[TUHS] Re: Setting up an X Development Environment for Mac OS

[segaloco via TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org>]

We benefit from a general culture of openness surrounding UNIX these days.  We see no such openness from Nintendo, Sega, Sony, nor Microsoft in their video game offerings, neither current nor former, and similar for publishers and studios for the most part.  Anecdotally, when SquareEnix went to reissue Final Fantasy 8, they had to rewrite it from scratch as the original PS1 source code had been lost.  Apparently this is a pretty common problem plaguing efforts to roll older titles forward to modern systems, and is one of the reasons shoddy emulation seems to win out over intentional ports of anything.

UNIX experienced the rather unique phenomenon of being able to grow legs in academia for many years before some legal types tried to put the kibosh on that.  Super Mario Bros. was a closed code base from day 1 with a tight deadline and little to no reason for it to be shared outside of its own development group.  The circumstances are just so wildly different.  UNIX is a bit of an anomaly as far as being an iconic, ubiquitous, still appreciated design that succeeds in academic *and* commercial spheres and also has ample source code and documentation history not only available but not constantly being torpedoed by lawyers.  I don't know that we'll see a willingness to open up the history of video game development like that in a timeframe that sensitive source codes and documents could still be properly preserved.

Plus, to the defense of these studios, some algorithm or technique developed for management of game resources may still be very much relevant to modern engine designs in ways that OS code from the 70s simply wouldn't even have a place in modern design.  I wouldn't be surprised if there are scene graph and asset manager algorithms and such down in, say, the Zelda 64 engine, that the big N is *still* using in comparable engines and considers a trade secret.  Hard to say.  But anywho, just to draw some comparisons to the preservation state of UNIX vs other technological innovations.  We have decades of quality OS code to study, research, and expand upon as hackers, but we have no such wealth of real video game source codes to educate the masses on game design, especially embedded console/bare metal approaches.  This is where the crossroads lies for me between my UNIX and game development interests, I would LOVE some day for there to be as accessible and quality of resources for those studying the history of game design/development as there are for those studying OS design.  After all, the way I describe old games to people in a technical sense is its just a specific type of OS.  That programmer had to abstract all that hardware into concepts like button triggers movement of VDP scrollplanes and emission of commands to the FM synth chip.  The thing you're using is just a Dpad instead of a mouse and you're moving a silly little character instead of a window across the screen.

- Matt G.

------- Original Message -------
On Thursday, January 26th, 2023 at 8:48 AM, emanuel stiebler <emu@e-bbes.com> wrote:


> On 2023-01-26 11:07, segaloco via TUHS wrote:
> 
> > Excellent post, thanks for the share! I think about that loss of
> > information often. Its a shame preservation hasn't been more of a
> > theme, there are probably countless iconic video games for which the
> > original source code doesn't exist anymore. If "digital archivist" was
> > more in-demand in tech companies I'd love to engage with that sort of
> > work professionally...maybe someday.
> 
> 
> But isn't it, what this group is all about?
> Collecting all the (Unix) pieces we can find, and talk about the past.
> And copying the archives to newer disks, newer mail systems so it will
> hopefully survive ...