· 2 min read · Lynder063
More projects, one goal
communitynews
Something nice has been happening lately: more and more people are working on Ratchet & Clank. New repositories, new faces on Discord.
We think that is wonderful news, and we want to say clearly where we stand.
Meet our friends
We are not the only ones, and we are happy to point you to the others:
- Lombyte, by our friend mateuszklysz. It is a byte-matching decompilation of the NTSC-U release of Ratchet & Clank, with the same aim as ours: readable C that compiles back to exactly the original bytes. Ours follows the PAL release, so between us both versions of the game are covered.
- ReRAC, by aslanhudajev. It takes a different road to the same game: a native PC port, written in Rust. Understanding the original code is what makes a project like that possible, so the work on all sides feeds into each other.
We are in touch with both and we are working together.
The same goal, so why would we fight?
A decompilation is a huge job: thousands of functions, and every one of them has to come out as exactly the same bytes as the original. Nobody finishes that alone, and nobody is competing for a prize. When another project figures out a function, it is not a point lost for us. It is one more piece of the game that all of us now understand.
So, to everyone who loves this game and this community:
- Credit each other. If you learned something from another project, say so, in the source and in the commit. Many of us already do, and it shows.
- Share what you find. A name, a structure or a compiler quirk helps everyone, whichever release or approach they work on.
- Disagree kindly. Projects will make different choices, and that is fine. Argue about the code, never about the person.
- Welcome newcomers. Every one of us started out not knowing how any of this works.
"In a world where you can be anything, choose to be kind."
— Nitya Prakash
Kindness is free, and it is the reason people stay around long enough to finish something this big.
Want to join in?
Pick the project that fits you best: they all welcome help, and each has its own contributing guide. You can also ask anything in our Discord, whichever one you end up helping.