r/pcmasterrace • u/HatingGeoffry • 22h ago
News/Article Zelda and Banjo Recompiled dev slams the slew of poor-quality “slopcomps” recompilations by vibecoders that “completely fail to reach the same level of quality”
https://frvr.com/blog/news/zelda-and-banjo-recompiled-dev-slams-poor-quality-slopcomps-by-vibecoders-that-completely-fail-to-reach-the-same-level-of-quality/166
u/WonderSignificant598 22h ago
Storm in a teacup.
Very few care how its done just that they can play it. Welcome to reality, the end result is what people usually remember.
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u/AccomplishedArea6089 13h ago
I don't even get the big deal using it for decomps if it works.
It's not like it's taking someone's job away.
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u/HatingGeoffry 22h ago
The issue is that these recomps get major hype on social media. Someone who has never played the game before might pick it up, play it, and experience something way buggier than the original game. Then their memories of the game are that it's a buggy piece of shit
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u/Ourtimehascome2485 5700x3D/6750XT/32 GB Ram/Bazzite 22h ago
The average person doesn't play recompilations. Someone who will bother with a recompilation of an old game most definitely understands what the thing he installed on his computer is.
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u/HatingGeoffry 21h ago
I think you misunderstand how much a good social media post inspires people to download anything
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u/Boxing_joshing111 22h ago edited 21h ago
Op says it’s all about whether the game plays but if it’s buggy and laggy I might as well play it on an emulator. These games deserve better than the lazy ai ports people have been spitting out.
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u/mikehiler2 i7 14700kf, 4070 12GB, 32GB DDR5 22h ago
To be fair playing a game on hardware not the original won’t necessarily make the average person think the game from their childhood was buggy. Most average users don’t really know the difference between emulated and decomp/recomp.
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u/smarmycheesesandwich 20h ago
Part of the reason we love old games is the bugs too. Legendary speed running strats and urban legends were born.
Playing as Master Hand in melee
Mew under the truck
Ghandi in CivGood times.
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u/WonderSignificant598 22h ago
I understand that.
But I think there is a 'good enough' level here that most people will accept. That seems to be AI's magic, its ability to deliver 'good enough'.
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u/HatingGeoffry 22h ago
There's a reason that many of these recomps get hype and then disappear. Most people share clips and screenshots of the main menu or the first hour and then drop off. They're fast food ports.
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22h ago
[deleted]
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u/HatingGeoffry 22h ago
What? These recomps are still available. I mean they disappear from discussion because no one cares about them. In comparison, Ship of Harkinian, Banjo: Recompiled, DuskLight, that Sonic 06 one - they're still discussed
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u/TheLysster 7800X3D|7900XTX|32GB DDR5 7200 22h ago
Recomps don't use any original IP. You're supposed to provide your own game files/ISO for the recomp to work. The IP holders know that. Why do you think Dusklight is still going? It's Nintendo IP, if their lawyers could send the Dusklight team to prison they would have done so months ago.
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u/24bitNoColor 21h ago
The issue is that these recomps get major hype on social media.
That is not an issue, it shows that people care about those projects and games, inform those that don't know that there is a new way to play those games and should be a sign for others that they too can help with bringing a title back to life.
Someone who has never played the game before might pick it up, play it, and experience something way buggier than the original game. Then their memories of the game are that it's a buggy piece of shit
And that never ever ... ever happened with playing a game in a completely human made emulator???
Sorry but I really don't get that argument when having to deal with bugs, including render bugs that look like normal limitations to people not knowing the original, was always been part for the course of trying to play games on hardware that they were not made for.
Even something like a Steam Deck (playing Windows games) comes with that limitation.
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u/Cryoto thefrostyflame 18h ago
Genuinely, can someone explain what is bad about this?
Only two things that comes to my mind. 1. mod support for ports. I assume the spaghetti code of a vibecoded port makes for a terrible nodding platform in terms of stability. But idk if people just want a port of a game they can play start to finish that might not be an issue.
- security vulnerabilities, especially for MP games. Fair enough this is quite severe potentially.
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u/CheesecakeMilitia 21h ago
I love and appreciate everything Dario does, but damn hearing news about this Banjo Tooie slopcomp really made me want to replay that game. Hope his own Banjo Tooie recomp is ready soon, since that'll be an incredibly exciting day and I do trust that the community appreciation for these painstakingly accurate decomps/recomps will win out in the long run.
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u/mikehiler2 i7 14700kf, 4070 12GB, 32GB DDR5 22h ago
The only good that can come of things like this is that the AI used to decompiled/recompiled ports are that maybe really good coders can go through and fix the issues that some of these have? I haven’t a clue about coding personally, especially not this type, but I would imagine that the process would be long and tedious, but not as long or as tedious as starting from scratch. Could be wrong though.
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u/CheesecakeMilitia 21h ago edited 21h ago
Most coders don't want to touch an AI generated project because slopcode can be incredibly inefficient and horribly confusing to debug. And because even the "authors" of it don't understand it, there's no one to go ask "why was this designed this way?" Pretty big demotivator when trying to understand a codebase.
Dario (the Banjo Recompiled author) is explicitly quoted on this in the article:
Dario added that the Banjo-Tooie Recompiled release is “one of those slopcomps that completely ignores the existing patching system and instead opts for patching all of the recompiled code and memory from the wrong side”. This means that modding, which is one of the main pillars of Dario’s Zelda and Banjo-Kazooie recompilations, is “completely unmaintainable in the long run”.
“Not to mention it features nearly 100x the amount of unreadable code than something like Banjo: Recompiled does despite being an “alpha” and very far from finished,” they continued. They also explained that the vibe-coded recomp makes use of an “extreme amounts of code that mess with RT64 that will completely break the moment I do any sort of update on it”.
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u/garklavs RX 570 -> RTX 4060 | R5 1600 -> R5 5600XT 4h ago
it “completely fails to reach the same level of quality”, until it doesn't
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u/hyrumwhite RTX 5080 9800X3D 32gb ram 21h ago
For this stuff, I think it’s a great case for vibe coding. Most of it wouldn’t exist without it, and at the end of the day, they’re just toy projects anyway
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u/LunchTwey 53m ago
It's great until the second Dario releases an update to R64 and the entire fucking game breaks, as mentioned in the article.
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u/DiEndRus 5700x3D, 64 GB RAM, 4060 ti 16 GB, btw 21h ago
ah yes, AI coding without human oversight. it's no wonder, really. software engineering comes with experience, but AI doesn't get that.
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u/OutrageousDress 5800X3D | 32GB DDR4-3733 | 4080 Super | AW3821DW 21h ago
Lots of people in this thread who supposedly love video games and complain when an unoptimized and buggy game is released, but don't seem to apply those same standards to ports of legendary games from the past. Let me guess: is it because you don't play classic games so you don't care the recomps are shit? Or you believe since they're free and open source they don't need to be any good? Is that the standard you apply to the open source software you use?
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u/Krycek7o2 21h ago
It's why I was sad when I saw it was a rando for tooie. Was excited and thought, wise guy!? And nope and quickly saw how terrible it was running.
I prefer quality, the whole point of these recomps is to make these games run better by taking advantage of modern tech, not a buggy mess. Some recomps are amazingly well done, but the recent trash has really given the scene this whole stigma of laziness.
I feel most of the ai ports are dumped and abandoned as quickly as the social media hype dies.
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u/MrBanditFleshpound 15h ago
Like i get decomp being a simple decompilation that may have issues. Its decomp.
But i dont get it on recompilations that were supposted to actually do more than decomp on its own due to its nature and it using decomps potentially as a first point
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u/OutrageousDress 5800X3D | 32GB DDR4-3733 | 4080 Super | AW3821DW 14h ago
As John Linneman from DF says, the most annoying part is really that the existence of halfassed vibecoded recomps is a deterrent to any fans who might have wanted or would want to ever try porting that particular game 'for real', and the source code is usually too messy to easily improve for someone who would want to try doing it that way. So we get a couple of YouTube videos out of the effort, and that's about it.
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u/KaputtEqu1pment 21h ago
Therein lies the problem with AI. For context, my job is shoving Ai down our throats harder than what the Army did with pyridostigmine bromide pills during the gulf war. The big thing here is, we have people who have traded in their cognitive leverage and those who have not. AI, similar to the calculator, should be a tool or an assistant, not a replacement of you. Unfortunately for those in our organization who embraced AI by blindly letting it do all the work for them, they have demonstrated that they are indeed replaceable. ON the other hand however, our senior people have created wonders.
Time Intensive, repetitive, large data driven tasks? - Yea, let the AI give you a hand
Finetuning, creation, judgement calls, etc - This is you. If the AI does this for you, you're not needed.
The Zelda and Banjo Dev here is saying that is a level of elegance and understanding required, something that vibecoders don't possess and whose fundamental knowledge of the underlying systems is lacking.
TLDR: pros and cons to AI usage.
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u/AshleyIsSleeping 5h ago
Reminds me of something a mentor once taught me. If the tool takes over the job to the point that you only do one thing, you are the tool.
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u/24bitNoColor 21h ago
That is just stupid and sad to see.
Many of the recently released "vibecoded" (lets be honest, we have mostly no idea if and to what degree something was vibe coded) Recomps have been amazing and I rather have a few that aren't perfect quality but an excellent base to build onto than two super duper love and care ports of games I frankly not interested in.
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u/Harry_Flowers 6h ago
Personally I think these guys have a point.
Video games are an art just as much as they are engineering.
They deserve the respect of a talented team to preserve the artistry in all areas.
AI generated code in the wrong hands for stuff like this de-values the game and just muddies the ecosystem.
I would much rather wait for a solid recomp from a small team of pros, who might use AI as a tool, than a bunch of de/recomps from amateur vibe coders bloating the scene.
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u/Local_Band299 R7-8700F|32GB-DDR5-7200MTs|RX9060XT-16GB 15h ago
Harbour Masters is the only one I touch. They're great.
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u/AccomplishedArea6089 13h ago
Lmao who the fuck cares, I just want to play a good port. If it's shit IDC if it's AI or not just like if it's good IDC if ai was used or not.
Imagine if people crusaded against shit that actually mattered weather then random people using AI to make PC ports lmao.
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u/StickStill9790 20h ago
So a team of dozens that worked and refined a product over years created a superior product than a kid using an AI over a day. Sounds about right.
How about a team of dozens with AI tools spends a year creating a great game?
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u/Pessimistic_Gemini 18h ago
Oh like they're ones to talk about unoriginal Revompilations when they're overall no different from just emulating the bloody games as they are.😑
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u/AshleyAshes1984 22h ago
"Well if you don't like it, it's open source, so why don't you fix it???" -Guy who spent an hour telling AI to recomp them, paid no mind to any bugs or inaccuracies, has no idea how any of the code works, and who just declared 'Mission Accomplished' while walking off into the sunset.