Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A remaster with no old code: Crash Bandicoot was rebuilt nearly from scratch

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 80 posts

Re: A remaster with no old code: Crash Bandicoot was rebuilt nearly from scratch

#11

Post by motwera »

le-mark wrote: post #9
corysama wrote: post #7

The only method I’ve seen work semi-reliably for archiving console game source is to grab the physical machine that made the final build, spray paint “Do Not Dispose! Build archive!” on its side and stick it in a back room. Even that has a 2% chance/year to end up in a dump. Otherwise, console game build systems were far to finicky to repro later (at least up to the 360/PS3 generation). You would need a huge collecti…

All true, yet for PS1 there was the net yaroze dev system that was distributed for some time. I actually had a copy at one point. Seems inconcievable it wouldn't just been easier to use a software emulator and the original data from the cd. But then I don't know if there is a good software emu for the PS1? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_Yaroze

It's likely that Vicarious Visions was unable to get the source code from Naughty Dog due to Activision being unable to get it via Sony, though I'm not 100% sure about that since VV mentioned that majority of the original code is virtually unusable in a blog post.

https://blog.us.playstation.com/2016/12/03/crash-bandicoot-n...

Re: A remaster with no old code: Crash Bandicoot was rebuilt nearly from scratch

#12

Post by [deleted] »

sova wrote: post #10
bitwize wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Any sufficiently complicated Lisp or Scheme program will eventually be rewritten in C++, Java, or Python." It's as true now as when I first said it in 2005-2006.

Don't you mean that the other way around? "Any C++, Java, or Python, or program will eventually be written in a Lisp-based DSL that generates that language" ? Seems far more accurate to me than to claim that all LISP functionality is derivable in (more rigid, less flexible) language. What prompted you to say this in the first place? If LISP is the mother language, of course all the rest are but a subset.

[deleted]

Re: A remaster with no old code: Crash Bandicoot was rebuilt nearly from scratch

#13

Post by drewblaisdell »

bitwize wrote: post #6
klodolph wrote: post #3

This is buried in a comment but it's worth mentioning. Naughty Dog used Lisp to write Crash Bandicoot. They had something they called GOAL--Game Oriented Assembly Lisp. From what I understand, this was a DSL they wrote so they could write assembly language using Lisp syntax, and call it from Lisp functions. https://web.archive.org/web/20070127022728/http://lists.midn...

"Any sufficiently complicated Lisp or Scheme program will eventually be rewritten in C++, Java, or Python." It's as true now as when I first said it in 2005-2006.

Isn't HN itself a counterexample?

Re: A remaster with no old code: Crash Bandicoot was rebuilt nearly from scratch

#14

Post by danShumway »

The games industry is so stinking bad at archival that it hurts. Very little consideration is paid to using architectures and build tools that can be replicated later. Source code becomes unavailable (as was the case here). Game logic is written using highly platform-specific code that's difficult to emulate. Source textures and other raw resources get thrown out.

And not to diminish from the accomplishment of the team here, because it must have been a huge amount of work, but even with that amount of work this recreation ended up having problems with collision detection that changed the entire feel of the game. I don't think that's because the devs are bad, but just because the task they were trying to undertake was so unbelievably impossible -- of course they missed stuff.

If you're in the games industry, please put some effort into preserving your work for history. It does actually matter.

Re: A remaster with no old code: Crash Bandicoot was rebuilt nearly from scratch

#15

Post by Illniyar »

sova wrote: post #10
bitwize wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Any sufficiently complicated Lisp or Scheme program will eventually be rewritten in C++, Java, or Python." It's as true now as when I first said it in 2005-2006.

Don't you mean that the other way around? "Any C++, Java, or Python, or program will eventually be written in a Lisp-based DSL that generates that language" ? Seems far more accurate to me than to claim that all LISP functionality is derivable in (more rigid, less flexible) language. What prompted you to say this in the first place? If LISP is the mother language, of course all the rest are but a subset.

They rewrote Crash Bandicoot. It was originally written in lisp and is now written,I'm guessing, not in Lisp.

The parent poster was factually correct.

Your statement while still holds true isn't the opposite of what the parent said - you've replaced rewritten with written. If you said "Any C++, Java, or Python, or program will eventually be rewritten in a Lisp-based DSL that generates that language"- you would be factually wrong in this account.

Re: A remaster with no old code: Crash Bandicoot was rebuilt nearly from scratch

#16

Post by Illniyar »

drewblaisdell wrote: post #13
bitwize wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Any sufficiently complicated Lisp or Scheme program will eventually be rewritten in C++, Java, or Python." It's as true now as when I first said it in 2005-2006.

Isn't HN itself a counterexample?

Errr.... I would say that HN is not sufficiently complicated. Also don't believe HN is written in lisp, though I could be mistaken.

Re: A remaster with no old code: Crash Bandicoot was rebuilt nearly from scratch

#18

Post by GFischer »

Illniyar wrote: post #16
drewblaisdell wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't HN itself a counterexample?

Errr.... I would say that HN is not sufficiently complicated. Also don't believe HN is written in lisp, though I could be mistaken.

Hacker News is written in Arc, a dialect of Scheme, so kind of Lisp, yes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arc_(programming_language)

some calling it simply an extension to Lisp or Scheme and not a programming language in its own right.

Re: A remaster with no old code: Crash Bandicoot was rebuilt nearly from scratch

#19

Post by hyperion2010 »

Illniyar wrote: post #16
drewblaisdell wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't HN itself a counterexample?

Errr.... I would say that HN is not sufficiently complicated. Also don't believe HN is written in lisp, though I could be mistaken.

Written in Arc running on top of an old version of Racket.

Re: A remaster with no old code: Crash Bandicoot was rebuilt nearly from scratch

#20

Post by GatoVolador »

danShumway wrote: post #14

The games industry is so stinking bad at archival that it hurts. Very little consideration is paid to using architectures and build tools that can be replicated later. Source code becomes unavailable (as was the case here). Game logic is written using highly platform-specific code that's difficult to emulate. Source textures and other raw resources get thrown out. And not to diminish from the accomplishment of the te…

Paid, not payed.
Post reply on HN