AI Recomping Controversy, PC Games on Switch and more (ft. Scarlet) - Tempcast #99

Flame · 2026-10-01T08:24:48+0100

Great one this one.

But you guys are showing your stuff, I cant see your stuff. Its a podcast not a video.

AlanJohn · 2026-10-01T08:41:57+0100

Flame said:
Great one this one.

But you guys are showing your stuff, I cant see your stuff. It’s a podcast not a video.

Explain this to @Ericzander

Dark_Ansem · 2026-10-01T09:28:46+0100

The problem with AI decomps is that AI will hallucinate what does what, so at the end...

Costello · 2026-10-01T09:30:22+0100

Dark_Ansem said:
The problem with AI decomps is that AI will hallucinate what does what, so at the end...

for that sort of things, I am pretty sure the AI creates deterministic tools that will not hallucinate.
But I could be wrong? maybe someone who has done this before can confirm?

skawo · 2026-10-01T09:58:56+0100

Costello said:
for that sort of things, I am pretty sure the AI creates deterministic tools that will not hallucinate.
But I could be wrong? maybe someone who has done this before can confirm?

If your goal is just to create PC port, sure. The AI can do that. It will probably eventually create a functionally-equivalent but nonsensical codebase full of fakematches (things that compile to the same binary, but are not anywhere close to what was in the original code) and without naming stuff properly.

Said codebase is effectively useless to humans afterwards (and possibly also AI, lacking context from the previous runs), because trying to understand what it does requires you to repeat the reverse engineering effort.

I mean just look at this AI Decomp of Banjo Kazooie. Does any of this code actually tell you anything about how the game works? https://gitlab.com/banjo.decomp/banjo-kazooie/-/blob/master/src/core2/code_C4B0.c

Compare with a decomp done properly:
https://github.com/zeldaret/oot/blob/main/src/code/z_collision_check.c
https://github.com/SMGCommunity/Petari/blob/master/src/Game/AreaObj/CollisionArea.cpp

Lop1 · 2026-10-01T10:57:51+0100

skawo said:
If your goal is just to create PC port, sure. The AI can do that. It will probably eventually create a functionally-equivalent but nonsensical codebase full of fakematches (things that compile to the same binary, but are not anywhere close to what was in the original code) and without naming stuff properly.

Said codebase is effectively useless to humans afterwards (and possibly also AI, lacking context from the previous runs), because trying to understand what it does requires you to repeat the reverse engineering effort.

I mean just look at this AI Decomp of Banjo Kazooie. Does any of this code actually tell you anything about how the game works? https://gitlab.com/banjo.decomp/banjo-kazooie/-/blob/master/src/core2/code_C4B0.c

Compare with a decomp done properly:
https://github.com/zeldaret/oot/blob/main/src/code/z_collision_check.c
https://github.com/SMGCommunity/Petari/blob/master/src/Game/AreaObj/CollisionArea.cpp

And I thought I was writing messy code. Jesus Christ that is awful.

JuanMena · 2026-10-01T12:33:49+0100

skawo said:
I mean just look at this AI Decomp of Banjo Kazooie. Does any of this code actually tell you anything about how the game works? https://gitlab.com/banjo.decomp/banjo-kazooie/-/blob/master/src/core2/code_C4B0.c

Not humanly... but I'm sure AI can "decrypt" the code.

If I were to write my code using StarFox Adventure's Dino Language, AI will easily get everything but to a human that doesn't know what "Saurian" is it'll be nonsense. There's absolutely no way that code was human written, and maybe is on purpose to effectively keep humans from reading it.

bonkmaykr · 2026-10-01T13:00:48+0100

skawo said:
I mean just look at this AI Decomp of Banjo Kazooie. Does any of this code actually tell you anything about how the game works? https://gitlab.com/banjo.decomp/banjo-kazooie/-/blob/master/src/core2/code_C4B0.c

Jesus. I can't even call this a decompilation. Most of the work reconstructing the code was not even done. This looks like someone just threw the entire Ghidra output at Claude and said "make it perfect

and robust

and super fast

".

And this is why people who exclusively rely on AI without a prior understanding of what to do without it are doomed to fail. I have yet to see a large-scale AI codebase that does not have code smells or major architectural fuck-ups. I don't mind if it's used conservatively by experienced programmers, this was obviously not.

Foxi4 · 2026-10-01T13:05:53+0100

Costello said:
for that sort of things, I am pretty sure the AI creates deterministic tools that will not hallucinate.
But I could be wrong? maybe someone who has done this before can confirm?

It will generate whatever ”source” translates to the same machine code after compilation which may or may not (likely not) match the original source due to how compilers work (you can code something 8 different ways and once the compiler is done with it you end up with the same binary anyway, you just used a different convention or approach). This has no impact on the end result since the end result is a binary.

EDIT: Nevermind, somebody already responded in a more verbose way.

ChibiMofo · 2026-10-01T13:37:16+0100

Whatever degenerative AI is doing today, it will be doing 1000x better two years from now. This type of work is perfect for AI because it is tedious, technical, and does not require creativity. And even today, whatever spaghetti-code that was created in that AI Decomp of Banjo Kazooie can be cleaned up and commented by other more powerful AIs today. Bad AI examples should not reinfornce a believe that all AI is bad and will continue to be. I fcking hate what these companies are doing to us, the absolute corruption involved, and how there are no meaningful safeguards being put into place to protect humanity from the tech. But it is amazing what it can do when trained properly and utilized responsibly.

Just to be clear, some of the very worst moments over the next 20 years for large swaths of humans will be a result of advances in AI. All the other threats I have seen come and go in my 50+ annual trips around the Sun are not even worth mentioning by comparison. AI is being added to every type of large scale weapon. It's is able today to reach hospitals, water treatment plants, military bases and everywhere else were humans are dumb enough to connect critical infrastructure to the whole rest of the world. But unlike Russian or North Korean ransomeware clowns, AI is a million times faster, more adaptable, and being used by all states right now in preperation for attacks and counter attacks. But also by criminals gangs and terrorists.

JK_ · 2026-10-01T13:44:39+0100

skawo said:
I mean just look at this AI Decomp of Banjo Kazooie. Does any of this code actually tell you anything about how the game works? https://gitlab.com/banjo.decomp/banjo-kazooie/-/blob/master/src/core2/code_C4B0.c

This is what I bet most people think C code actually looks like. Add some green colors, flashing, and terminal output and you've got yourself a sweet hacker setup for a movie.

Jaedon · 2026-10-01T14:11:29+0100

Can't wait for the 100th episode

Jayro · 2026-10-01T18:24:25+0100

I don't think there should be any controversy, AI has accelerated recomps and porting games to the MiSTer FPGA at an alarming rate. I'm excited to see what else comes down the decomp/recomp pipeline.

raxadian · 2026-10-01T18:44:38+0100

Playing Jazz Jackrabbit 2 on my Vita, let's the AI ports roll out.

Me > You

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