It's not like we need to individually train our own AI models, a few groups could do it and release for everybody else. Like Anna's Archive.

I think that’s a very interesting point about the compiler, companies have really leaned on that as a way to obfuscate code, some folks seem to think compiled is as good as encrypted? Just another lock on the door, I guess, and a free one at that.

Well, (depending on the language) compilation is a 100% lossy conversion. So when a game gets 'decompiled' with an LLM like this, they're not restoring the original code. It's just generating new code with the same behavior, which is functionally the same. People doing this generally wasn't considered infringement, but it's clear that having a machine automate it is a big problem. Even if we ignore the fact that the output of an LLM is legally tainted/grey area, the scale at which it can happen now means we need new laws to deal with it.

This is basically doing to software what the internet did to piracy. That led to the DMCA, which as shitty and corrupt as it is, at least succeeds at some of its main goals.

Additionally the bigger thing is once AI has the feel for understanding how an engine works, it can pretty easily be applied to another game with the same engine. That’s why nobody here gives a shit about unreal or cryengine games, but rather is reacting to RAGE or Nintendo games. The proprietary studio owned engines are the ones people care about

Decompilation offers you the possibility of cutting out network-required features, if you dream a little bigger.

This is a good opportunity to perform some introspection and think about what kind of mistakes led you to the wrong conclusion on this issue.

Me personally? Copyright is failing your advocated purposes of protecting artists work and their living, and living up to my belief that it was the wrong tool all along. Maybe you could use some of that.

I think you/that article are overthinking it. Compiling just means turning source code (written/readable by humans) into machine code (aka a program/game). "Decompiling" is the reverse of that, where you turn machine code into source code.

A lot of these AI de/re/comp/port/whatever projects are made by script kiddies/morons who don't know what they're doing. Sometimes you see them claim that a project is a "static recompilation", but when you look at the code it's literally just a bespoke emulator that runs the game.

Which is to say, don't get too hung up on these terms, since they're often misused either way.

It's important to understand that these terms are not standardized and people or organizations may use them slightly differently or interchangeably. This can cause confusion. But in the wild, people have come to use these terms (in my experience, I'm not an expert either) in specific ways. The article you linked seems to do a pretty good job, but we should remember that this is his/her personal interpretation. From your explanation, I would say it sounds about right "in my opinion".

I lost it and put this lengthy reply. Sorry about that. Edit: Some parts are still not good explained, I tried.

Source code and compiled binary

First, it is important to understand the two states of a game: source code and compiled binary. The source code is text form written in a programming language (usually by and for humans), with other source material. If you download source code, its just bunch of text files basically. To play the game, one need to use a compiler that compiles or transforms the text files into machine readable compiled binary files. There are other stuff too, but this is the important part. The game can now be run and played on the platform it was built for, such as Super Nintendo. If you create a backup of the Super Nintendo cartridge that holds the compiled binary, then you get a ROM file basically. And on your PC you can't run the Super Nintendo games without emulating the hardware.

Assembly

Every CPU has a set of codes and functions, the very basic at the lowest level possible. Assembly is basically that, it is basically the native language the CPU understands. If you code in Assembly, then it is for this specific CPU architectur, such as Super Nintendo. But the CPU only can understand zeros and ones. So you have to translate the Assembly into real machine code, but the logic does not change anymore. So Assembly is machine code, just wrapped up in a better human readable form. This is usually not the source code. Source code is compiled into Assembly and then machine code binary. You can think of Assembly as machine code for humans, if that makes sense.

Reverse Step 1: Disassembly

Disassembly is taking the compiled final binary (such as ROM files in example) and does just translate all the zeros and ones into human readable machine code. But the original variables names and such are lost, so that its hard to understand what this even is due to optimizations by the compiler. Humans have to go through each line and machine code (which is represented in Assembly format) and figure out what each of the lines, commands do, rename each function and so on. This is painful work. What you get is Assembly code that is readable by humans.

When you compile a fully reverse engineered Assembly code, you get the exact same ROM or machine code that you just disassembled. It didn't change the code, it just renamed stuff basically. So it will just compile to what it was programmed to.

Reverse Step 2: Decompilation

Now that you have something humans can read and reason about their logic, it's time to write some real and original source code. That means trying to understand the parts in Assembly, then writing in (in example C or Rust language) a language that can be compiled to any other target than the original machine code was intended. This new code is an approximation of what the original source code of the game developers were, but we don't know.

Now this process is painful and slow. And in the end it does not mean the code will compile to other platforms, it still aims to produce the original game logic for the original hardware (such as Super Nintendo). So they need to make adjustments to the source code, which is finally easy to work with.

Reverse Step 3: Port

Now that you have an easy readable source code in a programming language that is independent from the hardware, such as C or Rust, you can make adjustments. If you aim to play the game on PC, then adjustments are done so it can compile on PC. Whatever is needed, but in short they modify the source code to be able to compile it to other platforms than it was originally intended. That's a port.

What is a recompilation?

In context of this discussion, a Recomp is basically taking the binary of the game and automatically built a source code file (such as to C or Rust) in one step. This leaves out the manual work of humans to categorize, understand and write good human readable code. The produced code from recompilation is meant to be used by compilers only, that compile to binary. It is not intended to be read by humans, even though its technically source code. Disadvantage is, that if there are bugs then humans have a hard time figure out whats going on. Or to mod the game manually, its difficult too.

This is nowadays often associated with Ai tools, but doesn't have to. I'm not entirely sure, but the N64Recomp in example is such a non Ai recomp tool.

In general, the best case is that we have good high quality human readable and understood source code; Decompilation. On the other hand Recompilation is much faster to create.

Imagine decompiling windows and merging it with Linux so that anything you wanna do on either platform somehow works native? Like if I do a fresh install of WINUX let's call it and then I can run any .exe and any game or program that's windows only and it automatically out of the box thinks it's a Windows machine and anything that's Linux only think it's a Linux box

That one specifically - the game is ruined by parking, you run out of space for car parks long before you really fill up the mountain.

The car parks have coach spaces, but the seem to be broken and never appear. Either fix coaches or remove parking completely.

Will look into it when I have some time next week.

What is the benefit of AI Photoshop clone over, for example, Photopea?

This is kind of like the Palworld argument. Pokemon took their designs off of other games but yeah throwing a ball sphere is the best IP argument they could come up with. IMO, IP laws need to go to the shitter. I'm tired of the I did it first patented it first bullshit.

Sure, but with 'decompiled/recompiled' games apparently not breaching copyright, you'll be able to get GTA 6ish without having to worry about torrent clients and magnets and seeds and all that super complex stuff that most people just don't want to deal with.

If, a week after GTA 6 comes out at £70/£90, Big Stealing Cars 6 comes out at only £20 and is 90% as good... where's the money going?

AMAZING!!!

Thank you!

Why would they waste time and brain developing their own games when they can just piggyback on someone else's creativity that's had proven success in the market place?

Could I ask you to check my understanding of this part?

I think your understanding is basically correct, but i just want to clarify what i did with the specs:

I found the source code, which doesn't include the rendering engine, is composed of Python and C++ and contains the game logic.

I then fed the LLM the source code I had available to turn them in to a set of specs for that specific codebase, for important APIs and the logic that connects then.

I then took those specs and made the LLM genericize them, and in particular creating a structured, human readable description of all game rules.

With those new generic specs, i was able to creat a development plan and architecture (with heavy aid of LLM), the new engine is written in Godot with json data store.

Project was bootstrapped like normal, start with the smallest core functionality, especially including debug infrastructure. Get it stable and then keep adding features and testing until everything seems okay.

I guess i have a follow up question which is, is it possible that the Civ IV source code was included in the training data of the LLM, and would there be any way to know?

Agreed, that's actually part of why I said I don't think i can prove it's fully clean room!

But I did try my best to make it unlikely, and even if it did, I imagine it was closer to broken bits and pieces.

The irony!

No, kiddo. It’s apple’s enshitification that causes this. When they rolled the on-device autocorrect that used to be near perfect into an off-device AI based bullshit disaster- this is the result. I now have to spell-check and check for wrong autocorrections because AI has fucked that up too and it cannot be turned off or reverted.

So, thanks for helping prove my point.

If decompiling proprietary software becomes easy and cheap then these companies will just not allow you to download the binaries any more, furthering the push of cloud computing and gaming. "You will own nothing and you will be happy"

As for the medical applications, clearly OP is talking about AI colloquially, and thus referring mostly to LLMs and generative AI, which has not had much influence on the medical fields unlike other AI technologies like Alphafold. Equating the two is being ignorant (willfully or not idk)

Is entertainment and archaeology worth the cost of the environmental damage, mass plagiarism, and the funding of companies who are involved mass surveillance, pointless wars and causing financial / economic collapse?

The technology is cool for some specific tasks, and if it were brought about in a sustainable, ethical, and cautious way it would've been great. But ignoring all of its downsides and claiming people who don't support this are "out of touch" "hipsters" is stupid

If that’s you’re argument for “AI is awesome!” you have no argument.

Game modding is turning into vibe-coded slop by kids that have no fucking clue what they’re doing. It’s no different than the hacks that think they’re musicians because they can knuckle a sentence into a prompt

Fucking hacks.