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Zamujasa posted:the answers to "how are the development assets for retro games preserved" were mostly covered: nothing, tapes, random floppies in some developer's shoe box in their closet
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Jul 13, 2022 00:49
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If that old Grin story is true SE did have a paper backup of ff12's source code
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Jul 13, 2022 00:53
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Barudak posted:If that old Grin story is true SE did have a paper backup of ff12's source code Enix, at least, did keep things in binder format. I've seen photos that are supposedly the SHELF of binders which were the DQVII PS1 code.
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Jul 13, 2022 02:15
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Nintendo seems pretty on top of archiving things, judging by the big leaks.
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Jul 13, 2022 02:19
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SeANMcBAY posted:Nintendo seems pretty on top of archiving things, judging by the big leaks. Nintendo is effectively the only game company that has proper archives stretching back more than 15 years. It's amazing that such a major company is the one that got it right.
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Jul 13, 2022 02:26
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And yet still no Earthbound 64...... 
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Jul 13, 2022 02:28
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Good soup! posted:And yet still no Earthbound 64...... We’ve gotten amazing finds much older than it so I’m confident it’ll show up someday.
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Jul 13, 2022 02:31
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In many cases, some stuff has been preserved in the personal collections/backups of the people who made it, whether they were supposed to have them or not. For the Nintendo Switch version of Virtua Racing, Sega weren't able to find the original source code to the game, though they did apparently dig up other, entirely unrelated artifacts in the process, like a cancelled 32X port of Wing War... In the end, the producer on the Switch port project (Sega veteran Rieko Kodama) started asking around all her old coworkers, and tracked down a former Virtua Racing dev who had kept a private copy of the code to Virtua Formula, a modified version of the game for a theme-park attraction style setup involving F1 car cockpit replicas on hydralics in front of 50 inch screens. Good enough, project saved! Good soup! posted:And yet still no Earthbound 64......
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Jul 13, 2022 08:30
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I didn’t know the story behind VR. That Switch port is drat good so I’m glad they got the resources they got.
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Jul 13, 2022 08:51
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secretly best girl posted:Enix, at least, did keep things in binder format. I've seen photos that are supposedly the SHELF of binders which were the DQVII PS1 code. Weren't those DQVII binders just the game's script? I seem to recall it being promoted in terms of "look how many words this game has!" (I'm guessing you could probably fit the rest of the game code into a Worlds of Power book, so this is probably just splitting hairs.)
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Jul 13, 2022 13:02
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Dr. Spitesworth posted:Weren't those DQVII binders just the game's script? I seem to recall it being promoted in terms of "look how many words this game has!" (I'm guessing you could probably fit the rest of the game code into a Worlds of Power book, so this is probably just splitting hairs.) When you factor in the data for all the sprites and tiles and pallets, I could see it taking up a fair amount of space. Even if it's just direct 1:1 copies of the sprites art, the smallest grid paper is significantly larger than what a CRT would display a pixel as, so you're probably looking at a few pages for most of the sprites. Pallets I imagine would be simple if you just need to store the color numbers and which enemy that pallet is for.
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Jul 13, 2022 13:46
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TVs Ian posted:Didn't Square lose the source to both FF7 and Kingdom Hearts? I don't know if that's true (although it's not hard to believe) but I do remember hearing that several of the backgrounds in the FF9 were matte painting that have since been lost or destroyed.
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Jul 13, 2022 18:22
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Dr. Spitesworth posted:Weren't those DQVII binders just the game's script? I seem to recall it being promoted in terms of "look how many words this game has!" (I'm guessing you could probably fit the rest of the game code into a Worlds of Power book, so this is probably just splitting hairs.) I remember Nob Ogasawara/Doug Dinsdale posting about what a poo poo show working with Enix USA was back then, he basically had to copy the Japanese script himself while playing a jp copy of DQ7, then go back and translate it into English from his own hand written copy iirc
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Jul 13, 2022 21:03
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Dr. Spitesworth posted:Weren't those DQVII binders just the game's script? I seem to recall it being promoted in terms of "look how many words this game has!" (I'm guessing you could probably fit the rest of the game code into a Worlds of Power book, so this is probably just splitting hairs.) It's entirely possible. My Japanese skill at the time was not amazing and I can't find the photo again to check, which is why I left the "supposedly".
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Jul 13, 2022 21:07
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Schwarzwald posted:I don't know if that's true (although it's not hard to believe) but I do remember hearing that several of the backgrounds in the FF9 were matte painting that have since been lost or destroyed. Kingdom Hearts 1 is definitely gone. The 1.5 HD Remix version on PS3 is actually a full remake.
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Jul 13, 2022 21:50
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FF7 source was definitely lost, the code they gave to Eidos for the PC port was an incomplete beta and Eidos had to mash something together with spit and tape.
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Jul 13, 2022 22:41
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From Square Enix's President and CEO Yosuke Matsuda - https://www.gameinformer.com/e3-2019/2019/06/12/square-enix-committed-to-making-its-complete-library-available-digitally "I'm embarrassed to admit it, but in some cases, we don't know where the code is anymore. It's very hard to find them sometimes, because back in the day you just made them and put them out there and you were done – you didn't think of how you were going to sell them down the road. Sometimes customers ask, 'Why haven't you released that [game] yet?' And the truth of the matter is it's because we don't know where it has gone." I think this is why Square Enix is remaking so much of its old library recently (Live A Live, the SaGa games, the Front Mission games, FF Pixel Remasters) is cos there is nothing left to port outside of emulating the game.
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Jul 14, 2022 01:13
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Kurui Reiten posted:The idea of keeping source code around and accessible at any given moment is fairly new, because back in the day there wasn't space to store that data. this has always been laughable. there has never been an era of software development where the cost of storing the final source code for a project that made any amount of money at all was prohibitive in the slightest. they simply didn't care enough to even buy a single hard drive to put the files on, or to consolidate them all onto a (much larger) hard drive ten years down the road when HD failure might have been rearing its head. the cost of properly preserving the games in both storage and labor would have been absolutely tiny.
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Jul 14, 2022 04:21
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Jazerus posted:this has always been laughable. there has never been an era of software development where the cost of storing the final source code for a project that made any amount of money at all was prohibitive in the slightest. they simply didn't care enough to even buy a single hard drive to put the files on, or to consolidate them all onto a (much larger) hard drive ten years down the road when HD failure might have been rearing its head. the cost of properly preserving the games in both storage and labor would have been absolutely tiny. Now how many businesses do you know that willfully cut corners on non-essentials because bottom line is king? Source code sitting around isn't making anyone money, doesn't matter if you could fit it all on a single cheap hard drive, that's profit you're dipping into.
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Jul 14, 2022 04:34
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Jazerus posted:this has always been laughable. there has never been an era of software development where the cost of storing the final source code for a project that made any amount of money at all was prohibitive in the slightest. they simply didn't care enough to even buy a single hard drive to put the files on, or to consolidate them all onto a (much larger) hard drive ten years down the road when HD failure might have been rearing its head. the cost of properly preserving the games in both storage and labor would have been absolutely tiny. For starters, you generally wouldn't archive on drives, you'd archive on tapes. Drives can fail, tapes generally don't (assuming proper storage, etc). "Final source code" also isn't the problem, you're forgetting about all the raw art assets, sound composing, and any CGI cutscenes (that are a whole rendering project unto themselves to compile into "just" those few seconds/minutes of a video file) that take up more space. And those drives they do have are needed for their next project, so get wiping and get coding already.
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Jul 14, 2022 04:55
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Jazerus posted:this has always been laughable. there has never been an era of software development where the cost of storing the final source code for a project that made any amount of money at all was prohibitive in the slightest. they simply didn't care enough to even buy a single hard drive to put the files on, or to consolidate them all onto a (much larger) hard drive ten years down the road when HD failure might have been rearing its head. the cost of properly preserving the games in both storage and labor would have been absolutely tiny. I mean it's hardly a situation that's unique to software development. For its first thirty years or so television was considered a disposable medium. The BBC lost their recordings of the Apollo 11 moon landings, for example.
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Jul 14, 2022 06:09
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:I mean it's hardly a situation that's unique to software development. For its first thirty years or so television was considered a disposable medium. The BBC lost their recordings of the Apollo 11 moon landings, for example. The BBC is particularly infamous for disposing of old tapes to save space, a lot of their oldest shows like Doctor Who have lost early episodes because of this policy, because they were of the belief that if they wanted to re-run a show they'd simply get all the actors back and perform it again.
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Jul 14, 2022 06:30
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Neddy Seagoon posted:For starters, you generally wouldn't archive on drives, you'd archive on tapes. Drives can fail, tapes generally don't (assuming proper storage, etc). "Final source code" also isn't the problem, you're forgetting about all the raw art assets, sound composing, and any CGI cutscenes (that are a whole rendering project unto themselves to compile into "just" those few seconds/minutes of a video file) that take up more space. the CGI is probably a legit concern in the early CD era in the sense that you might need to spend a slightly-above-trivial amount of money instead of an extremely trivial amount of money. the assets and sound are obviously bigger than the code itself but i was including those in "final source code", i should have made that explicit tho. it does not change my evaluation of the reasons behind lack of preservation at all, nor does the change in medium from drives to tapes - the resources you would need to spend are not significant even if you saved all of the assets 10x over except in extreme corner cases Kurui Reiten posted:Now how many businesses do you know that willfully cut corners on non-essentials because bottom line is king? Source code sitting around isn't making anyone money, doesn't matter if you could fit it all on a single cheap hard drive, that's profit you're dipping into. i mean, obviously. that is exactly what i said! they, i.e. the corporations as entities, did not care (because there wasn't perceived profit in it)
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Jul 14, 2022 06:30
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Neddy Seagoon posted:For starters, you generally wouldn't archive on drives, you'd archive on tapes. Drives can fail, tapes generally don't (assuming proper storage, etc). "Final source code" also isn't the problem, you're forgetting about all the raw art assets, sound composing, and any CGI cutscenes (that are a whole rendering project unto themselves to compile into "just" those few seconds/minutes of a video file) that take up more space. I guess what I'm saying is, in many cases it's slightly more difficult than just throwing a zip file on Dropbox like the indie shlubs can.  Neddy Seagoon posted:And those drives they do have are needed for their next project, so get wiping and get coding already.
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Jul 14, 2022 09:07
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Namco has been archiving tons of art from their old warehouses recently, and they've said the situation with early digital/CG art is much worse than traditional art because the artists would lower the resolution of all the assets before archiving them, so a lot of their alleged source material is ugly as hell and not representative of the original work. They also have a lot of issues with assets being written for in-house software that nobody can remember how to use, or that has been tinkered with so much that it no longer supports anything older than x years, typical software stuff. They've also said that physical assets for more obscure games tend to be more comprehensively preserved than more popular ones, because the assets for the popular games tend to be dragged out and passed around to the point where they get misplaced or damaged, whereas the forgotten games go into the warehouse and never come out.
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Jul 14, 2022 09:11
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One important thing also is that it's not just about discarding assets, it's about losing assets. At a previous job we've had cases of source code that was fully backed up on a reliable support and on version control, and no one knew it, because over time people who knew had left and the knowledge had not been transmitted or written down in a way easily retrievable by people who hadn't worked on the project. Like, there's a tape but no one knows it, and to the tape guy it's just a tape on a shelf. A fully functional KH1 source backup disc might even be used as a coaster by some guy down the hall. In the fastest case where I've seen it happen it took one week for the organisation in general to lose that knowledge after the final backups were made and make the decision to make the next version from scratch. You really need someone whose very job is to know those things, and that guy is gonna be a hard sell to your boss because he could be working on something more directly useful instead. Chev fucked around with this message at 09:55 on Jul 14, 2022 |
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Jul 14, 2022 09:49
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Chev posted:One important thing also is that it's not just about discarding assets, it's about losing assets. At a previous job we've had cases of source code that was fully backed up on a reliable support and on version control, and no one knew it, because over time people who knew had left and the knowledge had not been transmitted or written down in a way easily retrievable by people who hadn't worked on the project. Like, there's a tape but no one knows it, and to the tape guy it's just a tape on a shelf. A fully functional KH1 source backup disc might even be used as a coaster by some guy down the hall. Yeah, one of the reasons companies like WWE can pull out clips of anything and put basically all their historic content on Peacock is because they have an entire archive department and staff whose whole job is maintaining their tape library. I remember reading an article around when they first started digitising that archive that not only were they digitising the tapes but also implementing a ridiculously involved tagging system so if you needed to find a specific moment quickly you could even if you didn't know what specific show it was on. No videogame developer was going to spend money on a dedicated archivist in the 80s or even the 90s.
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Jul 14, 2022 11:31
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Chev posted:One important thing also is that it's not just about discarding assets, it's about losing assets. At a previous job we've had cases of source code that was fully backed up on a reliable support and on version control, and no one knew it, because over time people who knew had left and the knowledge had not been transmitted or written down in a way easily retrievable by people who hadn't worked on the project. Like, there's a tape but no one knows it, and to the tape guy it's just a tape on a shelf. A fully functional KH1 source backup disc might even be used as a coaster by some guy down the hall. Yep. I have a friend who has a job as a archivist. Her (not just for men Chev) job can get complicated very easily just based on how much material has to be culled though before getting to sorting, documenting, and storage. Given how big media can't store their stuff correctly (fires at Fox in 1937 and Universal in 2008), it's a position that penny pinchers would rather not have because they don't value history. We're lucky at least that this medium has a virtually complete collection of released works (and quite a number of unreleased ones) but that's due to the fans and not the developers doing the work.
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Jul 14, 2022 12:08
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We see the same thing in product/software development in different industries too. Archival/education is a luxury for those that have time and at a bad company people with that type of passion burn out and get a new job, and then all that historical knowledge might as well be deleted. Now it’s so easy to back stuff up that people want to start from scratch just to avoid having to look up stuff without context.
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Jul 14, 2022 13:30
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Jazerus posted:the CGI is probably a legit concern in the early CD era in the sense that you might need to spend a slightly-above-trivial amount of money instead of an extremely trivial amount of money. the assets and sound are obviously bigger than the code itself but i was including those in "final source code", i should have made that explicit tho. it does not change my evaluation of the reasons behind lack of preservation at all, nor does the change in medium from drives to tapes - the resources you would need to spend are not significant even if you saved all of the assets 10x over except in extreme corner cases Its not necessarily profit, people are also just lazy/have a schedule to deal with.
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Jul 14, 2022 13:50
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Chev posted:One important thing also is that it's not just about discarding assets, it's about losing assets. At a previous job we've had cases of source code that was fully backed up on a reliable support and on version control, and no one knew it, because over time people who knew had left and the knowledge had not been transmitted or written down in a way easily retrievable by people who hadn't worked on the project. Like, there's a tape but no one knows it, and to the tape guy it's just a tape on a shelf. A fully functional KH1 source backup disc might even be used as a coaster by some guy down the hall. i know someone at ubisoft whose literal job is something like "build and release archive specialist", who manages automated build tools and also packaging up and archiving all assets for a given project, finished or cancelled in some cases even if you have the software or data, that doesn't mean you can use it properly. we have archives of sunsoft fami disks that had tools they used for drawing art directly on the console, and even if you had the source code for those, you'd still need an actual fds and whatever accessories or tools that were used. you might be able to emulate some parts of it, but in cases where you had dedicated proprietary hardware, you're basically poo poo out of luck and, as was said, every dollar spent on this is a dollar not spent on making something new for sale, so that's one of the most obvious cost-cutting areas
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Jul 14, 2022 18:03
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Zamujasa posted:and, as was said, every dollar spent on this is a dollar not spent on making something new for sale In the case of ubisoft this is a win-win
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Jul 14, 2022 18:45
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So a question - is FF VII on PC perceivably in any way different than the PS1 version owning to the fact it was based off a beta?
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Jul 14, 2022 19:33
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Well, all the characters have visible mouths, for one thing. They don't animate or anything, they're just pasted onto the texture and stay there for the whole game. There are two pieces of evidence that this is from the beta build and not something added to the pc port: 1. The same textures can be found in the ps1 files 2. It is not in any way an improvement 
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Jul 14, 2022 19:40
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Zamujasa posted:and, as was said, every dollar spent on this is a dollar not spent on making something new for sale, so that's one of the most obvious cost-cutting areas I also wouldn't be surprised if it's the sort of thing that can quickly turn into a very deep rabbit hole even if a company is hypothetically interested in preserving poo poo, leading to them balking at the effort/costs associated with proper archiving.
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Jul 14, 2022 20:36
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plus, how do you determine what needs to be archived? do you archive just the final assets and the code? what about all of the design documentation? what about equipment that was used? early assets or builds? etc etc etc.
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Jul 14, 2022 20:55
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For us the general idea is to archive the docs, the dev environment and the sources, but in practice it depends when tracking started, basically. Projects that are already in source control get archival of everything in it, which in recent years includes the build environments because we make dockerfiles (lightweight virtual machines) for them (all releases go through the docker builds, in fact), and the associated wikis. For pre-docker projects we try to keep a VM snapshot of a compatible build environment along as many docs as we can grab (digital docs. If it's not digital it's lost). We also have cases of legacy projets that are a bit trickier to handle, like right now I'm working on one where the old dev didn't use version control other than copying the work directory with different suffixes and didn't upgrade his dev environment in more than a decade, which was something he was allowed to do for various historical and structural reasons. But because it was an important project, I was tasked with upgrading it to a state that'd build on our current system and doing the necessary regression checks, then it can be packed like any other. In less important cases we just archive the whole work directory. The objective in general would be to have everything to be able to just click a magical button and get a working build on some form of environment we can run. Chev fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Jul 14, 2022 |
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Jul 14, 2022 21:54
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I wonder if it was less of issue of companies actually storing poo poo, but just the media/computers those copies were put on just disappeared with time. I used to burn discs of poo poo I had on my PC because I would often run out of storage in the late 90s and early 2000s, a lot of that stuff was old Half-Life 1 Mods, with tons of custom made models and map packs... all of those discs are probable a goldmine to behold but gently caress if they even exist anymore and if I have them. Maybe the same happened with those game devs too?
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Jul 15, 2022 08:50
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sigher posted:I wonder if it was less of issue of companies actually storing poo poo, but just the media/computers those copies were put on just disappeared with time. I used to burn discs of poo poo I had on my PC because I would often run out of storage in the late 90s and early 2000s, a lot of that stuff was old Half-Life 1 Mods, with tons of custom made models and map packs... all of those discs are probable a goldmine to behold but gently caress if they even exist anymore and if I have them. Maybe the same happened with those game devs too? I mean that's a common issue with archiving. It doesn't matter if you back-up everything if you have to search through a poorly organized warehouse to find it. Its not unheard of something that was thought to be lost to turn up in some random box somebody found. It was one of the main reasons the Star Trek the Next Generation restoration was so expensive.
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Jul 15, 2022 14:25
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IShallRiseAgain posted:I mean that's a common issue with archiving. It doesn't matter if you back-up everything if you have to search through a poorly organized warehouse to find it. Its not unheard of something that was thought to be lost to turn up in some random box somebody found. When Discotek announced that they were doing a blu-ray release of the classic anime film Project A-Ko, they were going to use it as a test of their new mastering method to upscale the footage that they had to 4K, but then someone literally just found the original masters in their collection so they had to go "Uh never mind we're just getting it from the film" and it was pretty funny.
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Jul 15, 2022 16:38
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