[HN Gopher] Show HN: Complete decompilation of Lego Island
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Show HN: Complete decompilation of Lego Island
Author : foxtacles
Score : 225 points
Date : 2024-12-23 20:03 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| indigo945 wrote:
| This project goes back to the LEGO Island Rebuilder [1] by (some
| of?) the same authors, which fixes several bugs in the original
| game release by patching it in memory (iirc). These fixes include
| some involved ones, like for the wonky framerate-dependent
| controls.
|
| MattKC, who developed much of this original work, has a nice
| Youtube channel full of video postmortems for some of these [2].
| It's kind of fun just to watch him poke around with a hex editor,
| unraveling the arcane mysteries of a long-sunken civilization of
| Win95 developers.
|
| [1]: https://github.com/isledecomp/LEGOIslandRebuilder
|
| [2]: https://www.youtube.com/@MattKC
| jeroenhd wrote:
| I've learned of MattKC through a video of his about how he
| ported .NET to Windows 95 (mostly).
|
| I love the dedication content like this shows off. In an age of
| ever decreasing attention spans, it's nice to see someone going
| through the grunt work for something other than pure financial
| gain.
| ddtaylor wrote:
| MattKC is a good YouTuber in my opinion. His videos are simple,
| fun and extremely information dense. I haven't had time but I
| purchased a Wii-U remote at a garage sale because it had all
| the pieces and was paired together. Days later I see MattKC on
| stream hacking the Bluetooth!
| bri3d wrote:
| The tooling and infrastructure in this project are pretty
| interesting as these things go. It's always cool to see how each
| decompilation project springs up with different ideas and goals -
| this one seems very focused on 1:1 accuracy, with a side-project
| for compatibility / cross-platform reimplementation:
|
| * https://github.com/isledecomp/reccmp is a lint tool which
| compares compiled function reimplementations with the original
| binary and produces an automated report detailing the instruction
| level accuracy of the re-implementation, while dealing with all
| of the fun of C++.
|
| * https://github.com/isledecomp/SIEdit is a resource editor for
| the bizarre RIFF-esque resource streaming format the original
| developer (Mindscape) seems to have invented.
|
| Also while we're on the subject of vintage LEGO games, I've
| recently been quite into playing Manic Miners, a complete Unreal
| Engine remake (not decompilation/reimplementation, an actual
| ground-up recreation!) of Rock Raiders.
|
| I'm hoping someone does Alpha Team next; it was a quite fun
| puzzle game but incredibly buggy.
| mclau156 wrote:
| I am seeing more reason to re-make in Unreal, Unity, Godot,
| Blender lately, these softwares are becoming increasingly more
| beginner friendly and downloading 3D assets and programming 3D
| skeleton animations are becoming easier
| mileycyrusXOXO wrote:
| I'm gonna have to get Manic Miners, lots of fond memories
| playing Rock Raiders with my friends
| Belphemur wrote:
| For those looking for the game, it's on itch.io :
| https://baraklava.itch.io/manic-miners
| teeray wrote:
| You can build a mountain, if you do it brick by brick...
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| Papa told mama and laura told nick...
| stravant wrote:
| I did a few thousand lines of this.
|
| In particular it was interesting learning about D3D retained mode
| as I did that part. What a weird piece of rendering history.
|
| Worth a search if you haven't heard about it before: D3DRM.
| pjc50 wrote:
| The top search hit for "d3d retained mode" is now
| https://www.legoisland.org/wiki/Direct3D_Retained_Mode , going
| full circle.
| voidfunc wrote:
| I liked this game when I was a kid but I remember being massively
| disappointed that there wasn't more building.
| codetrotter wrote:
| My two favorite games for some time were Lego Island and Lego
| Loco.
|
| Lego Loco is a city builder and railroad builder game.
| Something like a more basic SimCity and Railroad Tycoon
| crossover maybe. I really liked Lego Loco because you can build
| a whole city out of Lego to your own liking.
|
| So I had Lego building in Lego Loco and I had Lego Island with
| all the fun stories and things you could do there, like chasing
| Pepper the criminal with a helicopter and using donuts and
| pizzas to help the police on ground and the skateboarder.
| pesus wrote:
| Wow, I've seen anyone mention Lego Loco before! That was a
| great game. I was horrible at it, but the art style and
| atmosphere was great.
| robotnikman wrote:
| I loved Lego Loco. You could even set the game as a
| screensaver, and it would basically play whatever map you
| were on whenever your screensaver turned on!
|
| I kind of miss screensavers actually
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Brickster's the criminal, Pepper chased him with a rebuilt
| police helicoptor lobbing pizzas and donuts to help Nick and
| Laura on the ground catch Brickster.
|
| Also, second you on LEGO Loco. Of the original trilogy
| (Creator, Loco, and Chess), Loco by far was the most fun.
| Kudos to the Chess King though, saying the Knights are BMX
| bikeriders still hasn't been surpassed.
| AstroJetson wrote:
| Lego Loco was cool in there was a network version that let
| you send your train to other people.
| nemothekid wrote:
| This was a favorite of mine as a kid as well - I remember
| revisiting it after seeing a YouTube video of someone doing a
| technical breakdown. I realized that this game had maybe less
| than half an hour of content! I remember losing hours to this
| game.
| bombcar wrote:
| What we didn't have in content we made up in replayability!
| So many "Great games" from that era had a sandbox mode or
| other replayability.
| antics9 wrote:
| The game looks like Roblox and is just as creepy too:
| https://youtu.be/xyqXZDyR-RA
| stavros wrote:
| Wait, why is Roblox creepy?
| treve wrote:
| It's been called a casino for kids. There's decent reporting
| around this. I wouldn't let my kid near this, or anything
| that has a game currency tied to a real-world currency.
| stavros wrote:
| Ahh interesting, thank you!
| madjam002 wrote:
| Such a shame it's like this now because I played it
| extensively as a kid back in 06 and 07 and it helped
| inspire me to learn programming.
| homarp wrote:
| see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28247034
|
| and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32014754
| stavros wrote:
| Thank you!
| mastercheif wrote:
| Thank you to everyone who worked on this. One of my favorite
| games growing up, I'm glad to know it'll be around to show my
| kid.
| taspeotis wrote:
| I had aspirations to decompile another MSVC 4.2 game (FireFight)
| and I got stymied on CMake - among other things.
|
| This repo looks like a good reference.
| mdtrooper wrote:
| I love these kind of things, for years I want to learn decompile
| old games....but equal other things I do not know what it is the
| first steps or tools.
| jonhohle wrote:
| If you're interested, I've been decompiling Castlevania:
| Symphony of the Night live Monday through Thursday at 11am
| pacific time on twitch for several months -
| https://www.twitch.tv/madeupofwires
|
| I'm happy to talk about the tools and process or anything
| anyone else in chat wants to know about. I have about 10kloc
| contributed and worked on tooling and build, but still have a
| lot to learn myself.
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(page generated 2024-12-24 23:01 UTC)