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Nearly all Nintendo 64 games can now be recompiled into native PC ports (n64 native port compilation sunmercart64 n64recomp) (tomshardware.com | ia)
7 points by bmonkey325 413 days ago | 4 comments
  • Screwtapello 413 days ago
    If it's not actually a decompilation, allowing developers to go in and remove N64 hardware assumptions baked into the original code, isn't this basically just an emulator?
    • bmonkey325 412 days ago
      @ondono is correct in their summary …. There is a fuller discussion in the ### How It Works section in the n64Recomp repo.

      https://github.com/Mr-Wiseguy/N64Recomp

    • ondono 412 days ago
      Not an expert, but from what I see the code is being recompiled for the new platform, so no, this is not an emulator. Emulating would require running the original binary on top of a virtual representation of the console in question.

      Decompilations OTOH are work-intensive recreations of the source code, and people expect this recreation to have certain resemblance to the original (unavailable) code. This tool doesn't do this.

      It grabs the binary "translates" it to C by using some clues to restore some of the structure, but it's C output is basically unreadable for humans. This output is then piped into a compiler for the target platform together with the pulled assets.

      • rocky1138 412 days ago
        This all makes sense, but what about N64-specific functionality like line buffers or frame buffers? How is that work updated to add ray tracing, etc.?
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