widebrim HD

assets by Level-5, running in widebrim HD

widebrim HD is a work-in-progress Godot-based high-level engine recreation for the mobile versions of LAYTON2 (Layton: Diabolical Box in HD / Layton: Pandora's Box in HD) for running the game natively, without emulation on any compatible system.

Quickstart: How do I get this running?

Required Prerequisites

You will need the following:

• A dump of LAYTON2 HD for Android
  • For older versions, you will need the APK and OBB
  • For newer versions, you will need unmodified base and InstallAssets APKs
  • Global builds are preferable for wider language support
• Godot 4.2 or newer
• Python 3+
• PyCriCodecs, tested with 0.4.8

Optional Prerequisites

To improve your experience, the following is recommended:

• FFMPEG with libvorbis (i.e., any modern FFMPEG 'essentials' build)
  • This can either be installed system-wide (i.e., on PATH for Windows) or downloaded locally (-f flag must be specified during install)
  • Strongly recommended. Without FFMPEG, audio is left uncompressed and consumes significant storage space.
• If installing from an OBB, an environment for building Python extensions (e.g., Microsoft Build Tools for Visual Studio)
  • This is not needed for newer versions using the split APK because encryption has been removed. The provided extension only accelerates OBB decryption.

Installation Guide

For obvious reasons, widebrim HD is not bundled with any game assets. A Python script is provided to unpack game archives and convert relevant assets to native formats. Install by doing the following:

1. Install the required prerequisites (and optional ones for a better experience).
2. Clone the repository.
3. Start a terminal inside widebrim_hd/assets_py_unpacker and run the following:
   • Install requirements with pip install -r requirements.txt
     • (Optional, recommended if installing from an OBB) Build Cython extension for faster unpacking with python setup.py build_ext --inplace.
   • Unpack and convert assets with python install_apk_obb.py <path to base apk> <path to additional data>.
     • The additional data can either be the OBB or InstallAssets APK. New versions must use the InstallAssets APK for additional data and not be modified to merge the APKs. Use the base APK that corresponds to the additional data.
     • The install script has arguments that can be set to change its behavior:
       • -f <path to ffmpeg executable> to use a local build of FFMPEG if system build is not available.
       • --jp, --en_eu, --en_us, --es, --fr, --it, --de, --nl, --ko to filter the installed languages to save space. Global builds have all languages except Japanese. Default behavior exports all languages; this will be overridden if any language flag is set. Multiple language flags can be set simultaneously. This does not currently modify the Godot install so make sure to set CONFIG_GAME_LANGUAGE in widebrim_hd\godot\scripts\consts.gd. By default, English (Europe) is used.
     • To see all options, do python install_apk_obb.py --help
4. Import widebrim_hd/project.godot into the Godot Editor. This will take a long time for first boot - even a single-language install has around 12,000 assets!

Quickstart: How do I use this?

Open Godot, load the project and press Play in the top-right. By default, the game loads and saves a DS-like save slot as state.sav in the project root. To delete all progression and restart, delete this save.

Exporting is experimental and will be that way until foundational asset loaders are complete. It is expected that exporting will break between commits in this early stage of the project. For now, play entirely in editor.

What is widebrim HD for?

widebrim HD continues where widebrim left off and tackles research for the HD ports of LAYTON2... ^{...but to be honest, it's actually just for fun, I don't know much about Godot 😄}

How accurate is this?

widebrim HD is a rewrite of widebrim combined with additional knowledge from reversing LAYTON2 HD. It tries to be largely accurate and should replicate most engine-related bugs in the future, especially because the new engine itself has none of the quirks of the Nintendo DS version.

How far along is this?

Not very, gamemode switching is implemented and a basic event and room parser have been written. It's not known how far along the story can be completed yet.

How can I contribute?

Something broke and I'd like to file a bug report

Please open a GitHub issue describing the problem, your save file and steps to reproduce. The save system in-game isn't complete yet so we might need significant information if the bug isn't easily reproducible. Thanks!

I'd like to request a feature

Open a GitHub issue - keep in mind that features in the original game are already intended to have implementations in widebrim HD.

I'd like to contribute code

Feel free, open a pull request 😎

Who's fault is this?

Thanks goes to...

• The contributors of PyCriCodecs, audio support is planned and this library is responsible for making it possible ❤️
• Christian Robertson for the font Roboto, I'm lazy and can't be bothered to finish reversing font.dat but this is similar enough
• ssh for figuring out the decryption routine for the HD Layton games (RIP ZenHAX)
• creativelynameduser for their help with decoding the in-game font format
• Everyone who helped with widebrim and by extension, madhatter for understanding HD file formats