Current Events > Score 1 for the pirates I guess

(+) Yeah! (+)

tl;dr they lost the source code and had to remake it from scratch and combed through online data dumps & formula breakdowns to do remake it as faithfully as possible.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/d/d198ee47.jpg

well that's a little concerning

Square Enix is terrible about holding onto source code. Didn't they also lose Kingdom Hearts back when they first remastered it?

pokedude900 posted...

Square Enix is terrible about holding onto source code. Didn't they also lose Kingdom Hearts back when they first remastered it?

I dont know about KH but Im fairly sure they lost the code for FFIX, FFVIII, or both. I cant remember which.

As a developer my mind is boggled. Its like they havent heard of source control.

its baffling companies where still tossing out source code by the PS1

it made more sense in the NES days

but even as early as the snes people where wanting to easily replay older games or want ports or wtv

and yet nintendo seems to have the source code for every game they ever made

PraetorXyn posted...

I dont know about KH but Im fairly sure they lost the code for FFIX, FFVIII, or both. I cant remember which.

As a developer my mind is boggled. Its like they havent heard of source control.

It was the 90s. They probably had everything on some kind of subversion and then deleted it during a yearly data clean up not knowing what it was.

I would assume that the lawyers would demand that a copy of everything like that be retained.

Square Enix is fucking terrible at this.

This is actually a problem with a lot of old games.

HighSeraph posted...

This is actually a problem with a lot of old games.

The ol' BBC process. "We didn't think we'd actually need to use this later on."

HighSeraph posted...

This is actually a problem with a lot of old games.

Media deteriorating is one thing but how hard is it to take a few packaged units, seal them up and throw them in a safety deposit box?

Considering that without it you basically cant say a word to anybody doing anything with your game.

Nintendo also. They pulled all those ROMs for the Wii VC off pirate sites and then act like fans are the problem.

It's kinda fucking cool thinking they might have been looking at gamefaqs for technical data.

pokedude900 posted...

Square Enix is terrible about holding onto source code. Didn't they also lose Kingdom Hearts back when they first remastered it?

Most devs were terrible about it back then.

Game "piracy" is moral

As on old games not brand new

Robot2600 posted...

Nintendo also. They pulled all those ROMs for the Wii VC off pirate sites and then act like fans are the problem.

Wasn't that debunked & was because they hired an old emulator developer who used that header (The iNES one)?

Relating to post #36 in here:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/189706-nintendo-switch/80865283

Has SE lost the code to every game

feraldrgn posted...

Wasn't that debunked & was because they hired an old emulator developer who used that header (The iNES one)?

Yes. It's been thoroughly debunked. People keep bringing it up though.

mario 35 pretty much proves they still have the source code for the original super mario brothers

as its physics are 1 for 1 perfect which threw off people who where use to mario maker physics in mario 1

where as speed runners noticed instantly how exact it was

AceMos posted...

mario 35 pretty much proves they still have the source code for the original super mario brothers

No, it just proves they had access to documentation on the games' physics. Probably compiled by fans.

The existence of numerous accurate clones of classic games for modern systems, made by fans, of games for which the source code was never released, proves that having access to the source code is not necessary to replicate the physics accurately.

To be clear I'm not saying "they don't have it", I'm just saying that isn't proof they do.

Robot2600 posted...

Nintendo also. They pulled all those ROMs for the Wii VC off pirate sites and then act like fans are the problem.

This has been thoroughly debunked.

They're good for genuine preservation of decades old games.

This isn't Squenix being terrible at keeping source code from the 90's, this is the industry as a whole being terrible at it back then and even into the 2000's.

Anyways, it's not pirates really that they can thank but rather the modding community. They absolutely tore FFT apart over the years.

AceMos posted...

mario 35 pretty much proves they still have the source code for the original super mario brothers

as its physics are 1 for 1 perfect which threw off people who where use to mario maker physics in mario 1

where as speed runners noticed instantly how exact it was

Were they identical? Because I feel like I was way better at Super Mario Bros. 35 than I ever was at the original Super Mario Bros.

AceMos posted...

its baffling companies where still tossing out source code by the PS1

it made more sense in the NES days

but even as early as the snes people where wanting to easily replay older games or want ports or wtv

and yet nintendo seems to have the source code for every game they ever made

Nintendo does like to retain talent rather than removing them after their job is done compared to most of the rest of the industry. This extends to employees too.

Is there no way to reverse engineer video games in situations like this? Some way to extract the coding from an original game disc or cartridge so that it's readily available? That's always confused me why that can't or hasn't been done by developers, but you can just download an emulator and a game and play it on a computer.

GeminiDeus posted...

Is there no way to reverse engineer video games in situations like this?

If you have mastery of assembly of the processor the game was compiled for, in this case PlayStation's CPU, then you can spend a few months/years reverse engineering it into something like C.

This is, simply put, too costly to do in practicality and remains largely the domain of hobbyists doing it for fun.

However, the unwieldy size of the program makes doing this for FFT extremely difficult. Reverse engineering for video games is done largely with smaller games like NES or the console firmware itself. And there's just not many people who have the skills to do it at all.

Theoretically, you already have the source code, you just can't read it because it's all 0s and 1s.

Edit: and if you were an assembly god, you probably wouldn't be working at a video game company. They aren't hiring people for their assembly skills. If you wanted to use your assembly for the benefit of video games, you can start by cracking out Denuvo Anti-Tamper.