It was suggested to me by the penultimate non-shitposter in 4chan /prog/ that I may find better luck in this quest here.
I'm looking to hire someone to create an extraction tool for ripping sound assets from a particularly obstinate visual novel engine. I suspect such a job would be more research than implementation, but have no idea how to go about hiring someone, or how much I should expect to spend. I'm essentially asking someone to help me violate someone else's copyright, so I doubt most programmer-for-hire sites would take the posting, even if they didn't mind extracting resources from an eroges written and (likely) coded in moonspeak. Any commissioning tips, suggested budgets, or programmer exchange recommendations from progrider?
I doubt they use encryption. Scan inside the data files for file headers; if it's an compressed stream or archive, extract it and continue recursively (and hope they didn't include a zip quine just to fuck with you); if it's an audio stream, save it.
I'm essentially asking someone to help me violate someone else's copyright
I'm not a copyright expert by any means, but as far as I know, simply extracting the audio resources does not constitute copyright infringement in any country, except possibly places with harsh reverse engineering laws, like Germany. The 'copyright infringement' part would come when you use those resources in your own work, without giving credit to the original source.
Again, I'm not a copyright expert, so this could be completely incorrect.
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Anonymous2013-09-09 2:55
>>2 I think understand what you are saying, but have no idea how to go about doing it. I'm almost positive there is some form of compression going on; for one VN there are three archives total 4.32 gigs, and I know I've extracted more than that in game CGs alone (using someone else's extractor... who has no idea how to even attempt to extract game audio). The game engine (rUGP) has some notoriety within VN circles as being a difficult nut to crack from an extraction and reinsertion standpoint, but then again their objectives have always been script and cg manipulation, not audio. What tools would you recommend to "scan" and "extract"? I'm having a hard enough time just trying to figure out the character encoding in my hex editor.
Could very well be MIDI or the like. Those Japs love their synthesizers.
If I were you I'd focus more on researching the game's engine and look for tools that can unpack its data files. What game is it?
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Anonymous2013-09-09 3:08
not midi. full voice, quality music, and sound effects. not sure if mp3/wav/ogg/whatever. probably not lossless.
I'm looking to be able to extract from any game using rugp, but with particular interest in the muv luv franchise and it's sound effects. ive tried just sound capturing, but there are more tracks than channels, so I get overlap. hence the need for direct extraction
>>6 I watched a few videos of Muv-Luv (as far as I can tell it uses the rUGP engine) and the BGM is absolutely synthesized. Though it does sound complex enough that the game engine might not be doing the synthesizing. I still suspect that it is, because the music quality sounds fine but the voice tracks are super shitty. Probably high compression lossy and possibly pre-processed to ease compression.
Another thing to look for is RBCD or DAT-like audio, even though that would be perverse to the max.
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Anonymous2013-09-09 4:59
Since it sounds like you're going to have to deal with rUGP on some level, perhaps
might be of some help to you. It's mostly focusing around translating text through Aral Trans, but you might find some information in there that will hook you up with people know know their way around rUGP (and are willing to do what you want), and some of them might be responsive to offers of money,
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Anonymous2013-09-09 6:22
Does the VN not run in a debugger? Why don't you just set a breakpoint at an interrupt that accesses the sound layer and then trace the call to see what segment of the archives it's actually getting the data from?
>>8 some are composed as synth, but others have vocal tracks. the music isn't an issue though, beyond likely being the same format as other audio in the archive. I own the OSTs.
>>9 I participated in that thread. Aral trans is just a text hooking system, written in lesser moon runes. I hadn't thought about offering them the commission though. perhaps one of them might have some leads.
>>10 If I knew how I would. my programing experience is limited to writing baby-code in java, c++, and python. reversing other peoples work as it runs is several orders of magnitude beyond my current capibilities. I'm willing to learn, And this thread is atleast teaching me the vocabulary to hopefully ask someone who knows what they are doing intelligent questions. I will research your suggestion. do you have a recomendation for a good debugger? If rUGP has its own debug mode, its either dissabled or doesnt use any of the common shortcuts
thanks to everyone for the helpful posts, btw.
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Anonymous2013-09-09 9:51
>>11 I don't really use Windows, but OllyDgb is what I used to use ages ago. You can also try IDA Pro, the disassembler, if debugging it doesn't work.
Notice the last download in the green list, "source code for riorha2.rpo"
I took a quick look at that, and it seems to be part of the code for how rUGP encodes audio, because the readme file says the project includes "mpglib", which is part of a really old mp3 encoding library. There may be something in that source to help you extract audio from the program's binaries.
>>14 They may just be using a MOD type, maybe .mo3 if they use mpglib:
その他ＭＩＤＩ楽器、ＨＤＤ容量など情報は多ければ多いほと、具体的な対応をすることができます。 Information MIDI instrument, such as an HDD capacity and most often, the more other, you can make a concrete action.
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Anonymous2013-09-09 20:31
>>12 >>13 I have tried both OllyDbg and IDA Pro (trial) while following Proger's excellent VN hacking tutorial ( http://proger.i-forge.net/Stage%20Once/Part%202/ILZ ). I just know nothing about ASM, so I find myself researching for hours wondering if each rabbit hole really has anything to do with what I'm after. An interesting new world for me though.
>>14 I tried contacting muzhi at riox a few months ago. His thoughts: "I don't have a plan for audio extraction, because I don't even have a clue on that now......" Riox has been a great help to me for script and cg extraction though. really grateful to him for that. As for the KGNE translation project, I had written it off for dead. however RIODecode and it's source code are still out there riodecode.zip - http://115.com/file/bejzgij2 riodecode-source.zip - http://115.com/file/anezuyju will investigate shortly. Cursory putzing with old riodecode on new rio files reveal several calls of "&-OM_SetVarData" and most interestingly "&-OM_PlayMedia". Very interesting. My chief concern is that whatever audio scheme they used in 2002 with rUGP5.35.06 has changed as the current version (6.1) is advertised as supporting 5.1 surround sound, in addition to windows 7 functionality
>>15 Will try. You know I didn't even think of winzip. would have thought if 7z couldn't understand it, winzip would be just as stumped. worth a shot though.
>>16 I don't know what that is. More to research I guess. Thank you.
Thanks everyone for your continued help. I do really appreciate this. If I can end up solving this without hiring someone, I'll be asking you guys for a worthy cause to donate my planned budget to.
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Anonymous2013-09-10 16:29
What VN? I don't think you've mentioned.
I was the one who directed you here from /pro/g//, by the way.
I'm most interested in sound effects from Muv Luv Alternative, but im looking to extract assets from other games of that franchise.
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Anonymous2013-09-11 0:28
>>19 You said you have the soundtrack, right? Might be easier at this point to record the FX you want when they appear in the game, and isolate by lining up the BGM and inverting.
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Anonymous2013-09-11 0:36
The OST is slightly remastered, but that's not the issue. I'm trying to isolate distinct sound effects, however multiple effects and loops overlap. The game only has 3 channels - voice, BGM, and everything else. I can disable music and voice just fine, and record effects when there's only one playing at a time, but the game is very heavy handed when it comes to layering sound, so many effects are played along with a dozen others.
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Anonymous2013-09-11 2:10
If the engine lets DirectSound handle mixing then you might be able to isolate that way. No idea how probable that is or how easy it is to get to DirectSound's buffer.
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Anonymous2013-09-11 19:50
>>22 no idea. I don't know anything about direct sound, but I would think software from 2006 that relied on the directX library would have shipped with an installer/updater. Never seen a VN do that. just an assumption though.
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Anonymous2013-09-14 1:00
Are you still there, OP?
Any progress? Any roadblocks?
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Anonymous2013-09-14 19:51
Still here. still researching/trying. But I'm a complete amateur at hacking, hence my original posting intent to hire someone who know's what they're doing. I've gotten some small insight into how calls are made from what information I could extract using that ancient KGNE extraction tool. Luckily I have the tool's source code, but it's in C#.
I don't know C#, and while I use to know C++, its been maybe 6 years since I've so much as even thought about it. I don't consider myself a programmer, just someone who took a couple of years of software engineering in college before switching majors and leaving the programming for hobby work and occasional research.
I'm beginning to think I might be better off trying to extract it from the xbox 360 version. perhaps there is a different archive system instead of rio. Age, the game's developer, had partner with 5pb, a separate company, to port it's games to xbox 360. perhaps they have a different system.