3 ms·

Early in the 2000's one of the original authors of Sfarflight posted a massive dump of information online: design documents and source code. That is the "Techni

by dzdt 8mo ago

Early in the 2000's one of the original authors of Sfarflight posted a massive dump of information online: design documents and source code. That is the "Technical Articles Saved from Oblivion" link in this repository. Sadly no one seems to have managed to save a full copy! This is one I kick myself about: I browsed this back when it was up but didnt think to download. These days I make a point to request Internet Archives to save things like this if I ever come across it.

EarlKing 8mo ago
I'm not sure what you're referring to since the files T.C. Lee posted on that geocities site are the only design documents he (or anyone else) ever released, and those are preserved in the SFFiles.zip found at the oocities mirror linked from the github there. That zip contained only a partial dump of some source code, while that sonic.net page contains a more complete copy (but lacks any kind of design documents whatsoever). Was there something else you were referring to?
- torgoguys 8mo ago
  I seem to recall browsing what appeared to be the complete source back in the day. I put in a bit of an effort to get it compiling, but it was only released as poorly scanned printouts of the source code and OCR wasn't so good then so the project was bigger than I hoped.
  - EarlKing 8mo ago
    That would be the source code posted to that sonic.net site. It was a mix of raw dumps of FORTH blocks and printouts converted to PDFs. It wasn't the full source code, and there weren't any design documents in there.
    - dzdt 8mo ago
      You can see on archive.org where it captured directory info for files which were not stored: https://web.archive.org/web/20031218202130/http://www.sonic.net/~sage/sf/src/ https://web.archive.org/web/20031218202130/http://www.sonic.... When you navigate those directory archives many of the files are missing. E.g. https://web.archive.org/web/20030529230704/http://www.sonic.net/~sage/sf/src/Disk-SFSRC.BLK/AsText/SFSRC.TXT https://web.archive.org/web/20030529230704/http://www.sonic.... Some design documents ARE there, e.g. "Specification of 3d display for starquest" : https://web.archive.org/web/20030719111039if_/http://www.sonic.net:80/~sage/sf/Development/85_3DPlanetSpec.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20030719111039if_/http://www.son...
      - EarlKing 8mo ago
        Well....... shit. I'd been in there previously and never noticed that. Disregard.
s-macke 8mo ago
About halfway through my reverse-engineering process, I came across those documents and realized that roughly 50% were missing. I searched pretty much the entire web to see if anyone had stored these files elsewhere, but so far I haven’t had any luck.

by dzdt 8mo ago

EarlKing 8mo ago

I'm not sure what you're referring to since the files T.C. Lee posted on that geocities site are the only design documents he (or anyone else) ever released, and those are preserved in the SFFiles.zip found at the oocities mirror linked from the github there. That zip contained only a partial dump of some source code, while that sonic.net page contains a more complete copy (but lacks any kind of design documents whatsoever). Was there something else you were referring to?

torgoguys 8mo ago
I seem to recall browsing what appeared to be the complete source back in the day. I put in a bit of an effort to get it compiling, but it was only released as poorly scanned printouts of the source code and OCR wasn't so good then so the project was bigger than I hoped.
- EarlKing 8mo ago
  That would be the source code posted to that sonic.net site. It was a mix of raw dumps of FORTH blocks and printouts converted to PDFs. It wasn't the full source code, and there weren't any design documents in there.
  - dzdt 8mo ago
    You can see on archive.org where it captured directory info for files which were not stored: https://web.archive.org/web/20031218202130/http://www.sonic.net/~sage/sf/src/ https://web.archive.org/web/20031218202130/http://www.sonic.... When you navigate those directory archives many of the files are missing. E.g. https://web.archive.org/web/20030529230704/http://www.sonic.net/~sage/sf/src/Disk-SFSRC.BLK/AsText/SFSRC.TXT https://web.archive.org/web/20030529230704/http://www.sonic.... Some design documents ARE there, e.g. "Specification of 3d display for starquest" : https://web.archive.org/web/20030719111039if_/http://www.sonic.net:80/~sage/sf/Development/85_3DPlanetSpec.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20030719111039if_/http://www.son...
    - EarlKing 8mo ago
      Well....... shit. I'd been in there previously and never noticed that. Disregard.

s-macke 8mo ago

About halfway through my reverse-engineering process, I came across those documents and realized that roughly 50% were missing. I searched pretty much the entire web to see if anyone had stored these files elsewhere, but so far I haven’t had any luck.