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According to this writeup at NMA by Scott Campbell, the 90s rerelease of Wasteland was actually a new version, recompiled from a scavenged version of the source code:
I assume that the version of Wasteland in The Ultimate RPG Archives compilation from 1998 was this same version.
So the question is, were there any important differences between the scavenged C64 code used to rebuild the game in the 90s and the code of the game's original 1988 release?
I assume inXile will be releasing the newer one. I wonder if they have that source code?
Another fun title that came my way was Interplay’s 10th Anniversary. It was to have 10 of Interplay’s classic games; one a year, from 1983 to 1993. It seemed like fun, and an easy enough task - until I actually tried to get the games. I remember walking into one of Interplay's co-founder's office and asking to see the code archives. He pointed to a three drawer cabinet in the corner. The first drawer contained financial file folders. The second drawer contained cables and various old hardware cards. In the third drawer was a few handfuls of 5.25 and 3.5 floppy disks. I say handfuls because they were literally in loose piles – many unsleeved and unlabeled. After scouring each disk, it appeared that most of the code, let alone the actual GAMES were not there. To make matters worse, the older games would no longer run on modern machines. There were just too many changes in operating systems (DOS 2.0 to Dos4GW) and hardware (VGA, sound cards instead of PC speaker, etc.) There would have to be extensive code changes to get these to even run.
All would have been lost if it weren’t for Burger Bill. Luckily, he had personal backups of all of the games Interplay had made, and most of the code archived as well. There were three games he didn’t have the code for: Mindshadow, Tass Times in Tone Town, and Wasteland. Bill proved to be an assembly ninja. He reverse engineered the game executables of Mindshadow and Tass Times back into C++ code. He also used his elite h4x0r skills to remove the copy protection for the other games, but Wasteland still remained a problem.
Bill and I went around the company, talking to everyone who had been affiliated with Wasteland, trying to find lost code. Finally, Mike Quarles, the programmer of the C-64 version, still had a stack of floppies that filled in the last of the holes. To make the required changes to the game, the code needed to be recompiled, and after a long search, the backup of the ancient Borland C++ compiler was found, and the new executable was authored. I still shudder to think that the entire code to Wasteland was so close to being lost forever.
I assume that the version of Wasteland in The Ultimate RPG Archives compilation from 1998 was this same version.
So the question is, were there any important differences between the scavenged C64 code used to rebuild the game in the 90s and the code of the game's original 1988 release?
I assume inXile will be releasing the newer one. I wonder if they have that source code?