Dreamiverse Transformer

This project aims to reverse engineer the user-generated content in the PS4 videogame Dreams - from Media Molecule.

Why? Dreams hits end-of-life in September 2023, where it will no longer receive official updates (the servers are not going offline, but it is no longer receiving support).

The project name is a lazy reference to an internal server codename ("ultra magnus")

The Early Promise

In March 2020, it was suggested that Dreams would allow "creators to use their content [...] outside of Dreams". The scope of this was vague, and this was limited to a beta application form to allow use of content for "business purposes".

Archived: https://web.archive.org/web/20200425220034/https://docs.indreams.me/en/help/beta-evaluation

Further reading: https://atelier.net/insights/media-molecule-dreams-of-commercial-success

Progress

Investigate data formats on disc (game package)
Investigate web api
Backup Dreams creations
Write a model viewer (or at least document the requirements)

Summary

	Notes
Engine	BubbleBath (in-house engine)
Language	C++
Tech	json, gnf textures, proprietary data formats, web services
Techniques	sdf, constructive geometry
Licenses	pffft, FTTPACK, xxHash, lz4

First Impressions

There is an existing project that reverses the frontend website / server endpoints and authentication https://github.com/jaames/dreams-api
There is some raw 3d model data for the imps in obj format?
Some textures use the gnf format typical of other Playstation titles (gnf texture reader), most textures on the server are standard JPEGs
Most files are using bespoke data formats. Most files on-disc are compressed with the lz4 algorithm

Servers

Internal dev server: http://ultramagnus.medmol.local:31312/
Public community server: https://indreams.me/
Public short-url server: https://drms.me/thermometer?source=game (example)
Production server: https://prod.puprod.indreams.me/
Static assets are served from the CDN: https://cdn-prod.puprod.indreams.me/
The analytics server (updated every 10 seconds): https://dreams.api.wwsga.me/ (not the full url)

Data Formats

TODO

Current State

Some of the data formats are understood (texts, imps, unimodels)
Much of the game is driven by the web server. While some of the api can be understood, the secured transport protocol (https) makes sniffing the data almost impossible without being to decrypt the certificate
Practically, this means that downloading creations made in Dreams is not possible
The correlation between resource ids and hashes is not understood (possibly described in a file named bloblist.dat, content.json, or metadata.json)
How the game fetches creations is not fully known - but the CDN hosts both hashed binary content and hashes images (in various sizes)

Other Futures

The community push for exporting their creations (reach out!)
A means to decrypt the endpoints (hacked console? console emulator?) is discovered
Further work is done to reverse engineer and understand the game binary (eboot.bin)
Dreams is updated to support exporting creations
Dreams becomes open source

x1nixmzeng / dreamiverse-transformer Goto Github PK