#decoder disc

[thisisrealy2kok]

Decoder/Technical Itch - Headlock/Deception (1999)

[bookgeekgrrl]

My media this week (6-12 Apr 2025)

📚 STUFF I READ 📚

🥰 Fan Service (Rosie Danan) - this was just so! much! fun! and given my usual low tolerance of cishet contemp romances, that's saying something. Nailed the whole 'being-in-fandom' vibe, even calling out some of the more toxic aspects, without ever shitting on it, in a way that can only be done from someone on the inside.

😍 Murder by Memory (Dorothy Gentleman #1) (Olivia Waite, author; Blair Baker, narrator) - delightful scifi cozy mystery novella set on a generation ship - as someone who loved The Spare Man, I gotta say I am all on board with this publishing trend. also: Dorothy Gentleman? incredible name, chef's kiss. Absolutely cannot wait for more of Dorothy's adventures.

��💖 +72K of shorter fic so shout out to these I really loved 💖💖

In The Long Run (musette22) - MCU: shrunkyclunks, 12K - this fic is described by the author as "mostly 💫 vibes 💫 and unapologetic smut, with a bit of soulmates and angst thrown in the mix"; said vibes are heavily influenced by '70s rock, especially The Eagles' "Peaceful Easy Feeling" which all adds up to be wonderfully delicious

Misplaced Pencils (Somanywords) - MCU: stucy, 13K - lovely & poignant look at Steve Rogers & his relationship to drawing throughout his life (with a side of his relationship to bucky thrown in 😉)

📺 STUFF I WATCHED 📺

The Sam Sanders Show - How Did Marsai Martin Conquer Child Stardom?

Home Town Takeover - s3, e5

Smartypants - s2, e3

QI - series Q, e2-4, 7-8, 11-14

Um, Actually - s10, e6

Game Changer - s7, e1

Doctor Odyssey - s1, e13-14

D20: The Ravening War - "The Seventh Kingdom" (s17, e5)

D20: The Ravening War - "The Heart of the World" (s17, e6)

D20: Adventuring Party - s12, e5-6 (The Ravening War)

The Fall Guy

Doctor Who - s2 (series 15), e1

D20: Titan Takedown - "Party Animals" (s25, e1)

D20: Titan Takedown - "Bouts and Boogies" (s25, e2)

D20: Adventuring Party - s20, e1-2 (Titan Takedown)

🎧 PODCASTS 🎧

Pop Pantheon - Disco: Past & Present (with The Clive Davis Institute's Jason King)

Off Menu - Ep 285: Sally Phillips

Imaginary Worlds - NSFW Ancient Tales, Myths and Riddles

⭐ Twenty Thousand Hertz+ - Inside Apple: Sonic Accessibility

Our Opinions Are Correct - Severance and the New Hellscape (w/ Carl Zimmer)

Desert Island Discs - Cyndi Lauper

The Sporkful - Comedian Matteo Lane Says ‘Your Pasta Sucks’

Off Menu - Ep 286: Rhod Gilbert (Live in London)

Pop Culture Happy Hour - The White Lotus

The Curious History of Your Home - Clocks

The Atlas Obscura Podcast - The Black American West Museum

Switched on Pop - Miley Cyrus goes avant-garde

Dinner’s on Me - Matt Bomer

99% Invisible - Everything Is Tuberculosis

David Tennant Does a Podcast With…Georgia Tennant

Persuasion by Jane Austen - Persuasion 11. | The Tale of Mrs Smith

Pop Culture Happy Hour - Dying For Sex

⭐ Vibe Check - If You Don’t Want to Be Edged, Get Out of My Bed

⭐ Decoder Ring - Spring Break Forever

Decoder Ring - An MTV Spring Break Karaoke Misadventure

Imaginary Worlds - Blueprints for Utopias

Pop Culture Happy Hour - Pop Culture That Changed Our Minds

The Atlas Obscura Podcast - What Makes a Pest?

⭐ One Song - Roberta Flack's "Killing Me Softly With His Song"

Shedunnit - Book Club Fact File: The Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie

Shedunnit - Book Club Conversation: The Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie

No One Saw It Coming - Stealing the Mona Lisa: The Crime That Created a Legend

You're Dead to Me - Marco Polo: history’s most famous travel writer?

Hit Parade - Only Girl in the World Edition

🎶 MUSIC 🎶

The Muppets

"Bad For Me" [Dee Dee Bridgewater] radio

Who Believes In Angels? [Elton John & Brandi Carlile] {2025}

Rock Radio • 1990s

Groove Cruise

'80s Rock Revival

50 Years of the Piano Man [Billy Joel] {2022}

Beats & Soul

AC/DC

Ratt radio

The Darkness Radio • Rock

Enya

[cod-dump]

Adler: Where's Bell?

Sims: Decoding that floppy disc

Adler: *looks over Sims' shoulder at Bell*

Bell: *slumped over a desk making hysterical noises while scribbling in a notebook*

Sims: He's- uh- been doing that for awhile...

Adler: That's his process. Trust me, he'll figure it out

Sims: I can't tell if he's laughing or crying

Adler: A bit of both

Sims:

Adler: To be genius is to be mad

Sims: Right...

[felassan]

This post is a collection assorted DA:TV info/news snippets. it's under a cut due to there being some spoilers in places.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard is reportedly currently $20 off on Xbox or PlayStation on disc, at QVC through November 30th (on purchases of over $40). [source and details]

This article also describes another way to use a discount for the game [source and details]

Metacritic gave a statement to Eurogamer about DA:TV review-bombing -

"In a statement to Eurogamer acknowledging the backlash to Dragon Age: The Veilguard on its site, a spokesperson for Metacritic parent company Fandom said its site was a "place of belonging for all fans". "We take online trust and safety very seriously across all our sites including Metacritic," the spokesperson said. "Metacritic has a moderation system in place to track violations of our terms of use. Our team reviews each and every report of abuse (including but not limited to racist, sexist, homophobic, insults to other users, etc) and if violations occur, the reviews are removed."" [source]

DA:TV contains a reference to Elden Ring [source and details]

Apparently players have discovered in DA:TV an infinite money exploit [source and details]

The BioWare Gear store looks to have restocked the BGS-exclusive variant of the DA:TV art book [link]

Solas & Varric's inaudible conversation from the prologue was decoded by ThedasWolves [source, via] -

Varric: "So how is this time gonna work out for the better? Can you tell me that?" Solas: "I understand your hesitance, but what I do now must be done. Despite it being past your comprehension." Varric: "I'm not saying you're evil, but if you truly believed what you were doing you'd be able to give me a straight answer." Solas: "You would rather cast aspersions than admit that this is mine to solve!" Varric: "C'mon Chuckles, who are you trying to convince here? Me, or yourself?"

DA:TV is reportedly EA's most successful singleplayer game on Steam, overtaking Star Wars Jedi Survivor and Mass Effect Legendary Edition in terms of all-time peak of concurrent players and at one point knocking Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 off the top as current top seller on the platform [source].

Larian's Swen Vincke downloaded DA:TV [source]

Coverage notes that DA:TV is a smooth-performing release in terms of the technical side of things [source]

DA:TV contains a heartfelt memorial tribute in honor of late BioWare developer Bruno Hayne: [link]

[nintendo-killed-atari]

Yes, it's me again. Post this!

I just found a QR code hidden in the trailer at 1:20 (when the title for Plaything shows up). It lead to this App Store app page for something called "TCK96". The available screenshots and description are — interesting to say the least. HERE:https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tck96/id6529524046?mt=8

BRO DO WE REALLY NEED TO SOLVE AN ARG I SWEAR TO GOD-

Alright Alright

Here's a summary of what the description says:

Overview

TCK96 is an experimental software from 1996.

Originally leaked in the mid-late 2000s on a fan forum but was quickly taken down.

A forum mod’s laptop (purchased at a fire sale) contained a local copy.

Content of TCK96 Disc

Mostly company paperwork.

Includes a password-protected copy of unreleased software.

Advanced AI for its era—shocking it was never released.

Restoration Efforts

Currently working on bundling it with an emulator.

Also includes a 2007 interview discussing the leak.

Needs stabilization before listing all features.

Speculation and Leaks

Disc was likely a high-level executive's high-priority backup.

Includes cancellation memos, some redacted.

Questions why someone would redact their own backup—implies something significant.

Search for Additional Material

Seeking local copies of a related documentary, R. Retrospective.

Owns a degraded VHS copy, with only a few clips salvaged.

Asking users to post clips on Reddit if they have them.

About GR0NTH

GR0NTH is an anonymous burner account dedicated to archival and restoration of digital history.

GR0NTH is apparently a reappearing character as one of the messages at the bottom says "GR0NTH strikes again"

Bro it's 1AM I do not have the time for this along with work RARRRRRRRRRR, but if someone has the time mess around with the photos, brightness and contrast that bitch, there's some symbols and languages of text on the sides in the screenshots, if there's a way to decode that later hopefully. Go on the medias they mention such as reddit find GR0NTH or something

Ok I seriously need to go to bed y'all can ask me later.

[munchkin1156]

HADM 3- Tangoo

And we’re back! My writing is going to get more over the place the longer I do this, so I hope you enjoy some floating islands!

Word count: 801

Tws: Technically post apocalyptic? But it doesn’t feel like it

As always, thanks you to @hermitadaymay for running this event!

. . .

According to the elders, there had used to be a proper world. Not just all these broken, floating islands. They'd sound bitter when they told it, followed by how it was humans who had ruined all that. Annoyed the gods and cursed the land, they had.

Tango wasn't certain they were right. This didn't feel much like a curse. In fact, it was a joy to him, to run and jump and feel alive. He felt it in his heart that this was the way it was supposed to be, no matter what the elders said. The fire in his soul, mixed with the air and water around him. The earth beneath his feet crumbled sometimes, sure, but there would always be another island to leap to, another tree that wouldn't burn to sleep under, when the sun got too hot, even for him.

Birds were one of the few large creatures that had thrived besides the fire-born, and they dominated the skies more than Tango ever could. Their colours, their wings, the way they flew like the sky meant everything- He could watch them for hours on end. And had, multiple times in the past. Other than bird watching, Tango usually wrote in his journal, and hunted things that belonged to the time before. He was rather proud of his disc collection, if he was being honest. He had nearly thirty collected so far, and was always finding more!

It wasn't a curse in his eyes, and never would be, but he couldn't help but wonder what the world might've once been like. That's why he asked the elders, even if he disagreed with their opinions. That's why he hunted up discs, even though he had no idea what they'd been for. Maybe to throw at people. His disc collection was his best one, yes, but the things Tango loved to find the most, (and he hardly ever got these), were the drawings. He never properly understood them, or what they used to draw with, since they didn't seem to have that odd grey stuff here anymore, but they were the most amazing thing he'd seen.

The one framed above his hideaway, a small cavern in one of the larger islands, was a drawing of a flying machine. It had been drawn on blue paper, and over the past couple months, Tango had been studying it, slowly decoding it bit by bit. Now he was out material gathering. It was harder, since cloth and wood were rarer, but he was getting there. Slow and steady. It was something like a hang glider, except attached to your back, and it used some sort of fuel, called rockets. He was learning things. He asked questions to anyone who might know the answer, even the travelers who passed through, who he'd previously shown no interest in.

He was going to finish this, no matter what anyone said. And, luckily he hadn't told anyone, so there was no one telling him it was a stupid idea, or that it wasted resources. If he had, this would take even longer.

Tango watched birds much more frequently, but now, while he still admired their beauty, he was also watching them for how their body was built, how their wings moved. It was a whole different type of admiration. He burnt sketch after sketch into his journals, until he'd had to ask for several more just in case. They had been specially made so that they wouldn't catch on fire, since that's what fire born did, but they also hadn't counted on someone as determined as Tango to write things down.

People started noticing things, obviously. How he wasn't around as much, the way his eyes gleamed in excitement when he looked to the West, the odd questions, and how whenever someone tried to speak with him about anything other than what he was asking, he excused himself as soon as he could. But there wasn't much they could do. They could only hope, whatever it was that had caught his interest, would be over soon. Maybe it was a girl.

Little did they know, it wasn't going to end for a long long while. Once Tango would finish what he had named an Elytra, he would feel a different spark inside him. One that let him create things, and build things others couldn't even dream of under this sun. With wings on his back, he would know he couldn't be happy in the small town he grew up in. He would learn about the ruins of the past, and the people exploring them. He would head off to find them. Something like a new beginning, if you will. And he would be ready to start again, but start again flying.

Ready to soar with the birds.

. . .

Taglist: @i-am-beckyu , @da3dm , @faeiyn-cant-write , @boiled-ginger-ale , @local-squishmallow, @akatthatwants2sleep , @vocal-nyx-cords

Taglist just for fics: @mushr00mgurl

See you tomorrow!

[pineconnie]

hi! found your decoding struggles in the wifies tag and. me too </3 i've been able to get it to spit out an almost-coherent sentence ("sister clue" ?) through vigenère decoding, which is similar to the beaufort you were using, but with a key that is complete gibberish too ("binndu") so. may be a coincidence too, who knows. but i feel like at this point if it was meant to say haha april fools it would have been simple caesar or smth

HII I THINK I SAW YOU IN THE WIFIES DISC LMAO if we get another coded message then i feel like sister clue could mean that like. that one will use the same key + vigenere to find it maybe? that’s only if we get something else though lol

i also got it to say ‘aprilf ools’ so it could def be that 😭😭 but the key for that is still gibberish + i need a kww arg so bad its eating me alive so 💔

if it’s NOT vigenere or beaufort (played around with both and didn’t get much) then if you could get a code that can make the first word say wifies that might be something ???

[randomvarious]

Today's mix:

99.2 by Timecode / Aquasky 1999 Drum n Bass

Man, I legitimately have no idea why some of these releases from UK dnb juggernaut label Moving Shadow's 'year-decimal' series are rated so poorly on Discogs. Usually when something has an average rating that's below 4 out of 5, it has noticeable flaws, but this sampler mix from MS head honcho Rob Playford��operating here under his DJ-mixing alias of Timecode—is an excellently steady clinic in fun, turn-of-the-millennium dnb bounciness. And the release that preceded this one, 99.1, which also has a sub-4 rating, is one of the greatest dnb mixes that I've ever heard in my life! So, like, what the hell is wrong with you people?!

And you couldn't beat this deal when this thing dropped, either. £1.99 for this disc, a bonus disc with an exclusive 20-plus minute mix of Omni Trio tunes done by the great trio of Aquasky, and CD-ROM freebies that included snippets of Aquasky remixes in WAV format, promotional videos for some Rockstar Games titles, and a playable demo of Grand Theft Auto 2 as well! They were practically giving this shit away for free!

So we've got a full, chugging, 65-minute workout here with a slate of bangers delivered by Moving Shadow's top talents: Dom & Roland, Calyx, E-Z Rollers, TeeBee, Aquasky, Omni Trio, Technical Itch, and more. But nothing here seems to hit as nicely as the moment when Playford transitions between E-Z Rollers' "RS2000" and 60 Minute Man's "Brand Nu Day." "Brand Nu Day" as a standalone track opens up with this terrific sax line, and to then hear it uniquely played alongside the fuzzy bass groove of "RS2000" just really unlocks something special 🥹.

So don't listen to all the haters and overlook this one. If you want a trip back to those lovely y2k days when music CDs also came with bonus CD-ROM content, this promo mix from Moving Shadow boss Rob Playford is terrific. And I dunno how long the GTA2 demo is on here, but I'm willing to bet that if you fired up the bonus CD in your PC, and then put the main one in your stereo, you were probably in for a good time, because the type of drum n bass that's on here really does feel like the perfect, adrenaline-fueled soundtrack for boosting some cars and wreaking havoc 😎.

Listen to CD1 here. Listen to CD2 here.

Highlights:

CD1:

Renegade - "Terrorist (Dom & Roland Remix)" Calyx - "Diablo" nCode - "Spasm" Kudos - "Boiling Point" E-Z Rollers - "Cops Don't Like Us" Tekniq - "Shark Food" Kudos - "In the Dark" E-Z Rollers - "RS 2000" 60 Minute Man - "Brand Nu Day" Calyx - "Fortune Cookie" Decoder & Substance - "Heat" TB & K - "Arctix" Aquasky - "Bodyshock (Aquasky Remix)" Omni Trio - "Byte Size Life (Shimon Remix)" Calyx - "Code Red" Dom & Roland - "Can't Punish Me" Technical Itch - "Generation" AK1200 & Danny Breaks - "Deep Porn (VIP Mix)"

CD2:

Aquasky - 25 Minute Exclusive Mix of Omni Trio Tracks

[id-element0]

Bypassing TS2 intro movie

I honestly don't know who would need this but since I have it, I can also share. I was fixing/revamping my ReShade preset the other day and I said "Why don't I also try and install it for the sims 2 while I'm at it?" This reminded me that I still had to hit the space bar when the intro video came up. I realise a lot of people still handle it this way or just delete the movie file. Both ways are equally annoying to me so I decided to solve it. What I did was creating a half-second long blank movie in avi format and changing the extension. Why is it better than hitting the space bar or just deleting the file, you ask? Well, it's effortless. You don't have to do anything apart from replacing the original file. It also deals with the issue that comes with deleting the file, that of the game hanging for a moment after the logo because it's searching for a file that doesn't exist.

No screenshot because there's nothing to show. The transition from EA logo to loading screen is quite seamless with a momentary black screen. So for anyone interested, here it is. Also, my first sims 2 upload - yay, I guess.

- INSTALLATION -

You need to be able to see file extensions in your file manager. Search for how to enable it according to your OS if you cannot see file extensions.

For Starter Pack -> “C:\Program Files (x86)\The Sims 2 Starter Pack\Double Deluxe\Base\TSData\Res\Movies\”

For Origin/EA App -> "C:\Program Files (x86)\Origin Games\The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection\Double Deluxe\Base\TSData\Res\Movies\"

For Retail/Disc -> "C:\Program Files (x86)\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\Movies\"

Find the file that says intro_eng_audio.movie and change the extension part 'movie' into something like 'bak'. This is just for precaution if you want it back again. If you already deleted it then just download mine.

- DOWNLOAD -

:: MEDIAFIRE | SFS ::

And now the technical details for the nerds.

The video codec EA uses is Electronic Arts Madcow Video or in short 'mad'. It is allowed to be decoded but not encoded. Meaning you can watch media created with this codec but cannot create media with it. I know the game can load media encoded with AVI so I decided to create an empty avi file and just change the extension to 'movie'. It turns out that as long as the name is the same, the game doesn't care the codec is different.

So in theory you can use this file to replace ealogo_audio.movie as well. If the file in the Base folder doesn't work try ..\TSData\Res\Movies\ in your latest pack. For UC and Starter Pack it would be SP9; for disc version it would be whatever you installed last.

[homokeiju]

i've now got a reputation between some coworkers of hvin lockpickin be part of my supposed skill tree cuz i kno how to decode the four-number combination locks our company uses in less than a minute cuz w/ a flashlight u can see between the discs n see the codeable notch just below the number opposite of the right combination, then just rotate the number five times, n voilà, lock opens. i've saved the company dozens of euros in locks by openin locks that were coded wrong/were malfunctioning n we didn't hve the combination for. this is what hvin the sort of autism that makes u watch hours of lockpicking videos on youtube can give u in life

[bookgeekgrrl]

My media this week (12-18 Jan 2025)

📚 STUFF I READ 📚

😍 An Apple A Day (SquadOfCats) - 59K shrunkyclunks with doctor!/part time apple seller!Bucky & very freshly defrosted Cap!Steve - EXCELLENT FIC, ABSOLUTELY LOVED THIS 🍎🍏

🥰 bear hugs (steddieas_shegoes) - 76K steddie second chance hockey AU where they're both retired NHL'ers, Steve's a single dad & Eddie's his daughter's coach (main fic in a series, lots of fun sequel drabbles in series)

🙂 The Paddington Mystery (Dr. Priestley #1) (John Rhode, author; Gordon Griffin, narrator) - golden age detective story, originally published 1925. read for Shedunnit Book Club. Decently readable Golden Age mystery marred by the period-typical, latent antisemitism; it's not as egregious as other Golden Age stories I've read but it's definitely present in an almost 'background radiation' way

😍 Monoclonius (Zenaidamacrouras1) - reread for stucky book club, forever fave. Featuring environmental policy lobbyist single dad Steve with a dino-obsessed daughter, paleontologist post-doc Bucky, a fantastic co-parenting arrangement, amazing but chaotic roommates and the star of the fic: a purple trilobite plushie named Izzy

💖💖 +139K of shorter fic so shout out to these I really loved 💖💖

One deep breath out from the sky (musette22) - MCU: Stucky, 14K - just a really good sex pollen fic. in the year 2025! we love to see it.

Fixer-Upper (earlgreytea68) - Inception: Arthur/Eames, 8K - The One Where They're Stars on HGTV #1 - the start of an 9 work so-far amazing series (no surprise with this writer) but I was IN IT before I realized the entire series is 466K. I ain't even really mad about it, I just usually plan those sorts of reads. 😂 (you could absolutely just read this fic & be 100% satisfied, it's very definitely a stand-alone)

📺 STUFF I WATCHED 📺

The Graham Norton Show - s31, e14 (Daniel Craig, Nicola Coughlan, Jesse Eisenberg, Kieran Culkin and FLO)

Alan Davies: As Yet Untitled - s2, e1; s3, e7; s1, e2

Nobody Asked - s1, e4

Handsome - Pretty Little Episode #21

Handsome - Penn Jillette asks about the placebo effect

Handsome - Pretty Little Episode #22

Home Town - s9, e3

Heartstopper - s3, e1

Death In Paradise - Christmas Special 2024

Dirty Laundry - s4, e12

🎧 PODCASTS 🎧

Desert Island Discs - Cher, singer and actor

The Sporkful - Our 15th Anniversary Sporktacular

Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe - Time travel fiction

Sibling Rivalry - The One About DnD (with Brennan Lee Mulligan)

Switched on Pop - Our jingle sucks. Let’s change it.

Pop Culture Happy Hour - The Best One-Hit Wonders

The Atlas Obscura Podcast - The Kola Superdeep Borehole

⭐ 99% Invisible - Ancient DMs

⭐ Vibe Check - Zero to Hero featuring Royal Ramey

Pop Culture Happy Hour - Wolf Man And What's Making Us Happy

Smart Podcast, Trashy Books - 650. “I’m Going to Keep Daring” - Romance and History with Joanna Shupe

Shedunnit - Book Club Fact File: The Paddington Mystery by John Rhode (No Spoilers)

Shedunnit - Book Club Conversation: The Paddington Mystery by John Rhode (Full Spoilers)

⭐ Decoder Ring - I am Tupperware, I Contain Multitudes

Hit Parade - The Freewheelin’ Edition

🎶 MUSIC 🎶

'80s Soft Pop

Power Ballads Forever

'60s Sunshine Pop

Bad Bunny

'70s Rock

[captaincoffeegirl515]

Okay

So

I finally got to watch Unicorns

The movie was good

But SO NOT WORTH all the fuckery I had to go through just to be able to watch it on my laptop

Like. Jesus fucking Christ

I felt like I was looking for an actual unicorn just to be able to watch it.

They think WAYYYY too highly of themselves man.

You can only stream it if you live in the UK and Northern Ireland, which I don't.

So I bought the Bluray like they wanted us to bc that's the only way anyone who lives anywhere else other than those two countries could watch their movie.

And then! They went through all the trouble putting all this extra encrypting and whatever on the Bluray disc that made it virtually unreadable AND unplayable on my laptop.

I needed buy a new DVD player that can specifically play Bluray discs because nobody had one that could play it. And jfc it was a pain. I went to multiple malls and multiple appliance and computer stores and literally NOBODY had a bluray disc player bc people don't do discs anymore nowadays. They do streaming. I could only get one online which I did.

And then! Literally no software could play their Bluray. VLC doesn't work because of some AACS decoding issue. Like when the disc is open I can see it has an aacs folder but I guess they encrypted that shit to hell and back bc VLC keeps giving me an error that it cant decode the aacs.

So I had to buy a full license for a different video playing software called PowerDVD that can specifically play Bluray discs bc the free version of the only software that could play their disc can't fucking play Blurays. Only the licensed one could. And this was AFTER I tried a bunch of different other video playing softwares, none of which could play the disc.

So yeah. Anyways definitely going to avoid Signature Entertainment especially when it comes to Blurays bc jfc if that's what it's like to watch one of their movies then I don't ever want to deal with any of their other movies.

Anyways if anyone wants spoilers feel free to message me

[kiwbster]

August 28

do you know how a cd player works?

each disc is a worthless piece of polycarbonate

with one long track of aluminum

someone painstakingly carves little bumps

into this metal

with a little mallet and chisel

chipping away for months at a time

they then packages it tightly

in a little brown envelope

and mails it to the person they love the most

once they receive it, they put it in a small box

with a little light

that paints spirals around the disc

to decode a message

of 1411 thousand feelings per second

from one lover to another

[skyboxeye]

Capturing the ambience of Sneak King

This tasty title challenges players with stealthily handing out burgers across crowded rural, suburban, and urban environments.

(Not) Extracting Xbox sounds

The Sneak King ISO runs on both the original Xbox and the Xbox 360. This was achieved by including two sets of files on disc, each targeting a respective version: XBP archives and XEN archives respectively.

I didn't make any progress in extracting the contents of a XBP. EkszBox-ABX claims to recognize them as WMA containers as of v1.6, but ultimately extraction and playback didn't work in v2.10-Beta. I will say that while this program is powerful, I have found it a bit buggy/unintuitive in the past. It's also unclear the XBP format I read about is applied here, or if it's just a coincidental use of the same file extension.

I moved on from EkszBox-ABX, and tried unpackers and Winamp plugins on aluigi's site. Finally I tried DragonUnpacker and Game Extractor to no avail. I also tried the XEN QuickBMS script (see below), suspecting that the archive formats might be identical. but it failed.

I suspected that the XBP archives I was interested in were used to contain either WMA or Xbox ADPCM sound assets. I tried simply renaming to WMA; standard media programs still couldn't play them afterwards. I couldn't importing the WMA into Audacity as the format isn't supported there. Finally, I tried using vgmstream to interpret the file with the XBOX codec, but couldn't get usable output.

There is supposedly a home media center project for the original Xbox which may or may not support these files called XBMC4Xbox. This Wiki page has a bunch of info but I personally only found dead-ends.

Extracting Xbox 360 sounds

It's tempting to look further into the XBPs, since they boast bigger file sizes than the corresponding XENs in some cases. However I was reaching the limits of my skills. And besides, I've found little correlation b/t original Xbox audio file sizes and quality in the past - for example, with Riddick Butcher Bay.

We can use a QuickBMS script to extract King's ambient XEN archives and get the WAV(s) inside. This script was posted on the now-defunct XeNTaX forum, now accessible through the Wayback Machine.

This WAV file is in WMA1 or WMA2 format, decodable with vgmstream:

codec = WMA1 interleave = 0x0 channels = 2 sample_rate = 44100 start_offset = 0x00 num_samples = data_size

If you're interested in the sound effects found in each level's XEN archive, use this:

codec = XMA1 interleave = 0x0 channels = 1 sample_rate = 44100 start_offset = 0x00 num_samples = data_size

Some of these sound effects are seemingly ambient sounds, like birds and dogs in the Cul-de-Sac or distant chainsaws on Saw Mill. That said, I've never actually heard them play in-game.

Capturing footage

The Xbox 360 version offers the best visuals and should be used for capturing footage.

(Not) Hiding the HUD

We can try to hide the HUD (read on) or simply crop it out of our captures.

It should be possible to extract the XEN archives relevant to the HUD, modify or remove any relevant textures, and then repackage the archive using the BMS script above. However I couldn't get this working, due to the implementation details of the script - the QuickBMS error message suggests its something about MEMORY_FILE.

Regardless, I couldn't determine what format the textures are in. I was able to get signal using raw pixel viewers that suggests they are probably mipmapped. They are likely in some 360-specific texture format that requires its own toolchain (i.e. not Photoshop) to edit. Unlike some emulators, Xenia doesn't offer its own texture modding capabilities.

There are apparently developer commands in the Burger King games to hide the HUD, but these are disabled in retail.

Hiding the King

To avoid capturing the player-character you can hide the King somewhere that borders an obstacle or the level's edge, and then swing the camera such that the King isn't rendered. First-person mode unfortunately adds its own UI overlay so we don't want to use that (unless we can figure out replacing textures - see above).

Loading screens

In addition to each area's background tracks, there are short (~5 second) ambient loops that play over loading screens for Saw Mill (logging_am_loop_01) and Cul-de-Sac (suburb_am_loop_01). Loading assets seemingly exist for the other levels (const_amb_loop_01 and urban_am_loop_01) but I never heard them in-game.

Notes and curiosities

The game has four named ambient tracks: sawmill, construction, urban, and suburban. Of these, only urban plays on the expected level (Downtown). Meanwhile construction plays on Saw Mill, sawmill plays on Cul-de-Sac, and suburban plays on Construction Site.

[irascibleblackguard]

💛📷 :33

I shared my lock screen on a previous ask and I don't have any piercings or even wear much jewelry (it itches my way too sensitive skin and feels confining and Not Good in many cases) but that's boring so I'll describe the two items I wear almost every day. One is a rainbow wristband I got at pride last summer (inadvertent bonus answer, yes LGBTQ+) that my 2-year-old nephew likes to rotate on my wrist over and over to name all the colors in turn. The other is a pendant with several charms on it that I've collected: a steampunk-looking key, a cat in a coffee cup, a disc with a compass on one side and a map on the other, one that reads "BELIEVE," one that reads "never never give up!" with a stylized sunburst on the back, and my favorite, a tiny wooden sword from an escape room esque game I played with my friends last year. We found it sewn inside the tag of a t-shirt, and had to use it to decode various puzzles. I thought it was so cool, that my friend put it in a Christmas stocking for me that year. It was one of my favorite gifts! It symbolizes all the adventures we've had together, is a great representation of the sword cards in the tarot (being more representative of the mind rather than pure physical force), and furthermore it is a nice smooth finish and excellent to fidget with.

Thank you for the ask! I hope you enjoyed my mostly unrelated answer.😅😅😅

[sstabhmontown]

Read Magic

Magic-user level 1; Duration: 1 hour

Understand any writings enough to quickly get a rough understanding of a text, and note which items bear magic enchantments, for all such items bear specific markings. A hint about the spells within an item may be discovered (the name of a sword, a command word, or the element associated with the item, for instance). Alternately, a magic-user can follow idiosyncratic notes well enough to prepare a spell from another’s book by using this spell before the adventure.

The reverse of this spell permanently inscribes a unique mark, recognizeable by other sorcerers as belonging to the magic-user.

***

There are a few problems with the classic trio of detect magic, comprehend languages, and read magic.

Most egregious is the way that in many readings of d&d, read magic becomes an awkward universal spell, in ad&d one that all mages know, because the research and scroll rules don’t work without it. This is also easiest to solve, by remembering that “spells” are a game mechanic for the sorcery performed during the adventure, there’s no need to fit the entirety of a mages practice into them. Between weeks or when doing research, just figure out a way to tell the players what spells are, they are just game pieces. A hint of this remains, however, in our method of letting magic-users use stolen spells at the cost of a level one slot.

But it is in their important role as game pieces that I most want to make this improvement. As always, I want to make magic-users playable with just one random level-one spell and while I’ve made great strides in making sure every level of the dungeon has useful text to decode, having two reading spells is unnecessarily punishing to the mage who brings the wrong one. So combine them.

The biggest win of collapsing Detect Magic as well, with a similar logic of making sure there’s not a big wrong choice in these first level knowledge spells, is that it lets me avoid a big question of what is Magic-magic. A scroll is magic, surely, but is a spell-book? Is a command word inscribed here for a statue in another room? Let’s not worry about that: things have magic words writ upon them and you can figure out what their individual significance is.

Now the follow-up question is, do I want to add two spells back to the level-one list to keep it at a d8, or let it fall to a d6? The contenders, classic magic-user activities in source material and in classic d&d but not od&d, are a spell of disguise (already extant for my assassin-as-magic-user variant), tenser’s floating disc, and a hybrid spell of ventriloquism and audible glamer that I have a good idea for. For now though I think I will reduce starting spells to a d4 worth, on the shortened list.

Finally there’s the question of how scrolls work. My reading of most versions of d&d has this awkward situation where the spell is required to know what’s on a scroll, but yet trapped scrolls exist implying blind reading as a possibility? The way od&d suggests that you need to use the spell just to cast from a scroll is wild!