WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.600 You know, I was digging through some old computer 00:00:01.600 --> 00:00:05.099 magazines the other day from around 1987. Oh, 00:00:05.099 --> 00:00:08.279 yeah. And it is just wild how we used to define 00:00:08.279 --> 00:00:11.199 futuristic back then. I can imagine. A lot of, 00:00:11.220 --> 00:00:14.519 like, neon grids and shiny chrome robots. Exactly. 00:00:15.099 --> 00:00:18.960 But in gaming, if a game said it was 3D, it usually 00:00:18.960 --> 00:00:20.960 meant, you know, a black background with some 00:00:20.960 --> 00:00:22.960 green wireframe lines. Right. The Battlezone 00:00:22.960 --> 00:00:25.820 era. Yeah. Your brain was basically doing half 00:00:25.820 --> 00:00:27.280 the rendering work. You had to pretend those 00:00:27.280 --> 00:00:29.519 triangles were spaceships. Totally. But then 00:00:29.519 --> 00:00:32.020 I hit this review that just, it stopped me cold. 00:00:32.159 --> 00:00:35.060 It was for a game from 1987 that looked like 00:00:35.060 --> 00:00:37.399 it fell out of a time machine from, I don't know, 00:00:37.500 --> 00:00:41.020 mid -90s. Okay. No wireframes. It was solid. 00:00:41.320 --> 00:00:44.460 It had rolling hills, actual lighting, shadows, 00:00:44.859 --> 00:00:47.140 a physics engine. It was like seeing a color 00:00:47.140 --> 00:00:49.219 photo in a newspaper from 1850 or something. 00:00:49.439 --> 00:00:51.820 That is the perfect way to describe the arrival 00:00:51.820 --> 00:00:54.609 of Zark. It wasn't just a step forward. It was 00:00:54.609 --> 00:00:57.530 a completely different species of software. And 00:00:57.530 --> 00:00:59.369 that's exactly what we're unpacking today. We're 00:00:59.369 --> 00:01:01.729 talking about Zark, or as you might know it from 00:01:01.729 --> 00:01:04.329 the ports, Virus. We're going to look at why 00:01:04.329 --> 00:01:07.930 this game was a technical miracle, why the controls 00:01:07.930 --> 00:01:12.769 made grown adults cry, and just the sheer genius 00:01:12.769 --> 00:01:15.370 of the engineering that made it all possible. 00:01:15.590 --> 00:01:16.989 And we have to talk about the hardware, too. 00:01:17.519 --> 00:01:19.180 Because you can't really talk about Zark without 00:01:19.180 --> 00:01:21.579 talking about the machine it was born on. The 00:01:21.579 --> 00:01:24.400 Acorn Archimedes. The Acorn Archimedes. This 00:01:24.400 --> 00:01:26.760 is a piece of hardware history that I feel like 00:01:26.760 --> 00:01:28.760 a lot of people in the States probably missed. 00:01:28.900 --> 00:01:32.439 But in the UK, this thing was legendary. It absolutely 00:01:32.439 --> 00:01:36.040 was. The Archimedes was the first home computer 00:01:36.040 --> 00:01:39.280 built on the ARM architecture. And if that sounds 00:01:39.280 --> 00:01:41.200 familiar to you. It should. It should. Yeah. 00:01:41.280 --> 00:01:43.819 It's because ARM chips are powering pretty much 00:01:43.819 --> 00:01:45.900 every smartphone on the planet right now. This 00:01:45.900 --> 00:01:48.959 computer was like the great grandfather of the 00:01:48.959 --> 00:01:50.840 iPhone in your pocket. So this machine was a 00:01:50.840 --> 00:01:53.939 beast. An absolute beast for 1987. And Acorn 00:01:53.939 --> 00:01:56.439 needed a way to show it off. They needed a killer 00:01:56.439 --> 00:01:58.500 app that would make people look at their Commodore 00:01:58.500 --> 00:02:01.859 64s and just weep. So they called David Braben. 00:02:01.920 --> 00:02:03.620 Who was already gaming royalty at this point 00:02:03.620 --> 00:02:07.709 because Elite. Right. Exactly. Braben is a legend. 00:02:07.769 --> 00:02:10.650 And he created Zark specifically to show off 00:02:10.650 --> 00:02:13.490 it was a flex. The whole point was to say, look 00:02:13.490 --> 00:02:16.330 at this processing power. So let's set the scene 00:02:16.330 --> 00:02:18.889 visually. You boot this thing up. What are you 00:02:18.889 --> 00:02:20.949 seeing that just blew everyone's mind? Okay, 00:02:20.990 --> 00:02:24.629 so you're seeing a landscape. but not a flat 00:02:24.629 --> 00:02:27.009 scrolling background. You're seeing this checkerboard 00:02:27.009 --> 00:02:30.330 grid of like green and brown that actually undulates. 00:02:30.610 --> 00:02:33.909 It has hills and valleys and coastlines. Wow. 00:02:34.030 --> 00:02:36.050 And you're flying this little ship over it that 00:02:36.050 --> 00:02:38.009 casts a real shadow on the ground that moves 00:02:38.009 --> 00:02:40.460 with you. And this is what they called solid 00:02:40.460 --> 00:02:44.020 3D. That was the buzzword. Solid -filled polygons. 00:02:44.139 --> 00:02:46.520 Before this, everything was sprites, just flat 00:02:46.520 --> 00:02:48.180 images moving around. This is a world you could 00:02:48.180 --> 00:02:51.039 actually, you know, fly into. The reception must 00:02:51.039 --> 00:02:52.979 have been insane. I saw a note here about ACE 00:02:52.979 --> 00:02:56.240 magazine, Advanced Computer Entertainment. They 00:02:56.240 --> 00:02:59.159 gave it a score that seems, well, it seems mathematically 00:02:59.159 --> 00:03:02.780 impossible. 979 out of 1 ,000. It was the highest 00:03:02.780 --> 00:03:04.780 rating they had ever given a game at that point. 00:03:04.900 --> 00:03:07.319 That's incredible. The headline was literally... 00:03:08.170 --> 00:03:11.110 solid 3D the future of games. And, you know, 00:03:11.150 --> 00:03:13.250 they weren't wrong. It took the rest of the industry 00:03:13.250 --> 00:03:15.550 about five or six years to really catch up to 00:03:15.550 --> 00:03:19.169 what Braben did in 87. Now, Zark was the original 00:03:19.169 --> 00:03:22.370 title on the Archimedes, but most people, like 00:03:22.370 --> 00:03:24.030 you said, probably played it as Virus. Was that 00:03:24.030 --> 00:03:26.569 just a marketing name change? Mostly, yeah. It 00:03:26.569 --> 00:03:29.689 was ported to the Atari ST, the Amiga, the PC, 00:03:29.870 --> 00:03:33.150 and even the ZX Spectrum in 1988 under the name 00:03:33.150 --> 00:03:36.050 Virus. Did it look the same? It looked... Similar, 00:03:36.090 --> 00:03:38.189 but there were trade -offs. The Archimedes was 00:03:38.189 --> 00:03:40.229 just so powerful it could handle really complex 00:03:40.229 --> 00:03:42.710 lighting effects, depth shading. Right. The Atari 00:03:42.710 --> 00:03:45.250 and Amiga were great machines, but they couldn't 00:03:45.250 --> 00:03:48.169 quite handle that light sourcing. So Virus looks 00:03:48.169 --> 00:03:50.590 a bit flatter lighting -wise, but the speed and 00:03:50.590 --> 00:03:52.590 the gameplay were pretty much identical. And 00:03:52.590 --> 00:03:55.590 weirdly enough, the Atari ST version of Virus 00:03:55.590 --> 00:03:58.650 actually scored higher in ACE magazine than the 00:03:58.650 --> 00:04:02.090 original 981. I think by that point, reviewers 00:04:02.090 --> 00:04:04.250 were just so in love with the gameplay loop that 00:04:04.250 --> 00:04:07.229 the lack of, you know, fancy lighting didn't 00:04:07.229 --> 00:04:09.030 really matter. It was still light years ahead 00:04:09.030 --> 00:04:11.310 of anything else out there. Okay, so we've established 00:04:11.310 --> 00:04:14.409 it's gorgeous. But once you get over that initial 00:04:14.409 --> 00:04:17.569 wow factor, what are you actually doing? Is there 00:04:17.569 --> 00:04:19.850 a story or are we just looking at pretty hills? 00:04:20.089 --> 00:04:22.350 Oh, there's a plot, but it's very much an old 00:04:22.350 --> 00:04:25.050 school arcade setup. You're the pilot of this 00:04:25.050 --> 00:04:28.009 lone craft called a lander, and you are the only 00:04:28.009 --> 00:04:30.689 thing standing between a peaceful landscape and 00:04:30.689 --> 00:04:33.990 an alien invasion. Classic 80s setup. One ship 00:04:33.990 --> 00:04:36.790 against the armada. Exactly. But the way the 00:04:36.790 --> 00:04:39.370 invasion happens is really unique. The enemies 00:04:39.370 --> 00:04:41.670 are these cedar ships. They don't just shoot 00:04:41.670 --> 00:04:44.069 at you. They fly over the landscape and scatter 00:04:44.069 --> 00:04:46.730 these red particles, the virus. Ah, and this 00:04:46.730 --> 00:04:48.689 is where the visuals become the UI, right? You 00:04:48.689 --> 00:04:52.079 don't have, like, a Planet Health bar. in the 00:04:52.079 --> 00:04:53.839 corner of the screen. No, you watch it happen. 00:04:54.060 --> 00:04:56.220 The landscape starts out all green. When the 00:04:56.220 --> 00:04:58.660 virus hits, it turns brown, then red. It spreads 00:04:58.660 --> 00:05:00.560 like a blight. You can literally look down and 00:05:00.560 --> 00:05:03.000 see the infection moving across the map in real 00:05:03.000 --> 00:05:05.279 time. That sounds incredibly stressful. It is. 00:05:05.279 --> 00:05:08.199 It's visceral. Even the trees mutate. If the 00:05:08.199 --> 00:05:10.819 virus hits a tree, it turns red. And later on, 00:05:10.860 --> 00:05:13.779 if you or an enemy shoots a mutated tree. Let 00:05:13.779 --> 00:05:16.040 me guess. The tree itself becomes aggressive 00:05:16.040 --> 00:05:18.060 and starts attacking you. The trees attack you. 00:05:18.350 --> 00:05:20.209 That just feels personal. It feels like the whole 00:05:20.209 --> 00:05:22.750 world is turning against you. It's very similar 00:05:22.750 --> 00:05:25.649 in a way to the arcade game Defender. You're 00:05:25.649 --> 00:05:27.790 not just trying to survive. You're trying to 00:05:27.790 --> 00:05:30.990 protect a finite amount of territory from being 00:05:30.990 --> 00:05:33.149 erased. And the scoring system ties into that, 00:05:33.209 --> 00:05:35.170 doesn't it? You don't just get points for kills. 00:05:35.389 --> 00:05:37.490 Right. You get bonus points at the end of each 00:05:37.490 --> 00:05:40.490 wave based on how much uninfected green landscape 00:05:40.490 --> 00:05:42.750 is left. So if you save the world, you get a 00:05:42.750 --> 00:05:45.209 high score. If you let it burn, you get nothing. 00:05:45.410 --> 00:05:48.019 And then just to tune the screws. The game changes 00:05:48.019 --> 00:05:50.959 the map on you. Every four waves, you get a new 00:05:50.959 --> 00:05:54.060 landscape. But as you progress, the ratio of 00:05:54.060 --> 00:05:57.120 land to water shifts. You get less land and more 00:05:57.120 --> 00:05:59.120 ocean. Which sounds like it would be easier, 00:05:59.240 --> 00:06:01.199 right? Less land to protect. You'd think so, 00:06:01.259 --> 00:06:03.540 but it actually concentrates the infection. The 00:06:03.540 --> 00:06:06.300 enemies have a smaller target, so the virus spreads 00:06:06.300 --> 00:06:09.259 much, much faster. It forces you into this tighter 00:06:09.259 --> 00:06:11.540 and tighter kill box. Okay, premise is stressful. 00:06:12.339 --> 00:06:14.740 Visuals are great. But we have to talk about 00:06:14.740 --> 00:06:18.420 the elephant in the room. The controls. Ah, yes. 00:06:18.759 --> 00:06:22.680 The controls. I have heard Zark described as 00:06:22.680 --> 00:06:26.110 unplayable. sadistic and my personal favorite, 00:06:26.250 --> 00:06:29.310 a physics lesson gone wrong. Why is flying this 00:06:29.310 --> 00:06:33.089 ship so hard? Because it simulates real thrust 00:06:33.089 --> 00:06:37.370 physics with absolutely zero handholding. I mean, 00:06:37.389 --> 00:06:39.389 think about a modern flight sim or even a space 00:06:39.389 --> 00:06:42.009 game. You push the stick forward, the ship goes 00:06:42.009 --> 00:06:44.050 forward. The computer is firing little retro 00:06:44.050 --> 00:06:46.769 rockets to stabilize you. Zark gives you a single 00:06:46.769 --> 00:06:49.050 thruster and is mounted on the bottom of your 00:06:49.050 --> 00:06:51.720 ship. Pointing straight down. That's it. No forward 00:06:51.720 --> 00:06:53.720 thrusters. No forward thrusters. No brakes. Just 00:06:53.720 --> 00:06:57.019 go up. So how do you go forward? You have to 00:06:57.019 --> 00:06:59.480 tilt the nose of your ship. down like you're 00:06:59.480 --> 00:07:01.939 basically aiming at the ground and then fire 00:07:01.939 --> 00:07:05.120 the thruster this pushes you up relative to the 00:07:05.120 --> 00:07:07.500 ship which propels you forward and down but you're 00:07:07.500 --> 00:07:09.720 accelerating toward the ground exactly so you 00:07:09.720 --> 00:07:11.980 have to thrust to get speed and then immediately 00:07:11.980 --> 00:07:13.939 pull the nose back up to level out before you 00:07:13.939 --> 00:07:16.980 crash it's this constant rhythmic battle of tilt 00:07:16.980 --> 00:07:19.420 thrust level tilt thrust level that sounds like 00:07:19.420 --> 00:07:21.639 trying to balance a broom on your palm while 00:07:21.639 --> 00:07:24.410 you're riding a unicycle That is a startlingly 00:07:24.410 --> 00:07:27.009 accurate analogy. And remember, there's no auto 00:07:27.009 --> 00:07:30.389 level button. You have full 360 degree pitch 00:07:30.389 --> 00:07:33.670 and yaw. If you tilt too far, you flip completely 00:07:33.670 --> 00:07:35.730 upside down. And if you hit the thruster while 00:07:35.730 --> 00:07:38.269 you're upside down. You rocket yourself straight 00:07:38.269 --> 00:07:42.100 into the earth at Mach 2. Game over. I can just 00:07:42.100 --> 00:07:45.259 picture the panic. You see an alien, you jerk 00:07:45.259 --> 00:07:48.060 the mouse, you flip over, and you just pile drive 00:07:48.060 --> 00:07:50.040 yourself into the scenery. That is the essential 00:07:50.040 --> 00:07:52.720 Zark experience. In fact, it was even worse during 00:07:52.720 --> 00:07:54.720 development. There's a funny story about the 00:07:54.720 --> 00:07:57.180 prototype, which was just called Lander. Oh. 00:07:57.259 --> 00:07:59.879 The mouse sensitivity was so high that if you 00:07:59.879 --> 00:08:01.600 were just sitting on the launch pad, having even 00:08:01.600 --> 00:08:03.759 taken off, and you so much as bumped the mouse. 00:08:03.980 --> 00:08:06.100 Oh, no. The ship would register the tilt, flip 00:08:06.100 --> 00:08:09.420 over, and explode. Instantly. You died while 00:08:09.420 --> 00:08:12.360 parked. You died while parked, yes. They dialed 00:08:12.360 --> 00:08:13.980 that back for the commercial release of Iris, 00:08:14.100 --> 00:08:16.540 so you only explode if you try to land while 00:08:16.540 --> 00:08:19.040 tilted. But it shows you the level of precision 00:08:19.040 --> 00:08:21.339 Braben was working with. And you have to land, 00:08:21.420 --> 00:08:22.980 right? You can't just stay in the air forever. 00:08:23.339 --> 00:08:26.079 Nope. You have fuel. So imagine this. You're 00:08:26.079 --> 00:08:28.439 fighting off three Cedars. The ground is turning 00:08:28.439 --> 00:08:31.240 red. Trees are shooting at you, and your fuel 00:08:31.240 --> 00:08:34.460 alarm goes off. You have to disengage, fly back 00:08:34.460 --> 00:08:37.620 to your base, hover perfectly level. and gently 00:08:37.620 --> 00:08:40.360 set it down. While being shot at. While being 00:08:40.360 --> 00:08:43.620 shot at. You are a complete sitting duck. It 00:08:43.620 --> 00:08:45.440 creates this incredible tension where the simple 00:08:45.440 --> 00:08:48.500 act of parking your car becomes the boss fight. 00:08:48.639 --> 00:08:50.600 That sounds absolutely punishing. And speaking 00:08:50.600 --> 00:08:52.220 of punishment, I read about the weapon system. 00:08:52.500 --> 00:08:55.639 The game actually penalizes you for shooting. 00:08:55.820 --> 00:08:57.799 It does. It's another layer of what I'd call 00:08:57.799 --> 00:09:00.879 Braben difficulty. You have a rapid fire autocannon. 00:09:00.919 --> 00:09:03.840 It's fun to use. But every single bullet you 00:09:03.840 --> 00:09:06.860 fire subtracts one point from your score. So 00:09:06.860 --> 00:09:09.120 you can't just spray and pray? You can, but you'll 00:09:09.120 --> 00:09:11.740 end up with a terrible rank. It is mathematically 00:09:11.740 --> 00:09:14.200 possible to finish a game of Zark with a negative 00:09:14.200 --> 00:09:16.639 score. That is just humiliating. And the game 00:09:16.639 --> 00:09:19.220 rubs it in. If you finish with a bad score, the 00:09:19.220 --> 00:09:21.039 high score table doesn't just say game over. 00:09:21.200 --> 00:09:23.879 It displays a message saying that slugs and dried 00:09:23.879 --> 00:09:25.820 up bits of lichen have been known to achieve 00:09:25.820 --> 00:09:30.460 better scores than you? Wow. That is peak 1980s 00:09:30.460 --> 00:09:34.120 British developer snark. I love it. It really 00:09:34.120 --> 00:09:37.000 is. It frames the whole game not as a power fantasy, 00:09:37.159 --> 00:09:40.139 but as like a test of competence. The game thinks 00:09:40.139 --> 00:09:42.200 it's better than you and it wants you to prove 00:09:42.200 --> 00:09:44.700 it wrong. So we have gravity fighting us, the 00:09:44.700 --> 00:09:46.679 score fighting us. Let's talk about the actual 00:09:46.679 --> 00:09:49.480 enemies. What else is out there besides the Cedars? 00:09:49.840 --> 00:09:52.379 Well, once you get good at flying, the game throws 00:09:52.379 --> 00:09:55.320 the bomber at you. This is a high altitude aircraft 00:09:55.320 --> 00:09:58.379 that just moves incredibly fast across the top 00:09:58.379 --> 00:10:00.720 of the map, dropping massive amounts of virus. 00:10:00.980 --> 00:10:03.620 And why is that one so hard to deal with? It's 00:10:03.620 --> 00:10:06.220 a geometry problem caused by the physics. To 00:10:06.220 --> 00:10:08.940 catch a fast enemy, you have to fly fast. To 00:10:08.940 --> 00:10:10.799 fly fast, you have to tilt your nose down. But 00:10:10.799 --> 00:10:13.240 your guns are on the nose. Exactly. You can't 00:10:13.240 --> 00:10:16.159 fly fast and aim forward at the same time. If 00:10:16.159 --> 00:10:18.019 you're chasing the bomber at high speed, your 00:10:18.019 --> 00:10:20.159 guns are pointed at the ground. You have to do 00:10:20.159 --> 00:10:22.340 this sort of swoop maneuver where you gain speed, 00:10:22.639 --> 00:10:25.019 dive under it, and then pull up violently to 00:10:25.019 --> 00:10:26.840 take a shot as you drift past. That sounds like 00:10:26.840 --> 00:10:29.460 it requires a PhD in orbital mechanics. It separates 00:10:29.460 --> 00:10:31.519 the casual players from the masters, for sure. 00:10:31.799 --> 00:10:34.399 Okay, on the flip side of the scary bomber, there's 00:10:34.399 --> 00:10:38.360 something weird in the water. Tell me about the 00:10:38.360 --> 00:10:42.480 fish. Ah, the fish, yes. This is a classic Easter 00:10:42.480 --> 00:10:45.379 egg. In some levels, and some superfans swear 00:10:45.379 --> 00:10:47.019 it's in every level if you look hard enough, 00:10:47.200 --> 00:10:50.019 there is a fish -like enemy just swimming around 00:10:50.019 --> 00:10:52.720 in the ocean. Does it attack you? No, it doesn't 00:10:52.720 --> 00:10:54.460 shoot. It doesn't even appear on your radar. 00:10:54.519 --> 00:10:57.860 It just swims. But... If you manage to find it 00:10:57.860 --> 00:11:01.059 and shoot it, it explodes and releases a cloud 00:11:01.059 --> 00:11:03.659 of virus particles. Wait, so killing it is bad. 00:11:03.720 --> 00:11:05.580 It spreads the infection. It spreads the infection, 00:11:05.779 --> 00:11:08.159 yes. But it also gives you a massive point bonus. 00:11:08.220 --> 00:11:11.759 So it's this weird risk -reward secret. Do you 00:11:11.759 --> 00:11:13.820 want the points bad enough to pollute your own 00:11:13.820 --> 00:11:16.259 map? That is so strange. It just feels like the 00:11:16.259 --> 00:11:18.100 developer put it in there purely to mess with 00:11:18.100 --> 00:11:20.200 people. I think that's a very safe assumption. 00:11:20.500 --> 00:11:22.379 You mentioned the radar. That seems pretty critical 00:11:22.379 --> 00:11:23.940 since you can't see the whole island at once. 00:11:24.179 --> 00:11:25.919 Oh, it's essential. You have a little scanner 00:11:25.919 --> 00:11:27.919 in the top left showing red and green areas. 00:11:28.460 --> 00:11:31.559 But Braben being Braben, he didn't just make 00:11:31.559 --> 00:11:34.659 it a UI element. The radar data is provided by 00:11:34.659 --> 00:11:37.419 physical scanning towers located on the landscape. 00:11:37.779 --> 00:11:40.740 Let me guess. They're destructible. Completely. 00:11:40.899 --> 00:11:43.710 If you accidentally shoot a radar tower. or an 00:11:43.710 --> 00:11:46.389 alien destroys it, that whole sector of your 00:11:46.389 --> 00:11:48.450 radar screen just goes black, you're flying blind 00:11:48.450 --> 00:11:50.909 in that area. It feels like every single mechanic, 00:11:51.210 --> 00:11:54.330 the fuel, the ammo, the radar, is designed to 00:11:54.330 --> 00:11:57.110 say, be careful or you will break something. 00:11:57.370 --> 00:12:00.350 Exactly. It simulates the fragility of your machine. 00:12:00.690 --> 00:12:02.710 You aren't driving a tank, you're piloting a 00:12:02.710 --> 00:12:04.549 delicate instrument. I want to shift gears and 00:12:04.549 --> 00:12:06.529 look under the hood again. We talked about how 00:12:06.529 --> 00:12:09.490 advanced this was for 1987. How long did it take 00:12:09.490 --> 00:12:12.500 David Braben to write this thing? This is the 00:12:12.500 --> 00:12:14.460 part that makes other programmers want to quit 00:12:14.460 --> 00:12:17.299 their jobs. Braben wrote the original demo, Lander, 00:12:17.480 --> 00:12:20.360 in less than three months. Three months to build 00:12:20.360 --> 00:12:22.659 a 3D physics engine from scratch. Less than three 00:12:22.659 --> 00:12:25.480 months. He apparently only had access to a development 00:12:25.480 --> 00:12:27.840 machine for the Archimedes for about two weeks 00:12:27.840 --> 00:12:31.399 in January of 87. He wrote it all in ARM assembly 00:12:31.399 --> 00:12:34.320 code. Wow. He'd been experimenting with 3D algorithms 00:12:34.320 --> 00:12:37.000 on the BBC Micro, but the Archimedes finally 00:12:37.000 --> 00:12:39.320 gave him the horsepower to make it real. But 00:12:39.320 --> 00:12:41.919 even with all that power, He must have used some 00:12:41.919 --> 00:12:45.779 serious shortcuts. I mean, generating a 3D landscape 00:12:45.779 --> 00:12:49.559 in real time in 1987, how do you even do that? 00:12:49.940 --> 00:12:52.360 It's all math. He didn't have an artist draw 00:12:52.360 --> 00:12:54.860 the hills. He used pseudo -random sequence sine 00:12:54.860 --> 00:12:57.879 waves. Okay. English, please. Basically, he used 00:12:57.879 --> 00:13:00.720 a mathematical formula to generate waves, like 00:13:00.720 --> 00:13:03.139 sound waves or ocean waves, and then just phrase 00:13:03.139 --> 00:13:05.080 them in place to create the hills and valleys. 00:13:05.460 --> 00:13:07.700 It uses almost no memory because you're just 00:13:07.700 --> 00:13:09.940 storing the formula, not the whole map. That's 00:13:09.940 --> 00:13:11.539 brilliant. And then there's the sorting issue. 00:13:11.639 --> 00:13:14.740 This is really clever. In 3D games, the computer 00:13:14.740 --> 00:13:16.899 has to decide which object is in front of which 00:13:16.899 --> 00:13:18.960 other object. Right, so you don't have a tree 00:13:18.960 --> 00:13:21.049 that's behind a hill appearing. on top of the 00:13:21.049 --> 00:13:23.509 hill. Exactly. The standard way to do this is 00:13:23.509 --> 00:13:25.830 called bubble sort or quick sort. Basically, 00:13:25.830 --> 00:13:28.149 you compare every object to every other object 00:13:28.149 --> 00:13:31.529 to put them in perfect order. Is tree A in front 00:13:31.529 --> 00:13:34.289 of tree B? Is tree B in front of rock C? That 00:13:34.289 --> 00:13:37.070 sounds slow. It's incredibly slow. It eats processor 00:13:37.070 --> 00:13:40.090 cycles. So Braben realized he didn't need perfect 00:13:40.090 --> 00:13:42.789 order. He just needed good enough. He used something 00:13:42.789 --> 00:13:45.129 called bin sorting. Okay, what's the analogy 00:13:45.129 --> 00:13:47.970 for that? Imagine you have a messy pile of books. 00:13:48.659 --> 00:13:51.139 Bubble sort is looking at every single book and 00:13:51.139 --> 00:13:54.179 alphabetizing them perfectly. Bin sorting is 00:13:54.179 --> 00:13:56.600 like taking three laundry baskets and saying, 00:13:56.679 --> 00:13:59.720 okay, A through M goes in this basket, N through 00:13:59.720 --> 00:14:02.059 Z goes in that one. So you're grouping them roughly 00:14:02.059 --> 00:14:04.460 by distance instead of perfectly ordering them 00:14:04.460 --> 00:14:07.799 one by one. Exactly. He just divided the world 00:14:07.799 --> 00:14:10.600 into these depth bins. He didn't care if Tree 00:14:10.600 --> 00:14:13.059 A was one inch behind Tree B as long as they 00:14:13.059 --> 00:14:15.700 were both in the far away bin. It uses a bit 00:14:15.700 --> 00:14:18.080 more memory, but it is lightning fast. That's 00:14:18.080 --> 00:14:20.779 a fascinating trade -off. It's prioritizing speed 00:14:20.779 --> 00:14:23.799 over absolute perfection. And speed was everything. 00:14:24.159 --> 00:14:26.620 The game ran at a frame rate that made other 00:14:26.620 --> 00:14:29.179 games look like slideshows. What about the shadows? 00:14:29.340 --> 00:14:31.100 You mentioned they were solid, but were they 00:14:31.100 --> 00:14:34.730 like... real, dynamically cast shadows? They 00:14:34.730 --> 00:14:38.629 were a cheat, but a really useful one. The shadows 00:14:38.629 --> 00:14:40.610 are just projected vertically, straight down. 00:14:40.710 --> 00:14:42.669 They don't distort perfectly over the curved 00:14:42.669 --> 00:14:44.330 hills or anything. If you look closely, they 00:14:44.330 --> 00:14:46.110 kind of look like stickers on the ground. But 00:14:46.110 --> 00:14:48.350 they worked. They worked beautifully for gameplay. 00:14:48.850 --> 00:14:51.210 Because of that vertical projection, you could 00:14:51.210 --> 00:14:53.309 see the shadow of an enemy ship on the ground 00:14:53.309 --> 00:14:55.629 before the ship itself flew onto your screen. 00:14:55.830 --> 00:14:58.649 So the graphical hack became a tactical radar 00:14:58.649 --> 00:15:01.539 system. Precisely. I also saw a note about display 00:15:01.539 --> 00:15:04.379 modes. Apparently, the computer could do a higher 00:15:04.379 --> 00:15:06.460 resolution, but Braben actually turned it down. 00:15:06.600 --> 00:15:08.419 Yeah, this is a great little detail. The game 00:15:08.419 --> 00:15:11.840 runs in what's called Mode 13, which is 256 colors. 00:15:12.240 --> 00:15:15.019 The Archimedes had a higher resolution Mode 15, 00:15:15.200 --> 00:15:17.240 but Braben skipped it. Why would you do that? 00:15:17.360 --> 00:15:19.600 Better graphics are always better. Not if it 00:15:19.600 --> 00:15:21.980 kills your bandwidth. Mode 15 required moving 00:15:21.980 --> 00:15:24.419 so much data around that it actually clogged 00:15:24.419 --> 00:15:26.360 up the memory controller and slowed down the 00:15:26.360 --> 00:15:29.539 main CPU. Braben knew that for a game like Zark, 00:15:29.639 --> 00:15:32.840 fluidity was king. He sacrificed resolution to 00:15:32.840 --> 00:15:35.799 keep that buttery smooth frame rate. It seems 00:15:35.799 --> 00:15:38.019 like every single decision was laser focused 00:15:38.019 --> 00:15:40.480 on the feel of the flight. It really was. So 00:15:40.480 --> 00:15:45.120 Zark lands in 1987. It blows minds, gets ported 00:15:45.120 --> 00:15:47.860 as virus. How is it remembered today? Did it 00:15:47.860 --> 00:15:50.940 spawn a massive franchise? Not exactly a franchise, 00:15:51.019 --> 00:15:53.779 no, but it has a very respectable legacy. In 00:15:53.779 --> 00:15:56.960 1991, Amiga Power Magazine voted it the fifth 00:15:56.960 --> 00:15:59.159 best game of all time. That's high praise. Very 00:15:59.159 --> 00:16:01.159 high praise. Did we get any sequels? We did. 00:16:01.399 --> 00:16:03.820 There was a game called Conqueror, which used 00:16:03.820 --> 00:16:06.120 the same landscape engine, but instead of flying 00:16:06.120 --> 00:16:08.779 a lander, you drove a tank. That sounds a lot 00:16:08.779 --> 00:16:11.399 easier. Tanks generally don't flip upside down 00:16:11.399 --> 00:16:13.879 and explode if you tap the mouse. It was definitely 00:16:13.879 --> 00:16:16.740 more accessible. And then much later, in 1998, 00:16:17.179 --> 00:16:19.899 Braben's company, Frontier Developments, released 00:16:19.899 --> 00:16:23.960 Virus 2000 for the PC and PlayStation. And 98 00:16:23.960 --> 00:16:26.340 is a long gap. That's the PlayStation era. Did 00:16:26.340 --> 00:16:28.700 they keep the brutal controls? They tried to 00:16:28.700 --> 00:16:30.960 modernize it. They added more forgiving physics, 00:16:31.019 --> 00:16:35.480 better mission structures. But honestly, it didn't 00:16:35.480 --> 00:16:37.720 quite capture the magic of the original. Why 00:16:37.720 --> 00:16:40.370 do you think that is? I think because the brutality 00:16:40.370 --> 00:16:43.049 was the magic. When you play Zark, you feel like 00:16:43.049 --> 00:16:45.289 you are wrestling a machine. When you succeed, 00:16:45.450 --> 00:16:47.509 when you land that ship perfectly after a huge 00:16:47.509 --> 00:16:50.090 dogfight, you feel like a god. Because you earned 00:16:50.090 --> 00:16:53.990 it. You absolutely earned it. Modern games. They 00:16:53.990 --> 00:16:57.250 love us. They want us to win. They have auto 00:16:57.250 --> 00:17:00.190 -aim, auto -leveling checkpoints every five seconds. 00:17:00.470 --> 00:17:03.230 Zark did not care if you won. It's the difference 00:17:03.230 --> 00:17:05.529 between riding a roller coaster and flying a 00:17:05.529 --> 00:17:08.970 helicopter. One is thrilling but safe. The other 00:17:08.970 --> 00:17:10.769 requires you to actually know what you're doing 00:17:10.769 --> 00:17:14.069 or you die. That's it. And Zark comes from that 00:17:14.069 --> 00:17:16.269 era where the challenge wasn't just beat the 00:17:16.269 --> 00:17:19.109 level. The challenge was master the interface. 00:17:19.549 --> 00:17:22.069 Read the manual or suffer. Read the manual, practice 00:17:22.069 --> 00:17:23.950 for 10 hours, and then maybe you won't explode 00:17:23.950 --> 00:17:26.730 on the launch pad. But that feeling of mastery 00:17:26.730 --> 00:17:28.849 is something very special. And I think very few 00:17:28.849 --> 00:17:31.190 games today are brave enough to demand that from 00:17:31.190 --> 00:17:33.910 the player. Well, next time I crash my ship in 00:17:33.910 --> 00:17:36.269 a modern game, I will try to remember that at 00:17:36.269 --> 00:17:38.250 least I didn't get a message telling me I played 00:17:38.250 --> 00:17:40.349 worse than a piece of dried lichen. Always a 00:17:40.349 --> 00:17:42.839 silver lining. Huge thanks to everyone for listening 00:17:42.839 --> 00:17:45.539 to this deep dive into Zark. Go check out a video 00:17:45.539 --> 00:17:47.940 of it if you can. The movement is still mesmerizing 00:17:47.940 --> 00:17:50.240 to watch. It really is. Thanks for listening. 00:17:50.400 --> 00:17:51.579 See you on the next deep dive.