PoP2 developer's documentation

Second part of the best game ever made.
Post Reply
David
The Prince of Persia
The Prince of Persia
Posts: 2846
Joined: December 11th, 2008, 9:48 pm
Location: Hungary

PoP2 developer's documentation

Post by David »

A few days ago, Mechner posted PoP2 developer's documentation on his blog:
http://jordanmechner.com/blog/2013/04/p ... and-flame/

It contains many interesting things, like description of the levels, sketches of the cutscenes, sprite sheets...
There are also some things that didn't make it into the final game.
For example:
Level 1:
- A doorway near the beginning where the guards come from, and if you try to enter there, you die. (This was moved to near the end of the level, where you land after climbing down: if you want to go right, you'll die.)
- There are archers who are shooting arrows. (Perhaps shooting would have been too foreign from PoP? - But there are shooting darts in the caves!)
- If you fall off the rooftops, you land in the courtyard.
- Dead guards may give potions - more exactly, you could take it away from them. (This got into the game, on the last level.)
- The princess's mouse is on the ship.
Level 2:
- A puzzle that is different from the current one.
Movement:
- Control your flight in floating mode. (slow fall potion)
- Swimming.

There are some sprite sheets in the document.
What's interesting is that the numbering of the sprites is like: A11, ..., A18, A21, ..., A88, B11, ... (This can be best seen in a very long sheet, on pages 193-196.)
This reminds me of the cast window found in old versions of Macromind Director. (Later it became Macromedia Director and then Adobe Director.)
As page 188 says, kid sprites for PoP2 were taken from the Mac PoP1. These old versions of Director ran only on the Mac. Interesting...
There are some screenshots of the cast window here:
http://www.lingoworkshop.com/Articles/history.php (one row)
http://www.khazar.com/academics/portal/ ... mation.php (one row)
http://www.animatormag.com/archive/issu ... 9-page-10/ (5 rows)
I didn't find any references to Director in the text yet. I didn't read the whole document yet, though.

One more thing: If you have PoP2 for Mac, look into Prince.rsrc with a hex editor. It contains some texts from MacroMind Director.
David
The Prince of Persia
The Prince of Persia
Posts: 2846
Joined: December 11th, 2008, 9:48 pm
Location: Hungary

Re: PoP2 developer's documentation

Post by David »

(Now the PDF is on PoPOT: https://www.popot.org/documentation.php ... dDocuments)

From page 31:
Guards’ Jumping Ability

The guards can manage a two- or three-space running jump, but a four-space leap is
too much for them. The guards don’t know how to grab onto the ledge. (Maybe
they didn’t read the documentation.) So, when you escape a guard by means of a four-
space leap, most times he will stop chasing you. Every now and then, however (say,
about one time in four) he will attempt to replicate your four-space leap, and plunge to
his death with a gratifying scream.
Quite an interesting taste of humor, isn't it?
Post Reply