[HN Gopher] Zelda 64 has been fully decompiled
___________________________________________________________________
Zelda 64 has been fully decompiled
Author : mcraiha
Score : 95 points
Date : 2021-11-27 16:55 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.videogameschronicle.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.videogameschronicle.com)
| devwastaken wrote:
| Oh no it's a public GitHub. Nintendo will throw their lawyers at
| this. Download while you can.
| ksaj wrote:
| "The kind of reverse engineering ZRET do is made legal because
| the fans involved did not use any leaked content. Instead, they
| painstakingly recreated the game from scratch using modern
| coding languages. The project also does not use any of
| Nintendo's original copyrighted assets such as graphics or
| sound."
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Just saying that doesn't make it true through. If they ran
| the source code through a decompiler and then cleaned up the
| output, they're not using any leaked content but it's still
| potentially infringing on Nintendo's copyrighted source code.
| That's why some projects choose to make "clean room
| implementations".
| klyrs wrote:
| Legal or not also has only tenuous correlation to github
| taking action.
| devwastaken wrote:
| It doesn't matter if you use original assets or not.
| Duplicating the heart of a work, in any way, is copyright
| infringement. Even streaming a video game, against the wishes
| of the copyright holders, is copyright infringement.
| Recording of playing a video game is not your own work.
|
| U.S. copyright law is absolutely gross, we are used to these
| companies choosing to not enforce infringement and targeting
| specific people/projects.
| bogantech wrote:
| The authors of re3/revc thought the same and now they're
| going to court
| zamadatix wrote:
| re3/revc is going to court largely because they included
| assets in their repository and advertised derivative
| works/ports. zret purposefully avoided all of these points
| making this oot mq decomp.
|
| Of course Nintendo can submit a case if they like but it'd
| be a lot less likely to enter an actual trial like
| re3/revc. A better comparison would be
| https://github.com/n64decomp/sm64 which followed the exact
| same guidelines as this project. Nintendo chased after and
| DMCA'd many projects based on it but never the original
| project.
| CyberShadow wrote:
| > The kind of reverse engineering ZRET do is made legal because
| the fans involved did not use any leaked content.
|
| IANAL, but - there's no way that can be true. Reverse engineering
| of machine code is generally forbidden except for very specific
| exemptions, like compatibility with other systems. Furthermore,
| even under such exemptions, you are still generally not allowed
| to share the results.
|
| Even putting reverse engineering aside, they are still
| distributing code that was written by Nintendo (although
| meticulously transformed in a way that makes reading and
| modification much easier), and which still belongs to them.
|
| What would have been legal is if either this was a black box
| reverse engineering effort, in which all code was written without
| ever looking at the original machine code, or releasing a tool
| which fully automatically decompiles the ROM (which is not
| included with the tool, and must be acquired separately, probably
| from dumping a cartridge).
|
| (Had to research this subject a bit as part of my collaboration
| on https://github.com/Davidebyzero/Snipes)
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Which also makes me wonder, if it's not legal anyway... was the
| Ocarina of Time source not included in the major Nintendo leak
| from last year? A lot of other stuff from that era certainly
| was...
| azeirah wrote:
| No, the source code was not leaked. Only a bunch of assets.
| jsd1982 wrote:
| > Reverse engineering of machine code is generally forbidden
| except for very specific exemptions, like compatibility with
| other systems
|
| Reverse engineering is generally legal in the US, except in
| cases where a EULA expressly forbids it. Since n64 titles are
| not covered by EULAs, to the best of my knowledge, reverse
| engineering them is perfectly legal. Distribution of such
| results however may not be.
| CyberShadow wrote:
| Good to know. Perhaps the US law makes more sense here,
| because banning reverse engineering by itself is not really
| enforceable.
|
| For Europe there is the EU Directive 2009/24/EC, and I think
| I remember reading something almost like that predating it by
| many years in some country's (possibly mine) legislation.
| naikrovek wrote:
| it can probably be argued that the effort put in by people
| surpasses the requirement for derivative work, and it should go
| without saying that without the ROM (or other source of assets
| such as sounds, art, and music) that the code in question
| compiles into something that doesn't function.
|
| this isn't the result of a single tool doing the work, but a
| lot of tools and a lot of people looking at the output of those
| tools and interpreting that output, then changing it to make
| sense within the scope of the project framework(s).
|
| probably very similar to an emulator for a single game.
|
| I am also not a lawyer.
| ABCLAW wrote:
| Just as an FYI to casual readers, I'd take the above post with
| a large dose of skepticism. If I'd wager a guess, the research
| in question was performed during Google v. Oracle winding it's
| way through the courts, because for a period there was concern
| that Sony v. Connectix and the other leading cases in the area
| were about to be tossed aside, which ultimately didn't happen.
| CyberShadow wrote:
| Sorry, that's off the mark.
| xyzzy_plugh wrote:
| IANAL either but it really depends on your jurisdiction. There
| are many places outside North America where it is quite legal
| to RE without a black box.
| Pulcinella wrote:
| Yeah this article is very unclear. It talks about decompiling
| from existing code (namely the GameCube master quest version)
| but also recreating the game from scratch. Which is it?
| naikrovek wrote:
| probably both. singular approaches rarely work for everything
| when reverse engineering.
| lbrito wrote:
| Wow, that's a really quaint acronym. Kudos.
| brundolf wrote:
| OT, but it's bizarre that they call it "Zelda 64" in the title
| zamadatix wrote:
| I bet the author glanced at their site named "Zelda 64" and
| assumed that's how they referred to OOT not realizing they have
| other projects (some not even on the N64 now) as well.
| brundolf wrote:
| Ah I didn't notice the source website. That makes a little
| more sense (on the reporting side at least). I wonder if the
| fan site is named that way to avoid trademark issues with the
| full name?
| 0xcde4c3db wrote:
| It might be to evoke nostalgia for when it was still in
| development and the press was hyping it up under that name.
| Even Nintendo used it occasionally (including for a preview
| feature in _Nintendo Power_ ).
| zwegner wrote:
| zelda64.com was also the official website when Ocarina of
| Time came out, presumably because, at the time, the
| zelda.com domain was already taken by a porn site. That
| was an interesting discovery for 10-year-old me.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Nerrel just finished his multi-year effort of making an extremely
| high quality (as in effort and faithfulness not just high quality
| bitmaps) texture pack last month as well
| https://youtu.be/ovknYMdIP9I. I'm willing to bet we'll see quite
| the combination of enhancements by fans in time, much like
| happened with SM64.
| shawnz wrote:
| Regarding the SM64 decompilation, a nice showcase of the
| modifications that have been created based on that work can be
| seen on the YouTube entertainer SimpleFlips' channel:
| https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3Hg1a3VjI1bfcErqawMUWhB6...
|
| He also maintains a website where you can download and review
| many of them: https://romhacking.com/
| djbusby wrote:
| Couldn't find it but, did they fix that one ghost coin in
| little-tall island?
| shawnz wrote:
| I assume not, since that would require an asset change, and
| the game assets are not included with the decompilation
| project. It's also not a goal of the project to change
| existing behaviors of the game (including bugs)
| GrammarCommie wrote:
| The vast majority of what's showcased on that site and
| playlist were done via assembly hacks, not c.
|
| Super Mario 64 decomp has only publicly been available since
| late 2019. And even then, there's still holdouts as the
| toolset for ye olde ways has been around longer.
| Imnimo wrote:
| I wonder if this will lead to new speedrunning strategies? The
| existing strategies are already mind-blowingly complicated and
| make use of bugs, glitches and quirks that feel nearly impossible
| to discover.
| ddtaylor wrote:
| Similar projects:
|
| * DevilutionX: decompiled and modern version of Diablo for the PC
| - https://github.com/diasurgical/devilutionX
|
| * pokered: decompiled version of Pokemon Red for the Gamboy -
| https://github.com/pret/pokered
|
| * zelda1: decompiled version of Zelda for the NES -
| https://github.com/aldonunez/zelda1-disassembly
|
| * supermetroid: decompiled version of Super Metroid for the SNES
| - https://github.com/strager/supermetroid
|
| * VAC: decompiled version of Valve Anti Cheat (VAC) for PC -
| https://github.com/danielkrupinski/VAC
| aojdwhsd wrote:
| Also re3 and reVC (Grand Theft Auto III and Grand Theft Auto:
| Vice City, for PC), though it is down for now, pending the
| outcome of a court filing... https://github.com/GTAmodding/re3
| msk-lywenn wrote:
| OpenGOAL: decompiling and recreating the language and compiler
| used for jak and daxter - https://github.com/water111/jak-
| project
| kaszanka wrote:
| Also Super Mario 64 (mentioned in the article, but here's a
| direct link) - https://github.com/n64decomp/sm64
| SimeVidas wrote:
| On a related note, it's a shame that you have to look to
| emulators to play this game because Nintendo's official emulation
| is so bad.
| whateveracct wrote:
| Original hardware + an everdrive + some hardware upscaler [1]
| is the way to do it.
|
| [1] Super64 is excellent - its "blurry" mode makes things look
| authentic on my HDTV.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| For lowest latency you may also need a CRT. Thin screens are
| getting better but every stage of the pipeline can introduce
| more lag than the original.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| It's funny how people still call it Zelda 64 more than 20 years
| later, despite that not being its actual name.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-11-27 23:01 UTC)