Conversation between Sophie's World (1997) game developers in YouTube comments section

Sophie's World CD-ROM Playthrough - Complete Longplay [uploaded by Mequa32 on 2014-03-15]

Comment highlight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyWIRwOuyR0&lc=UghCUYBmqCFInXgCoAEC

@alanmcauley7010 [Alan McAuley]: What a find! I actually worked on this with some talented people and its weird to see it after al l these years!

@Mequa32 [Mequa32]: What was your contribution to this software? It was an outstanding piece of philosophical multimedia and edutainment, I'd love to see an update or at least any similar software today. I was surprised to see no videos of it, so I recorded it played through.

It's still playable on modern PCs too - I recorded this with Windows 8.1 - though you'll need a VM with a Win9x guest OS and suitable drivers. (A shame that's too difficult for casual users).

@alanmcauley7010 [Alan McAuley]: ***** Glad you liked it!

I found this by accident as I was sort of working on a CV recently and I also accidentally found one of the development copies of the codebase (I think) hope I didnt throw it out ...

I think the team was all exhausted by the time it went out the door. It was a significant but small team of developers, MAC and Win32, , graphic artists, producers. I was a win32 developer, putting the scenes, working on audio, and the timelines, working closely with the graphic artists and producers. We had a real star developer (MAC) and I cant recall his name, Sam???, he developed a "scene" engine, in Hypercard??? and we used the scripts of this tool to run in either Mac or Win32. All of it is coded from scratch. Many many long hours. There were also academics of philosophy for script writing and if I remember correctly the producer was called Ailsa Barry. It was all a bit mad but it still looks (kinda) pretty. I still remember the audio as we sat in that room (from the market scene) in a London accent "ooooo wants sum luvvely eggs then" all day.

It makes me smile now, it was developed for 16 bit windows and windows 95 at the time and MAC. So it had to work on both which meant debugging it on both. Oh the joys of it all. Its C++.

I cant remember the key sequence but I am sure someone out there does. After a certain key sequence it brings up an Easter Egg which shows the faces of the people involved on the project.

It was about 6 or 7 core developers with others coming and going. one lead graphic designer with other graphic content people. Assistant producers, script writers, actors, movie makers, all the sound is original, 3D rendering and all night code sessions, sleeping in the building and eating pizza for a living.

If other people see this post Im sure they will al lcomment and the story will unfold....it would be great to hear from some of that team in life again!!!

@simonjf [Simon Jenkins]: Hi Alan, Simon here. You're thinking of Sam Deane, yes a superstar. And Ailsa was indeed the producer. Other folks included the illustrious Maf Vosburgh also insanely talented. Don't remember if Chris Pointon worked on it. I think so. Pretty sure that Kevin Marks was doing more management type things by this point. I wrote the natural language engine for the in-game instant message application, as well as the text renderer on the Mac. I see that it wasn't very well ported to the PC :-) The IM app on the Mac simulated the other party typing... I don't remember much pizza but there was plenty of Chinese food. Maybe that's a mac/pc thing ? I learned that my wife had gone in to labour with my first child while at MMC working on this. Those were good days in retrospect. Lots of smart people working crazy hours to make something very good. I'll post a link to this on Facebook, that should pull in some other MMCers.

@samdeane [Sam Deane]: Oh wow - what a trip down memory lane. I feel somewhat sheepish to be described like that, but I was certainly young and full of energy (wish I could work out where it all went!). Also: Mr McAuley - I've been trying to find you for years! Lots of happy memories from those times: our lunches (and my crazy idea of trying to get the programmers to talk to the graphic designers)... and some bad jokes (a meringue?)... and Darren playing White Zombie... and the insane heat during the summer with no aircon... and...

@alanmcauley7010 [Alan McAuley]: Crikey! Simon Jenkins, hurragh! yes indeed there was a lot of chineses as well. I even recall passing the noodles to Ailsa Barry and saying "Noodles?"..."I can call you noodles?"...never sure if i got away with it. Indeed SImon i do recall the NLP and you sitting to my left in the MAC corner with Sam, yes Deane sitting behind you. Im more mature but still looking for  that buzz in a job..crazy as it was.....hard to repeat.

@alanmcauley7010 [Alan McAuley]: Hey hey Mr Deane. Knew Id remember that surname. Yes, plenty of good times. I remember the scene engine and it taking me a while to think i could reach your standards! I went off to the "City" after that.......maybe thats where it all went wrong.....Ill drop you a line!