[MrFlibble]

Is 3DR still in possession of the source code of Bio Menace, Halloween Harry, Major Stryker, Realms of Chaos, Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure and/or Hocus Pocus? If yes, is there any chance of it being released to the public?

[Lunick]

MrFlibble, on 30 April 2017 - 04:39 AM, said:

Halloween Harry

It may exist but the rights to it belong to John Passfield. Source

I don't think the source code to Bio Menace, Major Stryker, Realms of Chaos, Hocus Pocus or Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure exist though as they have never been talked about at all. A bit of a flimsy reason but Hendricks, TerminX and the 3D Realms team did go through a lot of files and never mentioned anything of the sort publicly.

[K1n9_Duk3]

Lunick, on 30 April 2017 - 04:52 AM, said:

I don't think the source code to Bio Menace, Major Stryker, Realms of Chaos, Hocus Pocus or Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure exist though as they have never been talked about at all. A bit of a flimsy reason but Hendricks, TerminX and the 3D Realms team did go through a lot of files and never mentioned anything of the sort publicly.

You know, I could fix about 75% of that.

[Hendricks266]

I've said this before, but TX and I only received a small portion of the 3DR archives. Aside from Joe's beta CD, we only have stuff relating to Duke Nukem 3D and Shadow Warrior, and even then it's not everything they have for those games.

That said, I doubt they would have the sources to these games. Cosmo is almost certainly in the same boat as Todd Replogle's other projects: Duke Nukem I and II (the legend of the Amiga floppy disks in Allen H. Blum's attic). The rest, I don't know. There is probably a better chance of the original authors having copies.

[K1n9_Duk3]

Hendricks266, on 30 April 2017 - 01:47 PM, said:

Cosmo is almost certainly in the same boat as Todd Replogle's other projects: Duke Nukem I and II (the legend of the Amiga floppy disks in Allen H. Blum's attic). The rest, I don't know. There is probably a better chance of the original authors having copies.

Yeah, I'm sure Major Stryker doesn't share the same fate as Todd Replogle's projects. I mean, it was programmed by Allen H. Blum, so its source code surely wouldn't be on a floppy disk in Allen H. Blum's attic...

[Hendricks266]

K1n9_Duk3, on 30 April 2017 - 02:46 PM, said:

Yeah, I'm sure Major Stryker doesn't share the same fate as Todd Replogle's projects. I mean, it was programmed by Allen H. Blum, so its source code surely wouldn't be on a floppy disk in Allen H. Blum's attic...

Very funny. What I'm implying by not including Major Stryker in that list is that I could see AHB taking better care of his own projects, or at least that he may have happened to. Around the time that I helped Joe Siegler extract the data from the Stargunner betas, he mentioned that Allen Blum may have a screenshot of an early build of Major Stryker with a different name, and I'm extrapolating from this. Someday I will reach out to AHB directly, but probably only if the betas project resumes in somewhat of an official capacity. It's on my bucket list.

[MrFlibble]

Does this mean Apogee did not have a centralised archive of source code of their games? They never planned to update and re-release any of the older titles for newer platforms?

[Hendricks266]

For most of the time, Apogee was just a few dudes making games in a nascent industry. I think you're applying a modern perspective bias.

[K1n9_Duk3]

Most Apogee games up until Rise of the Triad and Duke Nukem 3D were developed by external teams/individuals. RotT and Duke3D were the earliest titles that had their source code released because these were the first games that were actually developed in-house at Apogee/3D Realms.At least that's what I remember reading on the 3D Realms website/forums when those sources were released.

Maybe they have some source code archived (Joe Siegler mentioned they found the Crystal Caves source code when they were fixing the millenium bug in CC and Secret Agent) but they might not have the rights to release the source. During the Apogee Legacy interview series, they always mentioned that it was comany policy to let the developers keep the IP of their games, so I would assume this also included the rights to the source code.

Also, I doubt they would have had any plans to update or re-release their older titles. AFAIK, the only company that did something like this in the (very) early 90's was Sierra. And based on what Al Lowe wrote about the Larry 1 VGA remake, the remakes didn't do too good. Which is probably why Sierra didn't create remakes of the other AGI titles like King's Quest II & III and Space Quest II.

[Hendricks266]

Any source code that they still have is probably just what is lying around hard drives. For example, I have backups of the SW source code in intervals of a few work days going back years. I also found the source code to v1.3D and v1.4 of Duke Nukem 3D, as well as fragments of source from much earlier builds. Interestingly, one of the 18 Crystal Caves betas on Joe's CD was actually some prototype source code. (I'm sure this is independent of the final source code existing.) Independently of my research, the Trek Trivia source code also exists. I would like to talk to Fred about getting my hands on some more data, because several times I have found things where you would least expect it.

[K1n9_Duk3]

Hendricks266, on 01 May 2017 - 12:53 PM, said:

Trek Trivia source code also exists.

That's nice. But Trek Trivia is basically just Word Whiz with different questions and ranks, so I doubt anyone would ask them to release that. (Which they probably won't do anyway because Star Trek.)

[MusicallyInspired]

K1n9_Duk3, on 01 May 2017 - 12:46 PM, said:

Also, I doubt they would have had any plans to update or re-release their older titles. AFAIK, the only company that did something like this in the (very) early 90's was Sierra. And based on what Al Lowe wrote about the Larry 1 VGA remake, the remakes didn't do too good. Which is probably why Sierra didn't create remakes of the other AGI titles like King's Quest II & III and Space Quest II.

People likened them to colourizing black and white movies, saying they were "destroying the classics". I would have liked to have seen what they could have done with them, though. Luckily, us fans solved most of that problem ourselves.

[NY00123]

As already said, originally a lot (most) of Apogee's titles were not developed in-house, and they had the policy of letting the original developers retain the IPs. There's also at least one evidence they didn't have access to all sources.

Consider Wolfenstein 3D. Some of you may recall that Apogee went through a "we hate cheats" period, in which they re-released Wolf3D v1.4 with no cheat codes. This was not done by editing the sources and then building a new EXE. Rather, they opened the original v1.4 EXE (that has the cheats) with a hex editor and replaced the command-line "goobers" string with seven spaces.

Now, it looks like the cheats-disabled Wolf3D release was prepared after id Software changed to GT Interactive as a publisher for Wolfenstein 3D. So not only Apogee didn't have the sources, but apparently they were also past their earlier contacts with id Software, meaning they couldn't just ask the original devs to disable the cheats.

[MrFlibble]

BTW, what happened to Death Rally? I remember reading a while ago that there was an updated Windows version, and now some Googling suggests that supposedly a Windows version was released as freeware by Remedy on 20 October 2009, which was available from the now-defunct Joystiq magazine website. A later post in the same thread made in August 2015 suggests that said free version was still available from Remedy's site while a more updated paid version was (and still is) sold through Steam along with the 2011 remake. But the free version appears to have been removed from Remedy's site since then (it was still available as of March 2016). A quick Googling tracks down the file here (among other places), but all the while the game is sold at 3D Realms.

I'm a bit confused about all this stuff. Is the version that Remedy gave away for free no longer allowed to be distributed?

[Hendricks266]

That free version was actually included with the Anthology, at least on Steam.