I just wonder how people behind this emulator do that enormous amount of work for free. I mean it takes a lot of time from your regular job and your family to do an in-depth research like this, not to mention writing quality emulator code. They must be angels. Or demons. Or both.
Everyone needs a hobby - for a lot of people, doing this kind of research and development is just plain fun, especially if it involves working with video games you enjoy or collaborative work with a lot of people that share the same interests. I guess it's a bit like an online hackerspace?
Emulators in particular seem to attract a lot of extremely talented programmers, since they often demand advanced or novel techniques in reverse engineering, compilers, graphics, etc. and I guess serve as a nice "challenge" for those who are good at these things.
> Just a year later, Nintendo announced their newest edition to the Zelda series, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword as a MotionPlus exclusive.
I believe this should be Wii Sports Resort? The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword came out quite late in the Wii's lifecycle, in 2011.
> In a bit of good fortune, while developers were analyzing the calibration data, the NSA released a reverse engineering tool called "Ghidra". This tool helped Billiard more easily examine the calibration data and see how the games were using it. With Ghidra, it only took a few days to determine what all of the data meant, and give Dolphin the ability to generate perfect calibration data.
I am curious how Ghidra helped here. Does the Dolphin team not have access to IDA Pro or other similar reverse-engineering software?
Have you seen the IDA pro license fee? It is obscenely expensive. At least it was when I was last interested in reverse engineering which is admittedly over a decade ago.
The announcement for Skyward Sword was in 2009 - though at that point the name wasn't released. The fact that it relied on the new MotionPlus technology was part of the announcement.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 38.5 ms ] threadI believe this should be Wii Sports Resort? The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword came out quite late in the Wii's lifecycle, in 2011.
> In a bit of good fortune, while developers were analyzing the calibration data, the NSA released a reverse engineering tool called "Ghidra". This tool helped Billiard more easily examine the calibration data and see how the games were using it. With Ghidra, it only took a few days to determine what all of the data meant, and give Dolphin the ability to generate perfect calibration data.
I am curious how Ghidra helped here. Does the Dolphin team not have access to IDA Pro or other similar reverse-engineering software?