Who needs Ghidra when you have autism and a box of markers?
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And here is the entire point of digging all this out. @foone was talking about reverse engineering compression - this is how it started. This is an RLE encoded sprite. The highlighter sections and boxed sections are RLE opcodes and compressd runs, and the bytes with curvy underlines are uncompressed pixel spans
@gloriouscow oof. Doing this on paper sounds so painful
(I was doing this on paper back in 2003, but I've mostly suppressed those memories)
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@gloriouscow oof. Doing this on paper sounds so painful
(I was doing this on paper back in 2003, but I've mostly suppressed those memories)
@foone this is all circa 1999-2001. maybe it is just a phase every reverser goes through.
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@foone this is all circa 1999-2001. maybe it is just a phase every reverser goes through.
@gloriouscow this is just what we had to do before computers were good at things
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Who needs Ghidra when you have autism and a box of markers?
@gloriouscow I really wish I could afford a printer right now. :(((
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And here is the entire point of digging all this out. @foone was talking about reverse engineering compression - this is how it started. This is an RLE encoded sprite. The highlighter sections and boxed sections are RLE opcodes and compressd runs, and the bytes with curvy underlines are uncompressed pixel spans
well, when you play I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream using ScummVM, some of this shit may still be in there, somewhere.
Maybe.
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@foone this is all circa 1999-2001. maybe it is just a phase every reverser goes through.
@gloriouscow @foone having a big "wait, that counts as reverse engineering? oh gods, yeah, it would have to, wouldn't it" moment over here
tractor feed was so good for this
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@gloriouscow @foone having a big "wait, that counts as reverse engineering? oh gods, yeah, it would have to, wouldn't it" moment over here
tractor feed was so good for this
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Who needs Ghidra when you have autism and a box of markers?
@gloriouscow
isn't it tedious? -
@gloriouscow
isn't it tedious?@blue_on You'd think so, but it's more methodical. I remember just laying on the floor with the listings spread out and listening to music while doing. After a while you just zone out, it's meditative
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@blue_on You'd think so, but it's more methodical. I remember just laying on the floor with the listings spread out and listening to music while doing. After a while you just zone out, it's meditative
@blue_on the closest experience i have to it now is tracing out boards in KiCad. put on some music, and just follow traces with the mouse from chip to chip. thousands and thousands of traces...
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Who needs Ghidra when you have autism and a box of markers?
@gloriouscow I sometimes think that might be better than ghidra
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Who needs Ghidra when you have autism and a box of markers?
@gloriouscow @goosey Dot matrix printed source code is the best! I had tons of it, at one time, all marked up like you’ve done here.
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Who needs Ghidra when you have autism and a box of markers?
@gloriouscow I do, because I threw out my tractor feed dot matrix printers over two decades ago.
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Who needs Ghidra when you have autism and a box of markers?
@gloriouscow wow amazing. How much time did all this take?
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@gloriouscow wow amazing. How much time did all this take?
@ask I worked on this over a period of two years as best as I can figure
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Who needs Ghidra when you have autism and a box of markers?
@gloriouscow this is unbelievably crazy for a gamedev, what type of game even is this produced for?
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@gloriouscow this is unbelievably crazy for a gamedev, what type of game even is this produced for?
@taleb it's a point and click adventure game, very similar to LucasArts's SCUMM engine.
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Who needs Ghidra when you have autism and a box of markers?
@gloriouscow read long enough, the listings let you write c-code translation
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Who needs Ghidra when you have autism and a box of markers?
@gloriouscow I really love that you disassembled this in IDA, with all its interactive abilities for markup and analysis, in order to print it and go ham with the pencils!
Not snark, in case that's not obvious -- I genuinely do. I wish I still had the time to sit with things in this way and with this depth, though I never had your penmanship! And I have a lot of admiration for anyone with the short-term memory to be able to cohere a linear disassembly into a coherent picture
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Who needs Ghidra when you have autism and a box of markers?
@gloriouscow Is that why I like my coloured pens?
