this post was submitted on 07 May 2025
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Yup, they shipped a debug build. Here's a video that shows the build side-by-side with one that was compiled with compiler optimizations: https://youtu.be/9_gdOKSTaxM
It was quite laggy in certain areas, particularly the submarine sank the framerate quite considerably.
I heard somewhere more recently that they probably did it on purpose because they didn't know if the game would be stable using the different settings. Nintendo was known for quality back then so if the game crashed, even a bit more, they thought it would hurt their bottom line.
True, there were several programming mistakes that caused undefined behaviour. Most of these the compiler warns about though, so they could have easily been fixed.
The issues were "masked" so to speak by the debug build (even if not fully gone, the game could still crash). But decompiling the game let modders fix those issues fairly easily, after which it could be recompiled with the proper optimizations.
Thanks for the video. Yeah ok actually ~~clankers cavern~~ (no wait that was banjo kazooie, I meant that one with all the sea serpents) was hella laggy, you've brought it all back