Decomp projects accelerate the rate that romhacks come out through new or improved tools and fresh information about the inner workings of the game. Particularly when there was little experimentation previous to the decomp, as is the case here, to allow romhackers find the game’s kinks. It absolutely is not a romhack or romhacking tool, you are correct. It’s better!
I wouldn’t have found “Dredge” without it, so I’m grateful. I’d had a hankering for a fishing game for years and it was finally sated by that little ditty
Japan is incredibly prideful. They innovate fucking hard but refuse to copy each other’s homework, which leads to random “what the fuck is happening, why is this code 20 years out of date?” situations.
Gotta find a person that you like to match up against or you’ll find sweaty melee elitists. Try an online melee group if you don’t know anyone, or maybe you could try making a Lemmy community. Most play without items so items are completely disabled by default. Not a long process to change that, though. Just don’t use this information for evil, just against friends.
If you’re still hankering for something similar to super smash bros that you can play online on pc, slap city is decent. However, melee+slippi is still a masterpiece.