r/pathofdiablo • u/Hanuman9 • 17d ago

AI Development

There's a lot of talks lately about AI, AI coding and AI slop. A mod definitely needs to be designed by hand.

One advantage of AI though, is that it allows certain individuals to increase their productivity and take a higher workload. u/greendude120 is one such case. Increasing productivity is definitely a plus, when there aren't many others to step up.

A very major part of creating/fixing a mod is bug-fixing, which can be extremely time-intensive.

Claude and GPT are amazing at writing code.

I did some experiments with Grok Build. This one is amazing at DEBUGGING and pin-pointing the real issue. Grok Build is a hunter. That's what's needed here. Not writing code per se.

I gave it multiple hard tests and it passed them, to my surprise.

Could definitely be useful to reduce the workload and fix some lingering issues. There's a weekly quota on the $30 plan; fix a few bugs per week.

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9

u/greendude120 17d ago

This doesn't apply to d2's "softmodding" nor "hardcoding aka code editing" which are both ways you can mod. Softmodding involves editing spreadsheets that reference arbitrary things like for example SrvDoFunc=8 means the skill will fire multiple projectiles read from Par1. Meanwhile SrvDoFunc=18 means cast a buff on yourself and get the buff state, buff duration and buff stats from the AuraState, AuraDuration and AuraStat1-6 columns. So here an AI doesn't know all these arbitrary rules and functions meaning that they typically will hallucinate new columns or unused/invalid values.

Then for code editing, this involves reverse engineering the exe and dll files from the game for which there is no source code. And while yes, the frontier models have some reversing capabilities, it is, luckily, not yet able to do all of it and it cannot do any of it cheaply. The day AI can fully reverse d2 in the blink of an eye, this will mean all software cracked instantly. Any game or software would be pirated instantly and all security software and antiviruses would be bypassed. That is definitely going to happen but luckily we aren't there yet. AI performs best in the places it was trained on like regular programming. Reversing dlls and exe is not a universal thing, it is very situational to each program/app. Likewise d2 modding is very specific to d2 modding and so an AI cant do it unless it has been trained on d2 modding specifically.

I do appreciate you wanting to see us go faster, that sentiment is felt and appreciated but AI is a tool that requires the right job. And here, for now at least, it isn't the right tool for the job.

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u/Hanuman9 16d ago

I asked Grok Build about its capabilities in that domain.

What I can do

• Identify the file: ELF, PE, Mach-O, raw blobs, Wine/Windows EXEs and DLLs (this workspace looks like a Diablo II / Path of Diablo prefix).

• Disassemble: objdump, readelf, dumpbin-style views, Capstone, radare2/rizin, Ghidra if they are installed. I can also walk hex dumps and reconstruct instruction streams by hand when a tool is missing.

• Analyze: calling conventions, control flow, function boundaries, imports/exports, strings, vtables, jump tables, exception/unwind info, PE/ELF headers, relocations, and how a routine uses registers and memory.

• Compare and comment: match compiled code to known compilers, inlined helpers, game/engine patterns, and write a readable explanation of what a function does.

What I cannot do well (or at all)

• Recover perfect original source. Disassembly is an approximation; names and types are often lost.

• Reliably undo heavy obfuscation, packing, or virtualization without a lot of extra work.

• Run or debug a binary if the environment is missing (Wine, libraries, anti-debug, network).

• Produce exploits, exploit PoCs, malware, or attack tooling. Analysis for understanding, debugging, compatibility, or documentation is fine; weaponizing findings is not.

Practical workflow

  1. File type, architecture, and bitness (x86 vs x64, PE vs ELF).

  2. Imports, exports, sections, and interesting strings.

  3. Disassemble the target function or address range.

  4. Reconstruct control flow and data use.

  5. Summarize behavior in comments or a write-up.

-5

u/Hanuman9 17d ago

It has passed the tests I gave it so far. I'd be curious to give it an assembly test to analyze/debug the code in assembly. If we heavily struggle with that, a machine could actually go through it a lot better. Might just need a way to facilitate how to navigate/pass the right parts of code, as it's one huge binary chunk. I'm pretty sure that with the right setup, it could help tremendously here. It remains just a tool.

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u/greendude120 16d ago

Give it a try if you dont believe me. Download a copy of vanilla legacy d2 and ask it to reverse d2game.dll and to add a charm inventory to it as an example feature. See how far it gets.

1

u/Hanuman9 16d ago

Writing the code is one thing. Hunting down a weird bug for a full week is another. According to my tests, Grok is excellent at hunting bugs. Not the best at generating code. Test-Driven Development (Unit Tests, Integration Tests) can work very well but I don't think that can be applied here.

5

u/death2sanity 17d ago

Nope.

Grok

Nope nope.

2

u/MassivePepega 11d ago

AI is being used by many very clever people to solve problems far more complex than adding features to a D2 mod. In the right hands, it certainly could be used to speed up PoD development. That being said, AI is ultimately only as capable as its user. Given that devs introduced game breaking bugs during the "beta" that they still haven't been able to resolve for 8 months, it's probably best they stay far away from any LLM.

2

u/darain2 2d ago

Adam is working on slashdiablo's bh.dll with AI assistance and his productivity is very impressive for a server that last received its practical updates in 2020. Notably, loot filtration features. I made a couple requests inspired by my time here and on other servers and he banged it out within a weekend.

You're right though. This "beta" is most likely going to last a year or more. Wake me up when september ends :D