So,... what's the situation on the Dark engine source code?

Bonusbartus on 5/3/2009 at 13:08

Quote Posted by Knock

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.

Yeah In the Netherlands you can still buy the English version,
take a look here:
(http://www.bol.com/nl/p/games/thieft-1-dark-project-thief-2-metal-age/1004004004162318/index.html)
and here:
(http://www.bol.com/nl/p/games/thief-collection/1004004004952793/index.html)
:thumb:

Thief13x on 5/3/2009 at 15:46

Quote Posted by Brethren

Hey, just an fyi, I recently emailed Sean about doing a little Q&A for Southquarter. I originally talked to him back in mid 2008, but the interview never got done. In any case, he's agreed to answer some questions, so you can bet I'll throw in one or two about the topic at hand.

That would be fantastic, thanks alot. As for the source code, I would be willing to bet it's hanging out on an Eidos server in some burried directory, just knowing the way things get stored, backed up, and forgotten in large corporations.

I agree with demagogue. I know it sounds cliche but just looking over the source code would feel like looking back in time. Would just be really cool. Ah well:erg:

jtr7 on 17/3/2009 at 00:22

Not that this helps us much at all. Scroll down to about halfway to start.

(http://209.85.173.132/search?q=cache:mqKz9LNotpIJ:www.sshock2.com/articles/19.htm+Randy+MAHK+terri+computers+ION+bought+them+auctioned+&cd=88&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

sNeaksieGarrett on 17/3/2009 at 17:44

Fascinating Jason.:eek: Thank you.:thumb: I didn't read the whole conversation, I went to where I believe you were referring to and read up a bit past the basketball and quote scroll story. So, it turns out that Ion Storm had the PCs from LGS! Sadly, Ion is dead too, so I wonder what happened to those PCs?

BrokenArts on 17/3/2009 at 18:06

Its up to Garrett to find everything, those lost PC's, along with the source code. Hmmm. ¬¬

Macha on 17/3/2009 at 18:31

How hard is reverse engineering to do? This is definitely lying out there somewhere. Legal issues? If it was leaked who would find the source?

Renault on 17/3/2009 at 18:50

PCs are just machines, hardware. I'm willing to bet that any important code or data was removed long before they were sold to Ion.

As far as reverse engineering goes, someone once described it as trying to extract flour out of bread that's already been baked. In other words, impossible.

That's not to say that you can't create new methods to do the same (or similar) things - like Open Dark.

sNeaksieGarrett on 17/3/2009 at 19:05

I beg to differ, based on that "article." Someone (randy I think) said that Terri Brosius still uses her old PC intact with the same desktop she had from LGS. To me, this indicates that nothing was erased from the hard drive. Plus, some old LGS employees went to Ion. Though I guess we'll really never know what happened to the data?

Renault on 17/3/2009 at 19:19

You're right, the whole argument is a moot point, but for the record, Terri's desktop is a long ways away from the Dark Engine Source code. For one thing, I doubt everyone who worked at LGS has the source code sitting on their workstation.

Second, and most important - a thing like source code has a value attached to it, it's an asset, and when LGS went belly up, all assets were sold to pay off creditors. There was an auction. Eidos bought the Dark source code - do you think they're just going to just leave copies of it on a bunch of spare PCs sitting around? No way.

Terri Brosius' desktop background? Not quite so valuable. Is there a chance that someone might have left the source code on one of those used PCs? It's possible, but not very likely.

sNeaksieGarrett on 17/3/2009 at 19:27

I see your point, and I realize that the code was sold to Eidos.... I also just want to make a quick response saying that I didn't necessarily mean source code, but anything in general on her (or other employee HDs) hard drive.