[HN Gopher] Open-ribbon - A Project to reverse engineer the PS1 ...
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       Open-ribbon - A Project to reverse engineer the PS1 music game Vib-
       Ribbon
        
       Author : millerhooks
       Score  : 67 points
       Date   : 2023-10-06 16:39 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | maxweylandt wrote:
       | First encountered this game about a decade ago at the TATE
       | gallery in London on an exhibition showcasing their newly created
       | video game collection. Was immediately taken by the soundtrack
       | and chased it down. Fantastic game, fantastic music
        
       | xPyth wrote:
       | Thanks to everyone that got interested by the repo. Even if we
       | left the project on the side we may be able to work on it.
       | Unfortunately, it is REALLY hard to get this done as we are a
       | really small team. And we lack motivation and knowedges as most
       | of us never did any decompilation in the past, me included. Open-
       | Ribbon Discord Server: [join via the github]
        
         | millerhooks wrote:
         | Whoa. This blew up! I'm working on a vibribbon like game and
         | was curious about some of the internal workings and found your
         | repo. I am interested in helping. I'll come hang in your
         | discord this weekend and see what I can help with.
        
       | Kiro wrote:
       | I've never played the game but listened to Vib-Ribbon Blues a
       | million times. Seeing this I took the opportunity to watch a
       | playthrough, and wow, the singing voice is actually the character
       | speaking in the tutorial. I had no idea.
        
       | sleepybrett wrote:
       | One of my favorite games for the dev, non region locked, ps1 I
       | have. Picked it up out of a used game bin for a couple of bucks.
       | I still find myself humming the soundtrack.
        
       | lawlessone wrote:
       | Not sure if you are one of the people working on this. But some
       | screenshots inthe readme would be nice for the unfamiliar :-)
       | 
       | This reminds me of the demo disc i got with my ps1, it had a
       | music visualizer that also loaded into memory and then let you
       | swap out a disc.
        
       | effnorwood wrote:
       | [dead]
        
       | tecleandor wrote:
       | Woooo! This was a simple but great game, and the music was just
       | GREAT. Also, you could pop open the PS1 CD reader, and put
       | whatever Audio CD you had around, so you could play with custom
       | music that, more or less, was followed by the game levels.
        
         | ascagnel_ wrote:
         | The custom music wasn't followed the game levels -- the game
         | was designed for you to swap in your own CD, and the levels
         | would be generated off of that music.
         | 
         | It's why the digital re-releases have been somewhat lackluster
         | -- the default music is fine, but not notable on its own.
        
       | matt_heimer wrote:
       | Is this legal? I know decompiling is legal in some areas for
       | specific reasons. But I don't think that you can open source the
       | result of that decompilation. You end up with an artifact based
       | on something you don't have the rights to relicense.
        
         | xPyth wrote:
         | Well, its not legal obviously to decompile and share the code
         | online. But its just a matter of "will they care" and the
         | answer is most likely NO. Just like SM64, it is open sourced on
         | GitHub but they never got any complain from Nintendo asking to
         | shut down anything.
        
           | Lammy wrote:
           | Now's the time for open door and start it! Don't look back so
           | nothing to lose / Party just goes on!!
        
       | JansjoFromIkea wrote:
       | Love the game, even bought an E3 shirt for it from a random
       | person via a google image search years back.
       | 
       | Might be worth just directly asking Masaya Matsuura about this if
       | you get stuck, he's fairly accessible via facebook (or at least
       | he used to be).
       | 
       | Also, I've done no machine learning stuff at all, but wouldn't
       | something like Vib Ribbon be absolutely ripe for reverse
       | engineering via finding trends in the kinds of levels produced on
       | the basis of the kind of music played fed into them?
        
         | cossinle wrote:
         | About that last point: yeah it should be something like that,
         | the patent for it's system actaully goes into quite a bit of
         | detail about it (if anyone's curious:
         | https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/c3/3b/7a/f6f2da3...
         | )
        
         | xPyth wrote:
         | The algorythm used can be found in the game patents, they
         | explain how they are analysing the audio waves in order to
         | generate the map. For the default soudtracks, they are simply
         | pre-created with a script file explainig the map format.
        
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       (page generated 2023-10-06 23:00 UTC)