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[Weevilone]

Backup are not forever too... you need to check them frequently... so think about backups in some obscure room in the company for 10 years or more.

And Japan has natural disasters too...

Today backup is cheap but 10-20 years ago it was really a hell of expensive... a ZIP drive was expensive and could allow about 500MB backup... there is magnetic tape backup too.

It's a good point. We tend to think of the options available today, but in the past stuff was stored on physical media of some sort. Physical media isn't forever, nor are the machines that can access them. People used Zip drives, tape drives, even media from now defunct companies. Heck all of my graduate research work is "archived" on both optical media and Syquest EZ135 carts, and it was done this way so all my eggs weren't in one basket. Well, in my haste to get the hell out of there and to my new job, I failed to realize that the CD-ROM machine that I used to dump all my network-based files to optical couldn't handle the long UNIX filenames. It happily truncated all of them to a useless state. The Syquest carts have long since frozen up and won't spin or anything. All I have left is my resulting Postscript file to print the final document.

I'm sure there are an infinite variety of stories like this for old source code.

Could be due to copyright/licensing issues as well.
I have been part of a company acquisition. Lots of code got dumped because the licenses weren't clear or non-existent.
Sometimes, as far as the legal team is concerned, its easier/cheaper/safer to rewrite things than to deal with possible lawsuits later on.

Getting away from source code exactly and just talking about intellectual property and communication, I worked for a Fortune 500 company that literally purposefully deleted everything they could the moment it became legal to do so. Any sort of old documents and such were retained not one moment longer than necessary.

You couldn't print, backup, save old e-mails and such. You had to violate company policy to keep anything of value. They were too worried about potential lawsuits being able to use the old information.

 

[RedAssedApe]

how do pre-rendered backgrounds work? is this why we don't have hi-res versions of stuff like FF7?

 

[Finale Fireworker]

One of my favorite tales of source code mishandling is Konami including the compressed source code to beatmania 5th Mix as a dummy padding file on the beatmania Best Hits PS1 disc.

Not quite source code loss, but even more spectacular.

What is the purpose of "padding files"? I see it referenced a lot but it's extremely difficult to Google. Why would you ever want to do that?

 

[Kthulhu]

People fuck up sometimes.

 

[Shiggy]

I still remember Rare Ltd. trashing off lots of prototypes around 2011. Some luckily got saved by some employees and made their way to the public.

 

[CamHostage]

A regular backup doesn't even begin to address the problem...
*READ THE REST, GREAT POST*

Here's the thing, lots of developers do archive. They've had some sort of source control for a while. That's gets backed up to tapes and that sort of thing.

Great, right? Well... *ANOTHER GREAT POST*

Between these, you've covered the problems as I've heard of it very well. I'd also add that studios get complacent with archiving, assuming that storing it once means job done. Everything's saved, guys, we just have to load up the DAT and ZIP drives whenever we need them ... 20 years later, "Uh, what's a DAT drive?"

You consider the job done, you forget about it, you don't get asked about the status of old stuff because you're busy with new stuff, you neglect to re-archive, you upgrade your systems again and again, you box gear up and stick it in storage, you clear out the storage of all the rusting old junk, you just don't think about it until it's too late because you thought you already thought about it before when you "archived everything". (There's a story about the remake of Grim Fandango about the team wrestling with old DLT drives, running them so dangerously hard at the end of the medium's lives that they had to schedule cooling hours to run offloads.)

And BTW, we think we're beyond those days of worrying about data loss because data storage is so available now, but I've heard concerns about the future from technologists who say we're even more complacent today because it's so easy. 20 years from now, we may be looking back and asking who has the access URL to the Google Drive, or what is a Google Drive, or...

Unfortunately, we're past the days where we had the relatively foolproof method of just printing out the source on the reliable medium of paper.

 

[alr1ght]

how do pre-rendered backgrounds work? is this why we don't have hi-res versions of stuff like FF7?

They're simply pictures and the 3D models are placed over them.

 

[Tain]

What is the purpose of "padding files"? I see it referenced a lot but it's extremely difficult to Google. Why would you ever want to do that?

I think that they were used to reduce laser travel time on optical media.

 

[RedAssedApe]

They're simply pictures and the 3D models are placed over them.

right...but weren't the original pre-renders of much higher quality and reduced to fit the playstation?

 

[superNESjoe]

I had lost a computer and multiple drives and now I don't have the source code to GunWorld's original PC version, or any prototypes or small games I made before that. In order to update the PC version of GunWorld, I had to actually take the Xbox One version and go back and re-implement all of the PC specific and Steam stuff. It was a huge pain in the ass.

Shit happens, basically.

 

[Harlequin]

I think it might also be a case of people just not thinking that far ahead. Correct me if I'm wrong but re-releases and remasters weren't as much of a thing back in the day as they are now so some companies/people may simply not have worried too much about keeping their old source code and assets safe. There are similar stories in the film/TV industry. For example, many of the cut scenes from Fox's Cleopatra film are probably lost forever because someone in the archives just threw them out back in the days before VHS releases or DVD extras and the BBC is still missing entire episodes of Doctor Who for similar reasons.

 

[jetsetnickradio]

how do pre-rendered backgrounds work? is this why we don't have hi-res versions of stuff like FF7?

They're digital artwork that was created at a certain size and quality. Unlike geometry, you can't make the pictures a higher quality or resolution. You can only upscale them which will add considerable amounts of blur. In order to get higher quality versions, someone would basically have to remake all of the art from scratch and that would cost significant resources while also probably end up looking a bit different from the original art, which could upset fans.

 

[w3bba]

Even digital things can get lost. It happens a lot.

One nice story i read:
Jordan mechner thought he had lost the original source code for Prince of Persia, but his mom found it on a floppy in her attic one day.

 

[CamHostage]

right...but weren't the original pre-renders of much higher quality and reduced to fit the playstation?

Depends on how the assets were generated. Could have been a painting (if only FF VII used paintings,) could have been an illustration, most often is a computer-generated graphic (and even in cases where the backgrounds are hand-drawn, they're still touched up on the computer, so the original is no longer the same as the final product.)

In FF VII's case, they'd all be computer-generated designs and composites I'd assume, and they would exist at various levels of resolution depending on the asset and designer. And they'd be in Maya or Renderman or something like that from 1997, in which case you'd better hope somebody has a working old PC with compatible versions of that old software since there's no guaranty that a new machine with a modern update of those tools (Maya still exists, some of the others from ages ago are long unsupported and incompatible with modern Win/Mac machines) would read the files even if you had them. You'd also have to completely redo the game even if you could find higher-quality versions of graphics to replace the old stuff with since there's no inherent method of just swapping low-res art with high-res.

 

[Starwolf_UK]

Link's Awakening? The ROM of DX has some data from the computer it was compiled on which either suggests Nintendo programmers are literal robots or they had to reverse engineer the original game.

Yea, it was a big deal. Completely affected the way they continued onward with that game from what I recall, because the hacker was leaking assets and source code to the internet.

They ended up catching the guy because Gabe Newell actually contacted the guy and told him he wanted to offer him a job. Guy flies out to US thinking this is true, gets arrested as soon as the plane lands.

Don't fuck with Gabe.

Actually that isn't quite true. That is what the FBI and Gabe wanted to happen but the FBI figured telling the German police would be a good idea and they arrested him instead (in some accounts the German police come across as a "yeah if you got on that plane you would be in a US jail for life"). The guy turned his life around and was free for the 3 years it took to come to trial and he was sentenced to 2 years in prison.

Didn't Half Life 2 source code got stolen at some point during development?

Yes the story is pretty interesting:
https://arstechnica.co.uk/gaming/2016/06/how-half-life-2-source-code-was-stolen-axel-gembe/ (if it sounds familiar it is a revision of the 2011 Eurogamer account)
Complete with the classic "But the person I shared the source with assured me he would keep it to himself. He didn't."

Spoiler

They never do

 

[BlazeBreak]

right...but weren't the original pre-renders of much higher quality and reduced to fit the playstation?

Yes, this is the case. You can take a look at this awesome thread about FFIX backgrounds.

As I assume has been touched on in the parts of the thread I skimmed through, Japanese devs didn't really archive assets well at all until more recently. In the case of FFIX, a lot of people thought it may never get a re-release because of such (VII and VIII's re-releases were basically just dusted up copies of the old PC ports Eidos did). It's possible that Squeenix lost most of the original hi-res backgrounds, since they went as far as improving the FFIX character models, while the backgrounds remained the same muddy PS1 compressions.

 

[RedAssedApe]

Depends on how the assets were generated. Could have been a painting (if only FF VII used paintings,) could have been an illustration, most often is a computer-generated graphic (and even in cases where the backgrounds are hand-drawn, they're still touched up on the computer, so the original is no longer the same as the final product.)

In FF VII's case, they'd all be computer-generated designs and composites I'd assume, and they would exist at various levels of resolution depending on the asset and designer. And they'd be in Maya or Renderman or something like that from 1997, in which case you'd better hope somebody has a working old PC with compatible versions of that old software since there's no guaranty that a new machine with a modern update of those tools (Maya still exists, some of the others from ages ago are long unsupported and incompatible with modern Win/Mac machines) would read the files even if you had them. You'd also have to completely redo the game even if you could find higher-quality versions of graphics to replace the old stuff with since there's no inherent method of just swapping low-res art with high-res.

those backgrounds were so good even at low-res

 

[Adam_Vania]

right...but weren't the original pre-renders of much higher quality and reduced to fit the playstation?

from what i gather the FVII background originals were fully modeled CGI (well modeled to the one view at least) that would touched up as 2D art, probably in the final resolution. and those working 3D assets like models, textures, lighting, etc. were never saved, only the final renders of 320x240.

 

[CamHostage]

BTW, this is the relatively "simple" digital source code we're talking about being lost or damaged; just think of all the analog video and audio recording material that's lost, as well as the material art that we can never go back to.

Something like the arcade version of NBA Jam could never be "remastered", for example, as those audio tapes of commentary had to be spliced and sped up and reprocessed and reprocessed and reprocessed to get them to fit into the game, and whatever photo they used of Scottie Pippin doesn't exist in real life as it does in the game because they had to compress and cut up and retouch it a ton to make the sprite.

 

[-shadow-]

I think I read once that Rare lost a bunch of the original Donkey Kong Country floppy's containing the original 3D models and software used to render the sprites and ended up reusing what they had for the GBA games instead of being able to re-render what they wanted. Shame, because I'd love these games redone with the original graphics in a high resolution. It might look aged, but some of the stuff in DKC2 and 3 still looks amazing!

Does Nintendo backed up the source code from their NES and SNES games?
N64 seems so because of Oot an MM 3D

Yes and no. While I do think that many of their source code has survived, the way Links Awakening DX has its code written makes me think that they lost the source code and had a machine redo parts. I can't find the source of where I saw the comparison of the two codes, but I'm sure someone knows.

Edit:

Link's Awakening? The ROM of DX has some data from the computer it was compiled on which either suggests Nintendo programmers are literal robots or they had to reverse engineer the original game.

And there's the one I meant!

how do pre-rendered backgrounds work? is this why we don't have hi-res versions of stuff like FF7?

They're 2D images of 3D work, so technically they could re-render everything in a higher resolution if they still have the original files and can get it working, which I doubt considering the age of the software that was used. There's for (I believe it's) VIII IX a bunch of high resolution images online that are used in the game. But considering the age of the games and Square being Japanese I doubt they'll still have the original files.

I think it might also be a case of people just not thinking that far ahead. Correct me if I'm wrong but re-releases and remasters weren't as much of a thing back in the day as they are now so some companies/people may simply not have worried too much about keeping their old source code and assets safe. There are similar stories in the film/TV industry. For example, many of the cut scenes from Fox's Cleopatra film are probably lost forever because someone in the archives just threw them out back in the days before VHS releases or DVD extras and the BBC is still missing entire episodes of Doctor Who for similar reasons.

Yeah part of this comes down to not knowing they could reuse the stuff years down the line. Though for Fox's Cleopatra I do want to defend the studio somewhat, they did originally save the material but somewhere down the line someone made the decision to destroy it for some reason. Thankfully they did discover one scene (no audio though) many years later and are still in search for more. Even the rumoured black and what workprint is being looked into for years now. So it's not that they're not trying.

 

[Timedog]

I still have everything I needed saved from my first PC in 2001. No excuse for devs to not have backups.

 

[Chainsawkitten]

What is the purpose of "padding files"? I see it referenced a lot but it's extremely difficult to Google. Why would you ever want to do that?

A disc rotates at a constant angular speed, but since it's circular that means the outer edge of the disc moves faster than the inside of it.

The red and green arrows have rotated the same angle, but are obviously different in length. In other words, things at the edge of the disc get faster reads than near the center. So by simply placing things at the edge of the disc we get faster loads.

But the disc starts writing at the center and we don't have enough data to reach to the end! What to do?

Well, just add random junk data* to the beginning to make it large enough.

* Or just zeros. Or a South Park episode if you want to be sued.

 

[Nielm]

Holy shit! Whatever happened to that guy in the end?

Read this: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-02-21-the-boy-who-stole-half-life-2-article

 

[Loona]

Much of the code for Garou Mark of the Wolves II was purportedly lost/stolen in the naughties. What I wouldn't do to have that game finished and released!

Apparently any material related to the Hyper NeoGeo 64 games is lost too, and ports of NeoGeo Pocket games don't seem very likely either... :/

 

[Syriel]

I've heard stories that some of the parts from a remake/remaster for example Kingdom Hearts, Silent Hill, and maybe few others has to be rebuilt/rewritten from scratch because apparently the developers no longer have the source code/asset or it is lost.

Source :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Hill_HD_Collection
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...on-still-uses-ps2-cut-scenes-in-separate-ways
http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/06/27/original-kingdom-hearts-assets-lost
http://www.the-nextlevel.com/tnl/threads/52361-Developers-Losing-Source-Code

Notice that this mostly happen to Japanese developers. For some background, I worked for a few companies in the past 5 years, even the small one at least have weekly backup. One of the company I worked for still have their code from the 90's.

So I'm wondering how the hell this is even possible?

Do you save all the drafts from every project you ever worked on?

Back then, when a project was done, it was done. These weren't seen as things to save back then. They were seen as interim work product on the way to a goal.

Lots of stuff was thrown out for space reasons. Most of the game artwork I own is because companies were literally throwing it out. Project was over, they needed to move on.

Capcom and Mega Man Mania, the Game Boy Mega Man games. At least, that's what I remember them saying back in the day. They had no problem finding code for the Virtual Console, though.

Virtual console stuff, if done right, doesn't need the original source. An emulator just needs the original ROM image (aka final product).

Could be due to copyright/licensing issues as well.
I have been part of a company acquisition. Lots of code got dumped because the licenses weren't clear or non-existent.
Sometimes, as far as the legal team is concerned, its easier/cheaper/safer to rewrite things than to deal with possible lawsuits later on.

This is another big reason.

What is the purpose of "padding files"? I see it referenced a lot but it's extremely difficult to Google. Why would you ever want to do that?

Read speed is increased on the outer edges of a disc. You wanted to place the more important files (performance wise) physically on that part of the disc.

 

[Glowsquid]

I think I read once that Rare lost a bunch of the original Donkey Kong Country floppy's containing the original 3D models and software used to render the sprites and ended up reusing what they had for the GBA games instead of being able to re-render what they wanted. Shame, because I'd love these games redone with the original graphics in a high resolution. It might look aged, but some of the stuff in DKC2 and 3 still looks amazing!

They did lose some floppies; they used emulator to get the graphics,

"The original assets were on old floppy discs, only some of which were found, and those who were, we battled to make head or tail of the obscure file formats and the random frames of animation spread across the various discs."

"The art was lots of fun and games; let's just say it couldn't have been done without emulators. [...] The artists sat with SNES emulators, stepping through the game one frame at a time with various sprite/background layers toggled and taking screenshots. Most of the backgrounds were redone from scratch, to look as best as possible in the colour palette & scale/resolution of the GBA screen.

"[...] I remember [we put] a lot of extra detail into smoothing out the character animations; finding frames from other moves he could put between certain animation sequences to get rid of jerking/snapping. A lot of it you wouldn't notice unless you're looking out for it though!"

 

[eliochip]

Sega losing the Panzer dragoon Saga source code

 

[v1oz]

how do pre-rendered backgrounds work? is this why we don't have hi-res versions of stuff like FF7?

To add to this. How are pre-rendered CG cut scenes handled in the industry. Is there a reason why they can't take the original source files and re-render to higher resolutions for the HD remasters.

 

[-shadow-]

They did lose some floppies; they used emulator to get the graphics,

Well that part I didn't know yet. That just blows my mind they went through it like that. Truly unfortunate

To add to this. How are pre-rendered CG cut scenes handled in the industry. Is there a reason why they can't take the original source files and re-render to higher resolutions for the HD remasters.

It's a game by game basis. But there's a simple reason why I prefer in-game cutscenes even if they potentially take away some of the flair of them. Even if stuff gets lost, at least the cutscenes will not stick out like a sore thumb.

 

[Snakey125]

I think the development of the Sims 2 had a problem with a fire or flooding or something?
I don't remember 100% so could just be making it up!

Edit: Just Googled, think it was a fire

Was a fire.

It was during development and they had to remake the ENTIRE game because nobody had a back-up I believe.

 

[funkystudent]

To add to this. How are pre-rendered CG cut scenes handled in the industry. Is there a reason why they can't take the original source files and re-render to higher resolutions for the HD remasters.

You could. Some remasters do. I like the new Starcraft remaster does that. So did FFXHD.

 

[CSJ]

People fuck up sometimes.

Yup, recently if you don't have an off-site back up of "shit is over if we lose this" type of material, then you really done fucked up bad and there's no excuse.

My work has daily backups, multiple copies, one stays with an employee on their person to store at home.
It's not big, but it's important.

 

[hamdammage]

To add to this. How are pre-rendered CG cut scenes handled in the industry. Is there a reason why they can't take the original source files and re-render to higher resolutions for the HD remasters.

Another issue could be those assets were created with really old computers and software. Unless you had the exact same setup from back then, it could be a pain to get them up and running on modern systems.

 

[CamHostage]

Back then, when a project was done, it was done. These weren't seen as things to save back then. They were seen as interim work product on the way to a goal.

My company is video-based, and we only somewhat-recently started archiving raw video (quite expensively, I might add) after realizing that there might be need in the future for newsfeed from years ago and that our 640x480, Sorenson Squeeze'ed finished video files were not going to upscale to HD too well. Even then, I'm not sure how easy it'd be to find the "final cut" savefile in AVID of any given news segment since we fork and change our minds all the time, so I'm not sure what the case would be that we'd need to do this, but reconstructing an edit 10 years from now using source saves and files seems almost as difficult a proposition as rebuilding Silent Hill 2 without fucking up...

Another issue could be those assets were created with really old computers and software. Unless you had the exact same setup from back then, it could be a pain to get them up and running on modern systems.

...Or have the network key or login to access those old machines.

But hey, good to note, if anybody here is a developer of a surviving game company from the '90s and you see a Silicon Graphics Onyx workstation in the closet, put a post-it sticky on it today, "DON'T throw this away!!"

 

[7DollarHagane]

Why do people think source code is required to emulate software? For ports its probabaly nice to have but not necessary, but for emulation thousnds of fan created emulagors have been built to high standards without any access to source code.

Its always seemed like a dumb thing to claim when stating why panzer dragoon saga cant be re released or some other game.

 

[chrominance]

Note that video games are not alone in this. Almost a hundred Doctor Who episodes from the early seasons are missing because the BBC literally wiped the storage media they were on so they could record new stuff. This was partially because the old episodes were seen to have no economic value (but it gets weirder from there).

There are examples of western developers losing source code as well. For example, when Gearbox built the remastered versions of Homeworld 1 and 2, Homeworld Cataclysm wasn't included because no one could find the source code.

 

[marmoka]

Half Life 3
The last guardian

Spoiler

just kidding. I hope not to be saying something true

 

[CamHostage]

Why do people think source code is required to emulate software? For ports its probabaly nice to have but not necessary, but for emulation thousnds of fan created emulagors have been built to high standards without any access to source code.

It's not, but if we want to can talk about alternative approaches to "remastering" software in a different way or elsewhere, that's a little different discussion (even if that is one of the initial questions posed by the OP.) We're talking so far about the source code itself, its value, the method of archiving it, and why there are so many archiving horror stories.

I will say, though, that for true preservationists, the idea that preservation is "done" when we can get ROMs to load in an emulator is as short-sighted as the initial idea that a game is "done" when the cartridge is pressed; there often comes times where there's need to go beyond the boxed product (or emulated copy of it, which uses a lot of cheating to give you the "illusion of perfection",) and there are huge roadblocks in place that get in the way.

Its always seemed like a dumb thing to claim when stating why panzer dragoon saga cant be re released or some other game.

Panzer (and Saturn emulation in general) is its own weird little discussion, and there's actually a fair albeit inconclusive thread about that game specifically on Sega-16.

 

[Glowsquid]

Its always seemed like a dumb thing to claim when stating why panzer dragoon saga cant be re released or some other game.

I remember a member here (Krejlooc I think?) responding to the whole "Sega lost its Saturn source code stuff so that's why they don,t make ports" thing by saying ancient code on a foreign architecture would be completely useless for the purpose of making ports to modern systems. Not having any knowledge in this stuff, I don't know how true that is.

 

[HueyFreeman]

I just had to quote this after all the talk of Panzer Dragoon!

lol so I totally thought you were quoting a post from this thread and re-quoted it, and ended up necrobumping a 9 year old thread. I am currently catching shit for it in said thread.

(Appreciated quoting the post though, super interesting)

 

[Piggus]

I don't understand how you lose a gold master like Star Craft. How the hell does something like that end up in a box of junk and not in a safe or vault?

 

[7DollarHagane]

It's not, but if we want to can talk about alternative approaches to "remastering" software in a different way or elsewhere, that's a little different discussion (even if that is one of the initial questions posed by the OP.) We're talking so far about the source code itself, its value, the method of archiving it, and why there are so many archiving horror stories.

I will say, though, that for true preservationists, the idea that preservation is "done" when we can get ROMs to load in an emulator is as short-sighted as the initial idea that a game is "done" when the cartridge is pressed; there often comes times where there's need to go beyond the boxed product (or emulated copy of it, which uses a lot of cheating to give you the "illusion of perfection",) and there are huge roadblocks in place that get in the way.



Panzer (and Saturn emulation in general) is its own weird little discussion, and there's actually a fair albeit inconclusive thread about that game specifically on Sega-16.

Preservation in the form of a high quality low level emulator available for modern operating systems alongside clean, correct rips of software data is the ideal form of preservation for the long term. None of that requires source code. Just quality images and documentation of the hardware.

 

[Borman]

I think it might also be a case of people just not thinking that far ahead. Correct me if I'm wrong but re-releases and remasters weren't as much of a thing back in the day as they are now so some companies/people may simply not have worried too much about keeping their old source code and assets safe. There are similar stories in the film/TV industry. For example, many of the cut scenes from Fox's Cleopatra film are probably lost forever because someone in the archives just threw them out back in the days before VHS releases or DVD extras and the BBC is still missing entire episodes of Doctor Who for similar reasons.

Thats the thing though, the gaming industry had the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of previous industries, but they continue not to.

Another issue could be those assets were created with really old computers and software. Unless you had the exact same setup from back then, it could be a pain to get them up and running on modern systems.

If they hired people like me, they could get it going, if they had even a marginal backup or if I can track down the proper stuff. Licensing some of the software has become a bigger issue that Im not particularly good at navigating. Probably anyway. I've rebuilt some pretty odd development environments at this point

...Or have the network key or login to access those old machines.

But hey, good to note, if anybody here is a developer of a surviving game company from the '90s and you see a Silicon Graphics Onyx workstation in the closet, put a post-it sticky on it today, "DON'T throw this away!!"

Luckily, a lot of the security on the old software is able to be circumvented.

 

[Version 3.0]

Even digital things can get lost. It happens a lot.

One nice story i read:
Jordan mechner thought he had lost the original source code for Prince of Persia, but his mom found it on a floppy in her attic one day.

Oh, is that the story behind this old pic?

 

[soultron]

Several years ago, we had a fire at our studio the same day we were prepping our gold master candidate. The two events were entirely unrelated.

Spoiler

Luckily no one was hurt, the fire was contained really quickly, and all of our data was backed up.

 

[Quadraphonic]

I don't understand how you lose a gold master like Star Craft. How the hell does something like that end up in a box of junk and not in a safe or vault?

The fact the disc is gold is just because that's a common color of CD-R. When I've worked on games, I saw multiple discs burned and backed up for each and every build as we went through QA. As the project slogs on, a shitload of discs get made. Losing 1 isn't unheard of. It's not like a lot of this stuff is on super lockdown. People work late. People work from home. People work on laptops.

Some engineers back up their own work since there's no other way to prove they worked on something. Artists have portfolios of PSDs. Engineers don't.

 

[CamHostage]

Preservation in the form of a high quality low level emulator available for modern operating systems alongside clean, correct rips of software data is the ideal form of preservation for the long term. None of that requires source code. Just quality images and documentation of the hardware.

If that's all you're concened about, having good rips and decent emulators, then job done, no need to talk about it on GAF. Download Yabause and enjoy!

But for those who have to do the job of game preservation or remastering, there's more to it than that.

For example, emulation is not going to help you one bit with any of the low-resolution FMV in the Panzer Dragoon Saga re-release you're asking for. I can't imagine what an impossibility it would be to re-render it from original assets (SEGA's only option at this point would be to render new FMV and not pretend that it was capable of an authentic remastering,) but you're certainly not going to find anything in the Saturn ISO that'll help you with that challenge.

 

[Theonik]

To add to this. How are pre-rendered CG cut scenes handled in the industry. Is there a reason why they can't take the original source files and re-render to higher resolutions for the HD remasters.

It depends on a project by project basis. Often they are outsourced to an external company*. In those instances it is not weird that the game team would only receive the video files and even if they receive the source files they have little use for them.

*This is one of the reasons why many continuity errors in pre-rendered cutscenes occur. There is an infamous one in Prince of Persia (2003) where the prince goes from not wearing ahead covering to wearing it on a cutscene to it being back off after. That was a miscommunication between the two teams.

 

[-shadow-]

It*This is one of the reasons why many continuity errors in pre-rendered cutscenes occur. There is an infamous one in Prince of Persia (2003) where the prince goes from not wearing ahead covering to wearing it on a cutscene to it being back off after. That was a miscommunication between the two teams.

Another one I heard many talk about is Deus Ex Human Revolution. The cutscenes have all very different lighting setups from the actual game and some even have a different looking location altogether. The most annoying aspect is for the DC where the piss filter was removed, but the FMV's were unaffected resulting in the image constantly going from more neutral colours to the extremely yellow and sometimes even almost gold colours.

Edit: now that I think about it. Whatever happened to the final patched source code of this game? The DC was based on an earlier version which resulted in big appearing that were already fixed through a patch, or in some cases never were there to begin with (on the PC at least).

 

[JP_]

As a software engineer, I can tell you that reverse engineering it "from the disk" sounds like a living nightmare. Especially if the game uses some kind of encryption--it might not even be a possibility. It's cool that they pulled it off to great effect with KH, though.

Yeah, supposedly that's how they're doing it with the Phantom Dust remake. Seems insane.