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A comment on Decompilation of Paper Mario for N64.

Re:Decompilation of Paper Mario for N64 by uudecoded on Saturday January 13, 2024 @04:49PM (#38984938)
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.

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Re:Decompilation of Paper Mario for N64 by userbinator on Saturday January 13, 2024 @05:23PM (#38985240)
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.
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Re:Decompilation of Paper Mario for N64 by wegfawefgawefg on Saturday January 13, 2024 @07:35PM (#38986220)
gpt4 can spit out accurate unoptimized AST of javascript and python. (I just tried it.)

Now to test emitting.

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Re:Decompilation of Paper Mario for N64 by odyssey7 on Saturday January 13, 2024 @05:44PM (#38985414)
Would decompilation be closer to arithmetic or translation?
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Re:Decompilation of Paper Mario for N64 by nanaian on Saturday January 13, 2024 @06:21PM (#38985727)
Depends on your goal. If it's matching decompilation, probably the former.

There's been research into the latter but its in early stages. https://github.com/nforest/awesome-decompilation?tab=readme-...

decomp.me gives us a large database of C(++) <-> target asm to train a model on ;)

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Re:Decompilation of Paper Mario for N64 by kevingadd on Saturday January 13, 2024 @07:45PM (#38986280)
If you want the decompiled code to produce a 1:1 match with the original binary (even if it takes some finessing by hand at the end) you need something rigorous approaching arithmetic. A fuzzy decompiler that just approximates the intent of the original code won't get you there (and this is mostly what you get out of GPT for many tasks), but it could still be useful for something.
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