UnLockRay Subreddit
Hello there!
In the French forums of Rayman Pirate Community, this project was posted by LunaVorax, as REL ( “Rayman Est Libre” ). Luckily, Hunch told me about it, otherwise I’d never have noticed the topic.
In the past, some games had very much players. So much, that they started creating modifications, new levels, etc. So far, this hasn’t happened with the Rayman games yet. True, for Rayman 1, there is a level designer. But it doesn’t include everything ( for example, you can’t place Moskito that follows you in your levels, etc. ). And there’s nothing for the other games.
So, why not make our own? If there are some people interested in programming some of these, we could do it!
Let’s make a series of programs ( Open Source would be good - http://www.sourceforge.net/ ) that’d be able to do the following actions:
- Extraction of the dialogues - Very easy
- Font, Image and Texture extraction – Fairly Easy
- Sound Extraction ( SFX & Music ) – Not so Hard
- 3D Model ( and right textures on it ) Extraction – Hard
- Level Extraction ( 2D/3D ) - Hard
- Model Editor – Very Difficult
- Level Editor – Extremely Difficult
- A rewrite/editor of the game’s engine. - To kill yourself
- [ Add another idea here ]
Why us?
Why not? It has already been done for other games by other people, so why not for the Rayman games and why not us?
But, um… what is it for?
Well… have you already thought of playing Rayman M online ( but you can already play Rayman Arena online, hehe )? You’d also be able to extract & change the models, so that means: other racers, other levels, and more!
And not only for Rayman M!
Also, you’d be able to make mods for other games, if you just had the models!
Hey! I’d like to be part of this project, but I can’t program.
Well, I know it’s gonna be hard. But I can’t program ( well, I can, but only Gamemaker ), and still I did a lot already! I’d be a lot easier if you could program though, so you could always start learning C or C++ here ( http://www.cprogramming.com/ ) or others here (http://www.programmingtutorials.com/ ).
Great! But is it legal?
Well, who cares? Ubisoft isn’t going to do anything to stop us…
They didn’t do anything with RayTunes, which is more illegal than this, yet, you know.
What? A level editor for the 3D Rayman games? Are you crazy?
No, I’m not. Super Mario 64 even has its own level editor ( here - ), and that is a ROM, which is even harder to handle than normal PC files!
A rewrite of the game’s engine? Eh?
Well… it’s something very difficult, but you could make the game work on other platforms ( Linux, Mac, GP2X, Nintendo DS, PSP, etc. ) and add a good number of functionalities ( bigger resolutions, filters, bug correction, realistic blood XD, etc. ).
ROMs or the PC version?
If you don’t know what these are, I’ll tell ya.
ROMs are downloaded files that only work on other platforms ( like Nintendo 64 ) or on emulators for these platforms ( like Project64, which emulates the N64 ). Everybody who is able to read this text most probably has the PC version, which only works on the PC.
Now, the question is, what will we work with, ROMs or PC?
My personal answer would then be PC.
Why? The PC version is the most used version, and the easiest to modify. And not all people can run ROMs.
But…
There has been more progress in the ROMs section. For example, I know how to rip music, sounds and text from the PS2 games. I know how to rip images ( including the font and the textures ) from the N64 version of Rayman 2, AND from the Dreamcast version. I can also rip from the PSOne version of R1 and R2, if only the program I used would be fixed ( it keeps giving me an error since a while ago
).
You can also add gameshark cheats to the games, enabling other characters to play as, though I have not found any code that does that yet. In fact, I don’t know anything about Gameshark codes. XD
But still, it’d be better just to ‘hack’ the PC version. There has also been some progress there. For example, I forced the people at XeNTaX ( My posts there - http://forum.xentax.com/search.php?sear ... or=Droolie ) to make them support the *.cnt files in the games that contain the various images & textures ( including the font, which is a texture ). But sadly, the images in there are still unknown, in *.gf format. The *.cnt files are supported by MultiEx Commander ( MexCom - http://multiex.xentax.com/ ) and Game Extractor (http://www.watto.org/extract/info.html ). Only that in Game Extractor, you can WRITE to the cnt files ( I haven’t tried it myself yet though )! =D
Now, for the other things.
In Rayman 3 and M, there are hxd files that have sounds, right? In Rayman M, you can easily obtain all of the normal sounds by just analyzing these hxd files with Nova Extractor (http://www.volny.cz/nova-software/ ). You can also analyze the data.hos ( I guess that’s what it was called ) file in Rayman 3 with it to get all sound effects ( includes Rayman saying ‘Hup!’ and such things ). However, the MUSIC for Rayman 3 cannot be obtained in the full version, because it is compressed in the ADPCM format ( though you can still see all the different files with Nova Extractor ), which is unreadable unless you have Rayman 3’s engine’s decoder. But, you can listen to the music from the beta demo. It's encoded in another way. That way, by comparing, we might be able to decode the compression system.
Some other progress: I know it’s not what this is for, but I also got to make a ‘3D screenshot’ of Rayman 3. It’s bugged all over though, so you wouldn’t like to see it.
I’ll help! Where to begin?
Great! But we won’t start just yet. First, we need your opinion.
So please tell me what you think about this ( and about the ROMs vs. PC question ). If you have other questions than the ones I answered here, I’ll be happy to answer whenever possible.
Original topic of Droolie.
I'm just one of the project participants, but I need to spread it, because Rayman is full of unused content, so we definitely need peoples to help us!
Post here to join!
Hello there!
In the French forums of Rayman Pirate Community, this project was posted by LunaVorax, as REL ( “Rayman Est Libre” ). Luckily, Hunch told me about it, otherwise I’d never have noticed the topic.
In the past, some games had very much players. So much, that they started creating modifications, new levels, etc. So far, this hasn’t happened with the Rayman games yet. True, for Rayman 1, there is a level designer. But it doesn’t include everything ( for example, you can’t place Moskito that follows you in your levels, etc. ). And there’s nothing for the other games.
So, why not make our own? If there are some people interested in programming some of these, we could do it!
Let’s make a series of programs ( Open Source would be good - http://www.sourceforge.net/ ) that’d be able to do the following actions:
- Extraction of the dialogues - Very easy
- Font, Image and Texture extraction – Fairly Easy
- Sound Extraction ( SFX & Music ) – Not so Hard
- 3D Model ( and right textures on it ) Extraction – Hard
- Level Extraction ( 2D/3D ) - Hard
- Model Editor – Very Difficult
- Level Editor – Extremely Difficult
- A rewrite/editor of the game’s engine. - To kill yourself
- [ Add another idea here ]
Why us?
Why not? It has already been done for other games by other people, so why not for the Rayman games and why not us?
But, um… what is it for?
Well… have you already thought of playing Rayman M online ( but you can already play Rayman Arena online, hehe )? You’d also be able to extract & change the models, so that means: other racers, other levels, and more!
And not only for Rayman M!
Also, you’d be able to make mods for other games, if you just had the models!
Hey! I’d like to be part of this project, but I can’t program.
Well, I know it’s gonna be hard. But I can’t program ( well, I can, but only Gamemaker ), and still I did a lot already! I’d be a lot easier if you could program though, so you could always start learning C or C++ here ( http://www.cprogramming.com/ ) or others here (http://www.programmingtutorials.com/ ).
Great! But is it legal?
Well, who cares? Ubisoft isn’t going to do anything to stop us…
They didn’t do anything with RayTunes, which is more illegal than this, yet, you know.
What? A level editor for the 3D Rayman games? Are you crazy?
No, I’m not. Super Mario 64 even has its own level editor ( here - ), and that is a ROM, which is even harder to handle than normal PC files!
A rewrite of the game’s engine? Eh?
Well… it’s something very difficult, but you could make the game work on other platforms ( Linux, Mac, GP2X, Nintendo DS, PSP, etc. ) and add a good number of functionalities ( bigger resolutions, filters, bug correction, realistic blood XD, etc. ).
ROMs or the PC version?
If you don’t know what these are, I’ll tell ya.
ROMs are downloaded files that only work on other platforms ( like Nintendo 64 ) or on emulators for these platforms ( like Project64, which emulates the N64 ). Everybody who is able to read this text most probably has the PC version, which only works on the PC.
Now, the question is, what will we work with, ROMs or PC?
My personal answer would then be PC.
Why? The PC version is the most used version, and the easiest to modify. And not all people can run ROMs.
But…
There has been more progress in the ROMs section. For example, I know how to rip music, sounds and text from the PS2 games. I know how to rip images ( including the font and the textures ) from the N64 version of Rayman 2, AND from the Dreamcast version. I can also rip from the PSOne version of R1 and R2, if only the program I used would be fixed ( it keeps giving me an error since a while ago
).You can also add gameshark cheats to the games, enabling other characters to play as, though I have not found any code that does that yet. In fact, I don’t know anything about Gameshark codes. XD
But still, it’d be better just to ‘hack’ the PC version. There has also been some progress there. For example, I forced the people at XeNTaX ( My posts there - http://forum.xentax.com/search.php?sear ... or=Droolie ) to make them support the *.cnt files in the games that contain the various images & textures ( including the font, which is a texture ). But sadly, the images in there are still unknown, in *.gf format. The *.cnt files are supported by MultiEx Commander ( MexCom - http://multiex.xentax.com/ ) and Game Extractor (http://www.watto.org/extract/info.html ). Only that in Game Extractor, you can WRITE to the cnt files ( I haven’t tried it myself yet though )! =D
Now, for the other things.
In Rayman 3 and M, there are hxd files that have sounds, right? In Rayman M, you can easily obtain all of the normal sounds by just analyzing these hxd files with Nova Extractor (http://www.volny.cz/nova-software/ ). You can also analyze the data.hos ( I guess that’s what it was called ) file in Rayman 3 with it to get all sound effects ( includes Rayman saying ‘Hup!’ and such things ). However, the MUSIC for Rayman 3 cannot be obtained in the full version, because it is compressed in the ADPCM format ( though you can still see all the different files with Nova Extractor ), which is unreadable unless you have Rayman 3’s engine’s decoder. But, you can listen to the music from the beta demo. It's encoded in another way. That way, by comparing, we might be able to decode the compression system.
Some other progress: I know it’s not what this is for, but I also got to make a ‘3D screenshot’ of Rayman 3. It’s bugged all over though, so you wouldn’t like to see it.
I’ll help! Where to begin?
Great! But we won’t start just yet. First, we need your opinion.
So please tell me what you think about this ( and about the ROMs vs. PC question ). If you have other questions than the ones I answered here, I’ll be happy to answer whenever possible.
Original topic of Droolie.
I'm just one of the project participants, but I need to spread it, because Rayman is full of unused content, so we definitely need peoples to help us!
Post here to join!
