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Metal Gear Solid 2's source code has been leaked on 4chan

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Re: Metal Gear Solid 2's source code has been leaked on 4chan

#21

Post by defen »

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #2

I wonder if it’s a real leak or just an agent recreation of the source from machine code. I’ve been having fun lately with agents and decompilation. You can literally point them at any game and ask them to decompile the game and structure and format as if it was the original source code. Asking them to ensure it compiles works fine. Some proof: i made online save game editors for jagged alliance 3; grandcheaten.com a…

Whoa, since when is there a Jagged Alliance 3? Is it any good? JA2 is one of my favorite games of all time

Re: Metal Gear Solid 2's source code has been leaked on 4chan

#22

Post by jamesu »

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #2

I wonder if it’s a real leak or just an agent recreation of the source from machine code. I’ve been having fun lately with agents and decompilation. You can literally point them at any game and ask them to decompile the game and structure and format as if it was the original source code. Asking them to ensure it compiles works fine. Some proof: i made online save game editors for jagged alliance 3; grandcheaten.com a…

There is no way you could recreate a convincing enough 90s era codebase of a japanese videogame + its associated tools + scripts and commented out codepaths with current ai tools.

Re: Metal Gear Solid 2's source code has been leaked on 4chan

#23

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

halflife wrote: post #16
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dunkey MGS Explained https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaLiLRVeaZA

That’s great, now do kingdom hearts

Dunkey Kingdom Hearts explained https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8o1ieehttdA

Re: Metal Gear Solid 2's source code has been leaked on 4chan

#24

Post by AnotherGoodName »

tuna74 wrote: post #20
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #2

I wonder if it’s a real leak or just an agent recreation of the source from machine code. I’ve been having fun lately with agents and decompilation. You can literally point them at any game and ask them to decompile the game and structure and format as if it was the original source code. Asking them to ensure it compiles works fine. Some proof: i made online save game editors for jagged alliance 3; grandcheaten.com a…

How do you verify that everything is correct?

I’m sure the builds from doing what i’ve been doing won’t generate identical bytecode but it’s fun for the sake of messing with the game or understanding it (eg. The checksum logic for newstowers save game logic was cooy pastable as was the whole save game structure formatting itself and clearly matches the game - it works!). Likewise with all the JA3 mechanics documented in that linked guide.

Re: Metal Gear Solid 2's source code has been leaked on 4chan

#26

Post by sigmoid10 »

jamesu wrote: post #22
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #2

I wonder if it’s a real leak or just an agent recreation of the source from machine code. I’ve been having fun lately with agents and decompilation. You can literally point them at any game and ask them to decompile the game and structure and format as if it was the original source code. Asking them to ensure it compiles works fine. Some proof: i made online save game editors for jagged alliance 3; grandcheaten.com a…

There is no way you could recreate a convincing enough 90s era codebase of a japanese videogame + its associated tools + scripts and commented out codepaths with current ai tools.

I wouldn't be too sure about that. The original decompilations of Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time were done mostly by hand because LLMs weren't really around yet, but these kinds of projects seem perfectly suited for handing the gritty work off to AI: There is a clear output (exact binary recreation) and a straightforward path to get there (look at this assembly code and produce some C code from it). The decompilation of Twilight Princess jumped from very little to basically 100% of core code in the past year alone: https://github.com/zeldaret/tp

I have no doubt that this would be possible for MGS2 as well.

Re: Metal Gear Solid 2's source code has been leaked on 4chan

#27

Post by AnotherGoodName »

defen wrote: post #21
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #2

I wonder if it’s a real leak or just an agent recreation of the source from machine code. I’ve been having fun lately with agents and decompilation. You can literally point them at any game and ask them to decompile the game and structure and format as if it was the original source code. Asking them to ensure it compiles works fine. Some proof: i made online save game editors for jagged alliance 3; grandcheaten.com a…

Whoa, since when is there a Jagged Alliance 3? Is it any good? JA2 is one of my favorite games of all time

It’s playable but nowhere near as good and a lot of criticism is warranted. A true ‘70%’ game.

Gunplay is weak. Accuracy drops off waaaay too fast based on maximum range of the gun and burst fire has arbitrary damage reduction per bullet. So short range guns almost always missed (mechanics documented from source in the above guide) and if they hit they did little damage. It means the only viable weapons are long range weapons. Rifles and assault rifles. A submachine gun is worse than a sniper rifle even at close range.

The plot has a key gameplay changing moment that triggers waaay to early meaning you have to work to see much of the game content. Everyone tries to avoid the trigger on the second playthrough which is a silly thing to do game design wise. A desire to teleport across the map was the original motivation to the above from my point of view.

Enemies are bullet sponges in the late game too. A lame way o balance weak ai and gunplay.

It could have been as good as ja2 but they just didn’t refine the above enough.

Re: Metal Gear Solid 2's source code has been leaked on 4chan

#28

Post by 0cf8612b2e1e »

gwern wrote: post #19
charcircuit wrote: post #9

[flagged]

> Clearly if it was able to be leaked it already was being preserved Preserved by whom ? Many leaks are done by old or ex-employees who quietly kept a shall we say 'backup' of their work. More than one 'official' re-release has been rumored to be an embarrassed company quietly filing the serial numbers off a rogue leak because they realized way too late that their archival practices were inadequate.

Anti-emulation Nintendo was caught repacking a pirated ROM.

https://www.eurogamer.net/did-nintendo-download-a-mario-rom-...

Re: Metal Gear Solid 2's source code has been leaked on 4chan

#29

Post by CamperBob2 »

jamesu wrote: post #22
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #2

I wonder if it’s a real leak or just an agent recreation of the source from machine code. I’ve been having fun lately with agents and decompilation. You can literally point them at any game and ask them to decompile the game and structure and format as if it was the original source code. Asking them to ensure it compiles works fine. Some proof: i made online save game editors for jagged alliance 3; grandcheaten.com a…

There is no way you could recreate a convincing enough 90s era codebase of a japanese videogame + its associated tools + scripts and commented out codepaths with current ai tools.

That's pre-2026 thinking. At this point, with the ability to lash IDA or similar tools to an agentic harness, there is no longer any such thing as a closed-source binary.

Re: Metal Gear Solid 2's source code has been leaked on 4chan

#30

Post by wuschel »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #29
jamesu wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no way you could recreate a convincing enough 90s era codebase of a japanese videogame + its associated tools + scripts and commented out codepaths with current ai tools.

That's pre-2026 thinking. At this point, with the ability to lash IDA or similar tools to an agentic harness, there is no longer any such thing as a closed-source binary.

What is the state of the art of compilers here? What size of project are we speaking here?

What is the experience faulty decompilation, and the existence of bugs in the binary?

Could one decompile a binary to a more modern language than C?

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