TLDR; a Chicago-area schoolteacher was able to find the rights to the old Backyard Baseball PC game from the 1990s, and she commissioned a software game development company and a still-live fan base, to recreate the source code (because the original source was lost).
She founded a company called Playground Productions. Thanks to her efforts, nostalgic Millennials and their kids can purchase and enjoy this old game.
A nice, feel-good story. But I have two questions:
1. The story doesn't mention how this schoolteacher got enough "private investors" so she could quit her job and pursue this. Sounds like an important detail.
2. Would have liked to know more about the source code. What happened to the original code (it wasn't in escrow somewhere?) and how did they recreate it? It says some fans had old CD-ROMs with the game on it, and the game dev company in Pittsburgh worked with them to rebuild the game.
> What happened to the original code (it wasn't in escrow somewhere?) ...
It seems like the early video games industry did a pretty bad job of preserving development artifacts. There have been a lot of stories about game code being found, but it seems to be the exception rather than the rule.
I heard that the only reason WoW classic was even able to be a thing was that someone managed to find an old backup drive with the source code from back in the day. We take version control for granted now, but it seems like that was not how game development tended to operate a few a few decades ago.
1. An NYT commenter clarifies that the “Second Grade Teacher” of the article’s title is from a family worth $30+ billion. If true, this would seem to be egregious omission of context from the article.
I'm curious too. The original developers were Humongous Games (Putt-Putt & Freddi Fish) whose other titles used the SCUMM engine. My guess would be Backyard Baseball was as well.
I dug up this article that seems to go through the process but not in great technical detail: https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/backyard-baseball-97-in...
What I don't understand is why just grabbing the original game files and slapping it inside the SCUMMVM wasn't the whole story. That's definitely how the other Humongous Games were re-released on Steam a decade earlier. I just assumed Backyard Baseball had more complex rights.
IIRC, part of the order was for stuff like Steam achievements, upgraded assets, modern resolution support, other platform conveniences, plus other required changes to the game due to licensing agreements shifting, all of which made slapping it in a VM a poor fit.
I poked at the Steam Depots for some of these games for more information.
A game like Putt-Putt ships the ScummVM under the GPL license and runs it with the original asset files: https://steamdb.info/depot/294661/
The .he* files also appear to be the original assets for the game. And then they built a Scumm interpreter to run the game which can talk to Steam to use leaderboards and achievements.
> The story doesn't mention how this schoolteacher got enough "private investors" so she could quit her job and pursue this.
Yeah, this is the big question. Family money?
Whatever the case, it’s still pretty impressive. Running a project involving legacy IP and legacy source code and actually getting multiple games out the door (and a puff piece in the New York Times) isn’t as simple as throwing money at it.
Risk is rising as big tech companies like Oracle — the ultimate financial source of the Ellison media empire — need to turn to the bond market for staggering sums to finance data centers.
> STOP spending on immigration programs... to improve situation for kids of the people who built out the western civilization
The common misconception that the US Government is wasting money on immigration is pushed by Trump and FOX News, who both lie regularly. For example, see [1] about how Trump rejected a report produced by Federal researchers. The report is available [2].
Overall, the refugee resettlement program gives the country back many times what the government spends. And even if you just focus on the expenditure, the bulk of it is on border enforcement and imprisonment, which goes to domestic private companies.
As to your love for "the people who built western civilization", I'll just leave it up there. Your connotation is clear, and it doesn't reflect well on you.
[1] Trump administration rejects report showing positive impact of refugees
[2] Rejected Report Shows Revenue Brought In by Refugees. SEPT. 19, 2017: A draft of a study rejected by Trump administration officials that found that refugees brought in $63 billion more in government revenues over the past decade than they cost.
I think parent is referring to the film in the novel, also named Infinite Jest. The film is so compelling that its viewers lose all interest in anything other than repeatedly viewing it, and thus eventually die.
I would've liked to read more about what they're doing, but their website fab2.com is unhelpful. Very little info, presented in pointless swirling animations that hijack your scroll action.
Yes, the web site is all effects, no content. It's like an old Flash site.
E-beam machines work fine for prototyping. People have been doing that since the 1970s. But they're slow. It's a prototyping technology. The sort of thing that "3D print everything" people like. E-beam machines with many beams have been mentioned, but never seemed to be worth it.
There are companies which offer E-beam IC fab as a service. Some cater to DoD and the intelligence community.[2] (That's for when you really can't trust your supply chain and want your own ICs fabbed.) Others are more commercial, but are in China.[3]
They claim to be building all the machines needed for a fab. But they don't have a list, or pictures. There's a used market in that gear, and no reason to build it all yourself.
It's not a fundamentally bad idea, but the hype is strong here.
The article is only a brief summary that cannot do justice to the incredible story of the Koh-i-Noor diamond. I have been doing some research on it, and IMO the most modern and accurate take is the book by Anand and Dalrymple [1].
The following is an excerpt from a review of the book, written by Maya Jassanoff. The book is also very engagingly written. Highly recommend.
"If Koh-i-Noor sounds like a magical history tour, that’s less because of the stone’s putative properties than because – as the authors so pervasively recognise – the history of imperial power is always at base a history of violence. This is no book for the squeamish. There are noses rotted by disease, eyes punctured with hot needles, live cremations, slow poisoning and a torture victim crowned in molten lead."
[1] Koh-i-Noor: The History of the World's Most Infamous Diamond, by William Dalrymple and Anita Anand. Bloomsbury, 2017
"Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman, said... “All actions by President Trump and his administration are taken in the best interest of the American people.”"
"Since arriving at the White House, Mr. Trump and appointees have curtailed regulatory oversight of the industry, including policies related to memecoins."
"Despite the cratering prices, Mr. Trump has faced few consequences from his ventures, because federal regulators have largely abandoned crypto enforcement."
Yes, it's an outstanding book, well worth reading:
Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water, by Marc Reisner, Penguin Books, 1986, 1993.
A recent perspective on this excellent book by Ryan Cooper is also very good. He says that journalists in the 1970s and 80s were infected with Reaganite ideology and made some mistakes. Worth reading:
>Reisner [...] often relies on neoliberal economics
So, correct economics?
>[the] idea that public works projects should each pay for themselves individually is straight out of neoliberal dogma
I mean, not really; it's not an idea unique to neoliberalism. And if it were, that it is characteristic of neoliberalism does not constitute an argument against it.
She founded a company called Playground Productions. Thanks to her efforts, nostalgic Millennials and their kids can purchase and enjoy this old game.
A nice, feel-good story. But I have two questions:
1. The story doesn't mention how this schoolteacher got enough "private investors" so she could quit her job and pursue this. Sounds like an important detail.
2. Would have liked to know more about the source code. What happened to the original code (it wasn't in escrow somewhere?) and how did they recreate it? It says some fans had old CD-ROMs with the game on it, and the game dev company in Pittsburgh worked with them to rebuild the game.
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