avast / avast/retdec

Error decompiling FF8.exe

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Description

Hi,

I'm trying to use retdec to decompile `FF8.exe` ( Final Fantasy VIII ) released by [Squaresoft on Jan 25, 2000](https://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/final-fantasy-viii), as I was curious to see if the output was better than Ghidra, in order to help me move forward with my own modding project FFNx ( https://github.com/julianxhokaxhiu/FFNx ).

Although I don't have a High-End PC I am able to successfully decompile this very same binary using Ghidra or Snowman. Unfortunately on retdec I always get an error either because of not having enough memory or an "unknown error", once running the decompile script ( on both WIndows and Linux ).

I did ask also another great contributor to the Final Fantasy Modding scene @MakiPL which has a 64GB machine running Windows, and the process crashed the same after using ~31GB of RAM.

Could you please help me identify where the issue lies? Or which flags I can try to use?

The binary can be found at this URL: https://www.ff8.fr/download/programs/FF8SqeaNVPatch.zip

Thank you in advance,
Julian

Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

Research direction

Start by reproducing the failure with FF8.exe using RetDec's decompile script on Windows or Linux, recording whether it reports an out-of-memory or unknown error. Compare the behavior with the reported Ghidra and Snowman runs, then inspect the script's available flags and identify the failing stage. Done means the cause is documented or a reproducible flag-based workaround is established.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Domain
reverse-engineering
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
20/100

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