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Fundamentally, decompilation is not solving a technical problem most of the time (because the source already exists somewhere) but a social one (that the owner doesn't want to release it).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...
[1] https://github.com/cdlewis/snowboardkids2-decomp/tree/main
Awe, why I love hacker news. This game was my childhood! I played it again recently on an emulator and was astounded how much easier it was. Made it to Damian without losing a single race. That seemed impossible at age 10.
I understand the technical appeal of this effort, but wouldn't it be easier to try to obtain the original source code? Or has that been lost and all that's left is a blob? Fundamentally, decompilation is not solving a technical problem most of the time (because the source already exists somewhere ) but a social one (that the owner doesn't want to release it).
Define easier? There is virtually no incentive for a game studio to release their original source code. Studios are running on already tight enough margins as it is with one lackluster release being enough to doom a company to oblivion.
Unless you have a method to completely reorient capitalism away from the idea of intellectual property then painstakingly reversing the C code from MIPS assembly will always be the easier path.
Remember too, that we are on Hacker News. Only a tiny sliver of the population, in some cases just one or two people, cares about the source code. Not worthwhile for a studio to release the code just to satisfy a couple of nerds. What is the upside? Unknown. Downsides? Numerous.
Almost all instances of source code being released have come from small studios or individuals who are ideologically motivated, and are otherwise independently successful. John Carmack / Id Software comes to mind.
I understand the technical appeal of this effort, but wouldn't it be easier to try to obtain the original source code? Or has that been lost and all that's left is a blob? Fundamentally, decompilation is not solving a technical problem most of the time (because the source already exists somewhere ) but a social one (that the owner doesn't want to release it).
I've made a similar point in an earlier comment, but consider the following:
Even if the original sources leaked in a human-readable format, the original game was probably written in a mixture of the device-specific dialect of the Mips R3000 assembly used by the Nintendo 64, whatever in-house assembler macro routines SGI provided for the RSP game-specific microcode, and some C89 glue code in an IDE like Metrowerks Codewarrior 4, by a team of overworked japanese developers in a hurry.
We can safely assume that the final decompiled code is way more readable/usable than the original.
I understand the technical appeal of this effort, but wouldn't it be easier to try to obtain the original source code? Or has that been lost and all that's left is a blob? Fundamentally, decompilation is not solving a technical problem most of the time (because the source already exists somewhere ) but a social one (that the owner doesn't want to release it).
> Wouldn't it be easier to try to obtain the original source code? Or has that been lost and all that's left is a blob? Define easier? There is virtually no incentive for a game studio to release their original source code. Studios are running on already tight enough margins as it is with one lackluster release being enough to doom a company to oblivion. Unless you have a method to completely reorient capitalism away…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Wouldn't it be easier to try to obtain the original source code? Or has that been lost and all that's left is a blob? Define easier? There is virtually no incentive for a game studio to release their original source code. Studios are running on already tight enough margins as it is with one lackluster release being enough to doom a company to oblivion. Unless you have a method to completely reorient capitalism away…
This is a game released in 1999. It's silly that source code isn't released for games this old.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Wouldn't it be easier to try to obtain the original source code? Or has that been lost and all that's left is a blob? Define easier? There is virtually no incentive for a game studio to release their original source code. Studios are running on already tight enough margins as it is with one lackluster release being enough to doom a company to oblivion. Unless you have a method to completely reorient capitalism away…
This is a game released in 1999. It's silly that source code isn't released for games this old.
Completely agreed. But even if the will was there, how do we know the source code even exists? 1999 was a long time ago. Source code is company IP. Generally it's the devs who write it and care enough to want to release it to the masses or archive it properly. But they are not the decision makers. There are too many stories of source code quite literally disappearing despite the devs best efforts. A lot of the times when we do get access to source code it comes from rogue behavior aka a former dev putting their ass on the line for the community (see the recent MGS leak on 4chan).
Also like a sibling comment has stated there is no guarantee that the code would be a in a usable format. With the crazy crunch culture in game dev, I doubt most of these studios from the 90s were pumping out clean code. Like an archaeology dig, you'd have to budget a non-trivial amount of time getting what you find in a state that is useable by modern standards.
All to say, I think reversing these older games is a worthy endeavor that is not going away anytime soon. I for one, am excited by the productivity benefits that AI tools have brought with them.