The Gex series really needs updated native PC ports

[Retrofuge]

I know it sounds pretty crazy since Gex 1 and 2 already have PC versions. But, I always hated how most of those games were just out of the date. What I mean is, they really have no quality of life improvements, modifications or anything that improves the base experience. It's just been on my mind let's say the Gex Trilogy does come out. We know already the Carbon Engine is mostly going to be based on emulation, which is not really ideal for a port.

Also, it doesn't help the Gex: Enter the Gecko's PC port version is more or less broken. Also, it means that the third game is really just going to emulated PSX port which would sound pretty redundant to get at full price.  I really think the Gex series in general could really benefit from an made from the ground up remastered treatment.

In some necks of the woods, I have been seeing an uptick of decompilation projects lately, Banjo-Kazooie,  Paper Mario, Doom PSX and SM64 come to mind. It makes me wonder if it would be ever be possible with Gex one day.

I do think the series could use some extra love in terms of proper preservation and because I'm not sure if Limited Run Games would fulfill the promises of making the games more accessible to work on.  I would kill to see a Gex decomp project to take form. But it seems like the community seems very small to do such a task. But I hope it's possible one day.

[TwitchisMental]

I know it sounds pretty crazy since Gex 1 and 2 already have PC versions. But, I always hated how most of those games were just out of the date. What I mean is, they really have no quality of life improvements, modifications or anything that improves the base experience. It's just been on my mind let's say the Gex Trilogy does come out. We know already the Carbon Engine is mostly going to be based on emulation, which is not really ideal for a port.

Also, it doesn't help the Gex: Enter the Gecko's PC port version is more or less broken. Also, it means that the third game is really just going to emulated PSX port which would sound pretty redundant to get at full price.  I really think the Gex series in general could really benefit from an made from the ground up remastered treatment.

In some necks of the woods, I have been seeing an uptick of decompilation projects lately, Banjo-Kazooie,  Paper Mario, Doom PSX and SM64 come to mind. It makes me wonder if it would be ever be possible with Gex one day.

I do think the series could use some extra love in terms of proper preservation and because I'm not sure if Limited Run Games would fulfill the promises of making the games more accessible to work on.  I would kill to see a Gex decomp project to take form. But it seems like the community seems very small to do such a task. But I hope it's possible one day.

Oh I would love to see a Gex project like those mentioned.  My main hope from all this is to bring more interest to Gex in general so we can possibly see projects like that or give incentive for devs to give us a Gex 4.

[Ravenfreak]

I've attempted to disassemble Gex 3 but I don't think I had the correct settings in Ghidra since it didn't produce a playable iso. :V I'll have to see what settings to get the proper results. (I've followed this guide on how to get things set up but I don't think I did things correctly oops.) If someone else would like to give it a go, follow the steps in the link above. I probably just need to actually merge the bin/cue files I have to create the proper file for Ghidra to see it as a PS1 game. I've never really looked into N64 modding, that could be something else to look into to get Gex 64 and Gex 3 disassembled. (Though IMO the PS1 versions of the games are the definitive ones.) That alone will take a bit of time and to get everything actually converted from assembly to a higher language like C++ to run on PCs can take a bit longer. Anyways now I have another project I want to start lol. But since Gex 1 and 2 have PC ports it would probably just be best to actually try to get these updated to work on modern computers and have extra bonuses.

[Retrofuge]

I've attempted to disassemble Gex 3 but I don't think I had the correct settings in Ghidra since it didn't produce a playable iso. :V I'll have to see what settings to get the proper results. (I've followed this guide on how to get things set up but I don't think I did things correctly oops.) If someone else would like to give it a go, follow the steps in the link above. I probably just need to actually merge the bin/cue files I have to create the proper file for Ghidra to see it as a PS1 game. I've never really looked into N64 modding, that could be something else to look into to get Gex 64 and Gex 3 disassembled. (Though IMO the PS1 versions of the games are the definitive ones.) That alone will take a bit of time and to get everything actually converted from assembly to a higher language like C++ to run on PCs can take a bit longer. Anyways now I have another project I want to start lol. But since Gex 1 and 2 have PC ports it would probably just be best to actually try to get these updated to work on modern computers and have extra bonuses.

I have been looking into it lately myself. I would be pretty much an noob at it. I'm more interested in how you can start building the game into an iso, I think it would just be a good step to even have a bootable version, even if the decompilation is  a proof of concept. I don't really have the skills, and I'm only just learning programming but I'm very curious to how the process even works to begin with. Even with the PC versions. It's probably very possible to make tools or reverse engineer the PC version of Gex 2 to work on modern systems. I'm very surprised no one has tried yet, but if there's any more modding initiatives, that would be very cool. Gex really needs more love, I just lack the know-how. :v

[Roboguy420]

I have been looking into it lately myself. I would be pretty much an noob at it. I'm more interested in how you can start building the game into an iso, I think it would just be a good step to even have a bootable version, even if the decompilation is  a proof of concept. I don't really have the skills, and I'm only just learning programming but I'm very curious to how the process even works to begin with. Even with the PC versions. It's probably very possible to make tools or reverse engineer the PC version of Gex 2 to work on modern systems. I'm very surprised no one has tried yet, but if there's any more modding initiatives, that would be very cool. Gex really needs more love, I just lack the know-how. :v

From what I've seen, the greatest boost to start a decomp of any Gex game is if we got our hands on a leaked debug build. More specifically, one where the symbol file is there and can be applied to the binary. That way, when we do decompile the game's machine code into the more readable C, we'd be able to see what each of the function and variable names are, rather than having to guess the purpose of each function. This is what happened with some of the Legacy of Kain games and is why those fellas have been eating so good in terms of hacking and modding compared to us (see TheSerioliOfNosgoth modding group for example). AFAIK Gex 2 has yet to have a debug build leak, all the leaked development builds did not contain any symbol files, but I'm not sure for Gex 1 or 3.

[Retrofuge]

I have been looking into it lately myself. I would be pretty much an noob at it. I'm more interested in how you can start building the game into an iso, I think it would just be a good step to even have a bootable version, even if the decompilation is  a proof of concept. I don't really have the skills, and I'm only just learning programming but I'm very curious to how the process even works to begin with. Even with the PC versions. It's probably very possible to make tools or reverse engineer the PC version of Gex 2 to work on modern systems. I'm very surprised no one has tried yet, but if there's any more modding initiatives, that would be very cool. Gex really needs more love, I just lack the know-how. :v

From what I've seen, the greatest boost to start a decomp of any Gex game is if we got our hands on a leaked debug build. More specifically, one where the symbol file is there and can be applied to the binary. That way, when we do decompile the game's machine code into the more readable C, we'd be able to see what each of the function and variable names are, rather than having to guess the purpose of each function. This is what happened with some of the Legacy of Kain games and is why those fellas have been eating so good in terms of hacking and modding compared to us (see TheSerioliOfNosgoth modding group for example). AFAIK Gex 2 has yet to have a debug build leak, all the leaked development builds did not contain any symbol files, but I'm not sure for Gex 1 or 3.

Yeah, I think the issue is, most of it would be guesswork and a lot of people just wouldn't have the time for it. I do like to think the opportunity will come around some day. So far, I don't think there's any debug symbols found in either of the games, otherwise, we would have a lot of progress made by now.