I'm not asking for any source code. However, I am curious as to what SNES/n64 source code and/or development files/sources/etc. are floating around in the world for actual SNES and n64 games ? I know a fair number of SGI Indy dev kits made their way out into the world, and some of them must have had misc. data on their drives. Other, more explicit leaks of code/material must have occurred from other software houses. What have you seen floating around over the years ?
No, I mean _source code_ for the games themselves. What leaked source code have folks seen / discovered floating around ?
Well I have lots of source archives to games... though they haven't been leaked. ;-) The thing is with many games, the sources are close to useless without their tools to converting assets and data. Back in the day, our tools and code were very tightly coupled, as thats how we got the performance and minimum code size. One of my friends once wrote a Game Developer magazine article on a patch generation microcode for the N64's RCP, that was published. Though I don't know if any game ever used it. --Selgus
Yes, I imagine that's the case. It's staggering to think about the amount of data that exists out there for _even one game_ that has never / will never see the light. Not just code and custom tools, but storyboards, renderings, sound samples, etc., etc. One interesting thought - these days, financing for taking over a bankrupt firm is very, very scarce, so any small publishing/coding house that goes bankrupt now, or in the near term, will very likely have to liquidate at auction. It would be interesting to find some of these bankruptcies and put in lowball bids for data and intellectual property.
Was that Mark A. Deloura's article? Together with the article on RE video compression, these are the only two published examples of RSP ucode, aren't they?
I was working on a personal N64 engine about 10 to 12 years ago... maybe I'll post the source to that. --Selgus
Yes, I was making a reference to Mark's article. He was at Nintendo back then, before he moved over to Sony. --Selgus
I am surprised we haven't seen more public postings of code, lots of people here for example have bought all kinds of dev hardware, dev disks, dev PCs and stuff in closeout sales etc and some of those things would have included source code for games. Are people worried about getting sued if they post it? Are people not posting it because its useless without SDKs, tools and other things that they don't have? Or is game source code just not being found on dev gear, dev disks, dev PCs etc (i.e. companies sanitizing anything that would contain source code)
