Thread

1. wk_end · 1789928618 · focus · HN ↗

   From a preservation perspective, this is one of the least useful decomps ever, given how committed Capcom is to making sure RE4 is ported absolutely everywhere (kidding!)

   Made using the leaked debug build and its symbols, which shows how meaningful the work the game preservation community that acquires and distributes these things is.

   OTOH this is pretty off-putting:

   > Where the compiler needed a particular source shape to reproduce a register choice or a schedule and no natural spelling was found, the construct is marked with a // COMPILER-DIFF: comment (644 of them: dead tests, empty asm("") launders and anchors, register T x asm("rN") pins, padding statements).

   To me the value of a decomp isn't reproducing the original bytes per se (we already have the original bytes after all) - it's about reconstructing the understanding of the original game as represented by human-readable source code; getting byte-for-byte is just an indication that you've gotten it right. Needing to add a bunch of slop to force the compiler to match the original output is actually just an indication that you've gotten it wrong - and it's a demonstration of the danger of Goodhart's law, especially as it applies to AI.

   1. toast0 · 1789929918 · focus · HN ↗

      Certainly, it's better if you don't have these. But if I was working on something like this, I think you release when you have something that covers most of the territory, and then refine it over time.

      Maybe someone else comes and helps out here and there.

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