Wind Waker static recompilation makes its way to PC

SapphireLabs · 2026-10-03T19:29:05+0100

Exnor said:
DMCA might say otherwise but AINAL. I hope Nintendo does not have any way to nuke this projects.

They'd probably go after the SM64 port first, at least that one is complete. I don't really see a legal path to it through, the same reason Atmosphere is allowed to exist.

Exnor · 2026-10-03T20:03:14+0100

SapphireLabs said:
I can write a complete bootstrap -> BIOS -> UEFI -> Kernel -> OS tree entirely in ATT assembly, without an IDE or internet access.

The point being that a working product, and a _good_ working product, are entirely different things. Just because it runs does not mean it runs well, nor is the author capable of fixing the various edge cases that will arise, and due to their lack of knowledge and reliance on AI assistance, won't be able to fix it, or the fix will be a bandaid. You're literally looking at a repo made almost entirely by AI that simply runs the game. Great, cool, now adapt that to actually be performant. What's your plan when the author doesn't know what the hard float part of armhf means, and the build fails to compile? Random oGL / vlk / dx invocations that don't actually exist? Idle and wait loops that break HPET?

There is so much more to programming than having something run, and if your code was primarily designed by an AI, your product / software / toy will *never* be as good as something you make yourself, even if you're trash at programming.

Ok so you are decent coder, congrats. That does not mean all coders are at the same level.

And yes, some of the recomps are kinda crappy (some are even Slop), but you cant expect that all coders to have the same skills and experience and still contribute their time to the homebrew scene.
Some of these coders are most likely still students, and yet they try. And they will learn from this experience and maybe one day they will reach you level.

Using LLM/DL/ML is not a bad thing if used by people who know what they are doing.

Also, no one is forcing anyone to use this software. This is not hurting the more capable devs because there is nothing to gain. This is full FOSS, so who cares? If its AI Slop just name and shame and move on.

Coolsonickirby · 2026-10-03T20:11:49+0100

Exnor said:
By some people logic (those how are crying about AI), coders should not use algorithms to automate some of their task... Maybe, instead of being a bunch of cry baby's, go and try to code and see how far you will get without modern tools. In fact go full assembly in binary, otherwise you are using a compiler that is in itself an program with algorithms that facilitates coding (!!)

Didn't expect to read something this naive when I woke up today.

There's a massive difference between scripts written by hand to handle a bunch of tasks, a compiler that runs natively on your machine and translates from one language to another, and an LLM that's trained on a massive amount of stolen data and ruins the lives of many others by consuming resources that are local to them just to let people not think for themselves. Please do the basic minimum amount of research so you don't end up spouting such nonsense in the future.

As for the main post, was excited to see another recomp only for it to end up being AI carried. Will pass on this.

Exnor · 2026-10-03T20:22:45+0100

Coolsonickirby said:
Didn't expect to read something this naive when I woke up today.

There's a massive difference between scripts written by hand to handle a bunch of tasks, a compiler that runs natively on your machine and translates from one language to another, and an LLM that's trained on a massive amount of stolen data and ruins the lives of many others by consuming resources that are local to them just to let people not think for themselves. Please do the basic minimum amount of research so you don't end up spouting such nonsense in the future.

As for the main post, was excited to see another recomp only for it to end up being AI carried. Will pass on this.

I am not defending the use of "Ai". I am well aware of all the current problems . I am only stating that it is just another tool, and if used correctly its a very powerful tool.

You are mixing different discussion topics.

Coolsonickirby · 2026-10-03T20:28:44+0100

Exnor said:
I am not defending the use of "Ai". I am well aware of all the current problems . I am only stating that it is just another tool, and if used correctly its a very powerful tool.

You are mixing different discussion topics.

The problem is you're treating both tools as if they have the same issues the moment you compared using an LLM to a compiler or a script, when that clearly isn't the case. The consequences of using an LLM is vastly different than the consequences of using a script or a compiler.

Sure, an (online) LLM is a very powerful tool, but how it got there and the consequences of using said tool outweigh its benefits by a very long shot. If you have a button that gives you a million dollars every time you press it, but kills a random person, then that's a very powerful tool but the consequences of it isn't worth it.

ChronosNotashi · 2026-10-03T20:40:32+0100

munnimann said:
You say this as if the majority of AI complains on this forum aren't coming from people with no experience in coding whatsoever, engaging in undeserved and uninformed elitism, whereas the majority of developers in 2026 use AI coding assistance in some form. The purist anti-AI stance is, regardless of the ethical and environmental arguments behind it, removed from the reality of the field.

You say all this under the assumption that at least half the people who use AI to do 60-70%+ of the work know what the hell they're doing on the coding end to begin with. The reality is that half (or more) of them don't even know the bare basics of coding (ex: they never took a single computer coding class in college, nor read a single page of "[C/C++/C#/Javascript/etc] for Dummies"), and just let AI and a couple kindhearted volunteers do basically all the work. I know of a Phantasy Star Online project that was doing that for a browser "remake", and got DMCA'd by Sega.

Exnor · 2026-10-03T20:44:56+0100

Coolsonickirby said:
The problem is you're treating both tools as if they have the same issues the moment you compared using an LLM to a compiler or a script, when that clearly isn't the case. The consequences of using an LLM is vastly different than the consequences of using a script or a compiler.

Sure, an (online) LLM is a very powerful tool, but how it got there and the consequences of using said tool outweigh its benefits by a very long shot. If you have a button that gives you a million dollars every time you press it, but kills a random person, then that's a very powerful tool but the consequences of it isn't worth it.

A well trained LLM model can, in theory, be a good tool.

I am not discussing those topics in this thread. I have already shared my opinion on those topics in other threads and i'm tired of repeating myself.

NostalgicMillennial · 2026-10-03T21:26:10+0100

SK91 said:
Rather just wait for the Windwaker decomp to be done and then polished up to see a true source port
It’s closing in on 80% complete with rapid but not eyebrow raising progress
Been checking in on it all year

Same

Been watching it stuck at like ~70% for mooonnnths

SapphireLabs · 2026-10-03T21:53:54+0100

NostalgicMillennial said:
Same

Been watching it stuck at like ~70% for mooonnnths

Want to catch me up to speed on what's wrong? I could probably contribute

RedBlueGreen · 2026-10-03T22:21:34+0100

Lumstar said:
The humor in a community with a large number of pirates, opposing an project whose players are more likely than not pirating the game to play it.

I would totally legally rip my copy of Sunshine to play a decomp if my copy weren't scratched to hell.

munnimann · 2026-10-04T03:03:35+0100

SapphireLabs said:
It doesn't matter in the slightest how capable the model is, or how good you are at making a prompt, if *you* do not understand what you're doing, *you* can not validate, verify, test, and improve the code being held in your face.

Sure, I didn't say anything to the contrary. And I didn't say anything specific about this exact project, which I haven't cecked. I'm commenting on GBAtemp's (and social media in general) way of engaging with literally anything AI, that's why I called it purist. It lacks the very distinction that you're making. Whether a project is fully vibe-coded, whether AI was used for documentation, or simple clean-up tasks, as soon as the letters AI appear all the discussion afterwards is about "AI slop".

DuoForce said:
Doesn't matter. Ports like these are also made by people with little to no coding skills. "removed from the reality of the field" actually it isn't. You just don't like that I have a different opinion than yours. One that isn't harmful to our world.

I didn't share an opinion about the project or whether I approve of AI or not. I said that the majority of developers in 2026 are using AI coding asstistance tools in one way or another. That's not an opinion, that's a simple fact established by numerous polls. And it's true regardless of how harmful it is to the environment. And the trends are continuing to go up. Avoiding all softwares, systems, codes, etc. that involved ANY use of AI assisted coding is effectively already impossible. The Linux kernel has already received multiple AI generated and/or assisted updates and the documentation explicitly allows the use of AI coding assistants. The same goes for Android and, given how heavily Microsoft promotes AI, probably Windows too. None of that is an opinion.

Xalusc · 2026-10-04T03:42:22+0100

Lumstar said:
Not that quality code isn't welcome, it makes future improvements more feasible.
But a typical player during the course of active gameplay doesn't need to know how a game was coded.

You're talking as if the subject of this thread doesn't run like absolute garbage.
"A player doesn't need to know how it was coded" but they can certainly tell, now, can't they?

Wisteria_ · 2026-10-04T05:26:46+0100

DuoForce said:
Because they're promoting AI-made slop to the front page which hurts the scene and hurts the people making actual human made decomps. You're damn right I got something to say about that.

Definitely. I wish there was more quality control.

Xzi · 2026-10-04T06:06:39+0100

Wisteria_ said:
Definitely. I wish there was more quality control.

Quality control is the individual. As long as the use of AI is disclosed, everybody can make their own determination on whether that's a deal-breaker or not.

Personally I don't mind it in instances where the goal is creating a 100% accurate port of a game with a few extra bells and whistles. It's when people use AI to try to make "improvements" on the original gameplay/graphics that things start to get really messy and divisive.

And hey, free is free. Anybody with enough money to pay for a subscription to one of the latest frontier models could instead be using them solely to make themselves richer. So while it is a low bar, at least providing something to the public at large is a much more interesting and worthwhile use of the technology.

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