13 ms·

SpaceCadetPinball – Decompilation of 3D Pinball for Windows

288 points by Lammy 5y ago

nazgulsenpai 5y ago
I learned a lot about 3D Pinball recently on this video [0]. It's specifically about the 64bit versions of 3D Pinball (or the lack thereof) and the reasons why. Part of that is debugging which relates to this. [0] https://youtu.be/3EPTfOTC4Jw https://youtu.be/3EPTfOTC4Jw
- 22c 5y ago
  Dave Plummer, the programmer who ported Space Cadet pinball to ship with Windows, also recently did a video on this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThxdvEajK8g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThxdvEajK8g
  - kgliner 5y ago
    Plummer is flat out wrong that his port enabled our game to ship with Windows -- we built it for Windows (and for Microsoft) from the start. He didn't enter the picture until we were already shipping with the popular Microsoft Plus Pack (which put us on about 25% of all Windows machines). Honestly, I'd never heard of Plummer until a few years ago when a journalist asked about him. Plummer's only role, near as I can tell, was to get it working on later Windows operating systems that were 32 bit (or certain 32 bit variants), which likely extended the shipping life of the game (so, not Windows 95 or Windows 98, but the others that followed). Microsoft actually had the option in our original deal to ship with the OS when Win 95 launched and chose the Plus Pack instead. Kevin
    - 22c 5y ago
      Interesting insight but I think you're both "right". If I'm reading you correctly and understanding Dave correctly, the game was made for running in 16-bit mode on Windows. According to Dave, Microsoft did not want to ship any applications with their "flagship" 32-bit OS that were not able to run natively in 32-bit. This, according to Dave, is also the reason you don't see Pinball shipped on the newer "64-bit" versions of Windows, despite the 32-bit version running just fine on 64-bit Windows.
stuntkite 5y ago
Finally! This has been lost for ages! I want to see someone do a breakdown on the ball physics! Gonna archive this before it's wiped from the intenet.
- swyx 5y ago
  this game was a huge part of my 12 year old childhood. really good times.
WalterGR 5y ago
Not just decompiled. What was done: * All structures were populated, globals and locals named. * All subs were decompiled, C pseudo code was converted to compilable C++. Loose (namespace?) subs were assigned to classes. Edit: Wow, and a lot more: https://github.com/k4zmu2a/SpaceCadetPinball/commits/master https://github.com/k4zmu2a/SpaceCadetPinball/commits/master Also see “On the attempts to resurrect Space Cadet Pinball” by Raymond Chen: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20181221-00/?p=100535 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20181221-00/?p=10...
- stefan_ 5y ago
  Wikipedia suggests the copyright owner is Electronic Arts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinematronics,_LLC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinematronics,_LLC
  - moffkalast 5y ago
    So we can all look forward to a reboot of space cadet on Windows 11 with lootboxes and microtransactions?
- gruez 5y ago
  >* All structures were populated, globals and locals named. Microsoft provides that openly via debug symbols, so it's not even anything new.
  - WalterGR 5y ago
    Assuming it’s a debug build or a release build with absolutely no optimization. Otherwise at least some amount of manual work is suggested by the bullet point. But are PDBs even available for it? I assumed Microsoft only releases PDBs for binaries used in development scenarios.
    - devmor 5y ago
      If you read the README in the link, you will find the answer to your question.
22c 5y ago
> On 64-bit bug that killed the game I had heard about this bug, I think I saw it on Dave Plummer's YouTube channel[1]. I remember thinking at the time that I am surprised nobody has tried to decompile it and figure it out, looks like k4zmu2a did and couldn't find it. Now I have more questions about the original bug reports. [1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNzszbnvQeFzObW0ghk0Ckw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNzszbnvQeFzObW0ghk0Ckw
- worker767424 5y ago
  Makes me wonder why they removed Hearts from Windows 8
  - phinnaeus 5y ago
    Probably the same collision detector issue⸮
- pedropaulovc 5y ago
  The bug lore came from Raymond Chen's blog post [1] [1] Why was Pinball removed from Windows Vista? https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20121218-00/?p=5803 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20121218-00/?p=58...
  - selcuka 5y ago
    This comment made me chuckle and also a bit sad: > [...] we simply couldn’t figure out why the collision detector was not working. Heck, we couldn’t even find the collision detector!
    - unnouinceput 5y ago
      And the continuation is: "We had several million lines of code still to port, so we couldn’t afford to spend days studying the code trying to figure out what obscure floating point rounding error was causing collision detection to fail." I'd say Ray is right, not lacking the skill, but lacking the time
brassattax 5y ago
And it was forked and ported to emscripten! Amazing! https://alula.github.io/SpaceCadetPinball https://alula.github.io/SpaceCadetPinball
- fsckboy 5y ago
  that is really cool!! but the flippers are a teeny bit sluggish, screws up my timing on some stuff I know how to do (gotta love gravity well)
  - LegitShady 5y ago
    In the graphics settings up the FPS and it seems to work a lot better for sluggishness.
- listic 5y ago
  Did it really have music like that? I only remember the sounds, for some reason.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - twic 5y ago
    I don't remember the music either, possibly because i turned it off the first time i played, and never turned it back on. The menu option to turn music off doesn't work in the web version, sadly.
    - AshamedCaptain 5y ago
      Because the default was to keep the music off.
CodeArtisan 5y ago
Be cautious that publishing source code generated in part or entirely from decompilation of copyrighted content may take you to court. https://torrentfreak.com/take-two-sues-enthusiasts-behind-gta-fan-projects-re3-revc-210903/ https://torrentfreak.com/take-two-sues-enthusiasts-behind-gt... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28402640 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28402640
- chii 5y ago
  if the purpose of the decompilation is for reverse engineering and api compatibility, there's a fair use argument. So the OP would need to show that the purpose is indeed for reverse engineering. IANAL, so don't actually do it...
  - marcan_42 5y ago
    Decompiling may be legal, but publishing the decompiled source is almost always a copyright violation. Interoperability is an argument for the legality of decompilation itself (i.e. you can ignore EULA clauses that say otherwise); it doesn't make the resulting code copyright-free or automatically eligible for fair use.
    - R0b0t1 5y ago
      Why?
      - marcan_42 5y ago
        Because copyright. The decompiled code is a derivative work of the binary, and thus subject to its original copyright. You can make fair use arguments in some cases, but "I decompiled it for interoperability" isn't one of those. That just lets you decompile it privately (for analysis/research), not publish the resulting code.
        R0b0t1 5y ago
        That's still a handwavy answer. I worked with game RE for a long time and the only way that publishers were able to go after people was if they used game assets. The decompiled code was, as far as I was ever aware, free game. There was almost always manual intervention to get it to build.
Gigachad 5y ago
This is the line implementing the famous “hidden test” cheat https://github.com/k4zmu2a/SpaceCadetPinball/blob/8c4f38c0af544c5ebd6cef4971246f49bf774b68/SpaceCadetPinball/control.cpp#L661 https://github.com/k4zmu2a/SpaceCadetPinball/blob/8c4f38c0af... Looks like there are other undiscovered cheat codes too.
- TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
  What is the hidden test cheat? Your link brings me to the top of page
  - selcuka 5y ago
    // Original allowed to enter cheats only before the first launch. std::memmove(&cheatBuffer[0], &cheatBuffer[1], 10); cheatBuffer[10] = key; if (strcmp(bufferEnd - 11, "hidden test") == 0) { pb::cheat_mode ^= true; }
  - Gigachad 5y ago
    Typing "hidden test" and hitting enter would cause the ball to be stuck to the mouse pointer rather than playing normally. I assume this was used to test the game features but it was left in the final build.
    - kgliner 5y ago
      That's correct. Mike needed it to test the physics, and I needed it to tune and balance the gameplay.
      - Gigachad 5y ago
        Hah, thanks so much for replying! I just wanted to say that leaving this in the final build was awesome. Knowing this cheat in school made you basically a wizard.
pastage 5y ago
The 1992 Pinball Dreams from DICE is still being published for new platforms latest release on the Amstrad.(but as unlicensed as this release seem to be)
ur-whale 5y ago
Note that they used Ghidra (the NSA-developed decompiler), which, in spite of its shady origin, is a wonderful tool.
- vadfa 5y ago
  How does ghidra compare nowadays to IDA? Is it good enough already to be used as a replacement to IDA and Hex-Rays decompilation, at least for x86 code?
  - saagarjha 5y ago
    That would depend on your needs. For me, at least, it's largely an adequate replacement-I'd rank it as "consistently at least 50% as good, sometimes up to 200% as good as IDA". For the price it's simply unbeatable.
  - bri3d 5y ago
    Yes, I think Ghidra is "good enough" for most use cases. For some (architectures other than x86/ARM), it is vastly superior. For others (Windows and especially C++) it's not quite as good, but still useable. For C++ projects targeting Windows, IDA is still a lot better in terms of decompilation quality. The demangler and function signature system is particularly tailored to MSVC++. For other architectures, Ghidra kills IDA by virtue of abstraction - all disassembly turns into the same IR (P-code) and is decompiled from there. So, the decompiler works across all architectures with a processor spec, rather than being specialized to x86/ARM. And, the exposure of this P-code system is very powerful as well - with some clever plugin scripting for Ghidra, you can actually single-step through the P-code as though you had a full emulator/debugger, without needing to set up an entire virtual environment. https://wrongbaud.github.io/posts/kong-vs-ghidra/ https://wrongbaud.github.io/posts/kong-vs-ghidra/
  - ur-whale 5y ago
    > How does ghidra compare nowadays to IDA? Not in the same category, IDA is really good. However, Ghidra is: a) free b) good enough for many thing One downside: the UI is convoluted.
davidst 5y ago
I am one of the original authors of Space Cadet pinball (along with Mike Sandige, lead programmer, and Kevin Gliner, producer and designer.) It is surprising and gratifying to see interest is still alive for our old game. And I can't help but be impressed by the ingenuity shown by both the decompiling effort and the playable web-based game.
- papito 5y ago
  We played the hell out of it on our Windows 2000 machines during particularly boring IT labs in college, in early 2000s. The physics just seemed so spot on. I installed Win2K on a VM recently, just for this. Start Menu, type in "pinball". Ah....
  - _fat_santa 5y ago
    Was it available on Windows 2000? I know it was a default on Windows XP. I was way too young back then to remember
    - papito 5y ago
      Definitely. It was available (apparently) even with a Win95 upgrade pack, so it's very old. I was not aware of it, however. I am not sure it was as easy to launch before, by just typing in "pinball" in the Start menu.
- SubiculumCode 5y ago
  Well, it is simply one of the best pinball games I've ever played on a computer. Interesting scoring system. Fair. Not gimmicky. Pure beauty.
- californical 5y ago
  Wow, this game was a staple in my childhood! Just wanted to let you know that your work brought me lots of happiness as a kid, so thank you :) Out of curiosity, have you ever written about the experience? Technical challenges, the development culture, etc?
phreezie 5y ago
If you want to play a modern, hi-resolution 3D version of Space Cadet, there was a Visual Pinball port recently by JPSalas: https://www.vpforums.org/index.php?showtopic=47560 https://www.vpforums.org/index.php?showtopic=47560
- djmips 5y ago
  Not technically a port but recreation. Nice work!
gfiorav 5y ago
Here are some interesting takes by the guy who ported it for XP at Microsoft. He says it would later prove very difficult to move to 64bit due to some low-level hacks/dependencies on word length in the collision detection code. https://youtu.be/ThxdvEajK8g https://youtu.be/ThxdvEajK8g
gavinray 5y ago
Could anyone speak more about how this decompilation is done from a technical perspective? This looks nothing like the pseudocode C that IDA/Ghidra spit out, so how would you go about doing this even? It says in the README: Tools used: Ghidra, Ida, Visual Studio What was done: All structures were populated, globals and locals named. All subs were decompiled, C pseudo code was converted to compilable C++. Loose (namespace?) subs were assigned to classes. Which is a bit "Draw-the-rest-of-the-fucking-owl" for me. Or am I just clueless.
- bri3d 5y ago
  I'm not aware of any good general-case automation for this. When I've done this in the past, it basically consists of: 1) Decompile project using Ghidra/IDA, first pass. 2) Load symbols if present (sounds like there was a PDB for this one, which makes things a lot easier). 3) Read decompilation/asm for unnamed subs and try to name them based on what they do. 4) Export all decompiled source into an editor and start copy/paste/editing into readable source. Highly manual process, for some files it's just pattern matching / renaming and goes really quickly, for others it's full reimplementation and a bit harder. And, if you look at most "decompiled game" projects, I think this is the industry standard way to do this. For example, OpenRCT2 started as a repository full of manually created source with Hex-Rays names and slowly evolved module-by-module into readable source code. (disclosure: per the child post, my original assumption that OpenRCT2 was copied out of Hex-Rays was inaccurate, since it was originally written in assembler it didn't follow a standard C ABI and the decompiler wouldn't work properly anyway).
  - gavinray 5y ago
    > sounds like there was a PDB for this one, which makes things a lot easier Ah yeah that certainly reduces the difficulty by an order of magnitude. Do you know of anyone who has done this with high-skill as a recorded video tutorial? Seems like one of those things much easier to follow in video than text due to how complicated IDA/Ghidra are as tools.
    - bri3d 5y ago
anthk 5y ago
In you need music install timitidy and freepats.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
chizhik-pyzhik 5y ago
You can get the original game data freely from Internet Archive- https://archive.org/details/SpaceCadet_Plus95 https://archive.org/details/SpaceCadet_Plus95

288 points by Lammy 5y ago

I learned a lot about 3D Pinball recently on this video [0]. It's specifically about the 64bit versions of 3D Pinball (or the lack thereof) and the reasons why. Part of that is debugging which relates to this. [0] https://youtu.be/3EPTfOTC4Jw https://youtu.be/3EPTfOTC4Jw

22c 5y ago
Dave Plummer, the programmer who ported Space Cadet pinball to ship with Windows, also recently did a video on this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThxdvEajK8g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThxdvEajK8g
- kgliner 5y ago
  Plummer is flat out wrong that his port enabled our game to ship with Windows -- we built it for Windows (and for Microsoft) from the start. He didn't enter the picture until we were already shipping with the popular Microsoft Plus Pack (which put us on about 25% of all Windows machines). Honestly, I'd never heard of Plummer until a few years ago when a journalist asked about him. Plummer's only role, near as I can tell, was to get it working on later Windows operating systems that were 32 bit (or certain 32 bit variants), which likely extended the shipping life of the game (so, not Windows 95 or Windows 98, but the others that followed). Microsoft actually had the option in our original deal to ship with the OS when Win 95 launched and chose the Plus Pack instead. Kevin
  - 22c 5y ago
    Interesting insight but I think you're both "right". If I'm reading you correctly and understanding Dave correctly, the game was made for running in 16-bit mode on Windows. According to Dave, Microsoft did not want to ship any applications with their "flagship" 32-bit OS that were not able to run natively in 32-bit. This, according to Dave, is also the reason you don't see Pinball shipped on the newer "64-bit" versions of Windows, despite the 32-bit version running just fine on 64-bit Windows.

stuntkite 5y ago

Finally! This has been lost for ages! I want to see someone do a breakdown on the ball physics! Gonna archive this before it's wiped from the intenet.

swyx 5y ago
this game was a huge part of my 12 year old childhood. really good times.

WalterGR 5y ago

Not just decompiled. What was done: * All structures were populated, globals and locals named. * All subs were decompiled, C pseudo code was converted to compilable C++. Loose (namespace?) subs were assigned to classes. Edit: Wow, and a lot more: https://github.com/k4zmu2a/SpaceCadetPinball/commits/master https://github.com/k4zmu2a/SpaceCadetPinball/commits/master Also see “On the attempts to resurrect Space Cadet Pinball” by Raymond Chen: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20181221-00/?p=100535 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20181221-00/?p=10...

stefan_ 5y ago
Wikipedia suggests the copyright owner is Electronic Arts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinematronics,_LLC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinematronics,_LLC
- moffkalast 5y ago
  So we can all look forward to a reboot of space cadet on Windows 11 with lootboxes and microtransactions?
gruez 5y ago
>* All structures were populated, globals and locals named. Microsoft provides that openly via debug symbols, so it's not even anything new.
- WalterGR 5y ago
  Assuming it’s a debug build or a release build with absolutely no optimization. Otherwise at least some amount of manual work is suggested by the bullet point. But are PDBs even available for it? I assumed Microsoft only releases PDBs for binaries used in development scenarios.
  - devmor 5y ago
    If you read the README in the link, you will find the answer to your question.

22c 5y ago

> On 64-bit bug that killed the game I had heard about this bug, I think I saw it on Dave Plummer's YouTube channel[1]. I remember thinking at the time that I am surprised nobody has tried to decompile it and figure it out, looks like k4zmu2a did and couldn't find it. Now I have more questions about the original bug reports. [1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNzszbnvQeFzObW0ghk0Ckw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNzszbnvQeFzObW0ghk0Ckw

worker767424 5y ago
Makes me wonder why they removed Hearts from Windows 8
- phinnaeus 5y ago
  Probably the same collision detector issue⸮
pedropaulovc 5y ago
The bug lore came from Raymond Chen's blog post [1] [1] Why was Pinball removed from Windows Vista? https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20121218-00/?p=5803 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20121218-00/?p=58...
- selcuka 5y ago
  This comment made me chuckle and also a bit sad: > [...] we simply couldn’t figure out why the collision detector was not working. Heck, we couldn’t even find the collision detector!
  - unnouinceput 5y ago
    And the continuation is: "We had several million lines of code still to port, so we couldn’t afford to spend days studying the code trying to figure out what obscure floating point rounding error was causing collision detection to fail." I'd say Ray is right, not lacking the skill, but lacking the time

brassattax 5y ago

And it was forked and ported to emscripten! Amazing! https://alula.github.io/SpaceCadetPinball https://alula.github.io/SpaceCadetPinball

fsckboy 5y ago
that is really cool!! but the flippers are a teeny bit sluggish, screws up my timing on some stuff I know how to do (gotta love gravity well)
- LegitShady 5y ago
  In the graphics settings up the FPS and it seems to work a lot better for sluggishness.
listic 5y ago
Did it really have music like that? I only remember the sounds, for some reason.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- twic 5y ago
  I don't remember the music either, possibly because i turned it off the first time i played, and never turned it back on. The menu option to turn music off doesn't work in the web version, sadly.
  - AshamedCaptain 5y ago
    Because the default was to keep the music off.

CodeArtisan 5y ago

Be cautious that publishing source code generated in part or entirely from decompilation of copyrighted content may take you to court. https://torrentfreak.com/take-two-sues-enthusiasts-behind-gta-fan-projects-re3-revc-210903/ https://torrentfreak.com/take-two-sues-enthusiasts-behind-gt... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28402640 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28402640

chii 5y ago
if the purpose of the decompilation is for reverse engineering and api compatibility, there's a fair use argument. So the OP would need to show that the purpose is indeed for reverse engineering. IANAL, so don't actually do it...
- marcan_42 5y ago
  Decompiling may be legal, but publishing the decompiled source is almost always a copyright violation. Interoperability is an argument for the legality of decompilation itself (i.e. you can ignore EULA clauses that say otherwise); it doesn't make the resulting code copyright-free or automatically eligible for fair use.
  - R0b0t1 5y ago
    Why?
    - marcan_42 5y ago
      Because copyright. The decompiled code is a derivative work of the binary, and thus subject to its original copyright. You can make fair use arguments in some cases, but "I decompiled it for interoperability" isn't one of those. That just lets you decompile it privately (for analysis/research), not publish the resulting code.
      - R0b0t1 5y ago
        That's still a handwavy answer. I worked with game RE for a long time and the only way that publishers were able to go after people was if they used game assets. The decompiled code was, as far as I was ever aware, free game. There was almost always manual intervention to get it to build.

Gigachad 5y ago

This is the line implementing the famous “hidden test” cheat https://github.com/k4zmu2a/SpaceCadetPinball/blob/8c4f38c0af544c5ebd6cef4971246f49bf774b68/SpaceCadetPinball/control.cpp#L661 https://github.com/k4zmu2a/SpaceCadetPinball/blob/8c4f38c0af... Looks like there are other undiscovered cheat codes too.

TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
What is the hidden test cheat? Your link brings me to the top of page
- selcuka 5y ago
  // Original allowed to enter cheats only before the first launch. std::memmove(&cheatBuffer[0], &cheatBuffer[1], 10); cheatBuffer[10] = key; if (strcmp(bufferEnd - 11, "hidden test") == 0) { pb::cheat_mode ^= true; }
- Gigachad 5y ago
  Typing "hidden test" and hitting enter would cause the ball to be stuck to the mouse pointer rather than playing normally. I assume this was used to test the game features but it was left in the final build.
  - kgliner 5y ago
    That's correct. Mike needed it to test the physics, and I needed it to tune and balance the gameplay.
    - Gigachad 5y ago
      Hah, thanks so much for replying! I just wanted to say that leaving this in the final build was awesome. Knowing this cheat in school made you basically a wizard.

pastage 5y ago

The 1992 Pinball Dreams from DICE is still being published for new platforms latest release on the Amstrad.(but as unlicensed as this release seem to be)

ur-whale 5y ago

Note that they used Ghidra (the NSA-developed decompiler), which, in spite of its shady origin, is a wonderful tool.

vadfa 5y ago
How does ghidra compare nowadays to IDA? Is it good enough already to be used as a replacement to IDA and Hex-Rays decompilation, at least for x86 code?
- saagarjha 5y ago
  That would depend on your needs. For me, at least, it's largely an adequate replacement-I'd rank it as "consistently at least 50% as good, sometimes up to 200% as good as IDA". For the price it's simply unbeatable.
- bri3d 5y ago
  Yes, I think Ghidra is "good enough" for most use cases. For some (architectures other than x86/ARM), it is vastly superior. For others (Windows and especially C++) it's not quite as good, but still useable. For C++ projects targeting Windows, IDA is still a lot better in terms of decompilation quality. The demangler and function signature system is particularly tailored to MSVC++. For other architectures, Ghidra kills IDA by virtue of abstraction - all disassembly turns into the same IR (P-code) and is decompiled from there. So, the decompiler works across all architectures with a processor spec, rather than being specialized to x86/ARM. And, the exposure of this P-code system is very powerful as well - with some clever plugin scripting for Ghidra, you can actually single-step through the P-code as though you had a full emulator/debugger, without needing to set up an entire virtual environment. https://wrongbaud.github.io/posts/kong-vs-ghidra/ https://wrongbaud.github.io/posts/kong-vs-ghidra/
- ur-whale 5y ago
  > How does ghidra compare nowadays to IDA? Not in the same category, IDA is really good. However, Ghidra is: a) free b) good enough for many thing One downside: the UI is convoluted.

davidst 5y ago

I am one of the original authors of Space Cadet pinball (along with Mike Sandige, lead programmer, and Kevin Gliner, producer and designer.) It is surprising and gratifying to see interest is still alive for our old game. And I can't help but be impressed by the ingenuity shown by both the decompiling effort and the playable web-based game.

papito 5y ago
We played the hell out of it on our Windows 2000 machines during particularly boring IT labs in college, in early 2000s. The physics just seemed so spot on. I installed Win2K on a VM recently, just for this. Start Menu, type in "pinball". Ah....
- _fat_santa 5y ago
  Was it available on Windows 2000? I know it was a default on Windows XP. I was way too young back then to remember
  - papito 5y ago
    Definitely. It was available (apparently) even with a Win95 upgrade pack, so it's very old. I was not aware of it, however. I am not sure it was as easy to launch before, by just typing in "pinball" in the Start menu.
SubiculumCode 5y ago
Well, it is simply one of the best pinball games I've ever played on a computer. Interesting scoring system. Fair. Not gimmicky. Pure beauty.
californical 5y ago
Wow, this game was a staple in my childhood! Just wanted to let you know that your work brought me lots of happiness as a kid, so thank you :) Out of curiosity, have you ever written about the experience? Technical challenges, the development culture, etc?

phreezie 5y ago

If you want to play a modern, hi-resolution 3D version of Space Cadet, there was a Visual Pinball port recently by JPSalas: https://www.vpforums.org/index.php?showtopic=47560 https://www.vpforums.org/index.php?showtopic=47560

djmips 5y ago
Not technically a port but recreation. Nice work!

gfiorav 5y ago

Here are some interesting takes by the guy who ported it for XP at Microsoft. He says it would later prove very difficult to move to 64bit due to some low-level hacks/dependencies on word length in the collision detection code. https://youtu.be/ThxdvEajK8g https://youtu.be/ThxdvEajK8g

gavinray 5y ago

Could anyone speak more about how this decompilation is done from a technical perspective? This looks nothing like the pseudocode C that IDA/Ghidra spit out, so how would you go about doing this even? It says in the README: Tools used: Ghidra, Ida, Visual Studio What was done: All structures were populated, globals and locals named. All subs were decompiled, C pseudo code was converted to compilable C++. Loose (namespace?) subs were assigned to classes. Which is a bit "Draw-the-rest-of-the-fucking-owl" for me. Or am I just clueless.

bri3d 5y ago
I'm not aware of any good general-case automation for this. When I've done this in the past, it basically consists of: 1) Decompile project using Ghidra/IDA, first pass. 2) Load symbols if present (sounds like there was a PDB for this one, which makes things a lot easier). 3) Read decompilation/asm for unnamed subs and try to name them based on what they do. 4) Export all decompiled source into an editor and start copy/paste/editing into readable source. Highly manual process, for some files it's just pattern matching / renaming and goes really quickly, for others it's full reimplementation and a bit harder. And, if you look at most "decompiled game" projects, I think this is the industry standard way to do this. For example, OpenRCT2 started as a repository full of manually created source with Hex-Rays names and slowly evolved module-by-module into readable source code. (disclosure: per the child post, my original assumption that OpenRCT2 was copied out of Hex-Rays was inaccurate, since it was originally written in assembler it didn't follow a standard C ABI and the decompiler wouldn't work properly anyway).
- gavinray 5y ago
  > sounds like there was a PDB for this one, which makes things a lot easier Ah yeah that certainly reduces the difficulty by an order of magnitude. Do you know of anyone who has done this with high-skill as a recorded video tutorial? Seems like one of those things much easier to follow in video than text due to how complicated IDA/Ghidra are as tools.
  - bri3d 5y ago

anthk 5y ago

In you need music install timitidy and freepats.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

chizhik-pyzhik 5y ago

You can get the original game data freely from Internet Archive- https://archive.org/details/SpaceCadet_Plus95 https://archive.org/details/SpaceCadet_Plus95