Source code released for Little Big Adventure 1 & 2!
The engines of the classic 1990s 3D adventure games get released under the GPL.
Little Big Adventure was originally released back in 1994 for DOS and, eventually, found its way to a bunch of other platforms (including Playstation, Android, and iOS).
Well now the company which now has the rights to Little Big Adventure has decided to release the full source code for the game (as well as the sequel: Little Big Adventure 2)! From their announcement:
The programming work done by the original teams is not only tremendous but exceptional for the time. It can’t be kept on old CDs in suitcases in the programmers' homes (*wink* Didier 😏).
This codebase can benefit developers as a source of knowledge / education, Little Big Adventure fans or retrogaming communities.
And then, just like that, we decided to OPEN-SOURCE THE CODE OF LITTLE BIG ADVENTURE ENGINES AND TOOLS that have been trusted in our hands, so it can outlive all of us, somehow.
Our objective is to preserve those pieces of technical mastery and true groundbreaking vision. We also want to give back to the LBA community who kept cheering on the games during all those years.
The full source for LBA 1 and LBA 2 are up on GitHub.
One thing I really like about how they are doing this:
For each game, there is:
An “historic” repository where only ex-Adeline developers or myself will contribute (if we forgot a file or a mention somewhere),
A community repository that is open to pull requests
Absolutely love that. The history here is so critically important. Huge thank you to the team for helping to preserve this.
Oh, and the license they chose? GPL v2.
Too cool.
Oh, one other thing: It is insinuated (though not directly stated) that the following is a picture of how the original source code was stored prior to the current team getting ahold of it. Unsure if that is the case… or if the “kept on old CDs in suitcases in the programmers' homes” statement is true. Either way, it makes me giggle.
You can follow the teams journey to create a new Little Big Adventure game on their blog.
Oh, and you can buy a copy of Little Big Adventure over on GoG.com. It really is a game of it’s time. Worth playing at least once. The art style is… distinctly “Early 90s 3D”. To an intense degree.