Nearly three decades after MediEvil first arrived on the original PlayStation, Sir Daniel Fortesque has been brought back from the dead yet again! This time, though, it’s thanks to BlackLabelHQ, a team of developers who have used static recompilation to bring the original 1998 game natively to modern PCs. Their project, MediEvilRecomp, includes widescreen support, improved controls, higher frame rates, modding tools and plenty of other improvements, all while preserving the original game’s character and unique charm.
Something I found really interesting in this one is the team’s firm position on AI-generated code. As they proudly state, “This Recomp was made by human hands, no AI is involved in writing this code!” They even have a policy rejecting AI-generated contributions. I’ve written an article looking at the history of MediEvil, the technical work behind its latest resurrection, and why projects like this are becoming such an important part of video game preservation.
They haven’t even declared a license, and I’d assume even if they do it’d have to be pretty permissive, since they’re tiptoeing around Sony copyrighted material (muh copyrights!). What stops someone from forking it and using AI downstream?
Its virtue signaling
It’s the spirit that really matters. We know there are gonna be ones who use generative AI downstream in a fork ( if not a commit and try their hardest not to give it away by using that same clanker to write the PR in the slop free version ), but if they just fork it, we know we have a clean version available.
License be damned, I say let the gears fork the project and let the clankers go to town so the people can enjoy a slop free recomp that won’t open their computer to massive threats caused by the gears not knowing how to actually code.
What stops someone from forking it and using AI downstream?
Nothing, probably.
