Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak • Hacker News Board

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#181

Post by boomboomsubban » Tue, May 05, 2020, 10:45 PM UTC

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #167

gowld wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not true. The law governs humans, not computer technical details. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Download#Copyright The reason uploaders are prosecutor more is that they are easier targets (more evidence, more damages) DMCA takedown copyright strikes are one specific part of copyright law, that applies to hosting services and safe harbor protections for them. There is much more to copyright law.

I've read that streaming might be legally different, as it might not legally qualify as making a copy. It's difficult to find a reputable online source directly answering this question. I imagine the answer might vary between jurisdictions.

Streaming definitely counts as making a copy, it is functionally the same thing as downloading the media. Search your ram/HD and the file is there. I've never heard of anyone prosecuted just for downloading though, which is what I'd guess started this rumor.

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#182

Post by Wowfunhappy » Tue, May 05, 2020, 10:46 PM UTC

colejohnson66 wrote: post #88

tobylane wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could have one group document what the leaks describe, then another group implement from the documentation?

Isn’t that what clean room reverse engineering is?

Would that be a clean room? I'd think the documentation would be "tainted", since it was produced by a tainted person.

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#183

Post by DanBC » Tue, May 05, 2020, 10:48 PM UTC

gowld wrote: post #162

smileybarry wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not exactly. Copyright covers redistribution, not viewing someone else's illegal copy. That's why you can get a DMCA notice or copyright strike for uploading, torrenting, or hosting copyright works but not for downloading them. (Why torrenting? See below) When you get sent a DMCA or copyright strike for torrenting movies, their legal basis isn't that you downloaded the content but that you then seeded it to peers. Th…

This is not true. The law governs humans, not computer technical details. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Download#Copyright The reason uploaders are prosecutor more is that they are easier targets (more evidence, more damages) DMCA takedown copyright strikes are one specific part of copyright law, that applies to hosting services and safe harbor protections for them. There is much more to copyright law.

You've used the word "prosecuted", not "sued".

Copyright infringement tends to be a civil thing that rights holders can sue for loss of earnings, rather than a criminal thing that the police will prosecute.

In some jurisdictions the civil wrong can be tipped into a criminal offence. In England if you infringe copyright as part of a business that would be a criminal offence.

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#184

Post by bsder » Tue, May 05, 2020, 10:51 PM UTC

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #136

dathinab wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or Having a virus sneaked in. Through it's very unlikely. But you always have that risk when downloading anything (from anywhere). 4chan is a very special place, it has many "good" people but it also has "bad" people. (Note that both "good" and "bad" are very opinionated, which is why they are quoted).

I've always viewed 4chan as hardcore chaotic neutral. They're quite happy to find novel solutions to mathematical problems, DDoS people they don't like, openly work with leaked source code, create a new chat system (tox), troll celebrities... they don't care about good/bad, they care about whatever strikes them as interesting or fun. Which is... a very mixed bag:)

> I've always viewed 4chan as hardcore chaotic neutral.

Chaotic? Yes.

Neutral. Possibly by averaging, but I suspect that the Chaotic Evil side is better represented than the Chaotic Good.

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#185

Post by TheAceOfHearts » Tue, May 05, 2020, 10:55 PM UTC

dehrmann wrote: post #102

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #66

Modern Vintage Gamer just released a video [0] discussing this leak in greater detail along with its expected implications. Anyone who's curious can find the download links by backtracking through all the Pokemon Prototype General threads under the Pokemon board on 4chan. One of the leaks that caught my attention was the source for Pokemon Blue, partially because of nostalgia and partially out of curiosity to see wha…

I have zero experience in the video game industry, but I'd think that since video games get ~zero attention after they're shipped, writing maintainable code is less of a priority. I'd be really curious to see how the Pokemon Red/Blue split was done. Is it a C precompiler flag? Build config? Actual config? Cloned repo?

In the Pokemon Blue codebase they use 2 flag variables to distinguish between the different games, these are `pokemon_type` and `pokemon_type_blue`. The name of the second flag definitely hints that it was added later in development.

These are the values for each game:

    Green:  pokemon_type=0 pokemon_type_blue=0
    Red:    pokemon_type=1 pokemon_type_blue=0
    Blue:   pokemon_type=1 pokemon_type_blue=1

The general pattern for branching between game variations looks like this across the codebase:

    ifn pokemon_type
      ifn pokemon_type_blue
        ; blue
      else
        ; red
      endif
    else
      ; green
    endif

Conditional assembly directives like `ifn` are resolved statically during assembly, so only the code between matching conditions is included as part of the output. To anyone interested in exploring this a bit more, I'd recommend reading Chapter 8 Section 13 of the DOS version of The Art of Assembly Language Programming [0], which starts on page 43 of the linked PDF.

Bonus fun-fact: In the Pokemon Yellow codebase it says `pokemon_type=1` is yellow, while `pokemon_type=0` is pink! This suggests to me that the idea of Pokemon Pink with Jigglypuff as your starter was probably being floated around but it was eventually scrapped. (The only remaining options for a pink starter pokemon with a pink evolution in the original 151 would be Clefairy and Slowpoke, neither of which are very cute.) The idea of Jigglypuff as a starter is further supported by her appearance alongside Pikachu on the roster of the original Super Smash Bros. which seems rather unexpected unless they had bigger plans for her.

[0] http://www.plantation-productions.com/Webster/www.artofasm.c...

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#186

Post by krapp » Tue, May 05, 2020, 10:56 PM UTC

bsder wrote: post #184

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always viewed 4chan as hardcore chaotic neutral. They're quite happy to find novel solutions to mathematical problems, DDoS people they don't like, openly work with leaked source code, create a new chat system (tox), troll celebrities... they don't care about good/bad, they care about whatever strikes them as interesting or fun. Which is... a very mixed bag:)

> I've always viewed 4chan as hardcore chaotic neutral. Chaotic? Yes. Neutral. Possibly by averaging, but I suspect that the Chaotic Evil side is better represented than the Chaotic Good.

>but I suspect that the Chaotic Evil side is better represented than the Chaotic Good

It certainly is now that certain boards have become the very thing they used to ridicule.

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#187

Post by joeyaiello » Tue, May 05, 2020, 11:00 PM UTC

Timpy wrote: post #59

cycloptic wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not an excuse. They can start with the parts they do have access to, while the community can work on (legally) getting the other information from the relevant rightsholders at SGI.

Bryan Cantrill gave a talk that included how difficult it was to take something that wasn't originally intended to be open source and then open source it. I think it was something at Sun before they were acquired by Oracle (iirc Cantrill laments how Oracle effectively un-open-sourced the project). I've watched hours of Cantrill on youtube, I'm having trouble finding which video it was. I can't explain it myself but I…

I'm a PM at Microsoft that worked on open-sourcing PowerShell. As Windows PowerShell, it's a built-in Windows component, and the number of assumptions that could be made because it was both closed-source and part of the OS were immense. Even getting it to build outside of the rest of the operating system was crazy hard. Then figuring out to install it in a supported way was hard, and only then did we get to start figuring out how to eliminate usage of private APIs and start doing legal reviews.

And we're "just" a language runtime and a shell shipped in the OS. I can't imagine how hard it would be to unwind the proprietary bits of something like a GPU architecture running in a tightly integrated SoC with multiple vendors who are all deeply protective of their IP.

I say this all as someone who has been a proponent of open source for 15 years. And all the work was absolutely worth it, and deeply rewarding from a personal perspective.

But I can't say it would probably make the same sense for Nintendo to go through that effort with Pokemon or the N64 architecture.

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#188

Post by dogma1138 » Tue, May 05, 2020, 11:07 PM UTC

ars wrote: post #147

dogma1138 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About zero. Emulators and near perfect ones already exist. Sure they still sell old games on through their retro console but these can be pirated easily on existing consoles. This wouldn’t affect the bottom line really at all since this will not make piracy easier. The only possible loss here is due to fines from regulators or law suits from 3rd parties which had their licenses IP exposed but the latter would be a ha…

What if a Chinese company decided to make bootleg Nintendo machines using these sources and sell them? They would probably sell the console and a bunch of games as a single playable kit.

There were clones of NES/SNES when these machines were on the market I had a Famiclone in the 90’s, the games were also mainly bootleg.

Today you have pretty expensive high end SNES clones on the market on top of the 100/1000 games in one HDMI single SoC clones and Nintendo doesn’t seem to care.

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#189

Post by mschuster91 » Tue, May 05, 2020, 11:13 PM UTC

MPSimmons wrote: post #87

gregjw wrote: post #2

Is this bad? Am I misunderstanding? What financial damage does this do when Nintendo no longer manufacturers this console or actively developers for it and hasn't for years, or a decade in the N64/GameCube's case?

The worst case scenario would be if they used some of the copy protection schemes from the consoles in this leak, ported to the Switch. It seems unlikely to me, but I think that's the only real potential for damage.

Heh I hope someone finds a way to get reliable (or, for the new generation, any) homebrew on the Switch. The Switch has a built-in browser, Bluetooth and probably a h264 accelerator somewhere in the GPU stack. A proper media player and the ability to easily transfer screenshots via BT would be so awesome.

With many games being outright f2p or very cheap (except AAA titles) I don't get why they all are so uptight about DRM/piracy...

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#190

Post by mjevans » Tue, May 05, 2020, 11:23 PM UTC

Grazester wrote: post #139

dragontamer wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Case in point: it was Dreamcast's ability to be hacked and run CD-ROMs illegitimately which probably killed it. "Open Source Video Game Hardware" is a misnomer. Video game developers (ie: EA or Activision) demand DLC and DRM models to extract more money out of "whale" video game players. A leak like this harms the #1 customer of a console: the 3rd party developers. Even if a console is a hit with consumers (ie: Dream…

SEGA's history with their previous console and console add-on completely burned consumers. There was the 32x addon for the Genesis and the SegaCD which SEGA did not support very well. This burnt consumers. There was also a lot of fighting between SEGA of Japan and SEGA of North America at this point. They then did a surprise launch for the $400 Saturn months earlier than expected. Retailers were not prepare, develope…

DVD playback was also a major sell feature for the PS2. The Dreamcast also was dialup only in the era when DSL and cable connections were just starting to become mainstream (and at least in the US, BBS was practically dead and normal ISP dialup was too varied to work on a console).

SEGA really did get everything else right with the hardware; even having a semi-handheld as part of the controller. The market was just not ready for it.