The Zelda 64 Reverse Engineering team has just announced they've completed Zelda: Ocarina Of Time.  They accomplished this by using modern tools to re-create the game in C and since this is just the game code without any assets or Nintendo's intellectual property, it's completely legal.  Links to th
  • marmulak
    3·
    3 years ago

    Does this mean we’re going to have a native Linux port?

    • chrysn
      3·
      3 years ago

      Can only speculate as a bystander, but here’s what I think needs to happen before a Linux port (which is probably the end game here):

      • The project has to survive Nintendo’s attention.

      • Any component close to hardware needs to be ported to a PC equivalent: Graphics to OpenGL, flash writes to file access, etc.

        This can be assisted by using / linking in an existing emulator (a bit like qemu became more and more usable for KVM stuff), but that’ll be some work to give a native game experience. (The game is probably already playable well in emulators).

      • Players will either need to have the ROM (eg. read with a USB cartridge reader), or completely new artwork will need to be created.

        Compared to OpenRTC & OpenTTD, the former is much more complex (drives for the CDs the original games were shipped with are still somewhat widespread), as is the latter. The latter is not without precedent (OpenArena), but it’d likely feel more like a game on the OoT engine than the same thing.

  • chrysn
    3·
    3 years ago

    It’s weird how decompiling games is a legal gray area. In my understanding it would be clear copyright infringement, but it seems from how OpenRCT and OpenTTD got away with it, a decompiled game can be freed even without going through the painstaking clean room development approach.

    As a fan of all these three, I’m happy to see this.