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yjftsjthsd-h 18 hours ago [-]
> It is written in Haskell and Rust and this made getting it to work nicely in the browser, interesting
I imagine. What motivated using that combination?
nyuutsu 5 hours ago [-]
(author; wife posted the thread)
Haskell is cool and I wanted to play with it.
Rust is cool enough, has libraries Haskell doesn't, can be faster, and is a way to stick the unavoidably imperative parts under the bed.
Browser was not in the original vision but turned out to be surprisingly painless-ish. Haskell can compile to wasm. Avoiding C-backed crates on vibes / for no particular reason happened to be quite helpful.
gblargg 16 hours ago [-]
Doesn't the undo functionality cause it to store copyrighted data from the original ROM in the patch?
nyuutsu 5 hours ago [-]
(Author here, my wife posted this thread; it has no bearing on the question but I am told it is good to disclaim.)
You could quibble about what counts but the core is "yeah".
Ppf3-with-undo stores literal "hey, we expect byte n to be 'foo'. on apply, replace it with 'bar'. on undo, put 'foo' back. remember: the copyrighted byte is 'foo'". Touch every byte in some way and your undo data is the entire original.
Some patches literally touch one byte. Their undo is, indirectly or indirectly, a recipe for retrieving one byte of copyrighted data. Is that fragmentary enough that it is entirely in the clear? I have no idea.
infinite_spin 15 hours ago [-]
I think it's similar to adding a note to a book, and then removing that note, leaving you with a the original book. That scenario doesn't violate copyright law as far as I'm aware.
Dylan16807 15 hours ago [-]
That's not how patching a rom works. You directly replace data and the formats that let you undo have to put a copy of the original data in the patch file. So yes it is a risk.
choo-t 14 hours ago [-]
You don't need a copy of the original data, you can simply store your change as a XOR so undoing it mean XORing it again.
Retr0id 14 hours ago [-]
However, if your change involves zeroing something out, you're back to storing the original data again.
Retr0id 13 hours ago [-]
Slightly silly idea to solve this: Hash all non-patched areas of the file to produce a key. Use the key to encrypt your XOR value. Thus the key can only be derived by someone who has either the original file, or the patched version.
Joker_vD 13 hours ago [-]
So? Since when has making backups of the copyrighted stuff that you have the right to use been made illegal?
Dylan16807 8 hours ago [-]
A patch you can undo isn't a backup mechanism, it's data in the patch file when you download it. That's a big copyright risk.
You could design a system that generates undo info while you're patching. But it's easier to make a full backup copy of the original rom, and have no way to actually reverse the patching process.
SideQuark 13 hours ago [-]
Employing anti-protection methods to do to has been illegal since 1996 WIPO treaties, and then much more strongly in the 2002 DMCA.
So around 30 years now.
WhiteDawn 13 hours ago [-]
In fairness, games didn’t start employing encryption on the content till the 7th generation. So unless you’re applying ips patches to a 360 game you’re not breaking any DRM
Playing the title you backed up and patched is a different matter entirely
16 hours ago [-]
matheusmoreira 15 hours ago [-]
> nyuu.page
Is this in any way related to byuu, the SNES emulator author?
22c 14 hours ago [-]
No it's not related, sadly Byuu passed away several years ago.
14 hours ago [-]
teroshan 16 hours ago [-]
I recently stumbled upon https://www.hackdex.app/ which is a lovely website dedicated to Pokémon ROM hacks.
It's a really vibrant scene, with a lot of different hacks that go all the way to fully-fledged games, but because it's so rich it can be a pain to find what is available and what the latest version of a given ROM hack is.
This website has a neat feature where you upload any base Pokémon ROM file, and it filters all available ROM hacks that are compatible with it via a neat UI. And of course it offers you a one-click download (well, in-local-storage-patch) to the given ROM hack.
Quick clarification: I'm pretty sure there's no uploading at all; it uses local storage for the filtering too, which is important because uploading a ROM tends to be risky legally
teroshan 13 hours ago [-]
Absolutely, I should have made it more explicit, thanks for clarifying it. That's what makes this possible and legally compliant.
I imagine. What motivated using that combination?
Haskell is cool and I wanted to play with it.
Rust is cool enough, has libraries Haskell doesn't, can be faster, and is a way to stick the unavoidably imperative parts under the bed.
Browser was not in the original vision but turned out to be surprisingly painless-ish. Haskell can compile to wasm. Avoiding C-backed crates on vibes / for no particular reason happened to be quite helpful.
You could quibble about what counts but the core is "yeah".
Ppf3-with-undo stores literal "hey, we expect byte n to be 'foo'. on apply, replace it with 'bar'. on undo, put 'foo' back. remember: the copyrighted byte is 'foo'". Touch every byte in some way and your undo data is the entire original.
Some patches literally touch one byte. Their undo is, indirectly or indirectly, a recipe for retrieving one byte of copyrighted data. Is that fragmentary enough that it is entirely in the clear? I have no idea.
You could design a system that generates undo info while you're patching. But it's easier to make a full backup copy of the original rom, and have no way to actually reverse the patching process.
So around 30 years now.
Playing the title you backed up and patched is a different matter entirely
Is this in any way related to byuu, the SNES emulator author?
It's a really vibrant scene, with a lot of different hacks that go all the way to fully-fledged games, but because it's so rich it can be a pain to find what is available and what the latest version of a given ROM hack is.
This website has a neat feature where you upload any base Pokémon ROM file, and it filters all available ROM hacks that are compatible with it via a neat UI. And of course it offers you a one-click download (well, in-local-storage-patch) to the given ROM hack.
Source code: https://github.com/Hackdex-App/hackdex-website