# 'Grand Theft Auto III' and 'Grand Theft Auto Vice City' have been fully reverse-engineered



## Deleted User (Feb 16, 2021)

man i can only imagine the huge wealth of mod potential having this would open up

but i doubt anyone will actually tap into that potential


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## Silent_Gunner (Feb 16, 2021)

I've always been curious about this idea of taking a game, reverse-engineering it, and then porting it to other platforms since the source code isn't just a bunch of glorified 0's and 1's made to run on proprietary hardware.

Let's say one wanted to reverse engineer Metroid Prime 1. Upon doing so, theoretically speaking, they could go and make a port of the game to the Switch, PC, Xbox, etc.. Granted, I don't think distributing said code would be a good idea, as the NinteNinjas are diligent workers for their lawyers, after all!

What prevents more games from being reverse engineered like this? What's to stop one from doing this to Tekken Tag Tournament 1 or 2?


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## Deleted User (Feb 16, 2021)

Silent_Gunner said:


> I've always been curious about this idea of taking a game, reverse-engineering it, and then porting it to other platforms since the source code isn't just a bunch of glorified 0's and 1's made to run on proprietary hardware.
> 
> Let's say one wanted to reverse engineer Metroid Prime 1. Upon doing so, theoretically speaking, they could go and make a port of the game to the Switch, PC, Xbox, etc.. Granted, I don't think distributing said code would be a good idea, as the NinteNinjas are diligent workers for their lawyers, after all!
> 
> What prevents more games from being reverse engineered like this? What's to stop one from doing this to Tekken Tag Tournament 1 or 2?


because reverse engineering a game is a very looong and arduous project that normally takes years


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## masagrator (Feb 16, 2021)

Silent_Gunner said:


> I've always been curious about this idea of taking a game, reverse-engineering it, and then porting it to other platforms since the source code isn't just a bunch of glorified 0's and 1's made to run on proprietary hardware.
> 
> Let's say one wanted to reverse engineer Metroid Prime 1. Upon doing so, theoretically speaking, they could go and make a port of the game to the Switch, PC, Xbox, etc.. Granted, I don't think distributing said code would be a good idea, as the NinteNinjas are diligent workers for their lawyers, after all!
> 
> What prevents more games from being reverse engineered like this? What's to stop one from doing this to Tekken Tag Tournament 1 or 2?


Mainly symbol and comments leftovers. More complicated game needs significantly more time for tests. Symbols and comments left in various releases like it was with Android releases of GTA helps tremendously understand purpose of each function. Thanks to that more people have courage to start RE some game.


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## Sonic Angel Knight (Feb 16, 2021)

* Waits for San Andreas*


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## Deleted User (Feb 16, 2021)

i just gave this a test, and man is it a relief to finally be able to use the xbox car models and reflections without any stupid complicated setup, this pleases me. now i'll just wait for the 60fps physics fixes, and maybe some mods to modernise the controls a bit more


and reLCS/reVCS


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## Subtle Demise (Feb 16, 2021)

Silent_Gunner said:


> Let's say one wanted to reverse engineer Metroid Prime 1. Upon doing so, theoretically speaking, they could go and make a port of the game to the Switch, PC, Xbox, etc.. Granted, I don't think distributing said code would be a good idea, as the NinteNinjas are diligent workers for their lawyers, after all!


Rockstar are pretty litigious too. They have recently been taking down mods for GTA5 and RDR2 I think.


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## Deleted User (Feb 16, 2021)

Subtle Demise said:


> Rockstar are pretty litigious too. They have recently been taking down mods for GTA5 and RDR2 I think.


rockstar are scum but not nearly on the level of nintendo when it comes to taking down content

unless it's 2017 and taketwo tried to ban openIV


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## CTR640 (Feb 16, 2021)

Subtle Demise said:


> Rockstar are pretty litigious too. They have recently been taking down mods for GTA5 and RDR2 I think.


You probably meant menu mods. Yes, R* does a very good job on taking down the mod menu's and recently they took down one of the most cancerous mod menu's named Luna. Since that, GTA Online has become somewhat more chill and fun without cheating scums exploding players for fun, destroying sales and supplies remotely, kicking players to storymode and crashing their game by spawning 1000+ cargoplanes.

A few years ago OpenIV was taken down and it was not R*, in fact, it was TakeTwo! If I remember it fine, it was that asshole named Straus Zelnick. He wanted to force storymode players move on to GTA Online so more shark shark money goes to his pocket and to stop GTA offline being modded. And guess what? TakeTwo got a huuuuge backlash, it was so severe, they had to reverse it! Mods meant to use for storymode are totally harmless and only provide fun for....storymode!

All 3 GTA 3D games to PSVita would be effing awesome! I still have my PSVita OLEDs to use.


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## THEELEMENTKH (Feb 16, 2021)

This is amazing, can't wait to install both on my pc


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## Moon164 (Feb 16, 2021)

The work of these people is so incredible, I can't believe that I can finally play GTA on my Wii U, I just hope someone can port GTA Sandreas in the future, in my opinion it's the best game in the franchise.


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## Viri (Feb 16, 2021)

Do they also plan to reverse engineer Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories?


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## Deleted User (Feb 16, 2021)

Viri said:


> Do they also plan to reverse engineer Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories?


there's actually already a project for liberty city stories, but it seems to be barely worked on. i couldn't figure out how to install it


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## DinohScene (Feb 16, 2021)

GTA 3 has been reverse engineered for a couple of months now.
Yesterday VC got a release.


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## Deleted User (Feb 16, 2021)

DinohScene said:


> GTA 3 has been reverse engineered for a couple of months now.
> Yesterday VC got a release.


i tried to install re3 a couple of weeks ago and it straight up didn't work, so i think this is more of a "it's usable for people who don't have a trillion dev tools installed to get everything to work" sort of release


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## raxadian (Feb 16, 2021)

I I wish someone would do the same for Sonic Adventure International for the Dreamcast.


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## Deleted User (Feb 16, 2021)

so physics are already fixed with high refresh rate, however, save files are incompatible. i had a save file on the 2nd island and it crashed


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## masagrator (Feb 16, 2021)

DinohScene said:


> GTA 3 has been reverse engineered for a couple of months now.
> Yesterday VC got a release.


Re3 also got first release the same day.


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## MarkDarkness (Feb 16, 2021)

Just fired up VC with this. Two things: 1) wow, it works; 2) wow... it is more dated than my childish memories led me to believe.


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## Jayro (Feb 16, 2021)

Expecting a VC port to Switch any day now.


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## MikaDubbz (Feb 16, 2021)

Word is they're working on Liberty City Stories next and I assume VC Stories would be after that. And maybe then we can be lucky enough for San Andreas to be after that.  I would love to have the entire GTA III collection decompiled and available on all the newer hacked systems like Switch, Vita, and even Wii U.


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## Deleted User (Feb 16, 2021)

alright, so after extensive testing, i can tell that compatability with mods is HORRIBLE, and some of the lighting doesn't work very well
if you turn on the neo vehicle shader in gta 3, it gives everything a blue hue, if you enable it in vice city, it makes everything dark

if you try to install xbox car models in vice city, give up. half of the textures don't load, when they load normally with the vanilla exe
it's also incompatible with some major mods like vice cry, even if you opt in to just replace models and shit, it just crashes.

save files are also incompatible across both, so it's worth waiting


and despite what the github says, cross platform files are not compatible, you still have to convert everything or it won't load or it'll crash


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## DodgyJudge (Feb 16, 2021)

Prans said:


> View attachment 246798 View attachment 246797​
> Two of the earlier entries to the _Grand Theft Auto _series have been fully reverse-engineered by a team of modders. Re3 and ReVC are the respective reversed source code for _GTA III_ and _GTA Vice City _that have been made available to download. Those releases bring new features to those games such as widescreen support, debug menu and improved rendering. They also open doors to future modding and tinkering for those titles and the project has also been ported to the Nintendo Switch, Playstation Vita and Nintendo Wii U.
> 
> A few screenshots of those mods in action have also been made available:
> ...


NEW 3ds port when?


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## BigOnYa (Feb 16, 2021)

I see users on here claiming to have been able to test the VC...How can VC be installed on switch? Is there a release out like re3 yet?


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## masagrator (Feb 16, 2021)

BigOnYa said:


> I see users on here claiming to have been able to test the VC...How can VC be installed on switch? Is there a release out like re3 yet?


Only reVC on Switch available now is the one that used not finished code from early stage, is buggy and has big menory leaks. Just wait for release based on latest revision.


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## BigOnYa (Feb 16, 2021)

masagrator said:


> Only reVC on Switch available now is the one that used not finished code from early stage, is buggy and has big menory leaks. Just wait for release based on latest revision.


Thank you for reply, was wondering...


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## Purple_Shyguy (Feb 16, 2021)

Man the next few years are going to be NUTS for decompilations and source ports. I hear PErfect Dark decomp is coming along nicely.

Only a matter of time before companies start sending out C&D's for these projects.


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## MikaDubbz (Feb 16, 2021)

Purple_Shyguy said:


> Man the next few years are going to be NUTS for decompilations and source ports. I hear PErfect Dark decomp is coming along nicely.
> 
> Only a matter of time before companies start sending out C&D's for these projects.



Yeah, it is interesting to note how many we've been seeing lately.  I think it's super fascinating, now we have games like GTA III running natively on the Switch and even Wii U, even though it never released for a Nintendo system, and emulators weren't about to make such a game reasonably playable on these systems any time soon either.  Likewise to see the likes of Mario 64 on the freaking Dreamcast.  The possibilities seem endless, and kinda ensures that the homebrew and modding scenes for many systems wont completely fade away.


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## Deleted member 397813 (Feb 16, 2021)

POTENTIAL RISING


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## KimKong (Feb 16, 2021)

Awesome! Vice City on Switch is gonna be soo sweet!!


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## BigOnYa (Feb 16, 2021)

KimKong said:


> Awesome! Vice City on Switch is gonna be soo sweet!!


Yes! and Perfect Dark port too. It's gonna be xmas in March! Hopefully


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## Leqz (Feb 16, 2021)

Latiodile said:


> save files are also incompatible across both, so it's worth waiting



Save files are only compatible on 32 bit builds


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## Deleted User (Feb 16, 2021)

Leqz said:


> Save files are only compatible on 32 bit builds


the default downloads link to 64 bit, so that's what i ended up trying. thanks for letting me know
edit: there's no 32 bit opengl version, bruh

edit2: nope, still incompatible. probably because it isn't compatible with saves that were used with silentpatch


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## ChibiMofo (Feb 17, 2021)

Latiodile said:


> rockstar are scum but not nearly on the level of nintendo when it comes to taking down content



They are scum for protecting their IP, which they are required by US law to do in order to maintain their rights to the property? Are you a troll or just that ill-informed about the adult (read as: non-gamer) world?


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## FAST6191 (Feb 17, 2021)

Purple_Shyguy said:


> Man the next few years are going to be NUTS for decompilations and source ports. I hear PErfect Dark decomp is coming along nicely.
> 
> Only a matter of time before companies start sending out C&D's for these projects.



I am stunned it has not happened already. I don't know if a company fears setting a bad precedent if someone challenges them and they fluff it or what.


As far as nuts... will probably get a little glut of it but then we will see the end of C being used in games (the nice versions and makes it easier compiler options sooner than that, with pace slowing quicker as the most interesting games get tackled first*) and all the devs moving to C++ (and OOP vs procedural is a game changer for game programming so they embraced it hard when the systems got powerful enough for it) for which useful decompilation is quite a lot more computing power out.
Hope you like PS1 and N64 era games, and maybe handhelds up to the DS. Maybe a few things that used MS' various .net/c# spinoffs too but that is not the biggest number. Maybe a few more if different ports, developer leftovers and code leaks found in hard drives of dead game designers yield some of the nice function names or partial code. Plus the usual "well this open source game uses a very similar engine so..." and actual nuts people that disassemble and/or recreate from play and observation.

*basically see ROM hacking translations of 8 and 16 bit era games as it stands today where most of the big RPGs and platformers where pubs of the time seemingly did not like money and refused to bring them out of Japan have already been tackled and that mainly leaves the stuff that did not make the quality bar, or revisiting things that maybe had a rushed/censored/botched translation or cart size restrictions.



MikaDubbz said:


> Yeah, it is interesting to note how many we've been seeing lately.  I think it's super fascinating, now we have games like GTA III running natively on the Switch and even Wii U, even though it never released for a Nintendo system, and emulators weren't about to make such a game reasonably playable on these systems any time soon either.  Likewise to see the likes of Mario 64 on the freaking Dreamcast.  The possibilities seem endless, and kinda ensures that the homebrew and modding scenes for many systems wont completely fade away.



I figure there will always be some coder that fancies a challenge, wants to kick it old school or needs a project to use to learn an obscure system (rarely is a job so secure as someone that handles a legacy system that nobody else knows sort of thing). However with PCs being a commodity item (I have had people I taught to open email turn around and buy a cheapy single purpose laptop for themselves to do just one thing with like they might buy a kitchen gadget), phones doing what they do and stuff like the raspberry pi doing what it does then homebrew like those that saw it on the xbox, GBA, DS, PSP, Wii and the like will probably never reach the heights again... at least until


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## Kwyjor (Feb 17, 2021)

MikaDubbz said:


> I would love to have the entire GTA III collection decompiled and available on all the newer hacked systems like Switch, Vita, and even Wii U.


But... why? It's the same game with the same content you've already played and enjoyed on other platforms.  Wouldn't you rather have _new_ content?


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## MikaDubbz (Feb 17, 2021)

Kwyjor said:


> But... why? It's the same game with the same content you've already played and enjoyed on other platforms.  Wouldn't you rather have _new_ content?


Sure, but I don't believe the work from the modders porting these games is taking away from the development of any new titles I'm interested in.


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## Milenko (Feb 17, 2021)

We don't need doom on a pacemaker but here we are


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## Deleted User (Feb 17, 2021)

i remember reading on /g/ that someone made an OpenBSD port

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------



Kwyjor said:


> But... why? It's the same game with the same content you've already played and enjoyed on other platforms.  Wouldn't you rather have _new_ content?


improvements, these things are important for the improvements, for example, Doom ports often have a bunch of improvements, like higher resolutions and better controls, there's also the fact some people like playing certain games over and over, and having it on multiple platforms, even esoteric ones, is good for that


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## CheeseMan13 (Feb 17, 2021)

Prans said:


> View attachment 246798 View attachment 246797​
> Two of the earlier entries to the _Grand Theft Auto _series have been fully reverse-engineered by a team of modders. Re3 and ReVC are the respective reversed source code for _GTA III_ and _GTA Vice City _that have been made available to download. Those releases bring new features to those games such as widescreen support, debug menu and improved rendering. They also open doors to future modding and tinkering for those titles and the project has also been ported to the Nintendo Switch, Playstation Vita and Nintendo Wii U.
> 
> A few screenshots of those mods in action have also been made available:
> ...


Now to wait for San Andreas!


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## Deleted User (Feb 17, 2021)

ChibiMofo said:


> They are scum for protecting their IP, which they are required by US law to do in order to maintain their rights to the property? Are you a troll or just that ill-informed about the adult (read as: non-gamer) world?


last i checked, shutting down charities just because it used a modified version of the joycon logo isn't protecting any sort of IP
nintendo are scum, they're not just protecting their shit, they're just being assholes

last i checked, shutting down tournaments for trying to use a modded version of a game, in order to comply with covid safety rules, isn't protecting their ip

last i checked, most tournament hosts actually pay their winners their awards

that argument is ancient and invalid, try to use another one for once
also if it was required by US law to dmca basically all fan content imaginable, then why does literally every other company not bother? it's only nintendo that go full martial law on fan content

are you a troll or just ill informed of the shit nintendo does?


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## isoboy (Feb 17, 2021)

I believe the PS2 version has song they cut due to copyright or licensing or something on PC...is it all in?


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## Deleted User (Feb 17, 2021)

isoboy said:


> I believe the PS2 version has song they cut due to copyright or licensing or something on PC...is it all in?


the pc version has intact songs, i compared the length of flash fm and it's the same


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## CTR640 (Feb 17, 2021)

Latiodile said:


> the pc version has intact songs, i compared the length of flash fm and it's the same


If you have the Hoodlum version or V2 San Andreas, you have all the songs intact. If Steam version, songs are cut due to copyrights ended. Or has R* extended them for Steam version?


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## Deleted User (Feb 17, 2021)

CTR640 said:


> If you have the Hoodlum version or V2 San Andreas, you have all the songs intact. If Steam version, songs are cut due to copyrights ended. Or has R* extended them for Steam version?


this is a thread about 3/vc right?

i forgot that steam has 2 versions of vice city, one for people who purchased it before a certain date with all of the music intact, and one for those who purchased it after a certain date with removed music


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## Leqz (Feb 17, 2021)

Latiodile said:


> this is a thread about 3/vc right?
> 
> i forgot that steam has 2 versions of vice city, one for people who purchased it before a certain date with all of the music intact, and one for those who purchased it after a certain date with removed music



Except it never did get removed even for a newly purchased copy on Steam. This only apply to Steam though, any other digital versions have cut the music. Radio talk start around 1:30


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## pcwizard7 (Feb 17, 2021)

edit


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## Dartz150 (Feb 17, 2021)

CheeseMan13 said:


> Now to wait for San Andreas!



You words have been listened, is already out:



Please note that for the time being, it only runs on the Vita since this is completely different than the other reverse engineered ports.


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## Deleted User (Feb 17, 2021)

Leqz said:


> Except it never did get removed even for a newly purchased copy on Steam. This only apply to Steam though, any other digital versions have cut the music. Radio talk start around 1:30



forgot about that, i remember watching that video ages ago


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## tofttwaswas (Feb 17, 2021)

Prans said:


> View attachment 246798 View attachment 246797​
> Two of the earlier entries to the _Grand Theft Auto _series have been fully reverse-engineered by a team of modders. Re3 and ReVC are the respective reversed source code for _GTA III_ and _GTA Vice City _that have been made available to download. Those releases bring new features to those games such as widescreen support, debug menu and improved rendering. They also open doors to future modding and tinkering for those titles and the project has also been ported to the Nintendo Switch, Playstation Vita and Nintendo Wii U.
> 
> A few screenshots of those mods in action have also been made available:
> ...


now gta V


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## Deleted User (Feb 17, 2021)

I can confirm re3 works (sorta) on L4T Ubuntu for the Nintendo Switch. Yeah I know there is a direct port for the Nintendo Switch but I still wanted to try to build it


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## Subtle Demise (Feb 17, 2021)

ChibiMofo said:


> They are scum for protecting their IP, which they are required by US law to do in order to maintain their rights to the property? Are you a troll or just that ill-informed about the adult (read as: non-gamer) world?


That is false. Copyright, and by extension, intellectual property, is protected by law the moment it is created. You could allow people to pirate said property for 20 years and then out of the blue just start issuing take downs and filing lawsuits and be within your rights to do so. What you're thinking of is trademark law, which doesn't apply here.


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## Viri (Feb 17, 2021)

tofttwaswas said:


> now gta V


I'd rather see a GTA IV port first, so they can fix the shitty port that we got on PC. But GTA SA and the PSP games would also be nice.


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## Julie_Pilgrim (Feb 18, 2021)

Azerus_Kun said:


> improvements, these things are important for the improvements, for example, Doom ports often have a bunch of improvements, like higher resolutions and better controls, there's also the fact some people like playing certain games over and over, and having it on multiple platforms, even esoteric ones, is good for that


To be exact, sourceports are the ones with improvements, regular ports are just the game most of the time


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## Randy Steele (Feb 18, 2021)

Has anyone else had an issue with their thumb sticks not working in San Andreas on the Vita? All the other controls work but I'm unable to move CJ or the camera unfortunatly


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## pcwizard7 (Feb 18, 2021)

has anyone seen the gta vc port for the switch?


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## pwsincd (Feb 20, 2021)

https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2021/02/2021-02-19-take-two.md


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## FAST6191 (Feb 20, 2021)

Time for keep sharing those tapes then. I imagine enough people have dumps of it all (not like earlier times in life) that it is not going to be possible to erase it.

Had wondered why such things did not happen on other similar projects.


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## Deleted User (Feb 20, 2021)

FAST6191 said:


> Time for keep sharing those tapes then. I imagine enough people have dumps of it all (not like earlier times in life) that it is not going to be possible to erase it.
> 
> Had wondered why such things did not happen on other similar projects.


because other companies aren't dumb enough to try to take down something that's likely covered by fair use
unless it's on youtube


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## naddel81 (Feb 20, 2021)

Latiodile said:


> because other companies aren't dumb enough to try to take down something that's likely covered by fair use
> unless it's on youtube


There goes that great project. They directly follow nintendo's attitude unfortunately.


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## FAST6191 (Feb 20, 2021)

Latiodile said:


> because other companies aren't dumb enough to try to take down something that's likely covered by fair use
> unless it's on youtube


How on earth does decompilation in this manner fall under fair use?


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## Deleted User (Feb 20, 2021)

FAST6191 said:


> How on earth does decompilation in this manner fall under fair use?


reverse engineering counts as fair use, if it wasn't then there would be a lot of shit that would have gotten taken down YEARS ago, like openMW, openRCT2, even nintendo haven't even bothered to take down the mario 64 decompilation project (as far as i know)


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## FAST6191 (Feb 20, 2021)

Latiodile said:


> reverse engineering counts as fair use, if it wasn't then there would be a lot of shit that would have gotten taken down YEARS ago, like openMW, openRCT2, even nintendo haven't even bothered to take down the mario 64 decompilation project (as far as i know)


Certain types of reverse engineering and uses for it count as that.

Typically clean room reverse engineering. That is to say you play the game, interpret the mechanics and then go from there, possibly even handing it off to a secondary team in the big boy cases just so you can plausibly say nobody that wrote this touched the original code. Nightmarishly tedious and thus usually limited to protocols (various network and whatnot, or Windows API for things like WINE and reactos) and simple formats, or highly desirable formats (say Microsoft office formats) where less than 100% might still be more than good enough (figure out bold, center, font, italic, underline and maybe a table and you have probably 95% of Word documents going).

Playing with a disassembler and decompiler to recreate the source code, whether you have a nice boost from some developer leftovers giving you all the function names or go from scratch, or determining nature of formats is anything but that. This is what they would have done for this. Do something like this to your competitor's software in industry and you will get all kinds of fired and sued.

Ignoring forensics reasons ("did they steal my code?") then there are other accepted reasons/defences like dodging dead activation or dead multiplayer servers, maybe cross platform compatibility (this would be about the only in and stretching the reasoning for that beyond what I imagine any court would accept, or any kind of case law I have seen. It is however one of the "substantial non infringing uses" given for emulation being acceptable along with development, homebrew and accessibility).


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