From 3030b6cd68c1d35e438896943de9e8a083463fc5 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Ethanw05 <46205865+Ethanw05@users.noreply.github.com> Date: Fri, 2 Oct 2026 05:20:06 -0600 Subject: [PATCH] docs: simplify history and AI usage; credit dumbad by alias --- README.md | 71 ++++++++++++++++--------------------------------------- 1 file changed, 21 insertions(+), 50 deletions(-) diff --git a/README.md b/README.md index 313f68f4..ed7c9493 100644 --- a/README.md +++ b/README.md @@ -10,61 +10,32 @@ Includes skating, tricks, grinds, offboard movement, difficulty settings and ## History -This rewrite builds on more than two years of Skate 3 reverse engineering and -modding work that began before the Rust project. Its development timeline -should not be mistaken for the time it took to understand the original game. +Before this rewrite existed, **dumbad** spent more than two years reverse +engineering Skate 3 and building the tools needed to understand and work with +it. That meant countless hours digging through undocumented file formats, +animation data, and game interaction systems, then testing those discoveries +in the original game. Much of that work is collected in +[DumbadsSkate3ModdingTools](https://github.com/Ethanw05/DumbadsSkate3ModdingTools), +including tools for custom maps, meshes, collision, challenges, and DLC. -Ethan Wingfield, known as **dumbad** -([Ethanw05](https://github.com/Ethanw05)), developed the research and tooling -collected in -[DumbadsSkate3ModdingTools](https://github.com/Ethanw05/DumbadsSkate3ModdingTools). -That work established the foundation for understanding the game's file formats, -animation data, and game interaction systems used by the rewrite. It involved -examining the original game, decoding binary structures, building parsers and -exporters, and testing those discoveries against the game. - -The tooling includes ArenaBuilder, collision PSG generation, clustered-mesh -serialization and compression, KD-tree construction, mesh and material data -builders, AI-path data, ChallengeEditor, and DLC-building tools. These are -concrete outputs of the earlier research, rather than discoveries that began -with the Rust rewrite. - -Chasm later worked on a Skate 3 recompilation and a custom renderer based on -Ethan's earlier renderer work. The Rust/Bevy project followed that work, -bringing the accumulated research into a new implementation. Credit for -developing the rewrite and credit for the research that made it possible are -both part of this project's history. - -This project is a reconstruction of Skate 3 systems in Rust and Bevy. -Recompilation of the original executable is a different approach. Loading -original assets and reproducing demonstrated behavior does not establish -complete equivalence with the original game; gameplay parity remains a work -in progress. +That research laid the groundwork for this project. Chasm later worked on a +recompilation and a custom renderer based on dumbad's earlier renderer work, +before moving into the Rust/Bevy rewrite. The rewrite's development time tells +only part of the story: the knowledge and tools it relies on took years of +work to establish. ## AI usage -AI coding tools have been used in the broader research and development effort, -including work on tooling and the Rust implementation. AI assistance is part -of the development history and should be acknowledged alongside the people -who directed the work and supplied the underlying research. +AI coding tools were used to develop this rewrite, but none of it would have +been possible without dumbad's extraordinary effort to reverse engineer the +original game. The AI had years of hard-earned research and working tools to +build on. Describing the project as simply “AI rewriting Skate 3” leaves out +the work that made it possible in the first place. -The rewrite was not produced by giving an AI an unexplored game and having it -independently recover everything. It builds on the earlier reverse engineering, -format knowledge, tools, and experiments described above. The time spent -generating or adapting implementation code does not include the two-plus years -of work that established that foundation. - -AI-generated code is not, by itself, evidence that a recovered format or -gameplay system is correct. Claims about accuracy need support from inspection -of the original game, reproducible tests, and behavioral comparisons. -Likewise, a successful demonstration should not be described as proof of -complete 1:1 parity. - -When describing or reporting on this project, distinguish the original -reverse-engineering work, AI-assisted implementation, reuse of retail assets, -and the behavior actually verified in the rewrite. AI assistance does not -replace attribution to the people and projects whose work supplied the -necessary knowledge. +AI helped turn that knowledge into a new implementation; it does not replace +credit for discovering how the game works. This is still a work in progress, +and using original assets or showing working tricks does not mean every +system behaves exactly like the original. ## Play