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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

#161

Post by senordevnyc »

shakna wrote: post #151
bitwize wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am proud of my work, and I hate working with AI. But reality is what it is. The economics are what they are. And at the present time, writing code without LLM assistance is a mere handicraft, an idle pastime indulged in as a curiosity. It's like writing games in BASIC on the Commodore 64—no one is doing it anymore for serious stuff. Software engineering is the practice of formulating and implementing procedures to…

> those who refuse to use it will be lapped, in terms of ... quality, and security, by those who do use it. I uh... I might have burst out laughing. Sorry, but do you really, seriously, believe the machine so fantastic that it is widely called "slop", produces amazing quality outputs?

Oh honey, the next few years is going to be brutal for you.

Re: Decompiling a Nintendo 64 game in 84 days

#162

Post by senordevnyc »

bakugo wrote: post #56
bitwize wrote: post #21

Earlier 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.

Imagine being so angry about LLMs that you feel the need to come on here and insult people. Seems so small and insecure.

Re: Decompiling a Nintendo 64 game in 84 days

#163

Post by quacked »

debugnik wrote: post #142
glimshe wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be a tough change... An easier one, which is how things used to be, that everything enters public domain IF not renewed after X years (let's say 20). Abandoned or complex IP would just become public domain unless the owners themselves figure things out and demonstrate interest with the renewal process. Even a modest fee would lead to a huge gain without much friction for the true rights holders.

Legal would remember to pay the fee for their abandoned works, just in case, while the rest of the company does nil with them. I'd rather address the issue directly and expire the copyright after X years since it was last published. Then again Disney's old "vault" strategy would counter it, and Nintendo is already toying with it to sell through FOMO. How can it be this hard to make companies keep our digital culture…

We'll do it ourselves! People are natural hoarders and archivists, as should be effortlessly proven by custom wikis.

Re: Decompiling a Nintendo 64 game in 84 days

#164

Post by bitwize »

shakna wrote: post #151
bitwize wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am proud of my work, and I hate working with AI. But reality is what it is. The economics are what they are. And at the present time, writing code without LLM assistance is a mere handicraft, an idle pastime indulged in as a curiosity. It's like writing games in BASIC on the Commodore 64—no one is doing it anymore for serious stuff. Software engineering is the practice of formulating and implementing procedures to…

> those who refuse to use it will be lapped, in terms of ... quality, and security, by those who do use it. I uh... I might have burst out laughing. Sorry, but do you really, seriously, believe the machine so fantastic that it is widely called "slop", produces amazing quality outputs?

My observations suggest that frontier models consistently produce correct, high-quality code for small to medium-sized tasks provided the goals are well-specified and testable. Even when they appear to get distracted, they converge on a solution.

So what that means is that you the software engineer need to be doing what you should have been doing all along: start with systems analysis, stepwise refine that into a program specification, then break that into tasks to give to your programmers to implement. Per PRIDE, the sadly forgotten but comprehensive common-sense information systems methodology, the analysis and specification phases should take up the bulk of the time on a project, with actual programming taking up 15% or less. LLMs can drive that time asymptotically towards zero for human developers. The specification is the deliverable. As a former boss of mine put it, you should be able to delete the entire source code repository and get functionally the exact same software back by running the spec through the LLM.

Re: Decompiling a Nintendo 64 game in 84 days

#166

Post by shakna »

bitwize wrote: post #164
shakna wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> those who refuse to use it will be lapped, in terms of ... quality, and security, by those who do use it. I uh... I might have burst out laughing. Sorry, but do you really, seriously, believe the machine so fantastic that it is widely called "slop", produces amazing quality outputs?

My observations suggest that frontier models consistently produce correct, high-quality code for small to medium-sized tasks provided the goals are well-specified and testable. Even when they appear to get distracted, they converge on a solution. So what that means is that you the software engineer need to be doing what you should have been doing all along: start with systems analysis, stepwise refine that into a pro…

ITIL is at version 5 now - the idea of a process, is not exactly forgotten in the industry.

But you're working with a stochastic system. Even GPU matrix calculations are nondeterministic. It isn't possible, to the delete the entire source code and get exactly the same software back.

And any spec, that is specific and non-ambiguous enough to carefully construct the exact needs of each is... Well, that's code. Not a PBI, not an Epic. It's code.

Re: Decompiling a Nintendo 64 game in 84 days

#167

Post by Ahrgo »

unknownfuture wrote: post #59
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using typewriters is surrender! Not your handwriting, not your work!

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

You don't know HOW someone is using AI.

I for example, let the AI generate inbetween reports for a hobby project. These reports describe me how the project looks, stages, progress, etc.

I do know plenty about this particular project.

Also i wrote tons and tons of CRUD apps, do I really loose anything if that one quiz i did for learning, i don't understand in detail?

Re: Decompiling a Nintendo 64 game in 84 days

#168

Post by shakna »

senordevnyc wrote: post #161
shakna wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> those who refuse to use it will be lapped, in terms of ... quality, and security, by those who do use it. I uh... I might have burst out laughing. Sorry, but do you really, seriously, believe the machine so fantastic that it is widely called "slop", produces amazing quality outputs?

Oh honey, the next few years is going to be brutal for you.

Well, considering I accidentally embarrassed the Anthropic rep at work yesterday by producing better code in an hour, then he did in a day, I'm... Pretty sure I'm going to be safe.

Re: Decompiling a Nintendo 64 game in 84 days

#169

Post by rcxdude »

quacked wrote: post #126
rcxdude wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you still allow transfer of copyrights? Otherwise 1) would really make things more difficult in this case, because you're gonna need to deal with far more people (and potentially far more complicated contracts to try to work around this problem). A shorter expiration period would definitely help, at the very least a 'use it or lose it' provision that would remove the protection from works that are no longer bei…

I would not. I'm far less concerned about the rights and profits of copyright holders and far more concerned with society and civilization having access to the art that's produced within it. Since I'm just pitching wild ideas on the Internet of course I have the freedom to make any suggestion I want, but I would like to live in a world where (a) no companies or rights owners are able to play bullshit games with gatin…

I don't disagree with the goal, I'm just saying that having more copyright owners in a given work is likely to make the licensing more complicated and opaque, not less.

Re: Decompiling a Nintendo 64 game in 84 days

#170

Post by andrewingram »

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 had a lot of fun with Snowboard Kids. Not quite Diddy Kong Racing, but one of my favourite N64 racers.
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