This is such a well written story, and congratulations Ben, it sounds like it's been a lot of hard but ultimately successful work!
I know you'll deservedly get a lot of credit for all your work in remastering the game, but you should also get credit for how you've woven this narrative together, it's a lovely read. Thank you for taking the time to write it up, and good luck with the Steam release, and whatever project you take on next! :)
benstopics 4 days ago [-]
Thank you sir and I'm glad you enjoyed the story! I hope it's successful but we will see.
sho_hn 4 hours ago [-]
I really enjoyed this article as well!
I'm still curious, however:
> That's not a marketing angle—it's a headline that writes itself.
Any ChatGPT assistance there?
benstopics 4 hours ago [-]
Claude actually! Yeah the content editing was heavily LLM assisted as I'm a terrible writer and I wanted the read to be enjoyable. So I compiled all the research and worked with Claude to build the article. I then attempted to go through with a fine tooth comb and write it in my own words. That is one particular sentence I missed with a highly recognizable LLM pattern which I will fix. I simply also don't have time to really market the game, I care more about the quality of the software. I know if the software is great then it will be successful. But I wanted to share the story in a compelling way. Apologies if it was distracting!
sho_hn 4 hours ago [-]
Totally fine, thanks for the answer.
grey-area 4 hours ago [-]
I wonder why LLMs do this so persistently (the ‘it’s not this it’s that’)? Is there really so much of this style of writing out there?
msephton 3 hours ago [-]
Professionally typeset books. Designers have been typing it—and the other dashes—manually using modifiers+hyphen on Mac since 1984. You can type them—plus the bullet character—today on iOS by doing a long press on the hyphen key.
grey-area 2 hours ago [-]
I’m not talking about the em-dash, which is not a great indicator IMO but the horrible overuse of binary oppositions with a kind of false surprise, e.g.:
The problem was not em-dashes — but binary opposition!
That sort of thing.
It is a much clearer marker of llm use than the em-dash. The sad thing is when searching for info on this the most convincing reply in search was generated by an LLM, which went on at length about why LLMs do this as some sort of consequence of their internal structure. I have absolutely no idea if that’s true — it really sounds a bit trite and exactly the kind of thing LLMs would confidently assert with no basis. I would want to hear from someone working in LLMs, but their blogs are probably all generated by an LLM nowadays. So this conundrum is a good example of a question where LLMs actively work against clear resolution.
This is in my view the most insidious damage word generators are inflicting on our culture — we can no longer assume most writing is honest or well-meaning because amoral LLMs fundamentally are not wired to make that distinction of true and untrue or right and wrong (unlike most humans) and many people will use and trust what they generate without question, polluting the online space and training data until everything is just a morass of half-known facts sprinkled with generated falsehoods that are repeated so often they seem true.
How do we check sources when the sources themselves were generated by LLMs?
Macuyiko 24 minutes ago [-]
My personal feel (completely subjective) is that during RLHF humans are incredibly sensitive to this pattern, especially when talking about personal or emotional issues. Any reply in the form of "it's not you, it's them" is such a dopamine hit that the LLMs started applying it for everything else.
grey-area 22 minutes ago [-]
An interesting topic for some postgraduate student's thesis perhaps!
msephton 1 hours ago [-]
Apologies! You have a point.
doctoboggan 3 hours ago [-]
I think it comes from the RLHF. If you haven't interacted with LLMs enough to get turned off by it, I think that kind of speech is seen as powerful and confident.
dxdm 2 hours ago [-]
RLHF = Right Left Hand Foot. It's a technique in Bavarian interpretative folk dance where you jump around, artfully hitting the soles of your feet with your hands in order to court women who are busy carrying unbelievable numbers of beer Steins into the mountains.
That's what came to mind when I saw the abbreviation. Then I looked it up:
Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback.
alwa 3 hours ago [-]
I wonder this too. Is there so much of this style, or does it indicate some aspect of the LLMs’ sensemaking?
Aloha 3 hours ago [-]
I'm only annoyed that I cant buy it right now!
teiferer 3 hours ago [-]
> This is such a well written story, [...] you should also get credit for how you've woven this narrative together, it's a lovely read.
Don't forget to give credit to the LLM too which wrote the story for him.
benstopics 2 hours ago [-]
Sure, it's 2026 I used Claude to write a lot of it. But tell me this. Do you know which paragraphs I wrote?
Eisenstein 2 hours ago [-]
Please don't feel the need to be defensive about this. People are reacting in a predictable way to a shift in how effort is perceived.
Where one formerly could use a certain way of writing as a heuristic for effort put into content they are spending time ingesting, now that heuristic is meaningless and a new one must replace it.
At this point some people have decided 'has markers of AI writing' is the heuristic to match 'no/low effort' on, and are trying to use shame in order to start a system of self-policing against it. Unfortunately that isn't going to work, because
1. the heuristic is flawed
2. most people are going to end up using AI tools for writing, since writing well is difficult
magic_hamster 2 hours ago [-]
I don't agree that it's flawed. There's so much to gain by writing your own words. It's something to practice and after a while, it's even fun to be able to express something the way you intended. Even today I do my own writeups and articles manually. I want the text to come from me, to show how I'd put it, even if I have a typo here and there. I feel like it's worth it to keep your own personality instead of having AI do it for you - or even edit for you. Even if you think your writing suck, it's still your voice and it's just more interesting for me to read an actual human being.
benstopics 1 hours ago [-]
I agree honestly. I just wanted to get the story out and share it and I'm swamped IRL. But I'm going to go back and clean it up when I get the chance. I do appreciate the constructive feedback from everyone and I will do better.
grey-area 1 hours ago [-]
It’d be an interesting exercise to just write it again yourself without referring to the LLM article then compare the two to see which bits of each are better. Yours would be shorter, but perhaps better and more honest?
Eisenstein 48 minutes ago [-]
I don't use AI for my writing and I agree with you. I meant that it is bad heuristic because people often do put a lot of effort into posts with AI writing styles in them, so it is not accurate due to a large amount of false positives. If one performs a test that is wrong a significant percentage of the time then it will be eventually abandoned.
benstopics 1 hours ago [-]
I honestly get it. I wouldn't have made that comment but I get why it was made. It tells me I need to go back and put some more effort into it and clean it up. You know, in-between working 80 hours a week at the prompt factory and working on the actual game... Without Claude there would be no story to read. I pay Anthropic $200/mo and Claude is a robot. I don't think anyone shed a tear that I didn't put "coauthored by Claude" at the bottom.
stavros 1 hours ago [-]
Can we stop with this? The world has changed, LLMs exist, people use them, and "omg LLMs" is a very tired trope now. If you didn't like the article, you can critique it, but "you used a tool I don't like" is just boring.
Marazan 39 minutes ago [-]
I personally find LLM text exceptionally boring and tiresome to read. It is often incredibly voluminous and filed with trite phrasing that turns a one sentence idea into 3 paragraphs of pablum.
Yes, this has been inspired by a senior management figure in my company posting a clearly LLM assited 500 word slack message that could have been 2 lines.
grey-area 19 minutes ago [-]
I and many others find it a useful warning. So I doubt people will stop noting it as part of a critique of things.
'You used a tool I don't like' is really missing the point.
'You generated text that is long and a bit boring and will probably include falsehoods.' is a more accurate description of why people pick up on this - the style is an indicator of using a tool that generates convincing garbage.
jhbadger 57 minutes ago [-]
I think it is pretty unreasonable to call CP/M "primitive beyond belief". It was basically equivalent to MS-DOS in capability -- after all, MS-DOS was basically an unlicensed clone of CP/M for the 8086.
andylynch 28 minutes ago [-]
It is said be way of comparison to modern platforms. Which seems pretty accurate.
andrewstuart 44 minutes ago [-]
Yes. Primitive behind belief.
There was a time in the world when most PC users could drive the C prompt.
oncallthrow 15 minutes ago [-]
I suspect more computer users in total can use the terminal today than then
DigiEggz 5 hours ago [-]
Congrats on such an achievement. The remake looks great, but those DOS screenshots have an undeniable charm. With such a large scale game, something I always find interesting is uncovering what types of quirks and bugs bubble underneath the surface in the original version. Did you come across anything obvious in your testing?
benstopics 3 hours ago [-]
Options pricing was not correct, which MJ knew because he simply based it on lookup table using ratios of a spread on a random security in his brokerage account decades ago! I tried to implement Black-Scholes best I could, my one contribution to the engine thus far. MJ has patched several things such as runaway interest rates and commodity prices, too-easy crypto price movements. Typos here and there. Certain edge cases that only a highly skilled player would ever come across, which due to the Discord server brought those players out of the woodwork to battle harden the game and a place for them to report the things they always knew but never had the motivation to report. But for the most part the engine is pretty damn solid.
benstopics 3 hours ago [-]
The reason I discovered options prices were wrong is because for fun I created an In-The-Money visualization graph for when you're doing advanced options spreads and I noticed that the graph was asymetrical and profitability and loss made no sense. So with the help of Claude we debugged the code and came up with a pricing strategy that was closer to Black-Scholes. And it really is because it takes into account industry volatility and such it was a fun side quest and Michael is happy with the result which I am very proud of! It really makes me confident that one day, long live the king but, he is in his 80s. Decades from now I will be able to survive on my own, I hope.
tommica 1 hours ago [-]
Really cool article! The solution to wrap the engine in a modern UI was a good one. I would have fallen to the trap of trying to port the whole thing, like all the other companies did.
Out of curiosity, how are the things tested? Or is checking core-engine doing things right only up to the developer and their tribal knowledge?
benstopics 59 minutes ago [-]
Manual smoke testing and touching the original code as little as possible, for now. I am working on an automated testing solution although it will require a lot of backend changes in order to do create fixtures.
PaulRobinson 2 hours ago [-]
A technical question for you around the porting being a dead end:
I see from other replies that you now understand the code reasonably well and feel you can expand/extend it while keeping it in BASIC. However, I note you've also done project where you automatically ported Fortran to Lua - are you not interested in trying to do something similar for performance/maintainability reasons? Is there an advantage in keeping it in PowerBASIC?
I've wish listed the game, and look forward to playing it, it sounds like great fun - even the manual sounds like a good read.
benstopics 1 hours ago [-]
I did exactly that originally. But here is the reality. Michael only knows BASIC and he has felt the agency to continue patching and working on the code, adding features even, since it is still BASIC. When others tried to port it to C++ be felt like he had no agency and wasn't motivated to help. So while he's still motivated to work on it, it needs to stay in a language he can work with. And thanks for wishlisting!!!
soci 4 hours ago [-]
Reading between the lines, the game logic itself hasn’t been reverse engineered yet, so adding, changing, or fixing logic still means working with the original code that only Michael Jenkins understands to this day.
In any case: massive props to Ben. This feels like a strong foundation, and I’m excited to see him continue evolving the game.
magic_hamster 3 hours ago [-]
It was never really reverse engineering as the source code was available to the developers (including Ben), and Michael even took the time to give meaningful names to variables, etc. I suppose the author meant to say it was hard to actually understand what's going on both in Power Basic and in the domain of knowledge because of the massive complexity of the game.
benstopics 3 hours ago [-]
That is almost entirely true and yes it's a click baity title, and it worked ha!
rustyhancock 3 hours ago [-]
I'm sure there is truth in original author saying tax code complexity as the core challenge. But that's not what makes this hard. That's domain complexity we all come up against it's accidental complexity that killed the ports.
The real problem is idiosyncratic and esoteric coding practices from a single self-taught accountant working in a language that didn't encourage good structure.
I can translate well-written code without understanding what it does functionally, so long as I understand what it's doing mechanically.
The original author seems to build in the assumption you're not going to translate my code you'll need to rewrite it from the the tax code!
benstopics 3 hours ago [-]
I continue to advocate for the fact that Michael's code is not bad at all. There are some anti patterns in it for sure, what engineer hasn't fallen into those traps. The fact is Michael is an infinitely better programmer than many of the senior developers I've worked work in my career. I truly sing high praise to his software development capabilities, not just coding itself but building the product, delivering results, and getting it out the door, especially a simulator like this with no reference points, no formal training, no help? Sure it took him 40 years and it's in BASIC and uses gosub everywhere. But the damn thing works and for anyone who took the time to learn the language and structure as I did, you will see that it is actually very enjoyable codebase to work with.
Aloha 2 hours ago [-]
the difference between gosub and if blocks calling a function is more academic than practical, you still have a main event loop sending your path of execution someplace based on something that happens.
I might not be a basic practitioner, but as someone who as written serious things in bash and powershell, I can see the allure.
praptak 7 minutes ago [-]
How does the deal with the original author work with regard to the ownership of the copyright?
I mean, the article means passing the torch but how exactly is this assured in case the author dies and the estate holders don't release the copyright?
arjie 2 hours ago [-]
Well that was a pretty cool story. Really enjoyed that it was sufficiently good for its time that so many people got into the field after enjoying playing it (or perhaps that it was enjoyable enough for so many destined for the field to use). And loved the bit where someone emails him and a few chats later off he sends the source code.
deaux 2 hours ago [-]
You can tell that by the end of it you got tired and it's less manually edited and more straight from the LLM's mouth.
I don't really care in this case though, it's an awesome story and it doesn't detract too much. Congratulations!
benstopics 2 hours ago [-]
Good eye! I hope to go back and finish editing it. But it's better use of my time to work on the game itself. But hey, I did all the research at least which took me years so. I just wanted to share the story instead of listing bullet points. I have pretty bad ADHD so, I didn't wanted the article to be a rambling.
hexfran 3 hours ago [-]
This story is super interesting and I think can teach us some valuable lessons about refactoring and the price of truly understanding the domain in which the code operates.
The accompanying article is also a pleasant reading with a nice bit of background, and I really liked the motivation behind "layering" on top instead of rewriting from scratch.
Thanks for bringing this story to HN!
benstopics 2 hours ago [-]
I referenced a LOT of articles and case studies on legacy rewrites and ports in that first year. It is definitely a challenge that even with LLM still exists and I am happy to add to the body of knowledge surrounding the subject.
dwedge 2 hours ago [-]
I admittedly only googled quickly but is there anywhere I can buy the original and the book still? I understand he had issues with the payment processor, and I can see free versions to download but I'd prefer to do it legitimately if possible
benstopics 2 hours ago [-]
Join Discord there is a channel dedicated to instructions on contacting him. He no longer sells the game except mailing him a check. A completely unrelated factoid... He LOVES $30 Amazon gift cards...
dwedge 3 hours ago [-]
> The game he wanted to make required something that didn't exist yet: a personal computer.
> So Jenkins waited.
This part made me laugh out loud. It made me imagine Jenkins as a time traveller who had made a mistake and got stuck in the past, but knew that personal computers would be invented.
benstopics 2 hours ago [-]
Haha sometimes I think he is with the things he tells me.
pgt 28 minutes ago [-]
"fits of rationality" is a great line.
qubex 1 hours ago [-]
Looks like I’m going to need a Windows 10 virtual machine on my Apple Silicon. Or maybe I’ll just buy my first Windows machine since 2001.
Oh and… thank you so much for doing this. That game taught me more than you could ever imagine.
qubex 1 hours ago [-]
Much appreciated.
jjmarr 4 days ago [-]
Good job! When can I buy it?
I am sold on the game and wishlisted it but lack of release date saddens me.
I love spreadsheet games like Terra Invicta/Paradox/Simutrans and this seems like a terrific example of one.
benstopics 4 days ago [-]
If I can't get a response from a publisher here soon, I will be setting an Early Access release date of 1-2 months from now to give me some time to build up more wishlists before I pull the trigger.
msephton 3 hours ago [-]
This strikes me as a sort of Microprose aligned release. Do you have any publishers in mind?
DeathArrow 5 hours ago [-]
Please post here when you have a date!
saaaaaam 4 days ago [-]
This is very well written. I have fairly low interest in video games and rarely read gaming content, but read this all the way through. That’s an achievement in itself!
benstopics 3 hours ago [-]
I figured the engineering crowd here would enjoy the technical journey and I am so grateful it got to front page so that I may talk about the technical side which I enjoy doing. I am not a hermit by nature and posting on HN really was a cry for someone to ask me a question about the backend. So I really appreciate all the technical questions gives me an opportunity to get into the weeds a bit.
masswerk 5 hours ago [-]
Regarding "The Second Oldest Game Developer", there are also the authors of "Spacewar!": Steve Russell was born in 1937, meaning, he's either 89 or will be 89 this year. Dan Edwards must be around that age, as well.
benstopics 3 hours ago [-]
I am definitely sharing this with Michael he will be happy to be pushed down in the dinosaur ranking!
masswerk 5 minutes ago [-]
A few more candidates for the ranking: Peter Samson (of Expensive Planetarium fame, the background star simulation of Spacewar!, and known for his music on the PDP-1, also author of the TMRC Dictionary [0], still active with the CHM PDP-1 team) born in 1941, Ellen Kuhfeld (Minnesota Spacewar [1] for the CDC 3100 at the University of Minnesota, 1966-68) is also in her 80s.
The two developers mentioned/compared were for the games the op has ported.
blobbers 4 hours ago [-]
Spacewar.com was such a classic game. Why wasn't it an exe??
selcuka 40 minutes ago [-]
> Why wasn't it an exe??
It was originally a PDP-1 game. If you are talking about the PC remake by B. Seiler, it was only 9KB. There is no need to bother with a relocation table if it's under 64KB.
doctoboggan 5 hours ago [-]
Really interesting, thanks for sharing!
I know it almost sounds crass, but you should consider letting an LLM take a crack at transpiling the code. Source to source translations are one of the most widely agreed upon strengths of LLMs.
withinboredom 4 hours ago [-]
I can tell you from reading the code in the 90s, no LLM will save you. It’s well written, but it’s not structured like modern programs. IIRC he invented his own trampoline system using goto that will leave you scratching your head for days, just trying to figure out how it works. An LLM might be able to guess, but it def isn’t going to one-shot it and that means you will need to be able to understand it as well.
benstopics 3 hours ago [-]
I do think it is possible with the advent of Claude Agent to transpile the code. First I would refactor the trampoline system to be functional and unit test everything. Then I would use those tests to validate the transpilation. It's something that I would consider doing for a Wall Street Raider 2 to overhaul the engine and deliver massive improvements to the engine itself. I do want to do this to a certain extent to implement automated e2e testing. But I don't mind BASIC at all, prefer it actually, I just want automated testing set up. But a lot of this is beyond the scope of my goals for Early Access release.
MarcellusDrum 2 hours ago [-]
I read this in it's entirety. Not skimmed through it, but read every single word (took about 30 minutes)
You can imagine my disappointment when in the end, the code is still basically a mystery, and a wrapper around the core game was made.
Not because what you did is not hard or impressive, it's because, up until the line were you said you are going to use a wrapper, you made it seem like you're deciphering the code. That isn't really clickbait, because I had already clicked and spent 20 minutes reading. Being misled felt a bit bad, considering how beautifully the story is written.
Impressive work nonetheless.
tedheath123 4 hours ago [-]
I loved this game. As soon as I saw the title I knew it would be Wall Street Raider. I play it via dosbox and for me the UI is part of the charm. I’d be interested in tinkering with the pricing simulation but from the article it seems like that’s almost impossible.
benstopics 3 hours ago [-]
Not impossible but a lot of work. But with Custom Data API and Set Game State API you can do a lot of what you may wish you could do from modding the frontend. Not ideal but it goes from impossible to a possible!
MagicMoonlight 2 hours ago [-]
If you could get an LLM to write the article, why not just get it to rewrite the code?
tuhgdetzhh 2 hours ago [-]
An Agent Team of Opus 4.6 should be able to reverse engineer the simulator in a day or two, instead of 3 years. But it wouldnt be so much fun I guess.
AlecSchueler 1 hours ago [-]
I'm not sure how feasible that would have been three years ago.
tommica 1 hours ago [-]
Good luck doing that without proper tests - I assume finance stuff is quite complicated and blanked porting with AI is insanely difficult, especially companies have failed in porting it by hand.
wewewedxfgdf 6 hours ago [-]
If you dropped the source code here you'd probably get a versiojn in each of the 5 major languages quick smart.
dionian 5 hours ago [-]
i guess if it was public you could cheat or understand it. its incomprehnsibilty is just like the real markets - you can never know why or how
benstopics 3 hours ago [-]
A magician never reveals his secret...
3 hours ago [-]
ErneX 4 hours ago [-]
This was a great thing to read this morning, kudos to both!
thomassmith65 5 hours ago [-]
This is a wonderful project, and the post is a wonderful read!
Are there any plans to break out portions of the Basic engine to a modern language? It's frustrating that the heart of the game remains inscrutable. Surely Ward is tempted?
benstopics 3 hours ago [-]
I understand the code now after working with it for so long. I even improved the options code to use Black-Scholes so I have a few tricks up my own sleeve. The reality is, now that I have mastered the codebase structure and BASIC... Why would I port it? I have plans on how to keep it in BASIC and make it cross platform e.g. web based.
thomassmith65 39 minutes ago [-]
I don't know the project, obviously, so any opinions I could add on porting wouldn't be so meaningful.
It's a lovely achievement you have pulled off, and Jenkins must be tickled.
replwoacause 4 days ago [-]
I enjoyed the read. How did you tap into the legacy Power Basic engine? Was there a FFI or some kind of bridge you could hook into? And what languages were you using?
benstopics 4 days ago [-]
I built an FFI via event dispatching and shared memory pointers/matching structs. Imported the C++ UI layer as a DLL via Win32 LoadLibrary. The PB shares a big array for storing global pointers allowing them to read/write each other's memory. The C++ has an event queue and has DLL functions the PB can call to peek/pop the next event. It actually isn't that complicated, just took me forever to come up with the idea.
As for languages, PB, C++, and JavaScript (Electron/Preact). I chose a no-build UI framework so that it could be modded by players without installing any build tools, just edit the text files in the game folder, and it has been a very good decision.
nwellinghoff 5 hours ago [-]
Indeed very clever. I wonder if you framed this problem up with claude how it would “guide” you to solve this problem. Would be an interesting match up of ai vs human. Love the story!
benstopics 3 hours ago [-]
The feat was done before Claude Agent which is why it was so challenging. Although I admit I am a heavy user now circa the past two weeks. We shall not discuss my Claude Code experience lest I have another mental breakdown at work and my employer has to send me home again. Let me put it this way. I have set up Claude dangerously skip permissions with Agent Teams, Fast Mode, and our automated e2e test suite I designed where it can see screenshots of every step and browser and API console logs. It is entirely hands off software development. I have had to think long and hard about my identity as a software engineer. So forgive me if for my passion project I don't let Claude do everything, lest I remember the decades I spent reading those textbooks on my shelf, and the fear that I will forget it all.
replwoacause 4 days ago [-]
That’s awesome. What a clever approach!
pillefitz 6 hours ago [-]
This is amazing! Having no knowledge of Basic, a.) what makes the rewrite "impossible"? b.) how do coding agents perform on the codebase? It might make for a neat benchmark similar to ARC
thomassmith65 5 hours ago [-]
I gather the version of Basic is not Object-Oriented.
So the program most likely is flat: a bunch of global variables (and possibly memory addresses), and instructions ordered by line number, rather than functions or methods.
flomo 3 hours ago [-]
Apparently PowerBasic was the successor to Borland TurboBasic and complied to a native executable. So this wasn't an interpreted 'line number' Basic like our kiddie computers. It also probably had the Borland Windows GUI stuff.
(However it wouldn't surprise me if older 'line number' programs still mostly worked. iirc VB6 also supported this.)
benstopics 3 hours ago [-]
No line numbers but you can use numbers as goto labels. It uses Dynamic Dialog Tools which is a Win32 wrapper which most of my "job" is gutting out those calls, implementing Single Responsibility in functions and plugging in Electron UI. And trying not to break EVERYTHING...
flomo 2 hours ago [-]
Thanks for clarifying. Super smart approach to adopting legacy code to a modern interface.
Maybe I missed it, but are you still using the Powerbasic compiler or have you worked around that somehow?
benstopics 3 hours ago [-]
Functions yes, and actually PowerBasic does have OOP. Michael didn't use it but it's there.
No line numbers except for goto labels, but gosub is the challenge for transpilation.
lelanthran 4 hours ago [-]
The BASIC from that time was pretty limited, IIRC.
No real functions, only `gosub` and `goto` so everything is a global variable.
I think even assembler for x86 is easier to unravel.
benstopics 3 hours ago [-]
PowerBasic does have functions. Go there is thousands of goto and gosub which would need to be unraveled which there isn't really a 1:1 for gosub at least in say C++. Or EXIT IF... The bane of my existence...
benstopics 3 hours ago [-]
a) At the time it was impossible for me. I think I could actually do it now. But now that I can read the BASIC... what would be the point? If I wanted it cross platform, I will build a virtual machine.
b) Claude Code has performed exceptionally well. I haven't tried the most recent Codex update. But I don't see the point in spending thousands of dollars on tokens to rewrite it when it works perfectly fine. It would be much cheaper to have Claude Agent build the virtual machine. That's just my opinion. If it ain't broke don't fix it I guess. I do want to bring it to mobile though, whether that's a phone app or responsive website.
thomassmith65 3 hours ago [-]
Can the original code simulate the stock market as it operates today? The main reason I would want to convert the engine to a modern language is to make it easy enough to understand that I could add features.
benstopics 3 hours ago [-]
I think it will definitely need refactored in order to do an overhaul like that.
But the best way I can answer your question. WSR does not claim to simulate real markets. It probably leans too much into fundamentals for our time, at least for the blue chip stocks in the game. What is actually is is a M&A and tax evasion simulator on top of a financial market sandbox to create tax implications to be avoided.
thomassmith65 48 minutes ago [-]
I see. So no 'meme stock' and no 'Wacky POTUS' modules!
omega3 4 days ago [-]
The Wall Street Raider is under active development, you’re releasing a clone under the same name?
I am working with Michael to remaster it. He transferred the domain name to me and I just redid the website. I'm not sure when the last time he updated Roninsoft website, but he has "retired" from working on WSR, although has been a huge help with the remaster. https://www.roninsoft.com/#:~:text=!!!%20Check%20out%20WallS...
6 hours ago [-]
Aditya_Garg 4 hours ago [-]
Amazing read! Is it possible to do something like this but for wall street raider?
"claude code plays wall street raider" would be very very cool.
benstopics 3 hours ago [-]
I would love to do this. I do plan to code a PowerBasic virtual machine in order to make the game cross platform which would allow for a future with Wall Street Raider Online because my true dream? I want to play it on my phone!
logdahl 1 hours ago [-]
Super cool stuff! I love the idea of games being refurbished to the point that it can be kept, almost source original, and still played years down the line. For example, I love Another World for this, being just a bytecode blob where each port is just a VM (good writeup: https://fabiensanglard.net/another_world_polygons/index.html).
egorfine 2 hours ago [-]
They spent so much time and effort to port this game to... Windows only?...
bhy 4 hours ago [-]
The game itself could be a good benchmark for AI agents.
zahlman 4 days ago [-]
... You got the source code, and it was 115 kloc of BASIC, but several other individuals and organizations failed to "reverse-engineer" it?
benstopics 3 days ago [-]
Others attempted to build from scratch or port it without the original developer's involvement. I worked directly with Michael and built a bridge layer into his existing codebase rather than rewriting it.
zahlman 3 days ago [-]
Ah, I understand now.
benstopics 4 days ago [-]
I'm sorry what is the question?
dwedge 2 hours ago [-]
I think they were nitpicking the term "reverse engineering" which is fair if the source is available
selcuka 29 minutes ago [-]
The source was available, but with cryptic variable names and (apparently) no or little comments:
> Ward mentioned that the biggest bottleneck was the cryptic variable names—short abbreviations that were common in old-school programming but made the code nearly impossible to follow.
> "He not only commented everything," Ward marveled, "he went through every single line of code and renamed every single variable for me in about three days.
I think it's still fair to use the term "reverse engineering".
msephton 6 hours ago [-]
Fantastic. Well done! For both the new game and the website article.
ozozozd 2 days ago [-]
Awesome story! Well-written also.
You are the engineer we all aspired to be. Though, you really are the chosen one.
Wish you the best!
nacozarina 4 days ago [-]
AI can’t do impossible things yet, but we still can.
benstopics 4 days ago [-]
You're damn right we can.
cameron_b 4 days ago [-]
Cheers for this!
Thank you for sharing your story.
benstopics 4 days ago [-]
You're welcome!
Computer0 3 hours ago [-]
I have been eagerly waiting for this project's release since I first heard about it, thanks for the update!
benstopics 3 hours ago [-]
Sorry I am slow! I do it on the side so. Bear with me. I try to market and post updates when I can. Even this onslaught of comments from hitting frontpage is overwhelming but I am trying to be gratious and respond to everyone!
dionian 5 hours ago [-]
Love it and fascinated to play the game.
sevenseacat 3 days ago [-]
oh this is an absolutely fascinating story!
sevenseacat 2 days ago [-]
I forgot to ask, do you have links to any of the Reddit threads? They’d be a fun read!
benstopics 2 days ago [-]
That is a really good idea. I totally forgot to include the link in that part of the story. I will definitely be making that change! Well, here is the one I think you are referring to: https://www.reddit.com/r/tycoon/s/bzjG709MLB
MUSTANG303 5 hours ago [-]
[dead]
blobbers 4 hours ago [-]
I feel like this is the sort of thing AI could do in 10 minutes. Did you try?
dwedge 2 hours ago [-]
For the longest time I've had this feeling in the back of my head that most of the AI hype is from people who were bad at the job to begin with so they can't recognise limitations. This comment is a perfect example
grey-area 4 hours ago [-]
Please do go ahead and report back to us in 10 minutes.
We’ll wait.
Rendered at 11:35:57 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
I know you'll deservedly get a lot of credit for all your work in remastering the game, but you should also get credit for how you've woven this narrative together, it's a lovely read. Thank you for taking the time to write it up, and good luck with the Steam release, and whatever project you take on next! :)
I'm still curious, however:
> That's not a marketing angle—it's a headline that writes itself.
Any ChatGPT assistance there?
The problem was not em-dashes — but binary opposition!
That sort of thing.
It is a much clearer marker of llm use than the em-dash. The sad thing is when searching for info on this the most convincing reply in search was generated by an LLM, which went on at length about why LLMs do this as some sort of consequence of their internal structure. I have absolutely no idea if that’s true — it really sounds a bit trite and exactly the kind of thing LLMs would confidently assert with no basis. I would want to hear from someone working in LLMs, but their blogs are probably all generated by an LLM nowadays. So this conundrum is a good example of a question where LLMs actively work against clear resolution.
This is in my view the most insidious damage word generators are inflicting on our culture — we can no longer assume most writing is honest or well-meaning because amoral LLMs fundamentally are not wired to make that distinction of true and untrue or right and wrong (unlike most humans) and many people will use and trust what they generate without question, polluting the online space and training data until everything is just a morass of half-known facts sprinkled with generated falsehoods that are repeated so often they seem true.
How do we check sources when the sources themselves were generated by LLMs?
That's what came to mind when I saw the abbreviation. Then I looked it up:
Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback.
Don't forget to give credit to the LLM too which wrote the story for him.
Where one formerly could use a certain way of writing as a heuristic for effort put into content they are spending time ingesting, now that heuristic is meaningless and a new one must replace it.
At this point some people have decided 'has markers of AI writing' is the heuristic to match 'no/low effort' on, and are trying to use shame in order to start a system of self-policing against it. Unfortunately that isn't going to work, because
1. the heuristic is flawed
2. most people are going to end up using AI tools for writing, since writing well is difficult
Yes, this has been inspired by a senior management figure in my company posting a clearly LLM assited 500 word slack message that could have been 2 lines.
'You used a tool I don't like' is really missing the point.
'You generated text that is long and a bit boring and will probably include falsehoods.' is a more accurate description of why people pick up on this - the style is an indicator of using a tool that generates convincing garbage.
There was a time in the world when most PC users could drive the C prompt.
Out of curiosity, how are the things tested? Or is checking core-engine doing things right only up to the developer and their tribal knowledge?
I see from other replies that you now understand the code reasonably well and feel you can expand/extend it while keeping it in BASIC. However, I note you've also done project where you automatically ported Fortran to Lua - are you not interested in trying to do something similar for performance/maintainability reasons? Is there an advantage in keeping it in PowerBASIC?
I've wish listed the game, and look forward to playing it, it sounds like great fun - even the manual sounds like a good read.
The real problem is idiosyncratic and esoteric coding practices from a single self-taught accountant working in a language that didn't encourage good structure.
I can translate well-written code without understanding what it does functionally, so long as I understand what it's doing mechanically.
The original author seems to build in the assumption you're not going to translate my code you'll need to rewrite it from the the tax code!
I might not be a basic practitioner, but as someone who as written serious things in bash and powershell, I can see the allure.
I mean, the article means passing the torch but how exactly is this assured in case the author dies and the estate holders don't release the copyright?
I don't really care in this case though, it's an awesome story and it doesn't detract too much. Congratulations!
Thanks for bringing this story to HN!
> So Jenkins waited.
This part made me laugh out loud. It made me imagine Jenkins as a time traveller who had made a mistake and got stuck in the past, but knew that personal computers would be invented.
I am sold on the game and wishlisted it but lack of release date saddens me.
I love spreadsheet games like Terra Invicta/Paradox/Simutrans and this seems like a terrific example of one.
[0] https://www.gricer.com/tmrc/dictionary1959.html
[1] https://masswerk.at/spacewar/kuhfeld/
It was originally a PDP-1 game. If you are talking about the PC remake by B. Seiler, it was only 9KB. There is no need to bother with a relocation table if it's under 64KB.
I know it almost sounds crass, but you should consider letting an LLM take a crack at transpiling the code. Source to source translations are one of the most widely agreed upon strengths of LLMs.
You can imagine my disappointment when in the end, the code is still basically a mystery, and a wrapper around the core game was made.
Not because what you did is not hard or impressive, it's because, up until the line were you said you are going to use a wrapper, you made it seem like you're deciphering the code. That isn't really clickbait, because I had already clicked and spent 20 minutes reading. Being misled felt a bit bad, considering how beautifully the story is written.
Impressive work nonetheless.
Are there any plans to break out portions of the Basic engine to a modern language? It's frustrating that the heart of the game remains inscrutable. Surely Ward is tempted?
It's a lovely achievement you have pulled off, and Jenkins must be tickled.
As for languages, PB, C++, and JavaScript (Electron/Preact). I chose a no-build UI framework so that it could be modded by players without installing any build tools, just edit the text files in the game folder, and it has been a very good decision.
So the program most likely is flat: a bunch of global variables (and possibly memory addresses), and instructions ordered by line number, rather than functions or methods.
(However it wouldn't surprise me if older 'line number' programs still mostly worked. iirc VB6 also supported this.)
Maybe I missed it, but are you still using the Powerbasic compiler or have you worked around that somehow?
No line numbers except for goto labels, but gosub is the challenge for transpilation.
No real functions, only `gosub` and `goto` so everything is a global variable.
I think even assembler for x86 is easier to unravel.
But the best way I can answer your question. WSR does not claim to simulate real markets. It probably leans too much into fundamentals for our time, at least for the blue chip stocks in the game. What is actually is is a M&A and tax evasion simulator on top of a financial market sandbox to create tax implications to be avoided.
https://www.roninsoft.com/wsraider.htm
https://labs.ramp.com/rct
"claude code plays wall street raider" would be very very cool.
> Ward mentioned that the biggest bottleneck was the cryptic variable names—short abbreviations that were common in old-school programming but made the code nearly impossible to follow.
> "He not only commented everything," Ward marveled, "he went through every single line of code and renamed every single variable for me in about three days.
I think it's still fair to use the term "reverse engineering".
You are the engineer we all aspired to be. Though, you really are the chosen one.
Wish you the best!
Thank you for sharing your story.
We’ll wait.