About

daruma is:

• a pun on Darkroom [ Dar kr oom ];
• Japanese Red doll - a talisman that brings luck and happiness (i.e. 100% game completion);
• a tiny little tool I wish existed back in my childhood.

Maybe you didn’t know up until this moment, but there’s Beyond Good & Evil videogame, and there are collectible items in this game. There’s also one special collectible (MDisk #13), and there’s no in-game way you can get it.

What daruma tries to do is to solve this (dare I say problem?) in an old-fashioned way. There’s a development post which explains all of the stuff in a great detail.

Installation

From release archive

Grab latest release for your platform of choice and you’re all set.

Please note that only Windows version was tested, and MacOS bundle just cross-compiled. For Linux folks - sorry guys, GTK graphical backend is a work-in-progress, hence no GUI and executable. Either use Wine or other fan-made implementations.

From source

• download Red toolchain (mirror);
• fork or download this repo;
• compile ./src/main.red with -e and -r flags. If you want to cross-compile, specify -t flag and a target platform. Example:

./red -e -r -t Windows -o ./daruma.exe ./src/main.red

• that’s it, compiled binary should be in a root/specified directory.

Usage

Carefully examine this terms:

you

a person who has the game installed and obviously knows why (s)he’s doing what (s)he’s doing;

game directory

directory containing at least one BG&E savegame (i.e. slot[0-4].sav file);

daruma

a tiny executable you either baked yourself or grabbed from the release archive.

Good. Now, daruma can work in two modes as described below.

Picklock

If you place daruma in the game directory and launch it, it will silently patch all of the save files. After that, to unlock the infamous Akuda closet, you simply need to load one of the patched saves, access keypad of the locker and press Validate.

Decoder

If you launch daruma in any other directory that doesn’t looks like game directory (i.e. doesn’t contain any of the above mentioned save files), a small window will pop up for you to enter a 16-character Internet code. Well, just do that and hit Enter. Then, if everything is fine, write down decoded locker code and use it to grab the 13th MDisk.

Repo structure

src/

main directory with all scripts;

bench/

testing data and crude tests for decoder;

misc/

miscellaneous files and resources (mainly app icon, original disassembly and macro for save harvesting).

API

Two words are exposed into global context:

decode

takes a valid Internet code, decodes it and spits out map! with game stats (locker code included), otherwise (i.e. if code is invalid) returns none;

unlock

patches all savefiles in current directory; if none are found, returns none.

License

Peace out.

– Happy hunting!