Reverse engineer of PC-98 Touhou games retires

Posted by mimasama 5 days ago

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Comments

Comment by ndiddy 2 days ago

I've been following this project off and on for a while, frankly this post is bizarre. It seems like he'd been burning out for a long time and AI was the last straw. He goes over how he doesn't like the Touhou games, he doesn't like the Touhou characters, and he doesn't like the Touhou community. His motivation for working on the project seems to some combination of be wanting to seen as a pillar of the community (which he has no respect for), and the financial incentive because his decompilation work is funded by donors who choose what he works on.

There's one part where he goes over how he felt scorned because a remake of a different Touhou game that he wasn't decompiling came out, and people in the Western Touhou community worked on it, but nobody told him about it prior to its public announcement. There's a different part where he's complaining about how some FreeBSD user submitted a PR to fix his Seihou port to build on FreeBSD since the niche build system he uses doesn't have good support for *BSD. He spends a paragraph ranting about how he would never support FreeBSD, then the next paragraph is about how he would have loved to get it working on FreeBSD if the person went about asking for the feature the "correct way", then he says he'd rather quit programming entirely than support FreeBSD on desktop.

I think he saw the project as an obligation that he couldn't get rid of rather than something he did out of passion. There's a section at the end where he goes over how his life will improve now that he doesn't have to work on the project. Notably, throughout the post he calls out by name various people in the Touhou community that he doesn't like, but he never calls out any of the vibecoders. I hope that he can now spend his time doing something that he actually enjoys.

Comment by RockRobotRock 2 days ago

This person really needs therapy.

Comment by mwkaufma 2 days ago

I'm all here for testimonials about the harms AI hype brings to niche communities, but the messenger's idiosyncracies here tell a different story than the headline.

Bellyaching about a benign-if-mildly-presumptuous BSD request by making a point to complain abou C++ Modules support, of all things, doesn't demonstrate a less-narrow perspective on the part of the maintainer.

Also, comparing AI skepticism to GamerGate really reveals a mind forever locked in decades-old grievances.

Comment by oceansky 2 days ago

He's referring to people getting mad about recent games like slay the spire 2, having her name on credits

Comment by mwkaufma 2 days ago

Gotcha, thanks for the context.

Comment by mwkaufma 2 days ago

(not to mention vilifying the Actual Touhou Developers and positing an incoherent east-vs-west honor system)

Comment by oceansky 2 days ago

Although I love the new era of LLM assisted reverse engineering, it really breaks my heart how much it negatively affect veterans in their area of passion.

Comment by muyuu 2 days ago

I know this is no consolation, but passions often have no recognition or monetary reward.

Personally I will keep doing things I love. For instance, I didn't stop studying and playing chess when it was obvious that my career would be in engineering and I would never be a pro, or when computers became clearly much stronger than humans, which happened while I was already playing chess somewhat seriously.

I intend to keep rawdogging my stuff, especially the stuff I do for myself. It's more of a personal drama when it simply rug-pulls somebody's livelihood all of a sudden. This is not a new phenomenon, but it's happening at a remarkable rate right now. I wonder if this time around there will be enough people that they won't be dismissed as losers against progress.

Comment by userbinator 2 days ago

I'm an experienced reverser, and have been doing it for decades, but I think it's great that LLMs have brought this power to everyone and the old gatekeepers are being made irrelevant. IMHO the ones who are complaining about it were always just seeking fame and fortune, not freedom and user empowerment. Like I said in another comment recently, I don't think Stallman ever anticipated this development, and that his focus on "open source" was always misguided.

Incidentally I've also been writing Z80 and x86 Asm for roughly as long, and saw the complaints about "compiler slop" (we didn't call it that) at the time. I could probably still beat one if I wanted to, but clearly "close enough is good enough" and there's so much useful software which would not have been created if compilers couldn't exist and everyone still had to write machine code using a hexpad.

Edit: got any counterarguments? It's not like I won't get a boost from using LLMs either.

Comment by Pannoniae 2 days ago

You're 100% right...

You can outcode the compiler but ofc that's not a way to go with tens of thousands of instructions and so on. LLMs are just much faster in writing code, just like compilers are much faster at assembling all the functions.

And yes, in a roundabout way, this is Stallman's dream fulfilled to the tip with his printer driver ;)

Many of these people wanted a project to run and gatekeep the people "not worthy enough" to hack on it or to use it. That's changing now, everyone can prompt together a bunch of crap. Fun fact I think I've got like... probably more than ten people into C++ programming simply by helping them prompt AI on how to get started, then they've picked up actual skills along the way. Note, they weren't any kind of programmers before because code is scary, but with a much lower barrier of entry, many more people can do stuff. It's amazing to see.

Comment by JDups 1 day ago

The flip side is when you see someone who has never interacted with a community before come in and drop a big announcement written in Claudish about some new port they just released (with a ko-fi link already set up of course), you kinda feel like they're the ones chasing fame and fortune.

In the modding community I'm most active in, counter-strike, I have seen someone come in and literally ask if there was money in it and if not what game would be best to make mods for to make some money.

Comment by weezing 2 days ago

So was it really a passion project if it affects them anyhow? It's like saying that concept of dynamite fishing affects passionate anglers.

Comment by simias 2 days ago

I really struggle with this argument that I see everywhere lately, especially when we see many vibecoders clearly desperate for clout who post "decomps" and automated translations of works they clearly have no interest in and just want to claim a spot on the wall of fame. I'm talking about people bulk-translating old ROMs and not even booting them up to see if they work before releasing them in the wild for instance.

Their lazy cloud-chasing is normal but my high-effort clout-chasing is lame and makes me a fraud?

We're social animals. We like doing cool stuff and getting social status for it. We like breaking new ground. We like going where nobody has gone before.

Is it irrational and emotional? Maybe. Being human is being irrational and emotional sometimes. It's fine.

Comment by t_mahmood 2 days ago

I am no one in anything, the thing is I love spending hours writing code, fixing some weird issue somewhere in the code, and then see it working as it intended. But now I can just put up some text and the whole thing is generated. Using my thoughts, the things I learnt, and applying them are not needed.

I can see there are still lot to do in the generated code, but I also feel something went away, Now I start working on it, and realize I'm reminded I just have to dictate what I need and it will be generated

It's like I have to pay for the best gun in the game to win, otherwise I can't just progress. Then why am I playing the game for?

Comment by wzdd 2 days ago

Of course, passion here meant feeling good about putting effort into something which doesn't have obvious external life benefits such as money or visibility. If an LLM can just knock it out then it's hard to feel good about putting that effort in.

Comment by oceansky 2 days ago

I don't see why it wouldn't, passion does not exists in a vacuum.

Comment by weezing 2 days ago

So it's about visibility and not passion?

Comment by anonymous908213 2 days ago

This idea that if you want recognition for your work you aren't passionate is literally insane. Humans are social creatures by nature, the two aren't in any way exclusive.

Comment by alterom 2 days ago

> It's like saying that concept of dynamite fishing affects passionate anglers.

Are you implying that it does not?

If dynamite fishing were deployed on the scale the AI infra is, with VC capital and government backing, we'd run out of fish in a week.

The concept doesn't affect much, deployment of it affects a lot.

Comment by ginko 2 days ago

Well if dynamite fishers show up in your favorite fishing spot you might want to consider moving somewhere else at least.

Comment by lovich 2 days ago

I get what you’re going for but that’s a poor analogy. If I was a passionate angler and someone showed up dynamite fishing at the same spot, the activity I’m passionate about is ruined.

Comment by haunter 2 days ago

People should really read the whole thing (well at least the last chapter) because it's not as simple as "vibe coders made meg go away".

The writer equally hates ZUN, vibe coders, and AI haters (Bluesky crowd)

And if not then the TLDR is basically: ZUN made the games for japanese people. Western people wanted to play the games. Reverse engineers came along but they relied on community funding. Now the community is taken apart by vibe coders but the same community is not willing to fund manual labor. Also the community is still paying for ZUN which enforces the status quo of not bothering with english releases.

Comment by ndiddy 2 days ago

To add some further context, all the Touhou games have been playable by Westerners for years due to fan translation patches. Even for the PC-98 games, the community has made preconfigured emulators packaged with all the games pre-patched to English so it's easy to play them without any technical knowledge. The reverse engineering project is orthogonal to this and is mainly intended to document the games' behavior as well as make them easier to mod. Having the source code available would make it possible to port the games to modern platforms, but they are pixel art 2D shooters so from a gameplay perspective there's not much of a benefit over playing them in an emulator.

Comment by oceansky 2 days ago

He does say LLMs made things worse, even if he's not opposed to it.

Comment by throwaway613746 2 days ago

> the community is still paying for ZUN which enforces the status quo of not bothering with english releases.

A remake of Touhou 6 had an official english release just a few weeks ago. I bought it. It's fantastic.

Comment by numpad0 2 days ago

> it is not only morally correct to pirate Windows Touhou, but in fact morally wrong to pay for it.

> I have no interest in doing anything else in this scene, and especially no interest in working on closed-source games for a media empire in a humble doujin trenchcoat.

wth is ... this anglosphere otakus assuming anime content creators to be high-double-to-mid-triple-digit millionaires only when they don't seem to be ones? I don't know how many digits are in the bank account for ZUN so there is a chance that he is a multiquadrillionaire, but it frankly looks like a twisted edge case of right makes might mindset rather than a logical argument.

Though, granted, I am aware that it gets quite stressful when a seller isn't able to take your money.

Comment by falsaberN1 2 days ago

This idea is very common among the community. I paid for the games baaaack in the day (I even have a disk signed by ZUN himself) because shumps are my favorite genre and when Touhou 6-7 came out there was a huge drought. The games were good, I never particularly cared about the characters but the gameplay was solid and interesting, with good scoring mechanics and some spectacle despite ZUN's terribad art skills.

This was a huge hot take apparently and members of the community hated everyone who obtained (and played) the games legally. You'd get bullied relentlessly for it. And I don't mean "guys you gotta buy the games to support the artist" or any form of moralizing, just mentioning you purchased the games got you unreasonable amounts of anger. Even friends from Japan who bought extra stuff like the music CDs and stuff made them so angry that my friends got banned from the IRC channel and forums. I left after that because that was unsustainable, people were only there to discuss fanfics of the characters and porn.

I still like the games, but the community at large is disgusting and hate people who actually play the games. Triple so if they are purchased. This guy is the perfect representation of that attitude.

Comment by kmeisthax 2 days ago

Oh my god. I just found the mirror universe version of that Japanese otaku antipiracy flamewar that keeps flaring up on Twitter every few months.

Comment by bionsystem 2 days ago

I don't get it, why would they be upset if somebody pays for the game ?

Comment by falsaberN1 2 days ago

It's been 23 years and I still don't have an answer to that question. I sincerely don't know.

Comment by amiga386 2 days ago

Wikipedia links from the Touhou Project to an interesting article, called "database consumption", where people are fans of the component parts of an original work, but want nothing to do with the original work itself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_consumption

It gives the example of Hatsune Miku, who strictly speaking is a fictional character attributed to a sampled singing voice in a vocal synthesizer VST called Vocaloid 2. She was the product branding. There is now a huge industry of fans inventing stories about Hatsune Miku and rendering/drawing pictures of her and enjoying thoughts of her being their waifu. Whatever they've made up is now their headcanon.

I can totally understand Hatsune Miku fans asking you to get lost if you tell them you bought Vocaloid 2, it's cramping their vibe.

Is it the same with the menagerie of Touhou characters? Are there people enjoying thoughts of Marisa Kirisame who don't want to be reminded she's a character in a shoot'em'up?

Comment by ndiddy 2 days ago

Due to how Touhou is liberally licensed, there absolutely are people who are fans of the characters/story/music/fangames but have never played any of the actual shoot-em-up games. Within the community they're referred to as "secondary fans" since they only engage with the franchise through derivative works. I haven't heard of people who are hostile to the idea that Touhou is a shoot-em-up franchise though.

Comment by numpad0 2 days ago

Is this the first "not even wrong" moment for me??? Why would Miku fans not like someone using the VL2? It just makes no sense...

Comment by compass_copium 2 days ago

ZUN is hostile to non-Japanese people plating shmups because he doesn't imagine that racially handicapped people can play such a challenging genre. I'm barely being facetious. Western fans are opposed to buying the games because of that. Why play the games at all if it bothers you so much, fair question, it's not like there aren't better games from that genre. I always pirated them but I pirate everything anyway.

Comment by Jach 2 days ago

The submission notwithstanding, it's probably changed since then, no? Or just "the community" has split into more pieces, more of them willing to pay for stuff (e.g. fumos). I've primarily enjoyed the games (especially 7) for a long time but I've also often seen discussions that are like "games? What games?" Not as much hostility to paying for a game, though of course some, usually I've just seen frustrations over no way to pay without going to Japan, then when some new games came to Steam frustrations over no official English support, and no one cares about game piracy. At the same time there's a lot more games now, including the recent successful (and more properly marketed) 6 remaster, plus a huge pile of third party games, including a bunch with paid Steam releases, covering just about every other genre.

Comment by brigade 2 days ago

There's a certain online segment that's proud of not having a "real" job and has made that core to their identity. For reasons (4chan), Touhou blew up in part of that community during the great recession. They twist their arguments about Touhou specifically (reading OP's rant, wow the goalposts sure have shifted in the last decade), but ultimately I'm convinced it just boils down to wanting to feel superior for having opted out of the entire economic system.

Comment by bionsystem 1 day ago

Ah, that makes sense actually. Thanks.

Comment by Philpax 2 days ago

I wanted to be sympathetic to someone watching their hobby and source of income disappear, but I'm finding it quite difficult to do so when they're this smarmy and unpleasant. I would not want to involve this person in any of my endeavours, either.

Comment by alterom 2 days ago

[flagged]

Comment by hitekker 19 hours ago

You're flaming someone who expressed the common sentiment: the OP's words makes him seem unpleasant to be around.

If you meant something besides your own moral superiority, say so.

Comment by Philpax 1 day ago

This work is/was a community endeavour, and if you're unpleasant, people will route around you. My sympathy ends because this isn't just an AI problem, it's an interpersonal problem.

Comment by sunjester 2 days ago

this is hot

Comment by rvz 2 days ago

What happened [0] to Lee Sedol (Expert Go Player) 10 years ago after playing against AlphaGo is now happening to everyone else.

As I said before [1] we are all Lee Sedol.

[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-50573071

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49505141

Comment by anonymous908213 2 days ago

This is nothing like that. The disillusionment comes from imposters getting more attention and credit than the real thing. These shitty projects are nowhere near being superior to what a human can do, and most of them are blatantly lying and exaggerating their accomplishments. ie. dozens of "no emulator recompilations" that are actually just embedding an emulator into a binary with the game, and people are too fucking stupid to check and upvote it to the top of HN because we all love a good fraud here. Now this garbage can be mass-produced and get the adoration of the AI hype crowd, drowning out the content that people put hundreds/thousands of hours into despite the slop being of wildly inferior quality that doesn't hold up if you inspect it for longer than it takes you to click the upvote button. Not only here, but all over the internet. Of course it's demotivating.

Comment by grumbel 2 days ago

> dozens of "no emulator recompilations" that are actually just embedding an emulator into a binary with the game

Even those, which take about 20min, are incredible useful, as you can add save state, level select, cheats and gamepad controls on top that most emulators would struggle with or at least make a hell of a lot more complicated.

> Now this garbage can be mass-produced and get the adoration of the AI hype crowd

Those games wouldn't exist without AI. Decompiles that ended in a fully playable state have been incredible rare before AI. Best you would get was often just an incomplete reverse engineering of the data formats involved.

Comment by anonymous908213 2 days ago

??? emulators already had literally all of those things

> Decompiles that ended in a fully playable state have been incredible rare before AI.

Actual decompilations are still rare. I'm repeating myself here, but the vast majority of these, they're not doing much more than embedding an emulator. You have to understand that an emulator is sort of a JIT decompiler already. It's really not impressive, or an accomplishment of any kind, to put the emulator into the binary with the game. There are a few AI-accelerated ones that have some legitimacy to them but still involved months of human effort too, it is by no means as automated as the hypers would like you to believe.

Comment by grumbel 2 days ago

> ??? emulators already had literally all of those things

Yes, but badly. Any old Amiga game that requires you to jump with Up or requires keyboard keys for certain functions becomes unplayable on a gamepad in an emulator. When you throw the game into the AI and do HLE emulation, you can fix it all with ease, and you can do it all context depend, e.g. a platformer level might need different controls from the spaceship levels or the menus. You can also add on-screen menus when needed.

For console games this isn't generally much of an issue, they controls map pretty well to modern gamepads and play well in emulation. But home computer games play absolutely terrible in emulation, as the controls are all over the place and each game has their own little quirks.

Comment by thenthenthen 2 days ago

Never stick your head out it seems is a legit tactic.

Comment by rvz 2 days ago

okay.

Comment by thenthenthen 2 days ago

I need that on a tshirt

Comment by draw_down 2 days ago

This is how it goes. There isn’t going to be a big thank you and there certainly won’t be a payday. Just some asshole whining about your build system.

And when you’ve finally had enough, your announcement that you’ve had enough will get tone policed so nobody has to think about what you’re saying. This is how it goes.

It seems the author has some sort of link to Bluesky. God help them.