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Decompiling a Nintendo 64 game in 84 days

blog.chrislewis.au

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Re: Decompiling a Nintendo 64 game in 84 days

#81

Post by qingcharles »

jaydayvis wrote: post #15

I think Marx is rolling in his grave over the tirelessly expended human to recreate what almost definitely already exists on a floppy sitting in some “IP - Do Not Touch” lock box. But maybe endless puzzles for ever cleverer people is the point of it all.

I dunno. I was a gamedev. I'm pretty sure everything got thrown out. I don't remember ever taking any source home. It was all managed through Visual Source Safe (!) on a local server.

The 80s games were mostly coded in bedrooms, but after that it all moved to teams in offices and a lot of studios went boom-to-bust pretty quickly.

Re: Decompiling a Nintendo 64 game in 84 days

#83

Post by qingcharles »

NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #50

I'm still baffled by RE community aiming for "100% asm match", needing to reproduce specific compiler version, instead of aiming for functional equivalence and cleaner code is there really no tools whatsoever that produce proof certificates for "these two functions do the same thing"?

It's usually just the first sweep to make sure everything is understood and documented before you start to make mods.

Re: Decompiling a Nintendo 64 game in 84 days

#84

Post by qarl2 »

Jegber wrote: post #54
NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #50

I'm still baffled by RE community aiming for "100% asm match", needing to reproduce specific compiler version, instead of aiming for functional equivalence and cleaner code is there really no tools whatsoever that produce proof certificates for "these two functions do the same thing"?

Game behavior can be tied so closely to quirky hardware behavior that I doubt such a tool would be simple to create. You’d have to verify that your code produces the same hardware state. And different (ie more efficient) code almost by definition produces a different hardware state than the original code. Thus changing the game.

Really though? You have to try really hard to make your code that unstable - and well written code isn't that.

Seems more like voodoo.

Re: Decompiling a Nintendo 64 game in 84 days

#85

Post by qingcharles »

beepbooptheory wrote: post #62

Does decompiling a game made by a certain development team help decompile others made by the same people? Because you might know what patterns to look for?

No, not at all. I know where I worked there was zero code reuse across teams and games.

Games of this generation had code that wasn't intended to be supported or managed after release (no patches for those consoles) and so the code tended to be fairly horrible.

Re: Decompiling a Nintendo 64 game in 84 days

#86

Post by unknownfuture »

LPisGood wrote: post #64
unknownfuture wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can't see why your analogy is deeply broken I honestly don't know what to do for you.

It’s not clear to me why people believe determinism has some special property.

You still don't get it.

Think about the act of writing with a pen.

Now think about what a typewriter does in that context.

Now think about what an LLM does in that context.

Can you reason about how those are vastly different tools within the context of writing or communication, so much so that the comparison doesn't actually make any sense?

Hint: it has nothing to do with determinism. It has to do with the nature of the work itself and the role of the person doing it.

As an aside, this whole exchange really is just a perfect encapsulation of the outcome-focused versus process-focused individual.

The outcome-focused person sees words in a document and whether an LLM produced them or a human typed them is a distinction without a difference.

The process-focused person is utterly baffled that anyone could think those are in any way equivalent.

Re: Decompiling a Nintendo 64 game in 84 days

#87

Post by matheusmoreira »

jmcgough wrote: post #14

I've been absolutely loving the decomp projects that have been coming out lately. Huge props to the writer for this, Snowboard Kids is a real gem. I'd also encourage people to check out the Legend of Dragoon recomp [1]. It's a real labor of love that has breathed new life into a largely abandoned game. You can play it fully vanilla, or with improved graphics, fixes to cumbersome design choices, bugfixes, etc. [1] htt…

Loving this trend too.

It inspired me to use AI to decompile my favorite games as well, mostly Mega Man Battle Network games from my childhood. I'm not going to make it in 84 days though. I insist on understanding the game and documenting it myself instead of just having the AI do it all for me on autopilot.

As slow as that is, it's already led to some awesome moments. AI built a literal synthesizer that played back music straight out of the ROM. Mapped out all of the music that way. It was incredible.

Have neen reverse engineering my laptop's BIOS as well. AI is fully in charge of that one, and it's nearly done. Hopefully soon I'll have drivers and perhaps even coreboot.

Re: Decompiling a Nintendo 64 game in 84 days

#88

Post by qarl2 »

unknownfuture wrote: post #86
LPisGood wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not clear to me why people believe determinism has some special property.

You still don't get it. Think about the act of writing with a pen. Now think about what a typewriter does in that context. Now think about what an LLM does in that context. Can you reason about how those are vastly different tools within the context of writing or communication, so much so that the comparison doesn't actually make any sense? Hint: it has nothing to do with determinism. It has to do with the nature of…

> You still don't get it.

HEH. I just read your comment three times and I definitely don't get it. I think its entire point is to express outrage about not getting it, rather than actually explain it.

Re: Decompiling a Nintendo 64 game in 84 days

#89

Post by some-guy »

qarl2 wrote: post #75
some-guy wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use AI all the time for coding, but a tool that non-deterministically reaches potentially a different output than I would have produced myself is not analogous to typewriters.

You yourself would be non-deterministic if we could rewind time. So what's the issue here? Not to mention, LLMs can be made deterministic if that were actually valuable. Seems like determinism is just the latest excuse to hate.

It’s not exactly determinism, it’s authenticity. If we rewind time, of course the words would be different. It’s not relevant to my argument.

There’s a reason why the top comments of HN blog posts whine about articles that are clearly written by AI. I use AI constantly as a coding agent, but I care deeply about the authenticity of the words I write intended for other human beings to be my own.

Re: Decompiling a Nintendo 64 game in 84 days

#90

Post by [deleted] »

qarl2 wrote: post #88
unknownfuture wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You still don't get it. Think about the act of writing with a pen. Now think about what a typewriter does in that context. Now think about what an LLM does in that context. Can you reason about how those are vastly different tools within the context of writing or communication, so much so that the comparison doesn't actually make any sense? Hint: it has nothing to do with determinism. It has to do with the nature of…

> You still don't get it. HEH. I just read your comment three times and I definitely don't get it. I think its entire point is to express outrage about not getting it, rather than actually explain it.

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