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Snowboard Kids 2 is 100% Decompiled

blog.chrislewis.au

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Re: Snowboard Kids 2 is 100% Decompiled

#41

Post by Gamemaster1379 »

userbinator wrote: post #40
Gamemaster1379 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been experimenting with AI in this space myself. Don't believe any of my projects are listed there but I posted an article some days back where I showcased static recompilers all playing at least one commercial game for the NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, Virtual Boy and Playstation. I actually just announced a playable build of Megaman X today that eliminates all its slowdowns. Whether the broader communities will acc…

given the heavy correlation to those communities and anti AI sentiment. I've noticed the anti-AI sentiment is starting to die down. People are slowly realising that, along with the voluminous amounts of slop, there are others who have been able to leverage AI with much success.

You say that, but just today I showcased my Megaman X Recomp on a Megaman subreddit. I got harassed by a drive-by anti-AI cabal and then the moderators of the subreddit removed my submission after I reported the harassment, citing that AI was involved, and AI is theft.

Re: Snowboard Kids 2 is 100% Decompiled

#42

Post by idiotsecant »

Gamemaster1379 wrote: post #41
userbinator wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

given the heavy correlation to those communities and anti AI sentiment. I've noticed the anti-AI sentiment is starting to die down. People are slowly realising that, along with the voluminous amounts of slop, there are others who have been able to leverage AI with much success.

You say that, but just today I showcased my Megaman X Recomp on a Megaman subreddit. I got harassed by a drive-by anti-AI cabal and then the moderators of the subreddit removed my submission after I reported the harassment, citing that AI was involved, and AI is theft.

That's a pretty valid viewpoint, honestly. Unless the AI is open weights and free of charge it's using human effort that nobody paid for to do a commercial thing.

I would make the argument that open weights models are ethically still maybe questionable, but at least it's making the output a public good

Re: Snowboard Kids 2 is 100% Decompiled

#43

Post by orsorna »

thin_carapace wrote: post #30
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.

im not going to post with as much confidence as your many other replies ... but this is like one of the rarest nintendo games ... maybe that has something to do with it

This is sort of the explanation I was looking for. So I've learned this is a pretty good snowboard sim and that people really love it, but those aren't as enticing factors as the game just being hard to find. N64 emulation is still not really there and probably never will be so a decomp makes sense.

Re: Snowboard Kids 2 is 100% Decompiled

#44

Post by basilikum »

userbinator wrote: post #39

As someone who has done RE for decades, I feel like I've been seeing a lot of new decompilation projects recently, but even before the rise of AI. Possibly correlated with the release of Ghidra? Either way, it's great to see and perhaps a sign of a greater trend. Controversial opinion: I think the FOSS movement was a setback and distraction from attaining software freedom as well as giving an undeserved negative repu…

RMS is explicitly about FOSS and not just open source (in the sense of source available).

> You don't need the original source code if you have good decompilers, and now LLMs to assist.

Yes, you do. Decompiling and modifying a binary can be illegal itself under the DMCA in certain circumstances. But even if it is not, distributing the decompiled source is against copyright.

> Java utilities that were public-domain but not open-source

AFAIK Java is specifically easy to decompile when it is not further obfuscated. That is not true for many other languages. And while you can technically reverse engineer any language it does make modifying software and even finding out what it does fundamentally more difficult.

> far more liberating process than getting the source code, figuring out how to build it in its entirety, and possibly changing more than only the piece you wanted to.

It's certainly more liberating because there are more restrictions you have to liberate from in the first place. RMS argues that these restrictions should not exist in the first place. As for building being difficult, no free license requires the author to use a good and easy build procedure, but the GPL requires them to provide you all the tools required to build the software unless they are already readily available: "The “Corresponding Source” for a work in object code form means all the source code needed to generate, install, and (for an executable work) run the object code and to modify the work, including scripts to control those activities."

Re: Snowboard Kids 2 is 100% Decompiled

#45

Post by userbinator »

Gamemaster1379 wrote: post #41
userbinator wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

given the heavy correlation to those communities and anti AI sentiment. I've noticed the anti-AI sentiment is starting to die down. People are slowly realising that, along with the voluminous amounts of slop, there are others who have been able to leverage AI with much success.

You say that, but just today I showcased my Megaman X Recomp on a Megaman subreddit. I got harassed by a drive-by anti-AI cabal and then the moderators of the subreddit removed my submission after I reported the harassment, citing that AI was involved, and AI is theft.

[flagged]

Re: Snowboard Kids 2 is 100% Decompiled

#46

Post by Gamemaster1379 »

userbinator wrote: post #45
Gamemaster1379 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say that, but just today I showcased my Megaman X Recomp on a Megaman subreddit. I got harassed by a drive-by anti-AI cabal and then the moderators of the subreddit removed my submission after I reported the harassment, citing that AI was involved, and AI is theft.

[flagged]

Yeah, I may give a whirl to those subreddits, but it does really show the dissonance between a sect's visceral hatred of AI relative to their interests when they're rejecting the progress of a game on the game's own franchise's subreddit.

Re: Snowboard Kids 2 is 100% Decompiled

#47

Post by userbinator »

basilikum wrote: post #44
userbinator wrote: post #39

As someone who has done RE for decades, I feel like I've been seeing a lot of new decompilation projects recently, but even before the rise of AI. Possibly correlated with the release of Ghidra? Either way, it's great to see and perhaps a sign of a greater trend. Controversial opinion: I think the FOSS movement was a setback and distraction from attaining software freedom as well as giving an undeserved negative repu…

RMS is explicitly about FOSS and not just open source (in the sense of source available). > You don't need the original source code if you have good decompilers, and now LLMs to assist. Yes, you do. Decompiling and modifying a binary can be illegal itself under the DMCA in certain circumstances. But even if it is not, distributing the decompiled source is against copyright. > Java utilities that were public-domain bu…

Decompiling and modifying a binary can be illegal itself under the DMCA in certain circumstances.

...and so is going over the speed limit.

Practically? Who gives a flying fuck.

PC magazines in the late 80s and early 90s told people how to patch binaries to fix bugs or enhance functionality, with lists of offsets and bytes. Without distributing the original, so no copyright issues there. I don't think anyone tried to go after them because they'd be fighting the 1st Amendment.

Re: Snowboard Kids 2 is 100% Decompiled

#48

Post by ZenoArrow »

userbinator wrote: post #40
Gamemaster1379 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been experimenting with AI in this space myself. Don't believe any of my projects are listed there but I posted an article some days back where I showcased static recompilers all playing at least one commercial game for the NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, Virtual Boy and Playstation. I actually just announced a playable build of Megaman X today that eliminates all its slowdowns. Whether the broader communities will acc…

given the heavy correlation to those communities and anti AI sentiment. I've noticed the anti-AI sentiment is starting to die down. People are slowly realising that, along with the voluminous amounts of slop, there are others who have been able to leverage AI with much success.

> I've noticed the anti-AI sentiment is starting to die down.

I've noticed the opposite. Seems that it depends on where you're looking and what you're looking for.

Re: Snowboard Kids 2 is 100% Decompiled

#49

Post by basilikum »

userbinator wrote: post #47
basilikum wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RMS is explicitly about FOSS and not just open source (in the sense of source available). > You don't need the original source code if you have good decompilers, and now LLMs to assist. Yes, you do. Decompiling and modifying a binary can be illegal itself under the DMCA in certain circumstances. But even if it is not, distributing the decompiled source is against copyright. > Java utilities that were public-domain bu…

Decompiling and modifying a binary can be illegal itself under the DMCA in certain circumstances. ...and so is going over the speed limit. Practically? Who gives a flying fuck. PC magazines in the late 80s and early 90s told people how to patch binaries to fix bugs or enhance functionality, with lists of offsets and bytes. Without distributing the original, so no copyright issues there. I don't think anyone tried to…

That was before you could go to jail over that.

> I don't think anyone tried to go after them because they'd be fighting the 1st Amendment.

I have bad news for you:

https://www.eff.org/issues/coders/reverse-engineering-faq#fo...

Re: Snowboard Kids 2 is 100% Decompiled

#50

Post by zuzululu »

Gamemaster1379 wrote: post #41
userbinator wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

given the heavy correlation to those communities and anti AI sentiment. I've noticed the anti-AI sentiment is starting to die down. People are slowly realising that, along with the voluminous amounts of slop, there are others who have been able to leverage AI with much success.

You say that, but just today I showcased my Megaman X Recomp on a Megaman subreddit. I got harassed by a drive-by anti-AI cabal and then the moderators of the subreddit removed my submission after I reported the harassment, citing that AI was involved, and AI is theft.

big reason why i stopped using reddit
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