s-macke

l’altro ieridiscuss

Ask a coding agent to decode the assets. Works pretty often for such old games.

mese scorsodiscuss

What I find fascinating is the fact that you can implement those few lines in an esoteric language such as FRACTRAN or Game of Life and even boot Linux on them. Seems doable now. In theory.

s-macke

mese scorsodiscuss

Yes, I’ve tried it. For example, this was my winning entry from a year ago [0]. The LLM only performs trivial obfuscation, not advanced transformations.

For example:

  if (x == 1 || x == 2) { ...

can be transformed into:

  if (!(2+x*x-3*x)) { ...

An LLM will do this if you explicitly ask it to, but not on its own.

[0] https://github.com/ioccc-src/winner/blob/master/2024/macke/p...

s-macke

mese scorsodiscuss

Here is the video:

https://www.youtube.com/live/MoWCwZx1Swc?si=eIOlRsKWNKRVRZeB...

s-macke

mese scorsodiscuss

Yes, you haven’t tried it. LLMs are actually awesome at deobfuscation, but terrible at obfuscation. They just can’t do it yet.

They also lack the creativity needed for those entries. Obfuscation is only one part of it. Coming up with the idea is another. Many entries also have special qualities that make them true works of art.

s-macke

mese scorsodiscuss

My favorite is the 366-byte C program emulator that can run Linux and Doom [0]. The VM implements an OISC - a One Instruction Set Computer [1].

[0] https://github.com/ioccc-src/winner/blob/master/2025/cable/p...

[1] https://github.com/ioccc-src/winner/blob/master/2025/cable/R...

s-macke

mese scorsodiscuss

This VM implements an OISC - a One Instruction Set Computer.

More information:

https://github.com/ioccc-src/winner/blob/master/2025/cable/R...

s-macke

mese scorsodiscuss

Because I haven't found the special case in the disassembly for these "flying" objects. Probably I misinterpret the object coordinate somehow.

s-macke

mese scorsodiscuss

Sorry, the maps are rendered in 3D so that you can fly around. I can of course make top-down screenshots of the maps. Thanks for your feedback.

s-macke

mese scorsodiscuss

Author here. The Ross’s Game Dungeon video was, to some degree, a motivation for me to start the reverse-engineering process, just for fun. The analysis took place over many years, and I figured out 95% of the format myself. AI helped me then with the coloring, which is pretty complex. I have read the Accursed Farms forum, of course. But it didn't help much.

The map mentioned there can be found as “Unknown Map” in the dropdown. However, I haven’t yet connected that map to the menu screen. It might be called “Tom’s Test Track,” because that string appears in the disassembly.

Integration into noclip might be easy, because I also have the geometry as a standalone .obj file.

s-macke

mese scorsodiscuss

I wish I had known this two years ago. I ended up writing my own embedded connection struct to trace these things [0].

  type Connection struct {
    net.Conn
    OnEventCallback func(clientClosed bool, serverClosed bool, err error)
  }

[0] https://github.com/s-macke/SlapperX/blob/master/src/tracing/...

s-macke

mese scorsodiscuss

On weekends, yes. During the week, that’s also true if they arrive within a short time frame, e.g., three minutes. Almost no one looks at “New”. That is the real issue.

s-macke

mese scorsodiscuss

Author here. Yes, it is integral. I chose this approach to first show how to draw it from back to front, because the code is easier to understand this way.

s-macke

4 mesi fadiscuss

Nice to see an MCP integration here as well. In my experience, coding agents are great at analyzing MOS6502 code. Because the code is limited to only 64 kB, it does not overwhelm the agent. And in parallel it can write specs and even extract assets via normal coding tools.

Using my similar tool [0], I feel I get roughly a 100x speedup. I will definitely try regenerator2000.

[0] https://github.com/s-macke/OpcodeOracle

s-macke

4 mesi fadiscuss

Exactly. And JSLinux is using one.

s-macke

4 mesi fadiscuss

Most such emulators have Internet access on the IP level. Therefore, this is a very cheap way to test anything on the Internet.

    apk add nmap
    nmap your.domain.com

However, the speed is heavily throttled. You can even use ssh and login to your own server.

It can also be used as a very cheap way to provide a complete build environment on a single website, for example to teach C/C++. Or to learn the shell. You don't have to install anything.

s-macke

4 mesi fadiscuss

To reverse engineer old C64 games using Coding Agents, I built a CLI and MCP flow disassembly tool. The agent can search the disassembly, provide annotations, manage symbols, and reinterpret code and data.

[0] https://github.com/s-macke/OpcodeOracle

s-macke

4 mesi fadiscuss

AI is very effective for reverse engineering. Unless you’re doing it purely for fun, it makes sense to use AI where it helps.

I’ve tried to visualize the “navigate and modify” process you mentioned in [0]. It’s mesmerizing.

Because reverse engineering outcomes are comparatively easy to verify, it’s a good fit for training for AI. I expect major progress in the next few years, potentially to the point where reverse engineering many binaries becomes highly automated.

[0] https://github.com/s-macke/OpcodeOracle

s-macke

5 mesi fadiscuss

About halfway through my reverse-engineering process, I came across those documents and realized that roughly 50% were missing. I searched pretty much the entire web to see if anyone had stored these files elsewhere, but so far I haven’t had any luck.

s-macke

5 mesi fadiscuss

Some early source code snippets of the game have even survived and can still be found on archive.org [0]. By today’s standards, they’re almost unreadable.

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20030906124225/http://www.sonic....

Submissions

When Washington switched off Fable/Mython 5: What happened, hour by hour

366-byte C program emulator can run Linux and Doom – IOCCC29 winner

IOCCC29 Awards Presentation and Source Code Reveal [video]

Show HN: I reverse-engineered the world maps of Test Drive III (1990 DOS game)

Abstruse Goose Comic Archive

2026 Agentic Coding Trends Report

AI is just starting to change the legal profession

Taking Local AI Development to the Max with AMD Ryzen AI Halo

Abstruse Goose Comic Archive

Show HN: Reverse engineering and porting a C64 game with AI

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