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Nearly all Nintendo 64 games can now be recompiled into native PC ports

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Re: Nearly all Nintendo 64 games can now be recompiled into native PC ports

#51

Post by kkukshtel »

pjc50 wrote: post #30
kkukshtel wrote: post #27

I saw this when it came out, and as someone that doesn't follow the ROM hacking scene, I'm wondering - why did this approach take so long to come up with? Translating the assembly instructions to C and then recompiling them seems like an obvious method to try early on, but I'm wondering if there was some other breakthrough that made this possible in a way it wasn't before?

Emulating the hardware usually requires cycle-accurate emulation of things running in parallel, so it's not quite so simple as just the program in the ROM.

Watching the video, it seems like the explanation is mostly "tag the code and transpile to C" - im assuming the tags are acting as the hardware-aware part?

Re: Nearly all Nintendo 64 games can now be recompiled into native PC ports

#52

Post by kotaKat »

nottorp wrote: post #44

Isn't Nintendo hunting every one of their fans^H^H^H^H IP abusers with their black helicopters? Why do people even bother when they know they'll get lawyers at their door in 3... 2... 1... ?

Because a few of them will turn and go take a job offer from NERD.

https://www.nerd.nintendo.com/files/Secu%20Job%20Offer%20202...

Re: Nearly all Nintendo 64 games can now be recompiled into native PC ports

#54

Post by entropicdrifter »

ranger_danger wrote: post #6
protoster wrote: post #4

Do typical emulators compile ahead of time? Just-in-time? If not, why? This approach (ahead of time compilation) appears to have huge benefits.

A fair amount of 32-bit and later emulators do have JIT recompilation, but I'm not aware of any ahead-of-time translation unless that's how TeknoParrot works (you can run linux arcade games that use ELF binaries on windows with it for example), but I wouldn't call that emulation either way since the architecture is the same.

Modern Vintage Gamer over on Youtube has worked with Nightdive and Limited Run Games and helped design a C recompiler called Carbon Engine for various older consoles that are functionally the same as ahead of time compiled emulators.

https://youtu.be/eZRzaGFWoz8?si=XQyJol0pe2z2oG6d

Re: Nearly all Nintendo 64 games can now be recompiled into native PC ports

#55

Post by djmips »

What's the advantage over an emulator? This is after all, a form of an emulator - one where you translate ahead. This sort of thing has been done in the past with things like Bleem so it can be more performant but on a modern PC any good emulator is going to perform well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleem!

Re: Nearly all Nintendo 64 games can now be recompiled into native PC ports

#56

Post by wmf »

djmips wrote: post #55

What's the advantage over an emulator? This is after all, a form of an emulator - one where you translate ahead. This sort of thing has been done in the past with things like Bleem so it can be more performant but on a modern PC any good emulator is going to perform well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleem !

JIT emulation can cause stutters while AOT should not. The difference may not be noticeable now that computers are so much faster than the N64.

Re: Nearly all Nintendo 64 games can now be recompiled into native PC ports

#57

Post by [deleted] »

GaggiX wrote: post #22
andrewclunn wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That will likely require full decompilation. This is akin to wrapping the emulator up with the rom, with a few common functions (found via decompilation) being updated to support more modern rendering approaches. This isn't so much "native" as it is a patched container in an executable form. EDIT - But hey, you can always just add another layer of emulation via Proton to run it in Linux.

I don't think that's true, it really does recompile the N64 games into native executables, you can compile them using any C compiler like msvc, gcc and clang.

[deleted]

Re: Nearly all Nintendo 64 games can now be recompiled into native PC ports

#58

Post by doublepg23 »

skrrtww wrote: post #21

To operate this tool, you still need to disassemble the ROM up front and annotate it heavily before it can be recompiled. This tool is very nice, to be sure, but the hyperbole about anything close to one-click generation of standalone executables for an arbitrary ROM is getting out of hand.

I don't think that's true. The video in the post shows a no-name n64 game being recompiled and running fine. No annotation needed.

Re: Nearly all Nintendo 64 games can now be recompiled into native PC ports

#59

Post by ThrowawayTestr »

djmips wrote: post #55

What's the advantage over an emulator? This is after all, a form of an emulator - one where you translate ahead. This sort of thing has been done in the past with things like Bleem so it can be more performant but on a modern PC any good emulator is going to perform well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleem !

Recompilation is not emulation.

Re: Nearly all Nintendo 64 games can now be recompiled into native PC ports

#60

Post by doublepg23 »

djmips wrote: post #55

What's the advantage over an emulator? This is after all, a form of an emulator - one where you translate ahead. This sort of thing has been done in the past with things like Bleem so it can be more performant but on a modern PC any good emulator is going to perform well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleem !

The video shows multiple bugs disappearing when using this method vs. emulation.
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