So,... what's the situation on the Dark engine source code? - by Cliftor
[insert cool name here] on 4/3/2009 at 15:36
Please excuse a stupid question from one rather ignorant of these matters, but what would the significance of having the code be? What secrets would be unlocked?
New Horizon on 4/3/2009 at 15:53
[QUOTE='[insert cool name here];1827364']Please excuse a stupid question from one rather ignorant of these matters, but what would the significance of having the code be? What secrets would be unlocked?Well, it's the source code to the engine. You could rewrite it, fix bugs, enhance it.
[insert cool name here] on 4/3/2009 at 16:20
Could it conceivably be enhanced to the point where it would be comparable to a recent graphics engine?
New Horizon on 4/3/2009 at 16:25
[QUOTE='[insert cool name here];1827379']Could it conceivably be enhanced to the point where it would be comparable to a recent graphics engine?
Yes, as I said...rewrite...enhance. Look at some of the other engines that have been released open source. The Quake 3 engine is a good example with xreal having spruced it up to Doom 3 standards. (http://xreal.sourceforge.net/)
demagogue on 4/3/2009 at 19:53
Quote Posted by Thief13x
man, kinda sad to think about something like that being lost...all the hours that were probably put into developing it. Oh well
Yeah, this is probably what's worst about it.
It's like some masterpiece painting that just gets left in a back room and lost. There's still photographs of it, but it's something you can never really replace. We
are posterity, and we miss it.
I mean, it's valuable just on its own terms as an elegant and beloved work-product of LGS, even aside from what it can do for us. Also, so many mediocre engines get released all the time; why is it a real classic has to disappear?
Knock on 4/3/2009 at 21:03
So who technically owns the legal rights to the Dark Engine? Who would have to be asked about rights with regards to reverse-engineering the engine itself? Not that I have any idea what I'm talking about, but who owns the copyrights etc now that LGS is gone and Eidos is changing hands?
[NAUC]Chief on 4/3/2009 at 22:50
I seem to remember someone in Poland or somewhere ended up buying the engine rights from Eidos - sure I read that agggggges ago on the forums.
Either way maybe it'd be better to ask the guy over at:
(
http://www.nothings.org/)
to help code Open Dark Engine :cheeky:
jtr7 on 5/3/2009 at 01:05
Is the Eidos name going away? Will Eidos remain a subdivision, under Square-Enix control? Will Eidos continue to have say over their current assets, as long as Square-Enix has ultimate say? If the Eidos name goes away, whatever name replaces it is the name of the entity in charge. Will we see the Square-Enix logo added to new reprints of the Thief games? Will there be new reprints?:o
I'm actually more inclined to pretend that a former dev has a copy of the source code in a box somewhere, and that someone else had one too, but it was accidentally lost/destroyed. Oh the drama! But maybe it's sitting in a cabinet in a basement, buried under stacks of CDs of archived stuff.
New Horizon on 5/3/2009 at 02:39
It has to exist, somewhere. I can't believe that the employees of LGS didn't have a copy tucked away...even if it is an earlier version. If it is out there, nobody wants to step up and ...leak it.
Knock on 5/3/2009 at 03:02
Even Mastertronic (Sold Out Software) no longer sell the game. It's not like anyone's making money off it. Apart from secondhand copies, does anyone know of a site that still sells new copies of TG, TDP, or TMA? It'd be worth doing an online petition to send off, if we could find out who has a copy of the source code.
