Donkey Kong: A Record of Struggle
shmuplations.com
shmuplations.com
> S(0)=0 (reference position) S(1)=v₀-½g (initial velocity) S(t+2)=2S(t+1)-S(t)-g
Thus, the value of the previous screen frame (t+1) is added twice, the value of the screen frame before that one (t) is subtracted, and the constant g is subtracted.
Yet they managed to crank out code much faster, and with far fewer bugs, than today's programmers can seem to manage, and higher performing too for anything that didn't require heavy computation (these days, there's noticeable lag, sometimes up to 1s, between typing characters and seeing them on the screen; this never happened in the 80s).
Way way way less lines of code, and they were coding something to run on a single type of machine. They also made heavy use of manual testing before release, because once it was released it was incredibly difficult (and costly) to patch.
If you've ever peaked underneath the hood of games like Final Fantasy 4, it's a lot of spaghetti code held together by duct tape.
The nature of the development process then was necessarily centered on hardware development: the amount of computing logic to run Pong was a small multiple of the amount needed to run a contemporaneous electromechanical pinball, and the amount needed to run Donkey Kong was a few multiples of that for Pong: but the basic premise of "video games" remained close to the pinballs, still built on using timers, state flags and simple lookup tables to do almost everything, which is why the jump arc computation is notable for going into the realm of a real simulation and allowing the software aspect to "flex" a little more. They could have gone with a binary jump using a timer - there were games well after Donkey Kong that did that.
The problems we face now are primarily ones of technical dependency in that configuring a system that does well at typing tests or any other specific metric is weighed against being able to access the standards that require a slower path - we generalized everything to USB and Unicode and JSON and other "not all that fast" standards, and we don't want to give them up, but they also lead to software that is complicated and hard to build.
The reality is that today's programmers, especially in the big corporations, spend a lot of time not doing programming. It isn't too uncommon that something that takes a half decent programmer a couple of days to bang out is preceded by several weeks of running around trying to get approvals and clarifications on different levels.
I guess earlier more trust (and responsibility) was given to the individual developers to decide what to do and how to do it, kind of like in smaller companies nowadays, and with the correct developers that enables a much more productive environment with little to no overhead.
That seems like a pretty wild claim, no?
There was simply a lot less of it. An Atari cartridge had 2kB of ROM. ZX Spectrum had 48kB of RAM for programs. Elite was targeted at the 32kB BBC. The normalized bugs/line and lines/day probably don't look as different as you think.
The real question is: how much of modern code is really new features, how much is dealing with more complicated and less efficient platforms, and how much is busywork from one faction or another within the company?
Yoyozo[1] is a recently released PlayDate game. The first toot about working on it on Mastodon[2] is from Sept. 5 and it got into the PlayDate store on Nov. 21. Elsewhere the creator said he put about a month into it. So a lone dev working on a legacy-like platform can launch a game in a month. I think Yoyozo doesn't have quite as much depth as Donkey Kong (not as many screens, no enemies), but it was made by a lone dev, so it probably all balances out. I think people are basically still capable of the same level of output, maybe a little higher, if they're willing to work on a limited platform.
[1]: https://blog.gingerbeardman.com/2023/11/21/yoyozo-how-i-made...
[2]: https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@gingerbeardman/1110136615210...
Donkey Kong arcade had multiple bugs, one of which was bad enough they had to rush out a fix: https://twitter.com/MarioBrothBlog/status/115587981172793344... (see also https://tcrf.net/Donkey_Kong_(Arcade)#25m_Jump_Bug, and the "kill screen" was never fixed)
We spend much "downtime" learning, reading and writing (pseudo) code. Remember, coding was new, access to existing "examples" close to zero, so we had to figure a lot of stuff out.
Paper (no whiteboards either) was an excellent way to tinker, show off and bounce off ideas.
I still find myself writing / drawing a lot before I actually touch a keyboard.
What was considered cheap in those days was printer paper. No problem at all to print out your entire program for going through and editing - with a pencil! - on the long school bus ride. Sounds awful now, but it wasn't, it was just different. Besides, at 40x25 character screen resolution, you couldn't keep that much code "in view" anyway.
Relatedly, you can’t easily comment code willy nilly even with 120 char lines, so paper still has a lot of freedom anyway
Minor error there (maybe he remembered wrong), but the Z80 doesn't have multiplication instructions, it has to be implemented in code (e.g. see: https://wikiti.brandonw.net/index.php?title=Z80_Routines:Mat...)
Brilliant, I will never be able to unseen that now, the rolling barrels of beer.
The game essentially saved Nintendo of America and introduced some of the most valuable characters of all time.
There are no black people indeed, the characters are mostly animals. The issue is that the primate characters are portrayed using negative stereotypes of black culture.
I understand that this article is about Donkey Kong but my question was about the wider franchise. I was only asking if others in this community feel the same discomfort with the franchise, as a whole, that I do, to the point that it becomes increasingly difficult to engage with.
I know that race and gender issues are generally frowned upon here but I believe my feelings are valid and I approached the subject with curiosity and without judgement of others.
That said though I’ll give it a fair listen.
EDIT: He presents a good argument.
[1] Or maybe I once watched a video on that topic and I’m disremembering it as a hypothetical, hah.
I was asked to provide a screenshot from Donkey Kong related media to support my point and I felt that a video showing multiple media from the Donkey Kong franchise with commentary from a gamer of colour would satisfy that requirement, while also helping inform the readers here of issues at play and, further, letting those issues be directly communicated by someone from the affected community.
Like you say, the narrator makes a good argument, and there is much good discussion about this on the wider web for anyone that wishes to look further into it. I wouldn't have shared a YouTube video to HackerNews if I didn't believe in its content.
I raise these issues when I can because I feel that many people here are working in industries at the forefront of what is shaping our culture and it sometimes saddens or even frightens me that these topics are seen as taboo in our community. If we can derail every other post with bikeshedding about CSS issues on the author's website, then it would be nice if we could sometimes take the time to look at the power of software to perpetuate racial inequality as well.
Yes DK does play the bongos and Diddy plays rap and Dixie plays the electric guitar and Lanky plays the trombone, and Chunky plays the triangle.
Also Feynman played the bongos, It's a famous gift for children because its cheap. blacks don't own bongos, nobody owns any instrument.
I think that if you're comparing a Bart and DK then the distinction between a 10 year old boy experimenting with his identity and a literal gorilla who came to fame by kidnapping blonde white women should be quite clear. Of all the main Nintendo characters there is only one who expresses himself using tropes from black culture and that is the woman stealing gorilla. Peach never raps, Toad never walks around with a boombox. For some people that's interesting, for some it's weird, and for some it's problematic because they live in a world where stereotyping of black people harms their experience of life day to day. For others it's totally not noteworthy, and maybe it's not noteworthy for the people of Hacker News, but isn't it intellectually engaging to consider these things?
When children grow up with these representations of a The Other or of The Self then it affects their perceptions. That shouldn't be contentious for anyone who has undergone the process of socialisation.
For many children the Donkey Kong franchise might be one of their their primary means of the exposure to black culture.
Black culture is culture, as you say, but no culture is free from politics; that's just an inherent part of any culture existing within a wider global geopolitik.
Again, I'm not sure what you were implying, so please clarify if you need to. You say: Black culture is culture... So what? Is any representation of that culture in, the hands of anyone, free from criticism, by basis of being culture?
I think that when we're speaking on a forum like this, with the knowledge that certain demographics are underrepresented among us, we have a moral duty to ask ourselves what doors are being closed and in what ways we might be closing them through our choices.
In looking at the game again right now with your post in mind, I'm still not seeing any racial undertones. I've always liked the game and still like the game today. I see you linked a video below but I've decided not to look at it. I can appreciate and respect that you may see some association that I don't. Perhaps what you see requires a certain prior sensitization to see or perhaps it's open to differing interpretation by reasonable people. Either way, I'm choosing to keep my experience of a classic game I've always liked untainted. I'm just replying because you asked if others see what you see.
(Note: I've only ever played original arcade DK and DK Jr, no console versions.)
Do I understand you correctly though? You don't want to watch the video because either A) you are unmoved by it and have wasted your time or B) you realise the author has a point and your childhood memories are tainted?
I am kind of surprised by that if I'm reading it right. If someone told me that one of my childhood games had become a damaging franchise I'd want to risk my memories and be sure that I wasn't doing anyone any harm.
It's this one. I am a reasonable person who is deeply familiar with the original coin-op game and, IMHO, there is nothing remotely racist in it. I see from other posts that apparently the bulk of the claims you're citing are related to later console games which I have never seen, have no opinion on and which are off-topic from the content of this thread since the OP is entirely about the creation of the original arcade game over 40 years ago.
> a damaging franchise I'd want to risk my memories and be sure that I wasn't doing anyone any harm.
I categorically disagree that playing a 40 yr old arcade game beloved by millions on my personal MAME cabinet can possibly do "harm" or "damage" anyone. I find the suggestion ludicrous but based on that wording and framing, I suspect you and I have profoundly divergent world views and that further engagement will A) Not be productive, and B) Violate HN's prohibition on culture war topics (which I 100% support).
Of course it's easy to categorically deny with what they say if you refuse to listen, and I'm sure everything seems like a war when you start putting people into factions that can inherently not agree and are inherently unable to talk through issues with a mutual openness.