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Why aren't there more reverse-engineered game projects?

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First post, by Expack3

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Simple question: why do games like The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind, Baldur's Gate 2, and RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 get reverse-engineering projects, while games like Deus Ex and Unreal Tournament don't? I mean, they work now, but to keep them running in the future, open-sourcing their code, one way or another, will eventually be required for various reasons, like the obsolescence of 32-bit, system calls stop being supported or emulated, or, for those games which got a Linux port, the required packages becoming obsolete, hard-to-find, or just stop working with distros which work on modern hardware.

I get it: it's remarkably hard to reverse-engineer code, port old or ancient code to be usable on modern hardware, including replacing obsolete dependencies, and so on. I'm also aware it's even harder to keep an open-source project organized and healthy. Yet with all the fans of legendary, old games, surely there'd be enough interest within the code-minded individuals in their fanbases to get projects running.

I'm probably an idiot for asking, missing something obvious, but I thought I'd ask anyways.

Reply 1 of 3, by nforce4max

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Some games are simply more popular or are more special in some way or another so they get more attention. Wished that the Drakan series would get some love or at the very least port the Ancients Gates from the PS2 as that is a amazing game and like it more than even Morrowind.

On a far away planet reading your posts in the year 10,191.

Reply 2 of 3, by Jorpho

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Expack3 wrote:

I mean, they work now

That's pretty much it, isn't it?

like the obsolescence of 32-bit, system calls stop being supported or emulated

I think by the time that happens there will surely be some sort of fast and accurate virtualization technology available.

Reply 3 of 3, by Expack3

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Jorpho wrote:
Expack3 wrote:

I mean, they work now

That's pretty much it, isn't it?

Indeed. It doesn't help the examples I gave have enough of their source code released that it would take their underlying engine becoming broken by [insert reason here] for demand to happen.

Yet, Morrowind and RCT2 were included for a reason - to my knowledge, both games still work fine on modern OSes (even though they might look ugly these days), yet they've both been reverse-engineered.

Jorpho wrote:

like the obsolescence of 32-bit, system calls stop being supported or emulated

I think by the time that happens there will surely be some sort of fast and accurate virtualization technology available.

If that happens, I think that would usher in a paradigm shift in computing...but that's a topic for another thread.

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