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Snowboard Kids 2 is 100% Decompiled

blog.chrislewis.au

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Re: Snowboard Kids 2 is 100% Decompiled

#11

Post by orsorna »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #7
orsorna wrote: post #2

Awesome, but I always wondered why so much effort was put into decompiling this? Seems like a meme for meme's sake.

Before LLMs made these sorts of Sisyphean coding tasks tractable for normal people, there was IRC and Discord, where people with a special interest in programming and emulation could be egged on by the people who delight in the memes. I guess another POV is, were the special interest people and the meme lords ever really friends? If you don't understand what I'm talking about, you aren't really thinking deeply enough…

There are idea guys that thought it was funny to decompile an obscure N64 game with little cultural and nostalgic attention, and they found themselves at the intersection of special interest doers which they could egg on into doing it?

More I am just confused for why the game was chosen. SM64, Zelda OoT for example I could easily understand the community motivations behind decompiling. This not so much, which makes the whole endeavor even cooler.

Re: Snowboard Kids 2 is 100% Decompiled

#12

Post by Karuma »

bthallplz wrote: post #9
CM30 wrote: post #6

Always nice to see another game decompiled like this. It's a big deal as far as laying the groundwork for possible ports to PC and other consoles is concerned, and will probably aid modders quite a bit. If anyone needs a full list of these projects (which includes this one), there's a pretty good selection here: https://decomp.dev/projects Though these may have a few they missed: https://readonlymemo.com/decompilatio…

Any idea if there's a place where we can request games for decompilation? I see that one for Burnout Paradise is in the works, but I would love one for Burnout Revenge.

When people work for an insanely difficult project for more than 2 years, they probably pick something they personally love and don't need any external request.

Re: Snowboard Kids 2 is 100% Decompiled

#16

Post by SOLAR_FIELDS »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #5
orsorna wrote: post #2

Awesome, but I always wondered why so much effort was put into decompiling this? Seems like a meme for meme's sake.

Why not? Many folks feel an itch to play a certain nostalgic game that few others enjoyed. And they want to make it even better, especially as our expectations have grown over time. I prefer 1080 as snowboarding games go. Though must admit some fondness for Cool Boarders and a selection of other lower quality games that few will admit to enjoying. Decomp tools for N64 have had some breakthroughs even before AI. Now I…

1080 is good but feels more like a sim than SKII. The Mario Kart vibes of SKII really help with its replayability. And the absolutely comical situations that happen at the lift in SKII

Re: Snowboard Kids 2 is 100% Decompiled

#17

Post by applfanboysbgon »

Karuma wrote: post #12
bthallplz wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any idea if there's a place where we can request games for decompilation? I see that one for Burnout Paradise is in the works, but I would love one for Burnout Revenge.

When people work for an insanely difficult project for more than 2 years, they probably pick something they personally love and don't need any external request.

As someone who reverse engineers games for fun and preservation, I would personally be more than happy to take an external request. With compensation, of course. Maybe not so much if it's the "do hundreds to thousands of hours of highly specialised labour for free" kind of request :)

Re: Snowboard Kids 2 is 100% Decompiled

#20

Post by aizk »

The decomp dev guys are doing amazing work. It's also super educational too, if you're someone like me who's in just doing relatively simple AI / python / typescript work and rarely has to think about memory, hardware constraints, all that, it's a completely different world. Also, AI is finally getting to the point where it can do very difficult decompilation work, which is super exciting to me.
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