Morale of the story: Let every employee backup everything at least thrice and let them store those copies at home. Also, keep the original data in a bank's save for at least 50 years. Seriously!
This is a bad idea. For multiple reasons. Even if it was a joke, it's a bad joke.
That's exactly why many companies rely on cloud storage of their data... even if the company is physically destroyed the data will be stored in so many places that it'll be safe... unless everyone who knows the passwords die suddenly or if they stop paying the cloud services.
No, this is why companies have code repositories, which the company owns. You don't put your code up "in the cloud". That's silly. You put it on Github or Subversion or Perforce, and restrict access to it like crazy.
Much too common unfortunately. Just look at StarCraft Remastered and Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy there the games had to be built pretty much from scratch.
Wow so the source code is completely lost? I mean it's a 15 year old game, so I'm not entirely surprised.
I gotta ask though, is that a relatively common thing? I'm curious how many PSX and other old PC games have their source codes missing or gone.
IWD 2 happened extremely fast and it happened while Interplay was on fire so it doesn't surprise me a bit they didn't save the source code before interplay collapsed.
Our only hope of an EE is if they decide to reverse engineer it. IIRC I think they did that in Torment: EE on some things since they didn't get the full source for that game?
To bad I was not employed at Black Isle then and there. Well, I didn't know shit 'bout programming and still don't. I read a course in it but I still couldn't figure it out, because computers are retards. I wrote the code clear as day and still the computer got it wrong. Also, I was like 15 yo at the time. And also, I live in Sweden so commuting would have been a pain.
However, I still have my math books from first grade in a box in the basement. There would be 15 copies of the source code, of which five would be on hard drives and CD:s at my home - regardless whether company policy allowed it or not - had I worked there.
I really am surprised to learn that more backups were not kept of such important files. I would think that anyone who had put so much work into something like this would have been concerned about the possibility of loosing that work. Surely computers weren’t that much more stable than what we have today. Even before computers were a thing they used carbon copies to make “backups”.
It actually says a lot about the integrity of the employees that they did not copy anything when they left for other ventures. When iwd2 ip was transferred, that was the point in time when the backup should have been secured, not by individual employees in shady attics or basements...
Tardigrades in space won't be of much help in recovering lost source code data, I'm afraid. But they make for the cutest miniature giant space astronauts in the universe!
Why would they? I bet that all custom content would need to be updated either way. This was the case with the Infinity Engine EE's and non EE mods. And would be most likely the case with any Aurora EE's as well. Maybe they'd publish a "How To Do It Yourself" tutorial so that the communities are able to make their PW's compatible. But that's probably it. I wouldn't count on anything else officially on beamdog's side.
Why would they? I bet that all custom content would need to be updated either way. This was the case with the Infinity Engine EE's and non EE mods. And would be most likely the case with any Aurora EE's as well. Maybe they'd publish a "How To Do It Yourself" tutorial so that the communities are able to make their PW's compatible. But that's probably it. I wouldn't count on anything else officially on beamdog's side.
Yeah, ok... let's screw over thousands of players. Cool. If they're smart, Beamdog won't touch NWN1/2.
One advantage I could see from a possible nwn:ee1/2 is that the games are very modular and they can make their own campaign, set in ???? location and go from there. Free of any story restrictions they had with SoD.
But that's just me. I don't know how viable that is, but it's something I would be willing to spend money on.
Or whatever mysterious new 5th edition game, but if it ends up being the size of something like lets say... Half life 1: Blue shift, that would be a tad disappointing.
But it's all rather confusing how such a new game will turn out and it's all baseless speculation I know...
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I gotta ask though, is that a relatively common thing? I'm curious how many PSX and other old PC games have their source codes missing or gone.
Our only hope of an EE is if they decide to reverse engineer it. IIRC I think they did that in Torment: EE on some things since they didn't get the full source for that game?
However, I still have my math books from first grade in a box in the basement. There would be 15 copies of the source code, of which five would be on hard drives and CD:s at my home - regardless whether company policy allowed it or not - had I worked there.
When iwd2 ip was transferred, that was the point in time when the backup should have been secured, not by individual employees in shady attics or basements...
A Delorean
A Flux Capacitor
And a few 1990's 1GB Hard Drives
But that's just me. I don't know how viable that is, but it's something I would be willing to spend money on.
Or whatever mysterious new 5th edition game, but if it ends up being the size of something like lets say... Half life 1: Blue shift, that would be a tad disappointing.
But it's all rather confusing how such a new game will turn out and it's all baseless speculation I know...