#19463 - CyberSlag5k - Tue Apr 20, 2004 3:48 pm
There are no books. No classes taught on the subject, I'm sure. So how did it all start? Where did the tutorial/document authors learn to program for the game boy advance? Development Kits? Are there official resources I am unaware of?
#19469 - Gopher - Tue Apr 20, 2004 5:07 pm
Just speculating here, but it was probably a combination of reverse engineering and a steady drip of info from professional developers into the community. dunno the "history" of the scene really, though, so it might have been more one than the other. The release of the first flash carts was probably the jumping-off point for most of it.
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#19483 - sajiimori - Tue Apr 20, 2004 8:24 pm
GCC could already produce ARM binaries, and that's the most important part. All the GBA-specific stuff is either leaked Nintendo information (which are the official resources you mentioned) or reverse engineered, and it seems like much of our most valuable information came from the latter.
The people who do this sort of reverse engineering scoff at tutorials, and consider documentation a luxury.
#19489 - CyberSlag5k - Tue Apr 20, 2004 8:40 pm
| Quote: |
The people who do this sort of reverse engineering scoff at tutorials, and consider documentation a luxury.
|
Heh, like the black ops guys of computer science, eh?
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#19521 - LOst? - Wed Apr 21, 2004 9:54 am
| sajiimori wrote: |
GCC could already produce ARM binaries, and that's the most important part. All the GBA-specific stuff is either leaked Nintendo information (which are the official resources you mentioned) or reverse engineered, and it seems like much of our most valuable information came from the latter.
The people who do this sort of reverse engineering scoff at tutorials, and consider documentation a luxury. |
I guess the first one. Leaked Nintendo documents.
#19540 - Miked0801 - Wed Apr 21, 2004 5:53 pm
Not nearly as many as you would think. My opinion is that there are some really bright people out there (and here) doing a bunch of reverse-engineering for most of the stuff. The methods for getting stuff done here are very divergent from the Nintendo way - but just as efficient in almost all cases. Also, if Nintendo ever found out about a leak, that person would be begging for mercy. Nintendo has an iron fist and likes to use it. Just look at the cease and desist in the news section. I'm not at all suprised. ALso, they jsut got a patent giving them rights to all emulators. It won't stand in courts very long, but it goes to show their mentality.
#19558 - dagamer34 - Wed Apr 21, 2004 11:59 pm
I thought reverse-enginerring code was illegal.
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#19559 - Gopher - Thu Apr 22, 2004 12:10 am
that is a matter of much dispute.
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"Only two things are infinite: the universe, and human stupidity. The first is debatable." -Albert Einstein
#19561 - dagamer34 - Thu Apr 22, 2004 12:20 am
Well, on the intro screens for some games, they say that the reverse-engineering of binaries is illegal, and it seemed believable to me.
I guess it's just another one of those "Let the lawyer interpret the law" kind of things where the most expensive lawyer has the upper hand.
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Little kids and Playstation 2's don't mix. :(
#19565 - tepples - Thu Apr 22, 2004 12:28 am
Sega v. Accolade, 977 F2d 1510 (9th Cir. 1992), upheld the legality of making intermediate reproductions of copyrighted computer programs in order to learn how to interoperate with the computer they run on, provided that the organization performing the reverse engineering does not distribute the intermediate reproductions to any third party.
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#19572 - TwinD - Thu Apr 22, 2004 4:53 am
The official nintendo docs were leaked before the GBA was even released. That was certainly a big help...
#19619 - dagamer34 - Thu Apr 22, 2004 10:19 pm
Though, the official Nintendo docs aren't exactly in plain view for everyone to see...
_________________
Little kids and Playstation 2's don't mix. :(
#19758 - notb4dinner - Sun Apr 25, 2004 2:26 am
| dagamer34 wrote: |
| I thought reverse-enginerring code was illegal. |
Quite the opposite actually, alot of countries copyright law has specific provisions that allow reverse engineering.
#19763 - TwinD - Sun Apr 25, 2004 5:21 am
| dagamer34 wrote: |
| Though, the official Nintendo docs aren't exactly in plain view for everyone to see... |
You're right, but early on in the scene they were all over the place. Admittingly, from what I heard the docs were pretty shitty and they weren't 100% representative of the final hardware, but they certainly helped emu authors a lot I'm sure (despite claims that they werent using ANY reference docs, yeah right)
#19774 - sgeos - Sun Apr 25, 2004 2:59 pm
| TwinD wrote: |
| Admittingly, from what I heard the docs were pretty shitty and they weren't 100% representative of the final hardware |
I've heard that the docs are pretty cryptic. I'd be curious to compare the English docs to the Japanese originals and see how badly the translated was muffed up.
-Brendan
#19782 - Miked0801 - Sun Apr 25, 2004 3:58 pm
There in lies the problem with all Nintendo Docs - They really don't care about us gaijin. It reoccurs throughout most early documentation and takes quite a to get a good doc...
#19818 - sgeos - Mon Apr 26, 2004 2:17 am
Clearly the solution is obvious- learn Japanese. =P
-Brendan
#19840 - Miked0801 - Mon Apr 26, 2004 4:57 pm
Which is why I found the link to Slime Forest :) Yes, I can now read Katakana, usually read hiragana, and can recognize roughly 200 Kanji for meaning - which means I can read 1 word in 5 in a sentance or 1 in 3 if it's techincal - not quite good enough :)
#19871 - sgeos - Tue Apr 27, 2004 2:26 am
Thats a good start. A good J/E-E/J dictionary is a great way to artificially extend the vocabulary you can use. Jim Breen's WWWJIC is an excellent online dictionary.
Do you know how to use a kanji dictionary? I use and am satisfied with Arthur Rose-Innes "Beginners' Dictionary of Chinese-Japanese Characters". It is a little dated though. The WWWJIC has a multiradical lookup. (I personally prefer a proper radical lookup.) I have a list of the kanji one is supposed to know by the time he is out of high school on my website. It is split by grade level and lists the character, radical, stroke count, common readings and English meaning for each character. I manually pulled the meanings from the WWWJIC and have not had time to compare most of them with other sources. (The ??? in the English meaning means that I have not compared with other sources.)
-Brendan
#20635 - garlic - Fri May 14, 2004 3:00 am
| dagamer34 wrote: |
| Though, the official Nintendo docs aren't exactly in plain view for everyone to see... |
this is true, but the fact is that once they are released (and all the docs and devkits were released years ago) the people who know what to do with it can get their hands on it. after gaining the knowledge, that information can be used, registers learned, etc. by the time it makes it to a tutorial it has been used and learned by enough people to not resemble any nintendo document.
its important that a dev scene doesnt rely on official SDKs but for many consoles they can often be the first step. of course, in the recent years (excluding xbox) it is only the first step. i'm not doubting the major role reverse engineering plays.. nintendo doesnt quite say everything i'm sure.