Decompilations and recompilations have been really interesting lately. They seem largely driven by fans interested in replaying old content in ways the original sources haven't provided. E.g. rather than "run normal N64 Mario and Zelda on your switch" you can run them at 4k120 FPS widescreen with all sorts of QoL improvements, modifications, or new gameplay modes. Even extremely classic titles like Super Mario Bros.…
Majora's Mask decompilation project reaches 100% completion
21–25 of 25 posts
Re: Majora's Mask decompilation project reaches 100% completion
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Clean room is a legal defense that argues “I implemented similar functionality without consulting the copyrighted work” and sometimes with the addition of “or ever having viewed the original copyrighted work”. For video games the binary is the covered work, not its disassembly. And disassembly is covered by the DMCA and explicitly allowed for this type of purpose, so that’s not illegal at least. I can see the argumen…
> For video games the binary is the covered work, not its disassembly. For the law it doesn't matter much if you look at binary code in a hex editor or at disassembly, since disassembly is just a 1:1 translation of the binary code. Otherwise it would be sufficient to let's say gzip compress the binary and distribute that without fearing any copyright claims since the result would be different and no longer covered, w…
If it’s okay to implement software that does the same thing as some other proprietary software as long as you do it in a clean room, then it’s okay to implement software that does the same thing as other game software as long as you do it in a clean room.
So the argument is really about how clean the room is. Can the person verifying the output of the clean room, who is outside the clean room, also look at the binary? Can they look at the disassembly? These are legal questions. It would be interesting to understand more about these team’s setup, for sure.
Re: Majora's Mask decompilation project reaches 100% completion
#23Decompilations and recompilations have been really interesting lately. They seem largely driven by fans interested in replaying old content in ways the original sources haven't provided. E.g. rather than "run normal N64 Mario and Zelda on your switch" you can run them at 4k120 FPS widescreen with all sorts of QoL improvements, modifications, or new gameplay modes. Even extremely classic titles like Super Mario Bros.…
Is recompilation the right word for this? Reprogramming? I am not even into video games, and I am still so impressed by the efforts I have seen. I saw a ray-traced version of Mario 64 that looks incredible. There are also some retranslation groups who also get an A+, for far more literate translations with the sex and world mythology than the original translations that were softened for the American audience. I belie…
Re: Majora's Mask decompilation project reaches 100% completion
#24Decompilations and recompilations have been really interesting lately. They seem largely driven by fans interested in replaying old content in ways the original sources haven't provided. E.g. rather than "run normal N64 Mario and Zelda on your switch" you can run them at 4k120 FPS widescreen with all sorts of QoL improvements, modifications, or new gameplay modes. Even extremely classic titles like Super Mario Bros.…
I've been waiting and waiting for Majora's Mask to catch up. I got the recompilation and all, but no textures and other bells and whistles YET.
Glad their Switch legislation hasn't killed this yet.
Re: Majora's Mask decompilation project reaches 100% completion
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've seen projects like these use the term "clean room" extremely liberally. Possibly just to throw up a shield ("it's clean room so you can't take it down!"). I think the same was even claimed for the re3 (GTA III decompilation) project, which has been since taken down.
This re3? https://github.com/halpz/re3