Starcraft reverse engineered to run on ARM

[NamTaf]

That's, uh, really impressive. I'd like the author to write about it, because I'd like to understand how much extra work it took to get compiling from the C code once it was disassembled by the tools. It'd be interesting to understand what sort of pitfalls the tools produce, so that the tools can be more efficiently used to do more work like this.

It's well above my head, but it'd be a fascinating read!

[ekianjo]

I'm in touch with the author, but we'll see if he ends up writing about it or not... :)

[ekianjo]

By the way it's not the first time this is done, there were some other static recompilations (Xcom i think) done in the same way 3 years ago. But Starcraft was probably harder.

[slacka]

The tools that he used to convert x86 to C can be found here:

https://github.com/notaz/ia32rtools

Video of the game running on an OpenPandora here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vWnyDrNQO4.

[agumonkey]

Original Minimum Requirements (low-latency internet connection rated at 28.8 KBps+):

  - 90 MHz Pentium or equivalent
  - 16 MB RAM
  - SVGA video card
  - low-latency internet connection rated at 28.8 KBps+

I forgot how few resources this great game needed.

ps: the pandora specs http://openpandora.org/portal/index.php?option=com_content&v...

[userbinator]

The bulk of the logic seems to be here:

https://github.com/notaz/ia32rtools/blob/master/tools/transl...

It looks like it's not a full decompiler, but just an instruction-level one - it doesn't attempt to recover any more high-level structure beyond if/goto and function boundaries with parameters. Look at lines 4500-4533 for an example. He also appears to be parsing disassembler output(!) for its input.

[pmorici]

Is there an overview of how to use ia32rtools any place?

[sspiff]

This kind of reverse engineering never fails to impress. If you asked me ahead of time, I'd probably have said "possible in theory, but there would be so many obstacles to overcome that no one will succeed in practice."

[GFischer]

I thought it had been done for Android first, and apparently it was, with winulator:

docs.winulator.com/programs

Edit: more info on GsmArena

http://blog.gsmarena.com/you-can-now-play-starcraft-and-caes...

"The Winulator doesn’t work like an emulator. It just converts an x86 game executable to an ARM-friendly one. Here is what you need to do.

You’ll need three things – a computer with installed Winulator Converter Helper, the original DRM-free game installed on that computer and the Winulator Android app installed on your phone."

[Sektor]

Yes I was a bit confused that this is supposed to be new information, I installed StarCraft on my android about a year ago using winulator.

It even supports a bluetooth mouse, (which I went and bought the same day I installed and got working). Works perfectly. like having a '96 gaming PC in your pocket(s)

I even changed the winulator icon to StarCraft icon then went to the pub and pulled the mouse out of my pocket, setup my android and made all my iphone-owning friends $#!^ bricks. Good times.

[shirman]

You only need this [0] and this [1] to run the game.

[0] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.postram.wi...

[1] https://docs.google.com/a/shir-man.com/file/d/0B1bdCV3iqJ-MT...

[wtracy]

I've kicked around the idea of translating machine code to LLVM assembly code specifically to do things like this.

I actually got as far as creating a GitHub repo to work on this <https://github.com/wtracy/recompile> but my code never got farther than some logic for parsing ELF headers.

[jevinskie]

I can't wait until I find such a project that is in a usable state! I've tried all of these (save dagger, no releases yet) and always hit some issue due to their immaturity.

https://github.com/libcpu/libcpu

http://dagger.repzret.org/

https://github.com/draperlaboratory/fracture

[tluyben2]

Excuse my ignorance here; I wanted to get into LLVM more but never did. Don't you have: frontends which do Language => LLVM intermediate code and backends which do LLVM code => native ? So you were writing a frontend which could do x86 => LLVM code and then it can compile to ARM, x86, JS etc?

Sounds like a HUGE undertaking (esp for one person) but worth it; once you have that frontend (if my assumptions are correct), you would be able to have a lot of fun.

[dangero]

Yeah LLVM would be really cool like emscripten, but for x86.

I would like to see a performance comparison of this approach vs. running a full virtual machine since the x86 to arm conversion approach still requires a wine lib to execute all the windows APIs.

[AdrianRossouw]

I love my open pandora, even though i haven't played much on it recently.

I'll probably also buy the follow up device.

[tluyben2]

It's still the only option for long flights if you don't have the $ to pay for business class (power sockets there); I have a Pandora with 2 batteries (which are quite small) which is over 20 hours of a system which actually lets you do your work. Wouldn't have survived my trip of 25 hours last week without it.

[kokey]

I had various models of the GP2X and hacked together a game for it and really enjoyed the community around it. That said, I thought the Pandora project would either fail or units would only be available when better alternatives exist, or the unit price would be too high. I'm glad to see there is still some momentum.

[wpietri]

Neat! As I'm not much of a gamer, I hadn't heard of this device before. But for under $600, you get a modest portable Linux box with 10-hour battery life.

http://ithic.com/newsite/index.php?id_product=9&controller=p...

I'm not quite sure what I'd use one for, but it's an interesting option.

[Aissen]

If you're interested about the followup device: http://pyra-handheld.com/

Done by some of the founders of OpenPandora. Will probably be the only followup device. It has impressive specs, but is priced like a laptop (which it is tbh).

[protopete]

Awesome. I've been meaning to do the same thing for Final Fantasy VII PC.

[foldor]

While I'm never one to stand in the way of tinkering, I'm curious as to why you chose FF7?

There are many open source implementations of PS1 emulators, and the PC version of FF7 is notoriously bad. So from a gameplay perspective, the PS1 version of FF7 is far easier to run an any platform, and is superior in all respects.

Like I said, not discouraging it, just curious.

[MikeTV]

Starcraft was ported to ARM in 2010 to run on the Windows Mobile platform. Details are rather light, so I don't know if they used the same approach, but it's likely.

http://www.phonearena.com/news/StarCraft-arrives-for-Windows...

[cordite]

Funny, I actually started up my pandora the first time in two years, thinking I'd play pokemon. And then I see this on HN.

[ekianjo]

Video here: http://pandoralive.info/?p=2965

[AdmiralAsshat]

So if it's compiled for ARM now, any chance I could get it working on my Chromebook?

[deletes]

Now that you have the C source, release it and/or compile a tablet version.

[jevinskie]

The C source would be a derived work. They have no right to release it.

[ndesaulniers]

In the US, does decompiling have ramifications in regards to the DMCA?

[qdog]

Probably, and copyright. Blizzard sued bnetd for reverse-engineering to make a compatible server. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bnetd

FD: I no longer play Blizzard games due to this action.

[theandrewbailey]

Any possibility that this could be ported to a Raspberry Pi?

[grecy]

I wish there were more static recompiling emulators.

[marcelocamanho]

Raspberry Pi port anyone?

[crassus]

Now how about an Intel Mac binary?