Yeah I am decompiling a PS2 game. It's not easy but I think I finally have the right setup.
Decompiling a Nintendo 64 game in 84 days
111–120 of 191 posts
Re: Decompiling a Nintendo 64 game in 84 days
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
I think it was your phrase starting with the word "Hint:".
I only see that construction used condescendingly.
Re: Decompiling a Nintendo 64 game in 84 days
#113Yeah I am decompiling a PS2 game. It's not easy but I think I finally have the right setup.
Sounds cool, please document your steps and pitfalls. I would live to try this one day.
Re: Decompiling a Nintendo 64 game in 84 days
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I think it was your phrase starting with the word "Hint:". I only see that construction used condescendingly.
Yup, fair point, totally valid criticism.
Re: Decompiling a Nintendo 64 game in 84 days
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
"If I hand you a equation to solve, and you type in the numbers, hit enter on your programmatic calculator, and write down Texas Instruments' answer, you are definitely not dong math." Throw in "and when the batteries in your calculator die, you'll need to know how to do it by hand!" for good measure. :-) I jest...
I think the difference with the calculator analogies is a calculator just speeds up calculations you could do yourself (granted some very slowly). I can’t type in “sally has 35 apples, and wants to give an equal number to each of her 7 friends. how many apples does each get?” I have to know to do 35/7. But an ai will do that problem solving for me, with zero understanding on my part.
Re: Decompiling a Nintendo 64 game in 84 days
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
> You won't be able to produce as good code This says more about you than anything else. You weren't able to produce good code before AI, and you are not producing good code after AI.
Username checks out.
You might be right. I'm a better programmer than most, but I'm nowhere near as good as I could be, and there is still so much I could learn and improve upon. But back when I was saying that "AI is better than most programmers", ~6 months ago, I figured people at my level were still somewhat safe, as the average programmer, even working professionally, is a shockingly low bar. Do not judge the entire profession by Hackernews posters; most of us are in the upper quartile or so.
These days, for small to medium-sized tasks, frontier LLMs are consistently well within that upper quartile. People at my level have a lot to be concerned about, as most of our day-to-day can be automated away. Sure, there's need for judgement and architectural discipline, but in most shops that's done by the people we used to make fun of in the 2000s, who sit in design review meetings and produce box-and-arrow diagrams, not code. Those are now the real bringers of value to a software development company or division.
At a bare minimum, it is irresponsible to ship code that has any sort of security requirement without using AI. Frontier models are able to discover zero days in minutes that would have taken months with human investigators, and if you're not auditing and red-teaming your own code with AI, someone else will use AI to pop it.
You are just not working to a professional standard in 2026 if you're not using AI.
Re: Decompiling a Nintendo 64 game in 84 days
#117Re: Decompiling a Nintendo 64 game in 84 days
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
Using typewriters is surrender! Not your handwriting, not your work!
That's a terrible analogy. It's more like using a typewriter where the job is calligraphy. I use LLMs at work all the time, and it truly does feel like somebody else coding for me, and me reviewing, cleaning up, and asking for changes. It's really not my work, nor is it my code, but I'm still fine bringing it in. I also don't use LLMs on my personal code done in my free time because I want my brain to still be fully…
I still use LLMs on personal code as well because I can build way more of it and I have way too many open source projects
Re: Decompiling a Nintendo 64 game in 84 days
#119It's pretty amazing what you can do when you embrace LLMs, figure out how to build one high-quality rigorous project with them, and then start working on more projects. You become a machine with your workflow, once again limited only by your time/energy, tokens, and your discretion on how to spend it.
matching decompilation is a verifiable target. Its hard to create slop that still matches. The same does not hold up for coding with llms normally.
Re: Decompiling a Nintendo 64 game in 84 days
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Historically there was a notion of "clean room" reimplementation These projects start off with the original assembly code and use it actively throughout all stages. This is about as far away from clean room as you get.
These projects do not start with assembly. They start with machine code interleaved with data. Even getting to assembly through a disassembled requires some input and understanding. Usually these are raw binaries with no (or limited) metadata. When run through a disassembler, in most cases, it’s probably the first time anyone has ever looked at the assembly (assuming PlayStation or newer). There are no comments or la…
Ghidra is able to figure out the functions in around 99%++ of cases though