I wrote a blog post on the current trend of game decompilations using AI and where we’re going with this. It’s all very promising but oh boy are the implications scary.
I know a few games that are sorely out of date by active developers and the devs are always like “I don’t have time” or “It’s not that important” or “It’s too hard.”
And I’m like, why don’t you release the code you prick, you don’t care, so why are you still lording over it.
So this could be awesome.
For most games, the answer is “publisher contracts”.
Lol sounds like some of our internal teams.
They don’t have time to support the things they built or to have people help them build it, but they refuse to make the repo internal so that others in the org can help them with it. Instead, they just act like bottlenecks.
Can we please just skip the middle-man and start open sourcing everything instead of burning all the world’s resources to achieve the same goal?
Best I can do is ban software decompilation.
Could they do this to port vintage old mac games?
The compiler was never meant to be a source code obfuscating tool anyway, the real sea change is Copyright being ignored. I’ve always wanted Copyright to go away, but it’s going away in a way different than anything I’d imagined and I don’t know what to think about that.
The obvious upside is we can sort of return to a time when every game was openly moddable. 25 years ago almost every hot game was a mod of another game.
It’s not really copyright that you want to go away. It’s corporations exploiting the work of individuals. There are countries that have much saner, a lot more ethical laws around it.
The AI issue here is their theft, and since the theft is not addressed, it’s going to get ugly, and the big game producers will just lock games behind networks , so unless you’re online and likely paying a subscription, you ain’t gonna be pLaying thaT game.
Decompilation offers you the possibility of cutting out network-required features, if you dream a little bigger.
They’re not talking about individual features, they’re talking about locking the entire game behind a network (such as game streaming) so the game can’t be downloaded to be decompiled in the first place.
It’s been tried before, but the fundamental limitations on networking- not to mention the compute you have to spend in data centers to run it - makes it pretty unlikely to happen, especially as a means of preventing piracy.
Aren’t we assuming the data center buildout is to monopolize compute and turn our home computing into dumb screens?
That’s what I think the hyper scalers are planning, especially after the LLM bubble pops.
I haven’t seen any reason to believe that’s the case.
I appreciate that at least we are all reeling from the implications of it all.
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.
I think it does make a ton of sense that an llm would be so capable at decompiling code… it’s basically just translating? But having decompiled some stuff myself years ago, it’s still sort of amazing to see such a tedious process automated.
Bleh, too many conflicting feelings… yes, let’s hope we reclaim some bits of culture taken from us! And let’s cross our fingers that copyright is destroyed in a manner that actually benefits people…
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
I’ve always wanted Copyright to go away, but it’s going away in a way different than anything I’d imagined and I don’t know what to think about that.
It’s interesting seeing all the people who used to complain about copyright now realizing that copyright does in fact protect small artists, and it’s actually the reason why anyone was able to make a living as an artist at all.
On the one hand, it’s good that everyone is starting to get on the same page, but it sucks that things always have to get worse before they get better. 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. Maybe it’ll be constructive and helpful for other issues.
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.
What a shame.
The thing is, just getting rid of it is worse.
The tool is done, the current implementation has been warped to favor corporations. That doesn’t mean throwing out the tool is the answer
It’s interesting seeing all the people who used to complain about copyright now realizing that copyright does in fact protect small artists, and it’s actually the reason why anyone was able to make a living as an artist at all.
nah, the artist income game is even more rigged than the capitalism people like complaining about. basically 99% of all art revenue goes to 1% of artists, while the bottom 50% of artists get basically 0% of the income. it’s incredibly unevenly distributed. the income inequality among artists is even more extreme than it is for wage workers.
basically 99% of all art revenue goes to 1% of artists, while the bottom 50% of artists get basically 0% of the income.
99% of what art revenue? There isn’t a global “art account” that gets divided among anyone who calls themselves an artist. Individuals earn what they earn.
The people pumping out mainstream movies are obviously going to earn more than those doing furry porn commissions on the fediverse.
if there is no global art budget, then why would anyone care about AI output taking away market chances from small artists?
Copyright is going away in a way that only benefits AI companies. WE still get burned at the stake for downloading shit from limewire even if we’re training our own AI models.
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.
The only way I can see the industry of intellectual property - and hence all large-budget commercial games - surviving is if laws change to regard the efforts of AI analysis as breaching some of the established DMCA laws.
I’m sure we often regard those laws as horrendous, though I sometimes wonder if people would agree if they saw Epic Games publish “Meincraft” 3 days after Minecraft gets its first major news article, and leave Notch in the dust.
Games already have IP laws for their assets and patents, but the code is something we can’t really enforce. If someone reverse engineered Minecraft and released it with new graphics and trademarks, how are they going to prove this game is just a copy of Minecraft and not an original block game?
Obviously if it’s too similar they’d rule against it but AI is really good at shuffling code and changing up minor things to make it legally distinct.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot too, because of seeing all these decompilations (with all the implications that comes with, as you point out some of them), but also because my own “learning LLM tooling” project was reverse engineering Civ IV, and rereleasing in a 64 bit engine with more accessible controls at the expense of 3d (sort of like Unciv).
I did not do a decompilation, especially because the core of the game has restrictive-licensed source released, but i was able to build clean specs from that source, and then with as clean of context of possible, stage the production and testing of features. I honestly don’t know how you’d prove a classic clean room implementation with LLMs (and definitely not in a one shot), and i can’t really prove my implementation is clean either.
I really hate the direction of all this stuff (so so much), and i hate that my disabled ass feels compelled to learn such tools so I am able to feed myself. But I did try to have some good come out of it (generic reverse engineered specs, basic accessibility framework, game automation framework, and i definitely learned a lot, plus it does work pretty ok)
I haven’t been able to figure out a way to release in a way that fits my ethical framework, without also resulting in people insulting me (which I don’t have a lot of room for in my life right now). I’ll happily take suggestions though!
I’d love for this to not be wasted effort, especially because of the accessibility enhancements for a beloved but proprietary game.
This is all very new to me, but I think I get what you’re saying. Could I ask you to check my understanding of this part?
but i was able to build clean specs from that source, and then with as clean of context of possible, stage the production and testing of features.
Does this mean that Civ 4 has its source available – and you fed it into the LLM and asked it for a human -readable design spec for what the source code does.
Then you took that spec sheet and asked a new LLM to generate source code that matches the spec sheet, with some modifications you desired (e.g. 64 bit and different controls).
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?
Thanks for considering
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.
They already decompiled indiegames demo and used that to build a clone of it and ship it, faster than the indie dev can finish their game. It’s definitely an awful situation for small indie dev because they not only have to compete with bigger budget, their peers, and the f2p market, now they have to compete with cloners
Can it decompile windows and make it Linux
It’s called ReactOS :)
Compile this fucking [expletive] [slur]!
We have Linux at home.
Linux at home:
I fear this might be another push for live service shit or even game streaming. I absolutely like services like GeForceNow as an option to play games on less ideal hardware. But I wouldn’t want to be forced to that.
I don’t think that’s actually true. I think it’s more just AI propaganda. Most of the so-called “advances” that I’ve seen advertised seem to be far less than they seem when you dig deeper, often relying heavily on previous, human reverse-engineering efforts or simply being injection points built into wrappers for the actual binary game code. It’s just suddenly cool and polished looking because AI padded it out with a bunch of fragile and flaky filler code whose only purpose is to make it look finished and beautiful at first glance when it actually isn’t. The typical AI gameplan, in other words.
Every single month another hidden advertisement for AI companies surface. This is another one.
I have been trying to recompile a Windows v3.1 game. Once it has finished cooking, I will try to contact the OG game’s author for another freeware release of their work. While quite raw, you can see the bones starting to knit together.
My hardware is an 7965WX, 128gb DDR5 5600, x1 RTX 4090, and x2 RTX 3060. While powerful for a gaming machine, this is modest for AI workloads. I hope to eventually replace the weaker cards with a pair of RTX 4500, as that would afford me greater quality and speed.
This project has taken three days so far, and I am expecting another four to reach parity with the original article. If I had the hardware I wanted, I expect it would have only taken two days for parity to be achieved.
this post is the strangest humblebrag I’ve seen in a while
I am talking about my personal experience with the technology. The intention is to inform people what the technology can and can’t do, and what was required. I want other people to see what I am doing, and say “I can do it too!”
I want other people to adopt AI and to pursue the things that they think is cool. Be it creating manga, having tabletop game companions, or recommendations for baking recipes, I want everyone to have a better life from collaborating with AI.
Be it creating manga, having tabletop game companions, or recommendations for baking recipes, I want everyone to have a better life from collaborating with AI.
We used to did all the above together with other human beings. Sounds to me that you just want to replace them with machines. Well, good luck. You’ll never find true happiness down this path, in my opinion.
Not sure what there is worth bragging about
What’s the motivation for even doing this if not to learn? If it’s just to have a playable version of the game, emulation covers that easily. If you want to extend it, you still kind of need to know how the original is designed to understand what types of changes fit within the structure of the game.
Quenzar’s Caverns is such a simple game, re-implementing it is a great project for someone wanting to learn how a graphical application is put together end-to-end. It would even be a good beginner reverse-engineering project if you want to reproduce it precisely, given it’s a 16-bit application.
At the end of the week, you might have a reproduction of the game that you can play. But you’ll have missed out on the opportunity to learn enough about program design to understand why throwing a week’s worth of compute at this task is totally unnecessary.
The goal is to establish a workflow of working with AI, the programs, the behaviors of the models, and so forth. In any case, I always sucked at math, so learning how to program just isn’t viable for me. My strong points lie elsewhere.
My goals are not yours. I want to use AI to translate videogames and other media, reimplement games with modern QOL, and eventually, to have media of my own imagination given form.
Don’t send a fucking AI-generated message to the original developer
Yeah, this is pretty awful
Dude. I didn’t say anything, nor even imply, about an automated message. Also, I previously contacted the author and received permission to distribute the none-AI version of the game.
Seriously, folk like you suck - because you are hallucinating bullshit, and fling it at people.
Pretty sure “decompiling” has always been the easy step - open the binary with a hex editor and dump the contents as some source code. Making sense of that is where shit gets really difficult - making it work was usually even harder.
The information yearns to be free.
There is noting awesome about what AI does.
It could fix your spelling, at least.
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.
and it cannot be turned off or reverted.
🤨️ are you sure? because autocorrect is always the first thing i turn off, it sucks so fucking much! have you tried just setting your language to “undefined”?
Hey, if you’re anti-AI you shouldn’t be using apple products. I understand that owning a device can be difficult to move away from without an additional purchase, but Apple is still listening to you and reading your data. Your usage statistics are being used to prove to retailers that their products are worth selling to their customers. Even using an old iPhone is a silent vote for Apple to continue their trajectory
Just to be safe, they should throw out all devices that radiate EMF. I heard tinfoil hat might help against the AI overlords reading your brain signals
I turned off autocorrect on my iphone at least a decade ago but left spellcheck on so I still get the red lines if I mess something up. It sounds like that could benefit you.
K
What? Mass-decompiling proprietary software or making shitty companies like Adobe irrelevant is not awesome? Alright, what about advancements in medicine and science, even just mapping a fly for fun? Well, if saving lives is not awesome for you, then what about game modding that’s currently peaking? Entire games merged together, many games I play see mods that I thought were impossible before, etc.? Entertainment bad too? Alright, then, what about deciphering historical writings, texts, better archeology, pattern finding, etc.? History is not awesome either? I guess the only thing I can offer you is a personal robot assistant that could work around your house doing chores and stuff (we’re not there yet, but rapidly nearing it), but I guess that’s not awesome either
Man, lemmy has the most out of touch opinions around the world wide web, like a corner of hipsters. Now do your thing and downvote objectivity
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 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”
Call me a fool, but I really believe most people would not move their workstation/PC/laptop to a cloud. There will always be massive demand for hardware and even if west suddenly goes the route of not selling consumer hardware - China will enter the chat quite fast. By now you can build a fully Chinese PC.
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)
To be fair, I never said “LLM”, I’m speaking generally about AI because the data centers and money isn’t exclusively going into LLMs - it’s the entire portfolio being advanced.
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?
There is nothing we can do about this. I personally hate cars way more than AI and believe that millions of people aimlessly driving around for fun/entertainment is far worse. Like I said previously, you driving around for 1 hour for fun is far worse than me using AI for 10x longer. Probably closer to 100x. And there is nothing I or you can do about what other people and companies are ready to pay for, and if there is demand, there will be offerings.
I also believe AI will advance quite far (relatively to where we are now), to the point it will help humans develop and live more efficiently. Sure, AI will consume terawatts of power, but what if it ends up creating super-optimized motors/engines saving terawatts of power? Energy generation, wasteful manufacturing, etc can all be managed and improved with AI, negating much of the AI consequences.
Mass plagiarism is an interesting one because I’ve been always pro-piracy and everything I’ve ever made myself has been non-profit, so I’m really not the best person for this argument. Do you support the creation of Adobe and Microsoft-like products, by AI, to be used by anyone for free? Well, that’s plagiarism too.
But ignoring all of its downsides and claiming people who don’t support this are “out of touch” “hipsters” is stupid
That was a response to “there is nothing awesome about what AI does”. It’s just… factually false, intellectually lazy. Your arguments are far more logical.
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.
No you goofball, AI allows modders to decompile the games and bring modding to the next level. The one I’m currently playing only had modded assets for 2-3 years. Now there are like 40 mods that change the gameplay itself. Awesome!
Oh! Well shit! You should have said so from the beginning! That’s totally worth destroying our envorment and making people into idiots that have to outsource their opinions because they can’t think for themselves.
Take a walk kid.
Bitch please, I waste way more electricity gaming 6 hours a day than I do generating stuff for 15 minutes a day. Get reality checked before you walk anywhere, old man. Don’t even get me started on how utterly inefficient, wasteful and globe-killing is automotive industry, especially US… “BuT yOuR gPU”
Trust me, my CO2 footprint is much lower than yours since I actually live a green life instead of hating on everyone else, solar panels, no cars, got an Ebike and monthly bus tickets, etc.
Thanks for the laugh kiddo. I’m gonna go back to the adults table now.
When you lose in argument so hard you start acting like a teenager with petty insults without knowing how to even argue back
I guess we will see big studios push gaming as a service again? I honestly wouldn’t care too much since I haven’t been interested in Triple A games for a while now. (except for some exceptions ofc) As long as they keep my indie games unaffected!!
Scary implications aside, video game decomps are so cool! I honestly feel like we have enough games to last humanity. And having them all in their best form possible is kinda cool, soon we can run all time classics and built our dream console out of an raspi 5, with mods keeping it fresh.
