Similar to behind-the-scenes features for films, you get sort of a “backstage access” vibe from peering into a game’s data. It’s fascinating to get some insight into what could’ve been included in a game.
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The full picture isn’t always revealed though, and that’s why I think data mining is such an important aspect of telling those stories. Sometimes developers will talk about their time making games, and what kind of experiences and challenges they faced. You might’ve overlooked something in the past, or maybe you learned something new that led to a fresh discovery. I’ve revisited numerous games and discovered new stuff. If you don’t find anything interesting, move on and check back later. Look online for useful tools or information about the game’s data. If you’re looking into a fairly popular game, chances are someone out there has done it already. Over time, you’ll become familiar with different file headers and data patterns, and it will be much easier to ID things quickly in a hex editor. png file without this data at the beginning, it’s likely either not a PNG file, or it has compression or encryption applied. A PNG file will always start off with “ ‰PNG” and “ IHDR” near the beginning of the file (or in hex, 89 50 4E 47 0D 0A 1A 0A 00 00 00 0D 49 48 44 52). A hex editor allows you to see the raw data of a file, and get a proper look at what’s actually under the hood. Developers can put any extension they want on a file. I’ve seen many people determine a file type based on its extension (.png. I personally use HxD, but there are plenty of great editors available online. There are a few things that I think are important to data mining successfully. A shaky start for sure, but a decent one I think! Some lines were only used in the US language setting, resulting in my documenting them as unused. The UK English and US English text was intertwined, and being Canadian, I naturally played through only using the UK English setting. However, there was a slight issue I didn’t realize at the time. I played through the games again while noting what lines appeared and which didn’t. A friend had done some hacking for both games, and gave me complete text dumps. A couple of beloved turn-based RPGs from my childhood made for a good start on TCRF.
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The second key event for me was sifting through text dumps for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Philosopher’s Stone, and Chamber of Secrets for Game Boy Color. After all, Super Mario Maker wouldn’t exist until many years later. The notion of creating and playing custom levels in a (nearly) brand new Mario game was incredibly appealing. I stumbled upon this editor back in 2009, when Nintendo DS emulators and flashcarts were quite abundant at the time. The first was a level editor for New Super Mario Bros., originally written by Ninji. I don’t remember exactly how I found The Cutting Room Floor over half a decade ago, but I do remember two distinct events that defined my interest in discovering secrets in games. Some people are not cut out to do reverse engineering though, and I’m one of them. That’s why I firmly believe that anyone can data mine with some time and practice. I took some programming classes throughout high school and college, and it was never something that really clicked for me. That’s not to say that data mining is a super easy process, but I believe that what I do is not special. It often requires a high technical level of knowledge and logic. Hacking and reverse engineering is a much more involved process, however. Data mining in a very literal sense is like picking away at game data. Archaeologists use tools to find things, and what I do isn’t too different from that. I jokingly describe myself on Twitter as a “video game archaeologist”, but I kind of mean it. I personally classify hacking/reverse engineering and data mining as two different things. What better to write about than something you’re familiar with? While trying to decide what to write about first on Source Gaming, I eventually landed on a tutorial/introduction/opinion piece of sorts. One of my main hobbies is searching through video game data, looking for unused and hidden assets.
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An Introduction to Video Game Data Mining