Log 2024-07

• I added “programmed in” to our Wikidata corpus: https://w.wiki/99cy. I found only 31 games where this statement could be made with 99% probability, usually through statements by the developers. My favourite quote I stumbled upon was by Christian A. Weber:

Originally it was planned to port the game from Atari ST to Amiga, but the code was such a mess that I completely re-wrote the game without looking at the original source-code.

• A few details need to be investigated. ie. Philipp Gressly Freimann just listed a bunch of languages for the two games he worked on, at the same time. Sidenote: That he lists Modula-2 is pretty cool (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modula-2).

Pamehta und Züri - Computerspiele (1989/1992) [Modula II / C / Assembler]

• A lot of the games could be assumed as well. CALM for most of the Smaky games, 68k Assembly for many Linel games, especially if Christian Haller/Weber worked on it. Most games that had releases for multiple 68k systems (Atari, C64, Amiga) had probably a 68k asm core and than adjustments to take advantage of the specific hardware. I also gathered “game engines” but didn’t add them yet. Interesting bit: the mud Loch Ness was used as a base for the mud Ancient Anguish
• The gathering of the programmed in attribute gave me a good idea on the development space and some of it’s specifics. Amateur games were most likely approached in a BASIC dialect, while the commercial games were written by people that knew assembly, especially since 68k assembly could be ported easier between Atari, C64 and Amiga. An interesting position here takes CALM, which is not a am dialect, but a way of writting the same assembly code for different architectures

CALM is the abbreviation for Common Assembly Language for Microprocessors. CALM is not a new programming language, but another consistent, processor independant notation of assembly instructions. - https://www.pf-soft.ch/ascalm.php?L=E&C=W

• So it was an attempt to write the same code, for multiple different architectures. It’s still a topic today. That means of course probably Nicoud still wrote CALM after 1981 with the change to the 68k architecture. CALM enabled exactly that … Interesting would be to know if he also developed such a cross-compiler, who than transposed the CALM code into the different systems.
• I’m not able to formulate the thought yet, but I believe/have the hunch, there might be something to be done in terms of historical contextualisation and provenance, which are not covered in the approaches so far.