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Icewind Dale 2 source code and Enhanced Editions preservation

inigomartinezinigomartinez Member Posts: 5
in General Discussion (Spoiler Warning!)
I remember reading one of Trent Oster's tuits asking about the source code of Icewind Dale 2. Is the source code definitely lost (and all the chances to see and 'Enhanced Edition' with it)? I was eager to play it again and looking at the very nice features from `Enhanced Editions` it's sad to know that this possibility might not be feasible.

Has anyone on Beamdog proposed something to preserve the `Enhanced Edition` versions of the game? Is there any possibility that we can see their source code published, so nothing similar to Icewind Dale 2 happens again?

Comments

  • semiticgoddesssemiticgoddess Member Posts: 14,903
    The source code is indeed lost. There have been no signs that it remains stored anywhere.

    We don't need to worry about the EE source code being lost. The IWD2 source code was only lost because the game was out of development for many years and the company that owned it eventually broke up. The EE games are still actively being patched, so they will not be lost; Beamdog has the source code available and should have multiple backups, as any still-existing company would.

    There is no chance the source code would be published, since it would make it easier to pirate the game and so forth. Companies don't publish the source code for their products unless they decide to forfeit any potential profit the product might bring in the future. Since storing data isn't as hard or expensive as it once was, the source code for the EE games might not be lost until decades into the future.
  • megamike15megamike15 Member Posts: 2,666
    this isnt even the first time something iwd related was lost. heart of winter's source code was also lost. thankfully they had enough of it to get it into the ee.
  • inigomartinezinigomartinez Member Posts: 5
    Thanks for your answer @semiticgod. Just as a side note, I wasn't thinking on piracy when I asked about the source code. I was thinking about their preservation.

    @megamike15 was heart of winter's source code also lost?!? I didn't know that :o.

    Knowing how other projects like GemRB, from which I believe some of the Beamdog developers come, isn't there any possibility, to reverse engineer Icewind Dale 2 so they can do something similar to Heart of Winter?
  • gorgonzolagorgonzola Member Posts: 3,864
    it is always possible to reverse engineer something, the problem is how much work it takes.
    i doubt that beamdog has enough manpower to do it and probably it would cost too much, those ee versions of old games, even if of great old games, have only a small niche in the market. and to completely reverse engineer a compiled code than upgrade it is much more labor intensive then to start from a source code and only upgrade it for modern computers adding some new functionality.
    possibly i am wrong, if i am wrong better as we can have the ee version of the game, but i am afraid that i am right on it.
    as @megamike15 tells they had a great part of the source code of hearth of winter, so probably the reverse engineering was not so labor intensive, or maybe they just coded the missing parts, thing that can also be done. and it was profitable.
  • MyragMyrag Member Posts: 328
    In my working experience I had once a case of 'lost code' for my big client. In that project I was able to decompile the project from the .DLL files and after 2 weeks of work successfully fix the remainging parts that did not port very well. But in the end we gad it running.

    This of course was possible in such a short time because 1. code was not obfuscated and 2. it was small web application.

    This makes me wonder how possible would it be to decompile IDW2.
  • inigomartinezinigomartinez Member Posts: 5
    What about GemRB's findings? They have done enough reverse engineering over Icewind Dale 2 to have it working at least until chapter 3.

    Wouldn't that information be sufficient?
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