[game_preservation] Recreating game development environments

[Andrew Armstrong]

Vowell, Zachary W wrote:

> I was recently approached by a game programmer who was interested in

> recreating game development environments used by game developers in the 80s

> and 90s, etc.  Or as he called them, "asset creation environments."

>   

I haven't seen it discussed, but as the others have said, a lot of 
in-house tools would have been used.

Some do exist (and have been fan-modded to work today), released at some 
point. For instance, the Doom level editors / source code (with the 
compiler needed to compile it) are available. No doubt getting a 
similar-era PC would allow you to experience that again pretty reliably. 
Some others around too, give or take, but there's no list I know of.


> The real trick here seems to tracking down the programmers who still have

> the software/tools code, which is often written in-house for one company, or

> even one game.

>   

Yeah, that's the case. It's pretty much a given fact that they are 
holding onto the (much more important!) game source code, assets and 
game prototypes. The tools are probably even harder to track down then 
this however. Companies no doubt lose it frequently.

Andrew