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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

#91

Post by teeray »

agiacalone wrote: post #66
VCFundedGenYer wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using AI is cognitive surrender. It's not your code, it's not your work.

When I was in high school, graphing calculators were pretty new. New enough that most teachers had not yet encountered them. I was a pretty nerdy kid even then, and I saw graphing calculator as 'portable computer' in 1993! So, of course I wanted one. When our teachers found about them, they banned the use of graphing calculators, some teachers going so far as to only allowing 'four-bangers' (a basic one) for classes…

It’s more like cheating off your neighbor’s math test than using a calculator

Re: Decompiling a Nintendo 64 game in 84 days

#92

Post by qarl2 »

some-guy wrote: post #89
qarl2 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> It’s not exactly determinism, it’s authenticity.

I hope you understand, by so glibly switching from "determinism" to "authenticity" you've just provided more evidence that this is just the latest excuse to hate.

But that aside - what happens in a couple years, when LLMs inevitably improve, and their writing is objectively superior to human writing? And people who just want to read well-written material won't care about the authenticity?

I suspect there will be another glib switch. Because the reality here is just that AI is hated. Full stop.

Re: Decompiling a Nintendo 64 game in 84 days

#93

Post by ndiddy »

fizwidget wrote: post #72
minimaxir wrote: post #7

It's especially annoying that LLMs/agents are a logical starting point for decompiling old games but there is a significant backlash against it as the gaming community is very anti-AI and consumers of the benefits decompiling offers tend to be noncoders who don't believe that AI can do more than slop. I've seen takes such as "they're too lazy to learn C++" and accepting a PR from someone using Claude taints the proje…

I think the backlash isn’t necessarily against the decomp itself, but rather the sloppy/buggy PC ports that often come from it. In my mind using an LLM to assist with decompiling is fine, as the output is provably correct. It either compiles to the original binary or it doesn’t. Turning that into a playable PC game with controls that feel good, etc, is a different story. That requires human taste & judgement.

Yeah the problem isn't people using AI, it's the flood of lazy "native ports" that have no meaningful improvement over playing the game in an emulator and often crash or glitch out a level or two in because unsurprisingly a lot of the people who leave all the work to Claude don't feel like testing the game themselves. LLMs are a godsend for RE work when they're used properly, but a lot of these projects just waste everybody's time.

Re: Decompiling a Nintendo 64 game in 84 days

#94

Post by Jach »

rjrjrjrj wrote: post #33

I don’t remember this game at all - and there weren’t many N64 games, especially in the first couple of years.

Watching bits of videos from this guy's series on beating every N64 game (including JP-only releases) is a fun way to find out about interesting games I missed from back then. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrwJXOVKrLbIDAiT9b4Lk...

Re: Decompiling a Nintendo 64 game in 84 days

#95

Post by hn773746483 »

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?

It varies. Nintendo for example has plenty of different teams and internal frameworks, but not every game uses them.

Re: Decompiling a Nintendo 64 game in 84 days

#96

Post by unknownfuture »

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.

Weird, I don't think any of my comments express outrage

Bafflement? Certainly.

Maybe a little sadness at the lack of understanding of, or appreciation for, the creative process? Sure.

Outrage? Nah.

Re: Decompiling a Nintendo 64 game in 84 days

#97

Post by nsxwolf »

agiacalone wrote: post #66
VCFundedGenYer wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using AI is cognitive surrender. It's not your code, it's not your work.

When I was in high school, graphing calculators were pretty new. New enough that most teachers had not yet encountered them. I was a pretty nerdy kid even then, and I saw graphing calculator as 'portable computer' in 1993! So, of course I wanted one. When our teachers found about them, they banned the use of graphing calculators, some teachers going so far as to only allowing 'four-bangers' (a basic one) for classes…

If I hand you a math problem, and you point your camera at it and write down ChatGPT’s answer, you are definitely not doing math.

Re: Decompiling a Nintendo 64 game in 84 days

#98

Post by deadbabe »

VCFundedGenYer wrote: post #31
bitwize wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Using AI is cognitive surrender. It's not your code, it's not your work.

There's a time for cognition and a time for just moving quickly and getting shit done.

Downloading a bunch of open source libraries and putting together some project with a bunch of glue code also requires little thinking, but before AI no one really said that was "cognitive surrender". People even got pats on the back... for using other people's work to build something.

Re: Decompiling a Nintendo 64 game in 84 days

#99

Post by iAMkenough »

nickysielicki wrote: post #69
VCFundedGenYer wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using AI is cognitive surrender. It's not your code, it's not your work.

Actually it is your code and it is your work.

In the same sense that hiring someone overseas to do your remote work job is submitting your code and your work.

Re: Decompiling a Nintendo 64 game in 84 days

#100

Post by cleak »

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…

I love this trend as well. More than any other project or trend, it makes me feel optimistic about a future with AI and little or no slop.

I had hoped to someday make retro games for all major 80s and 90s consoles. I started with the Atari 2600 12 years ago[0], and planned to move to other 6502 family systems when I had time. I realized last year that AI could essentially do all of what I considered the hard parts and craft of retro game assembly, which felt like having the rug pulled out from me. Projects like this have really turned that around for me.

New tools just mean old things become easier and new things become the difficult (where I think the fun is), but solvable, frontier. This category of projects inspired me to pick back up an Ultima V decompilation project I started more than 10 years ago[1,2]. I'm looking forward to a world where all of my childhood games are cracked wide open for mods, ports, etc.

[0]: https://github.com/cleak/FlappyBoot [1]: https://github.com/cleak/u5-spec (spec for Ultima V binary) [2]: https://github.com/cleak/u5-engine (Rust port of Ultima V made from the spec; still lots of prose slop)

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