The load mnemonic is the type
Globals aren't all words. A byte-sized or halfword-sized global is accessed with a narrower load, and — unlike the arithmetic you've seen, where signedness rarely shows — loads wear their signedness on their sleeve. A narrow value must be extended to fill the register, and the mnemonic says how:
lb — load byte, sign-extend → s8lbu — load byte, zero-extend → u8lh — load halfword, sign-extend → s16lhu — load halfword, zero-extend → u16lw — load word; 32 bits fill the register exactly, so there's no lwu and no signedness clue — that has to come from elsewhere
Here's readFlag, which returns the global u8 gFlag:
lui v0, %hi(gFlag)
lbu v0, %lo(gFlag)(v0) # unsigned byte: lbu
jr ra
nop
Same two-instruction global pair as always — only the load changed. This is a gift for decompilation: a single mnemonic pins down both the size and the signedness of a global you've never seen declared. When you eventually write headers for a real project, lbu versus lb is often your only evidence for u8 versus s8.
The target reads one narrow global. Let the mnemonic dictate the declaration — which is provided — and mind that promotion to a wider type is free: the extension already happened during the load.
Your task
extern s16 gDepth; is declared for you. Write func_80033488 to reproduce the target assembly.