Al Lowe reveals his Sierra source code collection • Hacker News Board

Re: Al Lowe reveals his Sierra source code collection

#61

Post by catoc » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 12:45 AM UTC

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #9

I miss typing commands in the classic sierra games. Trying to figure out the right commands and names of items was much more fun than the point and click games that followed. Also you never know when you would stumble upon a joke while saying something ridiculous.

I played everything. Kings Quest, Space Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, Police Quest... hated it when they went the 'point-n-click' way.

Still whistle the police Quest opening tune to my daughters sometimes... What are you whistling daddy? How do you get the experience of classic adventure games across...?

Re: Al Lowe reveals his Sierra source code collection

#62

Post by rabidrat » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 12:53 AM UTC

code_duck wrote: post #42

djsumdog wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea that's what confuses me. Is he even legally allowed to sell this stuff? Should he even still have that stuff?! This gets into sketchy legal ground. I wish he had contacted the German company he claims currently owns the rights and just asked if he could post it all up for free. It's not like it's going to hurt sales on platforms like GoG if they still have it up. He's already gotten some of the rights back for LS…

It’s like selling a copy of a book that you own. Unless you signed some sort of confidentiality agreement, there’s nothing that prohibits you from transferring the physical copy to someone else.

Software is different from books. The EULA that you implicitly sign may prevent you from transferring ownership to someone else.

Re: Al Lowe reveals his Sierra source code collection

#63

Post by rvanmil » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 1:01 AM UTC

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #9

I miss typing commands in the classic sierra games. Trying to figure out the right commands and names of items was much more fun than the point and click games that followed. Also you never know when you would stumble upon a joke while saying something ridiculous.

I’ll never forget being stuck for months until I learned “INSERT CARTRIDGE”. Great memories indeed :)

Re: Al Lowe reveals his Sierra source code collection

#64

Post by djsumdog » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 1:09 AM UTC

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #56

glwtta wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would they? Code from 1987 is of exactly zero interest to someone developing a game in 2013.

It's a text command driven game, isn't it? Getting an encyclopedic listing of all of the different text that the original recognized would be most easily handled by reading it from the original code. I suppose just examining the original media might have been enough. Or maybe they abandoned that command style? I didn't play the remake.

If they wanted to referrer to the original dialogue or images, it's easy to do without the source. ScummVM and other projects already have tools out there to extract all the game data from old Sierra games.

Re: Al Lowe reveals his Sierra source code collection

#65

Post by djsumdog » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 1:14 AM UTC

ChrisLomont wrote: post #54

icebraining wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He can, he just can't make copies of them. It's like selling an used book. In the US, it's called the First-sale doctrine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine

He may not have such rights. It’s unlikely he was legally allowed to have this copy of the code; he likely just kept the copy because he felt like it. If the copyright owner didn’t sell/transfer/contract this to him, he basically has a stolen copy. I do wish this copy is legally transferable; I suspect it is not.

Yea that's what I thought.

This might have been made before modern NDAs and all the IP documents you handover when you join a tech shop today, or maybe Ken and Roberta W made some special deal with him since he was there really early on with the company?

Even if that's not the case, there's a good chance all the original contracts were lost too. I mean, it really all depends on if Activision (or whoever currently owns the original LSL/Sierra IP) finds out and decides to come after him.

Re: Al Lowe reveals his Sierra source code collection

#66

Post by zanny » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 1:24 AM UTC

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #37

all2 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Already massive amounts of data have been lost to the grind of technology forging 'forward'. As we lose the information, we lose context, and without context 'facts' about the past begin to lose meaning to the present reader. History, and the stories we have, is/are mankind's most important asset. Without the context of our past as a species, we lose the ability to navigate into the future effectively (without c…

I think that raises an interesting problem - if you want to look back 1000 years the sources are scarce, and largely composed of the thoughts of the educated or the wealthy - people who could read and write and store these items. 500 years from now we're going to be faced with a totally different problem - if a user wants to learn about the year 2018 where do they start? Official documents will appear to be stored be…

500 years from now we will likely have strong AI capable of rapidly processing the exabytes of data we produced in this day and age as a unit test for the self-modifying system updates.

That being said, on a timescale as long as 5 centuries, I don't think anyone can even begin to fathom in the slightest with any degree of confidence what anything will be like. I just hope the advances this century might make it a possibility I can exist long enough to see it myself.

Re: Al Lowe reveals his Sierra source code collection

#67

Post by jccalhoun » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 1:29 AM UTC

code_duck wrote: post #42

djsumdog wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea that's what confuses me. Is he even legally allowed to sell this stuff? Should he even still have that stuff?! This gets into sketchy legal ground. I wish he had contacted the German company he claims currently owns the rights and just asked if he could post it all up for free. It's not like it's going to hurt sales on platforms like GoG if they still have it up. He's already gotten some of the rights back for LS…

It’s like selling a copy of a book that you own. Unless you signed some sort of confidentiality agreement, there’s nothing that prohibits you from transferring the physical copy to someone else.

I think a better comparison would be owning the original manuscript. I might own the original manuscript to The Hobbit but that doesn't mean I can publish it.

Re: Al Lowe reveals his Sierra source code collection

#68

Post by rixrax » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 1:53 AM UTC

Al Lowe, if you're reading, I am humbly asking you to consider putting all the source code you have for Sierra etc. games up to GitHub for all of us to {gaze|look|worship...}. Let the collectors have the pleasure of having it all on the original physical medias, but let the rest of us mere mortals have access to the essence.

Edit: alas, it's pointed out that above may not be possible as IP is owned by someone else.

That out of the way - Your / Sierra games had such a profound impact on my life. I would go as far as to say that without Leisuresuit Larry,Space|Police|Kings Quest and others I might have never started [seriously] learning English and mastered it to the point that later I was able to move abroad and eventually immigrate to the new world. ( btw - that statement probably pretty much accounts for any possible problems with my English and poor choice of language at times ;-) )

Re: Al Lowe reveals his Sierra source code collection

#69

Post by kalleboo » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 1:54 AM UTC

TheDong wrote: post #10

st3fan wrote: post #5

Should have just donated it to archive.org instead of making a quick buck out of it.

Unfortunately, it's still copyrighted and so cannot be legally displayed or distributed by the internet archive for another ~65 years (95 years from publication for copyright to expire). Many of us won't be alive to see this code legally. The copyright period could also increase again if the law retroactively increases it again.

Who gives a shit? Just upload it anonymously. Nobody even knew he had the source code until now.

Re: Al Lowe reveals his Sierra source code collection

#70

Post by kalleboo » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 1:58 AM UTC

glwtta wrote: post #47

ru999gol wrote: post #21

if he were to actually care about digital preservation he would just put all of it on github even anonymously. But he doesn't so he doesn't. I know what Jason Scott would do.

Where does he claim to care about digital preservation? And I'm pretty sure GitHub would have to remove code posted without permission, anonymous or not.

But by the time they got around to removing it there would be thousands of backups around the world