Comment by estebank
7 years ago
I'm surprised that no comment has extrapolated that since this was a vsprintf implementation copy, the final binary would be non compliant only if the machine code generated for it was distributed, but if it was only used for debugging internal builds (as I would assume), then the original developers didn't run afoul of the license. Am I incorrect in my understanding?
The author notes that they were able to find constants that the code uses in the binary, so odds are it was at least partially distributed.
The constants mentioned are the following:
"01234567890abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz" and "01234567890ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ"
It's very possible that separate implementations of this function would use those same constants. It's not as if they're some completely arbitrary strings.
These constants should appear in most arbitrary-base-integer-to-string functions. I wouldn't say that this proves anything.
When these constants don't appear elsewhere in the source?
And what, they'd have another implementation of this function, but have a different one with their code because... reasons?
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Isn't it common to leave debug code in production software?
I work on AAA games and we definitely don't leave any debug code in production copies of the games. It's all #ifdef'd out in Retail builds.
Maybe it's less common now that tooling and frameworks are more standardized but having spent quite a lot of time messing with the PSX and its emulators I can vouch that it's fairly common to find debugging code and strings in production versions. Simply using an emulator to enable the debug UART will spew quite a lot of debug infos for some games. FFVII has a "debug room" that you can't normally access but is present on retail copies. I also seem to recall that the PC version shipped with full debugging symbols which gave reverse engineers a field day.
I’m always surprised when I see you here but I’m not sure why.
Anyway. I can corroborate this. Debug code is /really/ harming performance in AAA games. Also, you want to remove your “cheats” that QC use to skip chunks of the game.
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If one checks on TCRF, it's a lot more common than developers would like us to believe.
Games with debugging functions: https://tcrf.net/Category:Games_with_debugging_functions
Games with hidden development-related text: https://tcrf.net/Category:Games_with_hidden_development-rela...
Games with uncompiled source code: https://tcrf.net/Category:Games_with_uncompiled_source_code
Not on the PS1 with 2M of RAM.