NineChime forum

Waccoon wrote:

Yeah.  De-compilation isn't an exact science to begin with, but I'm surprised it works as well as it does.  However, I've tried several de-compilers and they all choke in certain areas of the code, telling me the bytecode is garbled.  I'm looking for a way to preserve the original bytecode instructions after de-compilation (DJ-Java seems to do this, but only for reference purposes, not for re-compilation).

I'm working on it.  All I know for sure is that there was some kind of change made to Java in 2008 that is breaking how the applet writes 16-bit values to the animation buffer, and it's because the applet is doing it the wrong way.  Most likely Java got more "strict" and the old hack in the applet doesn't work anymore.  It would be so easy to fix if I only had the source code, but Shi-Chan is apparently long gone from the Internet.  I already tried contacting him for years and never got a response, and now his web site is expired and gone. 

At least I know what it is.  I guess I'm 70% of the way to getting this fixed.

That's horrible. Furthermore, in regards to ShiPainter, it looks like that his e-mail address may have even bounced...which is one of the reasons why it doesn't work anymore.

The reasons why the applet might be breaking that it was never very well maintained and that it might not work correctly with future versions of the Java Runtime Environment.

As for getting it fixed, that's very good to hear that.

Waccoon wrote:

The only real update for the moment is a correction to the Spanish translation for Wacintaki.  It has not been released yet.

I do have some good news with regards to Java.  It seems the applets work fine with Java 7, which is very encouraging.

I've also made some progress in fixing the broken animation problem with PaintBBS and ShiPainter.  I was able to recover and decompress data from a "broken" animation file, and the applets are apparently using some "clever" code to encode the size of the animation data.  Since 2008, this code isn't working correctly with Java, and Java is outputting only one byte instead of two.  If I can find a way to replace the "clever" code with something more appropriate (an explicit cast), then animations should work correctly again.  I'm not a Java programmer, though, so I'm learning as I go.  It may not be necessary for me to de-compile the whole applet, but rather just the one class that's causing the issue, or perhaps just patch the bytecode directly.  The fact that ShiPainter isn't de-compiling correctly is what's making this difficult.  If I had the source code, this would be a piece of cake.  Oh well.

That's good news to hear so far!

As for ShiPainter, it kinda sucks to hear that something is not making the applet decompile correctly. And without the source code, I suspect that it'll probably won't work.

I haven't been posting anything here in a while, but have there been any updates yet to either Wacintaki or Wax Poteto?

Just curious enough to ask.

(I'm just really saddened to see people almost stop using oekakies and Java JRE 6 will be EOL'd this Summer. )