Slashdot Mirror
Preserving Virtual Worlds
The Opposable Thumbs blog has an interview with Jerome McDonough of the University of Illinois, who is involved with the Preserving Virtual Worlds project. The goal of the project is to recognize video games as cultural artifacts and to make sure they're accessible by future generations. Here McDonough talks about some of the technical difficulties in doing so:
"Take, for example, Star Raiders on the Atari 2600. If you're going to preserve this, you've got a couple of problems. The first is that it is on a cartridge that is designed to work on a particular system that is no longer manufactured. And as long as you've got a hardware dependency there, you're really not going to be able to preserve this material very long. What we have been looking at is how feasible is it for things that fundamentally all have some level of hardware dependency there — even Doom has dependencies on DLLs with an operating system, and on particular chipsets and architectures for playing. How do you take that and turn it into something that isn't as dependent on a particular physical piece of hardware. And to do that, you need information about that platform. You need technical specifications that allow you to basically reproduce a virtualization that may enable you to run the software in its original form in the future. So what we're trying to do is preserve not only the games, but preserve the knowledge that you would need to create a virtualization platform to play the game."
Can I preserve my Night Elf Hunter Legolarz?
So when the real world is TFU, we'll have plenty of virtual worlds to play with.
even Doom has dependencies on DLLs with an operating system, and on particular chipsets and architectures for playing. How do you take that and turn it into something that isn't as dependent on a particular physical piece of hardware. And to do that, you need information about that platform. You need technical specifications that allow you to basically reproduce a virtualization that may enable you to run the software in its original form in the future
If there are two things that any "computer" with enough power and memory has, it's a port of Doom and a port of vi. What you need is this magical thing that iD released on December 23, 1997.
While this is an interesting archival problem, there is no indication that a sentencing element of preservation has occurred. Not all data is _worth_ preserving in the sense of accurate indexation, availability, maintaining and medium cycling.
I'm more interested in the sentencing criteria for preservation of electronic culture. My suspicion is that from an archival stand point most is ephemera which would best be preserved or not preserved by leaving it up to non-archivists.
I can't go out and buy a punchcard computer, but I can go and buy a 300 year old book.
Commit it to paper, it's the only proven archive method.
Not a new idea, in fact their is a whole community based on running and preserving old games.See, http://www.oldgames.nu/ or search for abandon-ware. Their are many tools that can be used to make old games playable and even to run at the speed intended (a common problem games running too fast to be playable) The biggest problem I can see to this becoming a active/mainstream idea is the fact the copyright protection agency's will get involved and we know what kind of a mess that creates.
By now, a lot of these programs where kept alive by the fan base. Emulators are available for lots of old 8bit machines.
For example I found several emulators for my old TI 99/4A, complete with cartridges of games and applications. Even single pieces of hardware where available, like the speech box and expansion box, which as a kid I wasn't able to afford at the time.
So what I guess they should do, is to store source codes (often available, since abandoned by the producers), and all the information of the hardware, chipsets etc, that one would need to built an emulator on some new hardware. Maybe it would even be possible to build a kind of "general emulator", that needs only to be fed with hardware information.
There are always bunches of 2600's on eBay. That's how I got mine a few years ago (kinda curious who threw out the one I had as a kid, but, whatever)
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Preserving the software is one thing, but the experience of running one of these programs on the original hardware is considerably different.
With Star Raiders, for instance, the joystick is necessary to enjoy the same experience as an original user. Arguably the boot up sequence too and the CRT monitor.
Another example: "Daredevil Dennis" on the BBC Micro. The internal speaker on the system produces the sounds. Good luck reproducing that efficiently. And just the reality of sitting in front of the machine itself, loading the program from 5.25" disk and using the original keyboard to play the game completely alters the whole thing.
- not to mention the fact that an emulation of the hardware is going to be imperfect.
I thought that's what MAME [www.mamedev.org] and MESS [www.mess.org] are for. Preserving old games on all kind of hardware...
Black holes occur when God divides by zero.
In the context of archiving games, accurate software emulation the whole HW underlying each game is the only solution.
Obviously it should be done in a open, portable, multiplatform way to ensure that it is a long term solution.
Mame and Mess ( mamedev.org ) has already shown that this approach is viable and practical.
MAME is probably the most famous and widely used "game preservation" project in existence. The whole point of MAME is to re-implement obsolete arcade hardware and software as accurately as possible. Making the games playable is not the focus of the MAME project. It's been wildly successful, with lots of clever people reverse-engineering a lot of old hardware, and exceptionally rare games and hardware being documented and preserved.
MAME does "leave the original bitstream intact" as they put it. Getting accurate ROM or hard drive dumps is the entire point. Sure, MAME only handles arcade hardware, but there are plenty of other emulators out there for old gaming/computer systems, and people have spent a long time archiving software sets for these systems (Aminet, etc).
Basically, I'm finding it hard to see the difference between the emulation/preservation/source port culture we have now and what these guys are doing, with the exception that they are somehow more "credible" or "legitimate" because they're a university project. Their methodologies might be more formalized, and they're receiving government funding, but their goals are identical to those of the thousands of people already involved in emulation and archiving of obsolete hardware and software.
Doom is the ultimate example of JUST how to preserve a virtual world. By releasing the source code iD has decoupled it from OS/Hardware and ensured its continued survival.
So Doom is NOT an example of how hard it is to preserve a game but rather an example of just how to make sure a game survives.
On the whole, don't use success stories as an example of how not to do something.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I know it did come out on the 2600 but sheesh, that was dire. The proper version was the 400/800 and THAT is worth preserving. Oh hang on, they already have via emulators. Next!
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Oh my. I played WOW for a couple of years and barely got out of MC with my sanity intact. I now face the prospect of waking up in the future as my dwarf. Much as I love her, she's damned ugly and she has a big pet gorilla who smells! She's not even all-epic yet!
Digital Rights Management schemes will make it really hard soon to emulate the hardware and media.
That is why I believe that unless a non-protected copy of the game/media is submitted to the Library of Congress, or a similar insitution in your country, the game/media should lose all protection by copyright law and DMCA.
Just a thought.
Hey don't blame me, IANAB
I'm not a laywer, but as long as corporations keep their software patents and copyrights enforced, this will be a difficult task. It may take hundreds of hours of research and hard work to develop a virtualisation or emulation platform, but if Nintendo or Sony don't like the idea, then they can legally stop you, regardless of your motives.
This is exactly why emulation exists. There exists software that is still fun, or at least nostalgic, but nobody hangs around to the dedicated hardware for more than a couple years. So people write an emulator for that platform for a common instruction set and as long as you've got enough excess performance power, whala! Works like a dream.
I've actually got a SNES sitting right here, but I'm too lazy to plug the thing in (don't even have a tv anymore actually) so I have an emulator for SNES on my pc, with all the games I have on hardcopy cartridge saved as roms. This way, they won't physically degrade, I don't have to use the SNES video hookup, and so I'll have my favorite games perserved, PERFECTLY, forever.
I've been thinking about MMORPGs, and games on systems like Xbox LIVE. I can understand only allowing me to play the game through their online service while its still operational, but I really think once the support is dead and the company is clearly not selling the game any more, they should put out the source code so that those who purchased it can make their own servers and keep playing if they want. All Xbox Live games are now impossible to play multiplayer modes, no matter what. How many games is that? And how long was that window where you actually could play them, a few years? It seems very shortsighted.
GCS/MU/P d- s:- a-- C++++$ UL++ P+ L++ E+ W++ N o K- w--- O M+ V- PS+++ PE Y+ PGP t+ 5- X R++ tv+ b++ DI++ D++ G+ e++ h-
Even without source code, It's called FUCKING EMULATION
Until the companies that control exclusive rights in these games start attacking emulator maintainers under theories of circumvention and/or contributory infringement. Besides, with Moore's Law shifting focus from speed to number of cores, I see it becoming likely that the Xbox 360 and PLAYSTATION 3 won't be emulated any time soon.
Someday maybe we will put the same efforts into preserving our world.
It's not just games like Doom and such. There are/were programs out there that let people build things in other worlds.
* Active Worlds (Since the 1990's)
* Neverwinter Nights (All the custom modules and content)
* Second Life
* Etc.
That is just to name a few. Heck in Activeworlds I used some nice sized chunks of virtual land to build things like a full campus university, mountain hideaway, large gardens made from other materials like boulders and roof pieces, giant boulder trees, etc
Granted a lot of custom content looks like crap in these places but it's still peoples attempts to create things and use their imaginations. It's a lot of history really, granted dull every day stuff but still history.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Isn't this the exact same thing the MAME project is trying to achieve? http://mamedev.org/about.html
The Internet Archive has a project to do this: http://www.archive.org/details/software
Shameless plugs and inaccessible site design FTW! - www.mistletoestreetmusic.com
Just incrementally back up the entire Matrix. You can roll it back a decade or two to play your Atari game.
UTF-8: There and Back Again
I'm opening up a video game museum and will try to get every video game ever made. I'll charge admission and people can play the video games and learn about video game history.
God spoke to me.
The number of servers for FF XI keep getting smaller every month. And once Square-Enix decides to close the last server I'm quite sure they won't be releasing their server source code.
All FF XI server emulation solutions so far require an active account and also require to log in POL before logging into the pirate servers. That's not good enough.
I don't know if I could go AFK that long.
only in my memories.
I don't know if anyone has considered the full implications here. If this could be applied to other types of programs, it would end having to upgrade all of your old software any time you upgraded the OS or PC itself beyond a certian point. You'd still need to get functionality upgrades and patches, as no software is absolutely perfect, but this could become an incremental cost to the consumer and a constant revenue stream for companies making the programs in the first place. They would have to only develope one set of code to be used on Mac boxes, MS Windows, Linux boxes, etc. Older programs, whose companies were bought out by other companies, could be dusted off, upgraded for the new compatibility, and sold again, adding whatever upgrades that the user would like to purchase from the company. The issue here would be corporate responsiveness to user requests for upgrades and the amount of time rquired to write the new code. People writing the code would be paid on the basis of how many users buy the new upgrades, as well as how many buy the core product in the first place. The core software would have to be pretty solid to begin with, as any upgrades would have to allow it to perform without issues on a variety of platforms. Programs sold to new users would come with all the previous upgrades built in, (up to a set yearly 'drop dead' date, being the lead date between the load up onto the media that it is being sold on, packaging and shipping, and setup at the stores. (Obviously, advertising time would be added in as well) The core program would be sold with upgrades, and a yearly update package would also be available those who already own the core package, sold on the media of their choice.
...and while IMO the game was craptastic, I always was impressed with the beauty of the environments in Age of Conan.
What happens when this meticulously-detailed world dies? It would be a damn shame that all the artwork and effort that went into producing it were to end up as some 1's and 0's on a couple of DVDs in Funcom's basement archive.
It's really too bad that there isn't some sort of ur-format that worlds like this can be exported to, to allow them to be re-used somehow for other settings. I'm sure it's pure fantasy for me to hope that this world would ever be simply open-sourced for someone else to use, long after the AoC game is defunct and forgotten. :(
-Styopa
As everyone's pointed out, emulators have already covered the preservation of things like Star Raiders.
What really needs preservation are (relatively) newer games buried by copyright holders. Games like "System Shock 2," "KISS Psycho Circus: The Nightmare Child," and the PC version of "Turok 2: Seeds of Evil," all of which are no longer published and cannot be bought brand new anymore, leaving only eBay and warez as viable sources.
The Internet is full. Go away.
I upgraded to a new computer to find that the software that I bought it for won't work in Win95 compatible mode. The net needs a Richter scale for technology progress that has disastrous results.
I feel compelled to inform the author of TFA that we overcame this problem years ago with something called EMULATION. Stella (http://stella.sourceforge.net/) has been around since 1996, and that's just one of many excellent Atari 2600 emulators that remove the hardware dependency he spoke of.
even Doom has dependencies on DLLs with an operating system
I know Doom was ahead of its time, but being a DOS game with DLL dependencies is pretty impressive.