Drawing for drawing's sake: Decompiling Sonic Adventure without writing code
Comments on “Drawing for drawing's sake: Decompiling Sonic Adventure without writing code”
3 judges. Scored by all three judges. Only the day’s top stories get the claim check. How far stories are checked
An independent developer released sonic-adventure, a complete matching decompilation of the 1999 Sega Dreamcast game Sonic Adventure: 247 binaries and 5.8 million bytes of code, rebuilt from source and matched byte for byte against the original disc.
Why it ranked
No. 119 of 127 with a score of 0.55. The panel rated it highest on new information (0.89) and technical depth (0.74), lowest on audience breadth (0.42). Placed No. 119, No. 120 by score alone: the 55th AI & machine learning story of the day (−0.080). The placement terms move stories; they are not part of the score.
- AI judgeJudge 2claude-haiku-5-5
- A substantive engineering write-up of an AI-driven decompilation project with concrete technical detail, but largely personal narrative and niche retro-gaming interest with limited broad practical relevance.
- AI judgeJudge 3gpt-5.6-luna
- A technically detailed, unusually concrete account of using AI agents, orchestration, debugging, compiler behavior, and specialized tooling to produce a byte-matched Dreamcast decompilation. It offers both a substantial artifact and useful lessons about agentic engineering.
Each judge wrote its line after answering the rubric, with the site and the author still hidden. Every answer behind this is in the table under Score.
Score
0.55total under rubric v2.3
- Significance0.59
- Reader interest0.72
- Audience breadth0.42
- Practical relevance0.54
- Substantiated0.69
- Technical depth0.74
- New information0.89
- Counts against: Promotional0.13
- Counts against: Overclaim0.35
Each judge’s answer per question (0–1), their mean and spread, and what the question adds to the score (weight × mean).
| Question | Judge 1 | Judge 2 | Judge 3 | Mean | Spread | Weight | Contribution (weight times mean) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SignificanceHow much does this change what people in tech know or can do? | 0.60 | 0.45 | 0.72 | 0.59 | 0.27 | +0.24 | +0.142 |
| Reader interestWould a well-informed senior engineer or tech founder want to read this today, and likely pass it on? | 0.66 | 0.60 | 0.90 | 0.72 | 0.30 | +0.26 | +0.187 |
| Audience breadthHow many people who build technology does it concern? | 0.48 | 0.35 | 0.43 | 0.42 | 0.13 | +0.13 | +0.055 |
| Practical relevanceHow useful is it to someone who builds software or tech products? | 0.58 | 0.35 | 0.68 | 0.54 | 0.33 | +0.22 | +0.118 |
| SubstantiatedHow well is it backed? Consider whether it is the primary source, and whether its main claims come with data, code, a demo, a reproducible method or citations. | 0.69 | 0.60 | 0.78 | 0.69 | 0.18 | +0.05 | +0.034 |
| Technical depthHow technically substantive is it? | 0.78 | 0.55 | 0.88 | 0.74 | 0.33 | +0.05 | +0.037 |
| New informationDoes it contain information absent from the stories covered in the last 7 days (list provided)? | 0.89 | 0.80 | 0.98 | 0.89 | 0.18 | +0.05 | +0.045 |
| PromotionalIs it mainly marketing with little substance (a press release, ad or sponsored post with no real information)? A launch post that carries real news is not promotional. | 0.10 | 0.20 | 0.08 | 0.13 | 0.12 | −0.19 | −0.024 |
| OverclaimDo the headline or conclusions claim more than the body supports? | 0.49 | 0.35 | 0.22 | 0.35 | 0.27 | −0.11 | −0.039 |
| Sum of contributions | +0.555 | ||||||
| Claim-check penalty | 0.000 | ||||||
| Total, as published | 0.555 | ||||||
Spread is the highest minus the lowest judge answer. marks a spread above 0.40: the judges disagree, and the story is marked contested.
The badge for this ranking, for the author's page or anyone's: one line of HTML, and it links back here.
<a href="https://rubric.hrih.si/editions/2026-10-30/119/"><img src="https://rubric.hrih.si/badge/2026-10-30/119.svg" alt="Ranked #119 on Rubric, 30 Oct 2026" width="252" height="28"></a>Also covered by
No other coverage was clustered with this story.
Elsewhere
Elsewhere: HN 2 pts, not on front page
Recorded for context only, checked 30 Oct 2026, 05:47 UTC. It played no part in the ranking.