[HN Gopher] Decompilation of Paper Mario for N64
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       Decompilation of Paper Mario for N64
        
       Author : skibz
       Score  : 44 points
       Date   : 2024-01-12 09:33 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (papermar.io)
 (TXT) w3m dump (papermar.io)
        
       | echelon wrote:
       | Do Majora's Mask next! Jet Force Gemini!
       | 
       | Where do I donate?
        
         | trealira wrote:
         | Just so you know, those in charge of this project aren't going
         | to port it to PC, though someone else could do that. I'm saying
         | this in case the reason you want to donate is because you
         | expect a port to come out of it.
         | 
         | > PC Port?
         | 
         |  _There 's a lot of people interested in playing a PC port of
         | Paper Mario. Unfortunately, making a port isn't our focus.
         | Porting the game isn't why we made the decomp project, and it's
         | not a motivating factor in delving into this game. We have so
         | many exciting goals for the project including decompiling other
         | versions, making modding easier, and further understanding and
         | documenting the codebase; making a port isn't really on our
         | radar._
        
           | echelon wrote:
           | These are the first steps to opening a wide universe of
           | possibilities.
           | 
           | The things that Kaze Emanuar [1] has pulled off with Mario 64
           | are amazing.
           | 
           | [1] https://www.youtube.com/@KazeN64/videos
        
             | okeuro49 wrote:
             | I would like to see similar improvements made to the engine
             | of Perfect Dark, as that game really pushed the N64
             | hardware.
        
       | CM30 wrote:
       | Hah love the domain hack here.
       | 
       | But seriously, it's nice to see the number of decomps and
       | disassemblies for old video games we're getting recently. First
       | Super Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, now just
       | about every other NES to N64 era Nintendo game you can think of.
       | This will certainly be useful for mods in future.
        
       | uudecoded wrote:
       | This is great! I wonder how long until we see GPT-assisted
       | decompilation.
       | 
       | Taking a peek at the source, it's so interesting to see the a
       | piece of history. For example, this was released in Japan in
       | 2000, then internationally months later. As I recall, there was
       | awareness building around the idea that vibrating controllers
       | (here, the N64 Rumble Pak accessory) cause RSI or carpal tunnel.
       | Since the developers shortened the rumble length outside of
       | Japan, it looks like they were aware as well:
       | https://github.com/nanaian/papermario-dx/blob/main/src/rumbl...
       | 
       | I wonder what led to this decision being made at the exclusion of
       | the JP release.
        
         | userbinator wrote:
         | If current AI can barely do maths, decompilation is not
         | something I'd expect it to do well. It will of course try and
         | come up with something plausible, but often subtly wrong.
        
           | odyssey7 wrote:
           | Would decompilation be closer to arithmetic or translation?
        
       | nxobject wrote:
       | The part of decompilation that most amazes me, is getting
       | binaries to match 1-to-1 (up to hashing it seems) - the level of
       | knowledge about executable formats, layout, and how to control
       | the linker is beyond me.
        
         | itsgrimetime wrote:
         | Checkout http://decomp.me - it's a community built tool used by
         | a lot of video game decompilation projects. You put in the
         | original bytecode, it will attempt a decomp, and then you
         | fiddle with the source (using the same toolchain & flags
         | known/best guessed to be used by original devs) until it
         | matches perfectly. It's super cool.
        
           | nxobject wrote:
           | Thank you for that link! It's good to be learning about
           | decompilation/RE tools that aren't just Ghidra, IDA, Hopper.
           | It looks like it works by function, which I'm sure will help
           | future decompilation efforts.
        
           | nanaian wrote:
           | Building decomp.me was really worth it. It even helped us
           | match the very last function - someone from the Metal Gear
           | Solid decompilation team finished it off.
           | 
           | https://decomp.me/scratch/GImYC
           | https://github.com/pmret/papermario/pull/1019
        
       | nanaian wrote:
       | Dev here, AMA
        
         | boricj wrote:
         | Do all decompilation projects for 90s video games out there aim
         | for perfect matching?
         | 
         | I get _why_ perfect decompilation is a big deal, I 'm just
         | wondering if there are other approaches out there besides
         | perfect decompilation in the community at large.
        
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       (page generated 2024-01-13 23:00 UTC)