Rhythm:Decompiling

Interested in obtaining the music, bgm, voice clips, pictures, and even 3D models from Girlfriend Note? Well, you're in the right place! This page here will serve as a guide to decompiling the assets from the rhythm game!

The current process of decompiling has been outlines by Erina. Please contact Erina for more information or with questions. You will need to be running Windows on your computer, and need to be playing GFNote on an Android device.

To decompile, you will need certain tools that you can find on the internet. I have compiled the tool pack here.

Disclaimer

Quick obligatory disclaimer here before we start.

The tools bundled in the pack above were not written by me - they were found on the internet. Use them at your own risk. Also, please note that modifying game files directly from your phone may result in corruption and loss of data. Please follow the instructions below to make a copy of all game data, transfer that to your PC, then modify the copied data on your PC. I am not responsible for anything that happens to your data.

Game Data

In order to start decompiling the game, you'll need to take the game files from your mobile device and put it onto your computer. Using a file manager on your phone (or ES File Manager), navigate to Internal Storage/Android/Data. In that folder, you should see a folder called jp.co.cyberagent.gfonpu. This is the folder where Girlfriend Note stores all of its data!

If you don't see the folder on your phone, try using a different file manager. I recommend ES File Manager. It has always worked for me!

This file will sometimes be hidden to devices aside from the phone (like if you tried using a computer to look for the folder). In order to bypass this restriction, use your file manager to zip the jp.co.cyberagent.gfonpu into a .zip file. This way, everything is compressed into one file, which makes file transferring a lot easier.

After you do that, transfer the compressed zip file to your computer, and extract its contents.! Now, you're ready to start decompiling!

The process of decompiling is different depending on what game asset you want to obtain. I'll have separate sections for each asset: Music, Voices, Pictures, Cut-In Pictures, and Models.

Warning

As a general precautionary note, Girlfriend Note only downloads data of game assets that you have or need. This means that you will only be able to obtain the pictures and music of things you have seen or heard before in the game! For example, if you don't have a Chloe SSR card, you won't be able to extract her voices or images from the game data, because the game never needed to download it! I'll look into seeing if there's a way to force the game to download unnecessary assets in the near future, but for now, this is what we're limited to.

Music

From your extracted jp.co.cyberagent.gfonpu file, navigate to files/ast/Android. This is the directory where all audio files are located!

The .acb files are usually packs of files - these contain a pack of multiple music files, generally for voices. We're just dealing with the in-game BGM (like the story menu) and songs (like the ones you play the rhythm game to), so we don't need to worry about those.

The .awb files are actually individual audio files. These are the files that we want to look at.

As a precautionary note, some files may have a size of less than 4KB. These files are generally "empty" files that the game has allocated in case you ever need to fill them up. In other words, it might be for a new song you recently unlocked but haven't played. Since you haven't played the song yet, the game hasn't downloaded the audio yet, so the file remains as a small empty file. Thus, you can only extract/obtain music that you have heard in the rhythm game itself!

First, we have the in-game BGM. These files are titled 001_title.awb and move on from there.

Next, we have the rhythm game music! These files are titled IGM_####.awb, where the # stands for a number.

The process of decompiling these files is pretty straightforward. First, we need to convert the .awb file to a .hca file. Then, we convert the .hca file into a .wav file, which can then be used with most media players! To extract these files, launch quickbms.exe from the QuickBMS folder. It will ask you to select a plugin. Select "PlainAWBtoHCA.bms". Next, select the .awb file that you want to convert. Finally, select the output folder for where you want the program to place the .hca file. QuickBMS will then process. If it gives an error, that most likely means you either used the wrong plugin or the file was empty. Press any button to exit QuickBMS and complete the operation.

Now, drag the new .hca file onto the "draganddrop.bat" file if you wish to customize the final conversion. You'll be greeted with a lot of Japanese. For the first three prompts, you can ignore them and keep hitting enter. On the fourth prompt, you can select how many times you want the audio to loop. This is good for in-game BGMs that are meant to be looped. Press enter again, and the conversion will proceed. If it fails, the .hca file you generated may have been corrupted. If you don't care about these customizations, you can just drag the .hca file onto "hca.exe" and it will automatically convert for you using the default settings (no looping).

There you go! Now you have your .wav audio file! Easy, right?

Voices

Voices work almost the same way as BGM files, except they usually come in packs to save space and reduce the amount of files necessary.

From your extracted jp.co.cyberagent.gfonpu file, navigate to files/ast/Android. This is the directory where all audio files are located!

This time, we need to look at the .acb files - which are packs of .awb files.

Files that are titled something like "00001_a_1.acb" are voice packs for the center girls. There are two packs for each center girl - a "_a_1" and a "_a_2". Each file contains a lot of voice clips (like 50+), and you can access them as long as you have the center girl unlocked and in use in the game! This means you can listen to ALL the available voice clips for your center girl - even the clips that are hard to unlock or take a long time to unlock (ex: use this center girl for 365 days)!

The other files contain other voice clips (from cards or from menu screens). You can play around with them as you wish! Remember that files with a size substantially lower than others with the same name format usually means its an empty filler file.

The process is similar to the .awb files for BGM. Start with opening quickbms.exe from the QuickBMS folder. Select "ACBtoAWB.bms" as the plugin to use. Next, select the file, and then the output directory of the .awb file(s). Next, launch quickbms.exe again. Select "ACBAWBtoHCA.bms" this time. Now, choose one of the newly extracted .awb files to convert into .hca. Finally, choose the output directory. The .awb file might contain multiple .hca files too, so it's best if you organize all these files into a separate folder!

Finally, do the same thing with the .hca files as you would do for the BGM files! Drag the new .hca file onto the "draganddrop.bat" file if you wish to customize the final conversion. You'll be greeted with a lot of Japanese. For the first three prompts, you can ignore them and keep hitting enter. On the fourth prompt, you can select how many times you want the audio to loop. This is good for in-game BGMs that are meant to be looped. Press enter again, and the conversion will proceed. If it fails, the .hca file you generated may have been corrupted. If you don't care about these customizations, you can just drag the .hca file onto "hca.exe" and it will automatically convert for you using the default settings (no looping).

Now you have your voice clips! Easy, right?

Pictures

This section is for extracting images that you see in the game - like for login bonuses, for the girl cut-outs that you see on the menus, and more.

Pictures are all in the files/ast/Android directory as well! However, they are stored in .cpk files. These are sophisticated packed directories, like .zip and .rar files. Luckily, we have a viewer that allows us to browse their contents and extract the internal contents to a different directory!

These are some of the main cpk files that you are probably interested in.

• cpk_chr.cpk contains most of the character images.
• cpk_cos.cpk contains artwork for the icons of the clothes/costumes.
• cpk_evt.cpk contains event artwork and information. This is usually for the current event, but you may find old event's resources in it too.
• cpk_msc.cpk contains music jacket artwork of all sizes - the large blurred ones you see while downloading, the jacket, and the banner.
• cpk_the.cpk contains the theater standing images of the girls. These are generally the same ones that you would find in the original Girlfriend Kari card game.

Feel free to browse through the other cpk files for more resources! However, most of the cpk files that are less than 100KB don't contain images - they just contain text and csv files, which you aren't interested in.

Note that you can only obtain images of the cards and girls you have seen in the game! If you don't have a certain card, the game won't have that card's images downloaded, so you won't be able to find the pictures in the pack!

To browse the cpk files, go into the CPK Viewer directory of my download tools, then double click on "PES File Explorer.exe". Use this program to open .cpk files, and browse their internal contents! Easy, right? You can then extract (save) the internal contents you want for use later!

Cut-Ins

Now, you might actually want the pictures of girls that cut-in during gameplay! For example, whenever a girl's skill activates, a cut-out of their card image will appear! Some of these images are included in the .cpk files, but not all of them are there.

Please note: You can only view images of cards you have obtained and seen in the game! If you don't have a specific card in the game, the game won't have that card's images downloaded, so you won't be able to find the pictures in the pack!

The cut-ins are located in files\ast\Android\asb\4_6_4\NewImage\Girls\Cutin. They are .unity3D files! I don't have much experience with unity, so I'll just give a brief overview on how to extract the contents.

You will need to open a command prompt window at the location of where Unity Decompiler (disunity.bat) is located. Make sure to put the .unity3d file you want to decompile in the same folder as well. You can open a command prompt window at that folder location by pressing Left Shift + Right Click. You will be given the option to "Open a Command Prompt Window Here."

In the command prompt window, type "disunity extract filename.unity3d" to decompile the files. A new folder will be created.

You can then navigate into the folder to the Texture2D folder. A ktx file and a shadow mask of the cut-in can be found. The .ktx file has the actual color image of the girl. To open a .ktx file, I recommend using [PowerVR]. Install the program, then use that to view the girl!

Now, the .ktx texture might be a bit blurred or have artifacts on the edges. A good way to get rid of these is to overlay the shadow mask image of the girl with the full-color one! Using an application like Photoshop (or a free application like [Paint.NET], put both images into the program as two layers. The mask will fit around the full color texture perfectly (you may have to resize the mask to the same dimensions as the full color texture first). Then, use the magic wand tool in Photoshop or Paint.NET to select just the white portion of the mask. Now, switch layers to the full-color layer, and press CTRL+X. Now, open a new image file, and then paste (CTRL+V) straight into that file! You should now have a perfect cut-out of the girl!

A bit more complicated than the previous ones, but still pretty straightforward! Don't hesitate to ask for help if you're confused.

Models

Unfortunately, I don't have much experience with working in Unity, so most of this section is a black box to me.

You can find most of the model information in "files\ast\Android\asb\4_6_4". Use the Unity Decompilier (disunity) application to decompile the .unity3d files as you see fit. I don't have much more to say to this section - feel free to experiment around till you get something you want!

And, that's about it! Happy decompiling!