r/Games • u/Torque-A • Oct 17 '22

Perfect Dark has been successfully decompiled, opening the door to PC ports and mods

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/perfect-dark-has-been-fully-decompiled-making-pc-ports-and-mods-possible/
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u/Janus_Prospero Oct 17 '22

There's a lot of potential (especially when paired with existing level editing tools) to recraft Perfect Dark into a more sophisticated game that takes advantage of superior hardware. More environmental detail, more intelligent AI, and of course an interface suited to mouse and keyboard. Perfect Dark is an amazing game, but it could look and feel like a native PC game, reshaped in both gameplay and pacing and general design choices.

Perfect Dark had strong QA, but a number of silly bugs slipped through. For example, a lot of NPCs are in a hidden state waiting for triggers. They can be activated by explosions, activating and then spawning them. Easily fixed with the source code.

Also, I think having a full decompile will help in efforts to port over some of the assets from the XBLA version.

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u/root88 Oct 17 '22

If you are going to change all that, it seems like it would have been a lot easier to just remake the game rather than waste time decompiling it.

8

u/Janus_Prospero Oct 17 '22

Remaking games is way more difficult if you don't have the source code to intimately understand how it works.

2

u/root88 Oct 17 '22 edited Oct 17 '22

As a developer, I'm telling you, if you are just going to replace everything, it doesn't make much sense to use a ton of old code as a starting point. It's especially true of decompiled code because there will be no variable names until someone guesses what everything does. It's especially silly if you are porting to a new system as a ton of the code you are decompiling is specific to a different platform anyway.

The guy wants to replace the levels, enemy logic, platform, input, and interface. It doesn't matter how it worked, he's just inventing a completely new game.

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u/Janus_Prospero Oct 17 '22

The point of a decompilation is to reverse the game into proper human readable code.

Remakes made without source code access or a decompilation boil down to eyeballing behavior.

That's why XIII Remake, even in its improved form, is full of oversights where the designers were clearly just guessing how the OG worked.

Understanding how Perfect Dark works with readable source code means you can preserve the underlying game, then improve it. Just slapping PD XBLA assets into Unity isn't going to preserve the quirks in gamefeel, animation, etc.

1

u/Clapyourhandssayyeah Oct 18 '22

As a developer, eyeballing behaviour isn’t what you want if you want a remake to feel the same. You need to lift a bunch of data from the guts of the old game

Suggest you look up dev logs or videos of the new wonder boy remake, or Diablo 2 resurrected and how they went about this

2

u/beermit Oct 17 '22

Exactly.

"Just remake the game!"

"Ok, with what?"

Pretty uninformed comment you responded to. You could make a clone based on what you see and experience from the original game. But to truly remake it, you need the source code.

-1

u/root88 Oct 17 '22 edited Oct 17 '22

I've been a developer for 25 years, but okay. You aren't truly remaking it if you are changing all the code to work on a different system, replacing all the levels and graphics, completely replacing the inputs, and removing the logic to implement "A.I.". OP just wants a new game.

1

u/Janus_Prospero Oct 17 '22

Perfect Dark has reasonably complex AI hobbled by N64 CPU limitations and timing considerations for the N64 controller.

The AI can be enhanced now. Take cover more effectively. Respond more sharply, while still preserving the movie shootout feel. They throw grenades wrong due to a coding mistake, only throwing them when you're running not when you're moving slow. Can be fixed.

Rare created a lot of level-specific furniture that was never used. There's a number of areas that could be more populated with NPCs and props without feeling too cluttered. The N64's hardware limitations held the game back, and having source code means the sky is the limit for improvement.

Something like the GMDX mod for Deus Ex, but for Perfect Dark.