Seeking Information on Earliest AGS Code Release

[timofonic]

Dear Adventure Game Studio Forum Members,

I hope this message finds you well. I am reaching out to you today as a passionate fan of adventure games and an advocate for digital preservation. I am currently on a mission to preserve the earliest versions of Adventure Game Studio (AGS), and I am in need of your assistance.

I am trying to track down the earliest code release of AGS. I have looked at the earliest commit on AGS GitHub repository, but I am uncertain if this is the same as the original forum zip release. If anyone has a cached copy of the original forum zip release, it would be incredibly helpful for future reference.

I found the following forum thread, but the svn server is offline. I wonder if there's some backup somewhere: https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/engine-development/initial-ags-engine-source-code-release/

The reason for this request is that it may be beneficial if I or someone else decides to disassemble an earlier game to have the earliest known sources handy for reference. This would greatly aid in our understanding of the software's evolution and contribute to our efforts in digital preservation.

I understand that this is a significant ask, but I believe in the importance of this endeavor. Any assistance or guidance you could provide would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your time and consideration. I look forward to any possibility of working together to preserve a piece of our shared digital heritage.

With utmost respect,
Timofonic.

[Crimson Wizard]

I am trying to track down the earliest code release of AGS. I have looked at the earliest commit on AGS GitHub repository, but I am uncertain if this is the same as the original forum zip release. If anyone has a cached copy of the original forum zip release, it would be incredibly helpful for future reference.

I found the following forum thread, but the svn server is offline. I wonder if there's some backup somewhere: https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/engine-development/initial-ags-engine-source-code-release/

The date of the forum post is 27/04/2011.

There's a commit in the git repository called "Initial release of AGS Engine source code!" having date 27.04.2011 (commit hash a45f1a55a2c41efae2246c24a7e5c6c1ecddfe6d).

Since these dates match, I suppose it's the same release.

[eri0o]

Just to make it easier, here's a link to it: https://github.com/adventuregamestudio/ags/commit/a45f1a55a2c41efae2246c24a7e5c6c1ecddfe6d

And here's is it's download link

https://github.com/adventuregamestudio/ags/archive/a45f1a55a2c41efae2246c24a7e5c6c1ecddfe6d.zip

[timofonic]

Thanks a lot!

Does it contain all branches from SVN and such? Did the conversion from SVN to Git cause some kind of lost data?

Does someone have a backup of the Subversion repo?

Thanks in advance

[Crimson Wizard]

Does it contain all branches from SVN and such?

I think it contains all the commits from SVN's main branch, known as "trunk". This is hinted by the information in commit descriptions, which have the links and hashes of the corresponding svn commits. These links start with "https://svn.bigbluecup.com:7743/svn/ags/trunk1 " and go on increasing the number.
This branch corresponded to v3.2.1.

Changes from v3.2.2 branch were applied separately later (this may be noticed in the git history).

I don't remember which branches did SVN repo contained precisely now, as that was a long time ago. But my guess is that it did not contain anything older, because if there was anything, the original maintainer of git repo would port these commits too. Jochen Schleu had a goal to make old games run, so he would not miss a chance to have an older code.

Did the conversion from SVN to Git cause some kind of lost data?

I doubt it. This was done by an automatic tool meant for this purpose.

Does someone have a backup of the Subversion repo?

Well, I had many years ago, but no longer do.

I found a smaller clone of the SVN to git though here, made by Nick Sonneveld:
https://github.com/sonneveld/ags-cj
it contains strictly CJ commits, with nothing else over them.