4 ms·

My guess, on no basis apart from outside knowledge of some other game developer build systems, is that they couldn't actually build this game any more. I bet e

by angusgr 16y ago

My guess, on no basis apart from outside knowledge of some other game developer build systems, is that they couldn't actually build this game any more. I bet either their build system fell apart from disuse, or the one person who understood it left, or it wasn't documented and people just forgot over the years. It was all too time-consuming, manual, and complex compared to using the cracked executable.

InclinedPlane 16y ago
Seems the most likely, the software industry is pretty bad about maintaining old tooling for this sort of thing.
- mahmud 16y ago
  Sometimes tool vendors deliberately sabotage your maintenance efforts. A friend of mine called me over to show me his codebase, which is diligently maintained over 12 years using MS Visual Studio 6. As he booted the machine, a .NET update dialog popped up and he clicked "OK". .NET was updated, along with some important VS6 components, and when he fired up the IDE it told him it need to upgrade VS. After upgrading VS, reluctantly, he was no longer able to build the project.
  - roofone 16y ago
    To be pedantic, that's not MS deliberately sabotaging the project. That's perhaps MS being reckless with their upgrades, resulting in (I would suspect), an alienated customer. My lesson from this comment and the story is that configuration management is more important than I thought.
- phaedrus 16y ago
  The code doesn't even have to be that old - in my indie game company, my partner and I often run into issues just moving code between my machine and his. Things like compiler versions, C++ library versioning issues, third party libraries. I never understood before why big businesses' IT departments are so conservative about upgrading and changing systems, until one day as I was spending my whole weekend fixing problems caused by (needlessly) upgrading to the latest version of GCC I had the epiphany, "You know, this was avoidable."
  - angusgr 16y ago
    Did you have a separate build machine, preferably that built automatically on every checkin, so there was a canonical "it's broken here, but not there" point? (Not that this avoids this problem, it's just - in my experience - it makes it easier to pinpoint and fix.)
    - dalore 16y ago
      Continuous Integration http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_Integration http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_Integration
amichail 16y ago
Why can't they crack it themselves?
- eru 16y ago
  Would have probably been more work.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
veeti 16y ago
That would make sense, since the original creators of Max Payne sold the rights to the game and aren't involved anymore.

by angusgr 16y ago

InclinedPlane 16y ago

Seems the most likely, the software industry is pretty bad about maintaining old tooling for this sort of thing.

mahmud 16y ago
Sometimes tool vendors deliberately sabotage your maintenance efforts. A friend of mine called me over to show me his codebase, which is diligently maintained over 12 years using MS Visual Studio 6. As he booted the machine, a .NET update dialog popped up and he clicked "OK". .NET was updated, along with some important VS6 components, and when he fired up the IDE it told him it need to upgrade VS. After upgrading VS, reluctantly, he was no longer able to build the project.
- roofone 16y ago
  To be pedantic, that's not MS deliberately sabotaging the project. That's perhaps MS being reckless with their upgrades, resulting in (I would suspect), an alienated customer. My lesson from this comment and the story is that configuration management is more important than I thought.
phaedrus 16y ago
The code doesn't even have to be that old - in my indie game company, my partner and I often run into issues just moving code between my machine and his. Things like compiler versions, C++ library versioning issues, third party libraries. I never understood before why big businesses' IT departments are so conservative about upgrading and changing systems, until one day as I was spending my whole weekend fixing problems caused by (needlessly) upgrading to the latest version of GCC I had the epiphany, "You know, this was avoidable."
- angusgr 16y ago
  Did you have a separate build machine, preferably that built automatically on every checkin, so there was a canonical "it's broken here, but not there" point? (Not that this avoids this problem, it's just - in my experience - it makes it easier to pinpoint and fix.)
  - dalore 16y ago
    Continuous Integration http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_Integration http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_Integration

amichail 16y ago

Why can't they crack it themselves?

eru 16y ago
Would have probably been more work.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

veeti 16y ago

That would make sense, since the original creators of Max Payne sold the rights to the game and aren't involved anymore.