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Paper Mario PC port "Paper Boat" gets its first public release

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After being in the works for quite a while now, the latest project from the Harbour Masters team finally makes port. You can now download the first release of Paper Boat on Windows, Mac, and Linux, with the game being playable from start to finish. At the time of writing there aren't a huge number of enhancements, with the game supporting custom aspect ratios and a few cheats. There is a mod menu included though, so I'll be excited to see what the community comes up with for the game.

As always this project ships without any assets, requiring you to provide your own ROM on first boot. Be reminded that this forum is not a place to request or share such things.

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Internet drama, ho!

Anyway, while i'm sitting on the "no vibe-coding" side of the fence, I still think there's a silver lining to these ports/decomps/recomps, and that is being another option to play certain games we own through a modern experience without old hardware limitations.

I mean, if you seriously prefer the original, then play the original. you want your shiny gallon of Anisotropic Filtering and other graphic enhancements? Emulators already do that.
This is just another way, and if you can't trust the code, then that's totally alright too.

Personally I think it all comes down to stability. That means any generated code needs to be properly double-checked and triple-tested. ports also need to have more updates after their initial release, and not abandon them within a month.
Basically I wouldn't trust a project that was mostly or completely generated by a machine, primarily due to the expected lack of stability and long-term support.
 
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NostalgicMillennial said:
Yes this exactly. LLMs allows us to have these ports much faster without straining developers as much. You do realize that Windwaker has been in the decomp process for about 3 years and Melee was 6 years. Those are getting manually decomped.

Not everyone is going to be able to take the time to port each and every game to PC.

If the final product works who really cares?
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By that logic why bother recompiling games when 2+ decades of emulation research are behind us? Most emulators already work fine. I think we're in a good enough place where waiting however long for polish isn't so much to ask. A barebones port job indistinguishable from emulation or a dual-screen mod for a game not designed around it just isn't gonna cut it for me.
Fyrus said:
They're pretty much using it as a tool, not as an asset generation

But of course people a free to believe what they want to
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I hope this wasn't made by the team for the Thunderful mod database, cuz this just looks awful.
 
I pity people who are anti-GenAI no matter what.
Sucks to be you I guess, :(

Meanwhile, I'll continue enjoying the great many benefits this new tech brings while acknowledging its limitations.

Now I need to wait for the Master Quest mod to be completed and "ported to this port".
 
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Kitocco said:
I hope this wasn't made by the team for the Thunderful mod database, cuz this just looks awful.
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Nobody know who did that "art", and HM don't have a presence in Thunderstore, they prefer Gamebanana

EDIT : Sorry, art is relative, maybe some Presidents who could call that art
 
SecureBoot said:
I'm getting real tired of this discussion. Not every project that uses AI code is slop. I feel like the HM team has earned their reputation of providing quality ports that are well maintained have they not?

I feel like it's becoming the post covid mask thing. At a certain point, people are just virtue signaling (not saying everyone who wears a mask in the big 26 is virtue signalling, but many are)
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NostalgicMillennial said:
Yes this exactly. LLMs allows us to have these ports much faster without straining developers as much. You do realize that Windwaker has been in the decomp process for about 3 years and Melee was 6 years. Those are getting manually decomped.

Not everyone is going to be able to take the time to port each and every game to PC.

If the final product works who really cares?
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"b-but don't you understand, they used an LLM, the tool of the devil, therefore they're worse than Nintendo, Disney, Nessle, AND Hitler combined!!!1!"


Nuance on the internet is practically in the earth's core at the rate things are going.
 
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BlusterBong said:
"b-but don't you understand, they used an LLM, the tool of the devil, therefore they're worse than Nintendo, Disney, Nessle, AND Hitler combined!!!1!"


Nuance on the internet is practically in the earth's core at the rate things are going.
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That's something I've been thinking about a lot recently- especially since I've had Internet access through most of my adolescence. Now that I am firmly into adulthood, the dissonance between how nuance is treated online versus in person is bizarre to me. Obviously that in and of itself is a tired discussion, but in my experience, it isn't that difficult to communicate "I understand there is nuance here". Maybe it's because people don't want to spend the time to articulate, or just want to firmly establish whose "side" they're on. It seems people are conditioned to respond intensely to nearly everything. I've found it makes discussion really boring though, because that nuance is where the most interesting conversation lives. I don't remember it being this bad when I was a kid, but maybe it always was.
 
I'm genuinely astonished by this community's ability to somehow whine about literally everything. These ports, AI or not, are entirely fan made and distributed to us completely free of charge. They had no obligation to make much of anything and there's no obligation to use them if you don't like them. What are people even complaining about at this point?
 
For those worrying about AI due to energy / ethical reasons, let's just assume they were all using local models on their own hardware, powered via energy from solar panels. It's possible.

As for the code quality issues, that's a shame, but could happen even with "human written" code too.
If the project owners / PR reviewers aren't doing a good job of preventing bad code getting in, that's not AI's fault.

The humans are to blame, and using AI isn't really the issue.
 
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cearp said:
For those worrying about AI due to energy / ethical reasons, let's just assume they were all using local models on their own hardware, powered via energy from solar panels. It's possible.

As for the code quality issues, that's a shame, but could happen even with "human written" code too.
If the project owners / PR reviewers aren't doing a good job of preventing bad code getting in, that's not AI's fault.

The humans are to blame, and using AI isn't really the issue.
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Exactly, but what makes trusting these projects more difficult is that the amount of times bad coding being left as is, happens often rather than being rare cases.
 
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Well ... what shall I say.; Not all use of AI is bad use of AI by default.

But to shed some light on what I find bad use of AI:
If you are a non-coder, with no real knowledge or skill in the field or any clear understanding what your AI code actually does to a degree that you can clearly explain it's workings without being wrong about what it does. Dont get me started on non-vetted AI code at all. Let me also include excessive commented code as well, If everything is explained in your code to such an extent ... you did not code it ... you only conceptualized it. (Which in itself if done right is not a bad thing)

I work at a company where different departments make use of AI on a regular basis. But let's just say there are some who fit the bad use category for sure even here. But hey in the long run I have learned that when push comes to shove, and something breaks, stops working, fs up etc and their AI get's lost in itself or the 'nice' code it did create they will be exposed as lacking pretty quickly. (Also I refuse to help after the fact in such cases ... call it principle, call it being a d.. that just how I am wired)

AI can help get things moving along quicker, but AI should not be a replacement for skill, knowledge, art, passion etc.

Edit: Typo's
 
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cearp said:
For those worrying about AI due to energy / ethical reasons, let's just assume they were all using local models on their own hardware, powered via energy from solar panels. It's possible.

As for the code quality issues, that's a shame, but could happen even with "human written" code too.
If the project owners / PR reviewers aren't doing a good job of preventing bad code getting in, that's not AI's fault.

The humans are to blame, and using AI isn't really the issue.
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Like I said on another thread, I think it helps to look at this from the viewpoint of asset flips. Nothing wrong with asset use, but when it substitutes basic tenets of game development or any semblance of vision... we can tell.

That said, I'd love to assume most devs use local LLMs to assist in development, though each time on Github I see the usual suspects as co-authors & contributors. The Three C's, if you will; Claude, Codex, and Copilot. I know they can be run locally, but don't know if that produces the same co-authoring attribution.
 
Kitocco said:
I know they can be run locally, but don't know if that produces the same co-authoring attribution.
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You can't run the "paid" models (claude etc) locally,
and you can commit to a branch under any name you want or any commit message you want, so relying on the default attribution you see sometimes "Co-authored by Claude" etc, is pointless.

I mean, if you see it, it's likely true lol, but if you don't, it's still not 100% guarantee AI wasn't used.
(Just stating the facts, I think it's ok to use AI as long as it's good code)
 

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