Can Glulx games be decompiled?

Authoring Other Development Systems
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hello

i created an account to ask if its possible to open a glulxe game to make more additions without the development files? (or as in my case the original creator has apparently abandoned the game and i would like to continue working on it)

disclaimer: to any moderators if this topic is in the wrong place please move it to the right one

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This is not feasible because the Glulxe file is literally compiled code. You might be able to do small patches, but to rewrite it is a fool’s errand. You’re better off attempting a decompile as a step in a rewrite, but as most decompiles are, it’s a slow and messy process. Decompiling anything is best done to figure out individual pieces of a program and reimplementing them separately.

Can you tell us what you’re trying to do and why?

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mrifk is a Glulx → I6 decompiler, but mrifk is somewhat out of date. Even if it were up to date, it would produce ugly I6 with meaningless variable/function names (this is inevitable… the original names are no longer available).

There are still isolated bits that would be pretty easy of change, like switching some given bit of literal text with something else of the same length. Most things would be much harder.

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You should also think about copyright here, since the game is still the intellectual property of the original creator and (depending on its license) it may not be legal to distribute a modified version without their consent.

Probably the best option for both practicality and legality is to just ask the original creator for the source code.

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to answer your question

the game is called Bad Neverland and it is a fan-made game that was seemingly abandoned years ago by the original creators Team Anonymouse and i was wondering if it is possible to continue development of the game without the source code

you can check out the game here: Bad Neverland . wordpress . com

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sorry i do not know how to contact the original creators as the last i heard from them was in 2018 when they “disappeared” while developing the game i am looking for help with

please see other reply for more info

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A thing that is easy to do is to extract all the text from a game with glulx-strings. Of course, it’d be quite a jigsaw puzzle to reconstruct the game from that.

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