Modder re-creates Game Boy Advance games using the audio from crash sounds
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Re: Modder re-creates Game Boy Advance games using the audio from crash sounds
#2This is insanely impressive. I'm sure many of the techniques used like the "majority vote" algorithm cited are underutilized across many industries.
Re: Modder re-creates Game Boy Advance games using the audio from crash sounds
#3Zzazz (the subject of the article) runs a yearly April fools competition/event that usually involves some amount of retro hacking/reverse engineering. I recommend participating. Previous years competitions are on their GitHub
Re: Modder re-creates Game Boy Advance games using the audio from crash sounds
#4It’s stories like these that remind me I’m stupid and have a lot still to learn. My goodness this is amazing. Up there with audio key logging and things I read about but could never dream would be a real thing.
I tip my hat sir. Reminded that I’m a mere mortal in the presence of greatness. The absurdity of recreating a game based on audio crashes sounds like something a mental patient would say but no, here we are in 2024.
Re: Modder re-creates Game Boy Advance games using the audio from crash sounds
#5I imagine the 0xFF might be converted to 0x00 due to DC blocking capacitors/high-pass filtering, audio circuits aren't really suited for non-audible content.
He might get better capture accuracy with a digital oscilloscope hooked directly at the chip's audio outputs if he's lucky, but it's still pretty impressive he got a bootable image out of that.
Re: Modder re-creates Game Boy Advance games using the audio from crash sounds
#6It’s stories like these that remind me I’m stupid and have a lot still to learn. My goodness this is amazing. Up there with audio key logging and things I read about but could never dream would be a real thing. I tip my hat sir. Reminded that I’m a mere mortal in the presence of greatness. The absurdity of recreating a game based on audio crashes sounds like something a mental patient would say but no, here we are in…
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Re: Modder re-creates Game Boy Advance games using the audio from crash sounds
#7Glad to see this getting more attention here, it was posted a few days ago but drowned (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39037104). The original video has a lot not mentioned in this brief article, including a custom adapter that the hacker had to cut together manually to get the right audio quality out of the DS.
Re: Modder re-creates Game Boy Advance games using the audio from crash sounds
#8Why would this happen in the first place? Is it common for these games to dump state to audio? Is it a deliberate debugging tool for the game devs?
Re: Modder re-creates Game Boy Advance games using the audio from crash sounds
#9The issue with long runs of 0x00 is related to "clock recovery".
> Some digital data streams, especially high-speed serial data streams (such as the raw stream of data from the magnetic head of a disk drive and serial communication networks such as Ethernet) are sent without an accompanying clock signal. The receiver generates a clock from an approximate frequency reference, and then phase-aligns the clock to the transitions in the data stream with a phase-locked loop (PLL).
> In order for this scheme to work, a data stream must transition frequently enough to correct for any drift in the PLL's oscillator. The limit for how long a clock-recovery unit can operate without a transition is known as its maximum consecutive identical digits (CID) specification.
Re: Modder re-creates Game Boy Advance games using the audio from crash sounds
#10I imagine the 0xFF might be converted to 0x00 due to DC blocking capacitors/high-pass filtering, audio circuits aren't really suited for non-audible content. He might get better capture accuracy with a digital oscilloscope hooked directly at the chip's audio outputs if he's lucky, but it's still pretty impressive he got a bootable image out of that.
From what I remember reading in the comments of his youtube video, the point of the exercise was to do it with as basic equipment as possible.Hence the hours of multiples passes to average the error out instead of a proper data-logging oscilloscope.