Hello!
I guess I am technically a contributor to the tic-80 project. I added in the shortcut X button to hop into surf menu from the console screen, as well as the menu option to auto-save or keep carts explored from the surf menu back in 2024.
I was reminiscing and bouncing around itch and humble bundle browsing my weird sprawling library of games I haven't yet played and re-encountered this project. At first I though "Oh I should get the latest version" and archived the 1.3.1 binaries available here. Then I browsed the source code to see if my changes are still kicking around. That's when I discovered they are kind of there, but shuffled and re-arranged. I was surprised and wanted to learn why to only discover claude did it. I do not know if it did a good job or not, but still felt strangely robbed of my contribution. Some of my original inserts are still within the code, but others are not. In a way, I expected this outcome, but had hoped the optimization would be conducted by a fellow enthusiast. There is a unique form of communal comradery to have someone else peel through your nonsense, and call you an imbecile in the conversation section of their better constructed pull request. It's a learning experience for everyone involved. It doesn't reflect the same way when conducted by claude though... it's strange.
Either way, the project is hosted under an MIT License. Anyone can revert the codebase to the exact commit before llm implementation, or go to the release tag 1.2.0. ( https://github.com/nesbox/TIC-80/tree/v1.2.0 ) and then download, compile, and build with the "pro" features. The part I am unsure about is if that license extends to the "pro" builds that are sold here for $10.00
If they are equally free for distribution, then I could fork the build on my own repository, recompile with the "pro" flag, and upload them as releases on github. The only issue remaining is trust. They would be coming from me, compiled on my machine, not the official Nesbox entity. It truly is a situation best resolved by Nesbox.
Viewing post in Access to Last LLM-Free Version of TIC-80
Yeah, I raised the issue here cause 1) this is where I bought the pro version, 2) I've had multiple issues with compiling TIC-80 locally, and 3) not everyone has the knowhow to spin a compiler and configure the deps (which apparently I don't ;_;). Your point about licensing issues is one I didn't consider, tho.