Someone is attempting to decompile Lego Island

alehel@beehaw.org to Gaming@beehaw.org – 117 points –
So I started decompiling LEGO Island...
youtu.be

For anyone who played this as a kid, this video is really fascinating. Hope he keeps it up.

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MattKC has a lot of great content, he patched Lego Island a while ago to make it playable on modern systems

His video on the soundtrack had me fascinated!

Same. I'm impressed someone is able to figure that kind of thing out without any info other than a hex editor.

I haven't watched his videos but the tools are slightly better than just a hex editor. You can start by "disassembling" which decodes the hex into the set of CPU instructions. Then you can use graphical tools like IDA or Ghidra. You work through chunks of assembly and start grouping sets of instructions together into things like functions and label them. You end up with a load of (possibly labelled) boxes connected together by lines. It can be a painstaking and difficult process but the tools do help you tackle it piece by piece.

LEGO Island was so awesome… been following MattKC for awhile now and was super pleased he took this on.

I had been looking into trying to remake the island in something more modern like Blender, but without reference or debug info, it’s difficult.

Hopefully this results in some newer and better ways to play. Though it will probably take a few years!

They've finished the island.exe which admittedly was a small endeavour, but does mean a few simple fixes are possible. Such as removing the now unnecessary delay before the game intro, and the window bar.being visible at the top of the screen.

Loved delivering pizza on my skateboard, racing through caves and riding the jet skis!

I always wondered why one of the jet ski opponents was constantly shaking. Maybe MattKC will be able to answer that.

Played this game a ton when I was younger, can't wait to see what he uncovers.

I only just discovered him. Think I need to dig out my old copy.

Ahh good times, the first game I ever pirated and it only took three days to download. Really hoping this project turns out well!

I am interested in seeing how the decomp progress, especially when it's being accommodated by video blogs. It makes it way more interesting.

On a related note, I wouldn't mind to see Island 2 get the decomp treatment, but I think it might be better to do a P-06 type project and remake it.

I watched this a few days ago. The fix regarding the loading time when launching the game reminds me of my old university online portal that had a fixed load time of 5 seconds regardless of connection speed.

I'm looking forward to more videos about the progress of this project.