What's the point of preserving source code of old games? Most console and arcade games were written in assembly language and most PC games required the keyboard to play, making it's usefulness for ports quite dubious.
>muh preservation
Sure...
What's the point of preserving source code of old games...
Hunter Sanders
James Roberts
You can always try to sell it
Jaxon Reed
t. brainlet
Xavier Ward
because you can post the code somewhere and some autist will make a port for it
Isaac Hughes
It's similar to the idea of blueprints. Sure, technology changes overtime. But experts in the field who are passionate about what they do will know how to read the oldest blueprints and see how we used to do things back then. Have you seen the source code for HL:2? There's a bunch of notes from the programmer about stuff like memory leaks. I have no doubt in my mind that the code he wrote then was referenced for other Valve games as a "what not to do".
Jack Miller
AMD64 isn't that different though. Just takes an autist to change some of the keywords
Kayden Perry
t. room temp IQ brainlet retard
Christopher Flores
>most PC games required the keyboard to play
Are you implying that the keyboard has been replaced?
Jaxon Thomas
muh preservation
Blake Flores
There's nothing dumb about the lack of knowledge, user. The lack of wisdom, yeah sure, nigga's gonna drown in the rain like a turkey with its head facing the sky.
Ian Reed
>children with no life experiences deriding a child with no life experience
Colton Robinson
why not preserve the code? there's a community and an interest around old games and technology and it doesn't hurt anyone to release the code of a product that hasn't been on the market in over 10 years
if the source code or technical documentation for the old platforms were still around there would be more accurate emulation and the games would continue to entertain people instead of rotting in a basement somewhere
the keyboard + mouse problem doesn't matter because you can emulate controls, and the important thing about source code is that it's commented
the only reason not to preserve the source code (publicly at least) is so that the jew company who owns the copyright can decide on a whim if it wants to outsource the creation of a buggy emulator/port to india and then sell it for 60 dollars to retards, and if the company doesn't preserve it's own source code at all then that bites them in the ass cause it's harder (and sometimes impossible) for them to emulate it later
Blake Bennett
Not without permission of the copyright holder.
Where's the PC port of Doom SNES?
>inb4 who cares about console ports
The Atari Jaguar and 3DO ports (written in C) were ported back to PC.
Arcade and console games had several different architectures. Hell, even within the personal computer field there were different processors (x86, PowerPC, 68k).
No, but old computer games are very easy to emulate.
Hunter Allen
With remake culture now though user
Anthony Green
stupid faggot.
if fans of a specific video game got their hands on source code, they could easily fix bugs and add more content/features, or modify stuff like physics, movement etc.
Otherwise, they have to go through a time-consuming and complex process of reverse-engineering and figuring out what "variable1 variable2 etc." mean (because variable names and programmer comments get lost after compiling the code).
Kys stupid fag.
Lucas Harris
>Where's the PC port of Doom SNES?
congratulations, this is the dumbest fucking thing I have read all week.
Charles Ramirez
>if fans of a specific video game got their hands on source code, they could easily fix bugs and add more content/features, or modify stuff like physics, movement etc.
Most games would never get that much care. And good luck finding people with assembly knowledge for arcade and console games.
Dylan Wright
>No, but old computer games are very easy to emulate.
Okay, but what does that have to do with source preservation? Them being keyboard only doesn't do shit if it ends up getting lost to time.
Xavier Barnes
>but what does that have to do with source preservation?
>making it's usefulness for ports quite dubious.
>Them being keyboard only doesn't do shit if it ends up getting lost to time.
I think that preservation of retail copies is useful.
Angel Gray
that's a reason why source code should be preserved, but usually companies don't care enough to preserve it, like how the bbc just threw out or wrote over original tapes of early doctor who seasons
it's within a companies interests nowadays to closely guard their source code under intellectual copyright laws like how nintendo is anal about rom sites, but with older games if no one has the source it usually gets lost if the company goes bankrupt and their assets are sold off
if someone finds a stack of papers or hard drives with source code they might not know what it is and just get rid of it
assembly isn't popular by any means and the different architectures can make it more difficult but it's not some ancient knowledge lost to time, there are active retro scenes with people knowledgeable in assembly for whatever system you can think of
that's actually a reason in favour of preserving source code so it can be understood later
Eli Robinson
>Sure...
Why the passiveness? Preserving game code is how you get to understand how a game works? You think we try to preserve this shit for piracy reasons? What benefit and gain do people receive for preserving source code?
Jose Richardson
>there are active retro scenes with people knowledgeable in assembly for whatever system you can think of
The last thing those communities are interested in is in translating assembly to C.
Jordan Murphy
Don't old Toei anime have horrible sound quality because they threw out the master tapes? Try watching Dragon Ball in Japanese. The voices sound like they're coming through a wall.
Tyler Williams
Entitlement. Most people don't do shit with leaked source code.
Ryan Hernandez
Yes, they relied on a fan who recorded every single episode when they aired
Blake Johnson
and? there's more to code preservation than just porting
you asked why source code preservation is desirable, you've been given responses, it's not an "entitlement" issue
Elijah Bennett
All things end.
source code helps port shit when anything resembling an original IP holder is dead, gone, or uninterested.
Ethan Smith
>there's more to code preservation than just porting
Such as?...
>it's not an "entitlement" issue
Sure...
Joseph Cox
i find it amusing you ignored these you baiting faggot
Ryder Cox
Source is currently the closest you'll get to understanding another human being's thought process.
Jason Price
Bro literally fuck remembering or preserving anything. There is literally no reason to not set fire to everything that was made before this minute.
What the fuck are you, some kind of nostalgic Luddites clinging to the past? Get with the fucking future, if Apple didn't make it and sell it to me, it doesn't exist.
Noah Butler
>and the important thing about source code is that it's commented
But it wouldn't be a major loss if it got lost. Old games are easy to emulate for the most part and it's easier to port emulators than old games.
Easton Campbell
Easy porting to modern systems without using engine recreations (ScummVM was janky for years and still doesn't 100% many titles), can see how the games actually work, can extract all sorts of stuff very easily, and even get better copies of the renders. Square Soft was notorious for NOT saving source code, so all the original 3D renders for FFVII were lost, FFVIII didn't get re-released, and FFVII's PC port is a mess held together by fan-made patches.
Owen Williams
what do you mean by "easy to emulate"? emulator support comes around because there's source code preservation and technical information about the platform, emulation doesn't just happen overnight
if you think that emulation is more important than porting than it's also in your interest to preserve source code because every game is written differently and if a certain game has issues or inaccuracies in emulation than the source code can be inspected to see what the developer intended to happen with the code
do you think that source material shouldn't be preserved?
Alexander Evans
ITT: Brainlets
Brandon Gray
>easy to emulate
Lots of consoles have shitty emulators: Saturn, Xbox OG, PS2, and that's not even counting computer emulators or obscure shit. Most of the popular emulators are only good enough to run the most popular of games and even then utilized hacks to run...for years there were games that N64 emulation simply couldn't play.
Matthew Nguyen
>Easy porting
>assembly
>Easy porting
>heavy use of keyboard
Pick one and only one.
>Square Soft was notorious for NOT saving source code, so all the original 3D renders for FFVII were lost, FFVIII didn't get re-released, and FFVII's PC port is a mess held together by fan-made patches.
Those aren't old games.
>emulator support comes around because there's source code preservation
DOSBox was good enough for games years before Microsoft made DOS open source.
>technical information about the platform
Not source code.
>if a certain game has issues or inaccuracies in emulation
Blame the emulator for not being accurate enough.
>do you think that source material shouldn't be preserved?
I never said that. I just said that there's no much value in doing it.