Anybody up for a G-Bike archive?

[Shademp]

As a person who does not have the hours to create an archive in addition to my Dirge Multiplayer one, but still wants G-Bike to receive the same attention, I just want to throw the idea out there in the hope that it might stick and somebody takes up the task.

While G-Bike almost certainly won't go the way of DCFFVII: Lost Episode and live up to its subtitle of being lost, the sooner a preservation effort gets started the more will ultimately get saved.

What would a G-Bike archive include?

- Version Update Reports​

- In-game inventory lists​

- Gameplay videos​

- Soundtracks​

- Screenshots, promos etc​

- Trailer analysis​

- Notes about compatible platforms, playability and potential emulation​

- Overall development history from inception to its end​

Who knows for how long forum posts about the game's multiple patches and updates will remain? I certainly hope that all the reports from our own thread won't accidentally get lost whenever the TLS forums get upgraded. Who knows when the G-Bike data files may become difficult for modern computers to read? Or when modern phones will no longer be able to load the data files (that are not dependent on server connections)?


I do keep my own folder with miscellaneous G-Bike files but I doubt I'll ever have the time and resources to expand it to a size comparable to my Dirge Multiplayer folders. Whether one big archive gets created or not, you can do the following in a preservation effort:

● Download YouTube videos. I use this site to download YT videos. There are thousands of G-Bike videos out there but I will occasionally download ones that look particularly interesting.​

● Request the original video recordings from the uploader. Confirming the exact time of the recording is also important when confirming which patch/version the uploader was playing at the time.​

● Use the Wayback Machine to save websites. I have a Chrome plugin that lets me instantly save web pages. I've spent countless hours using this add-on to save Dirge Online blog posts that otherwise would never have been saved.​

● Save websites the standard way by downloading them as files to your own computer.​

● Acquire and/or keep back-ups of the G-Bike installation data.​

The idea has been shared. Now we play the waiting game and see if anybody gets inspired.

 

[Strangelove]

i have a lot of screencaps from this, i will try to send those over to you. i got most of the first half, but towards the end i took it off my phone to free up some space so i might have missed a few events.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

Shademp, have you asked Cloud_S? I expect he'll have more than anyone.

 

[ChipNoir]

If you can dig up any hidden Aerith data, that'd be an epic win. I was pissed that they closed the game before she got a limit break sequence for it.

 

[Shademp]

have you asked Cloud_S?

I did and yes he does have data, but just like with this thread the intention was mostly to promote that *somebody* leads an archiving effort. Though I have a feeling I'll end up taking the helm anyway.

 

[Still Unnamed]

I used to have an emulator installed on my computer, and I can certainly say that G-Bike crashed upon launch or just didn’t launch. This has happened with other SQEX titles like Opera Omnia. Mobius Final Fantasy didn’t work until they released the Steam version, and then it magically became playable. Maybe some games just aren’t meant to be emulated.

Anyway, I like this G-Bike archive idea.

 

[X-SOLDIER]

I simply cannot overstate how much I love that you do these things. They're so interesting and outside of my own skillset, but they fill me with immense amounts of joy.





X

 

[ultima espio]

G-bike required you to be online at all times, since the server doesn't exist you won't be able to emulate it anymore.

Someone was able to activate it's debug mode though by replacing the title screen data with a stage's data:
http://jul.rustedlogic.net/thread.php?id=17883

For the record there's no Aerith data other than some voices in the apk. It also listed Red XIII, Cait Sith, Vincent and Zack as assists, but of course nothing came of them.

EDIT: iirc it implied that her limit break was Holy.

 

[Cloud_S]

have you asked Cloud_S?

I did and yes he does have data, but just like with this thread the intention was mostly to promote that *somebody* leads an archiving effort. Though I have a feeling I'll end up taking the helm anyway.

Indeed, I do have various screenshots, backup data from the installs, most of the APKs per version update, and of course the BGM. Unfortunately I did miss a few events, due to the updates randomly clashing with my non-stock Android OS.

I do wish SE had opted to give the game an update that allowed offline play, even if there weren't any new missions, rather than end it as they did.

 

[Shademp]

I simply cannot overstate how much I love that you do these things. They're so interesting ... they fill me with immense amounts of joy.

Thanks dude. <3

and outside of my own skillset

There is literally no skillset involved here. All I do is click and save.

On the topic, I have now proceeded to save the official G-Bike twitter as well as the dozens and dozens of information pages about the game's patches/maintenance and events. The amount of information and juicy pictures still present here is quite staggering.

For a game that was so unceremoniously pulled and has been interpreted by some as a tie to CyberConnect2 that Square wishes to distance themselves from, Square hasn't gone out of their way to remove the many official pages dedicated to G-Bike.

 

[Shademp]

After finding the Square Enix Bridge update history page I was able to find 160 additional information pages about G-Bike. Now I have saved 237 such pages, both standard browser saves and Web Archive saves.

The Web Archive can be glitchy, as sometimes it will crash or claim to save a page when in fact it hasn't. But I have the browser save backups in case of the online archive failing.


What I'd really like to do though is automate this search for pages that include references to G-Bike. I've been told that it's possible to do a "macro" and automate such things. The only context in which I've tried a macro was in Notepad++, when you record an action and then have the computer repeat it however many times you want.

The oldest G-Bike related url on the Square Enix Bridge that I found ends with the number 7780 while the newest one ends with 15281.

If anybody knows a trick to have some program automate a search through all possible urls (like from say numbers 1200 - 20000) that mention G-Bike and then print those urls, please let me know. It is the only way that I can be sure that I've found every single G-Bike information page on the Square Enix Bridge.

You can no longer limit your search to G-Bike on this official page, but you can limit it to games like Kingdom Hearts &#967;. If anybody wishes to archive the update history of any of the games on the list, I'd recommend doing so sooner rather than later.

 

[Radigar]

Hello everyone

I played the game and have some images of a standard mission & raid mode:

Gallery with some screenshots in normal mission and "multiplayer" raid against Shiva and Ifrit

 

[Shademp]

^

 

[Radigar]

The recent name change of the twitter account of the game made was a surprise a nice way to recicle without lost followers

 

[Strangelove]

Posting to remind myself to look at this later

@Shademp did I ever send you the screenshots of the game I have?

 

[Hipnosis]

Hey everyone, I know this might be a long shot, but I'm currently searching the cache files for this game, and just happened to come across this thread.

I'm an experienced reverse engineer and my intention is to create a server emulator for this game (and also some other mobile FF games as well), for which I'd need the game files. I already found some while searching other places, but seems like it's nowhere near complete, and the game versions are all over the place. I've seen that some of you played this game extensively in the past, and if for whatever reason you made any backups, or even still have the actual phones with the app installed, there's still the chance to make the game work again.

If anyone could give me a hand on this, it would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Kuraudo.]

Did you hear about FFVII The First Soldier server shutdown in January? Would be great if to assist in preserving that game too

 

[Hipnosis]

Did you hear about FFVII The First Soldier server shutdown in January? Would be great if to assist in preserving that game too

Yes, I heard of it, but sadly I don't really care about that game. Besides, I'm more interested in single player experiences that just happen to use the server-client model, while TFS is more of a multiplayer focused battle royal game. The best thing you can do right now is to ensure that you downloaded all the game data and upload it to the internet, so at least the most important part is available in case someone wants to do a server emulator for it.

And since we are talking about it, I'd welcome the game data of any online game, even if here we're talking about just G-Bike.

 

[Kuraudo.]

PM you for TFS and G-Bike. Agree for G-Bike, would be super cool to play it offline.

FFVII G-Bike, the title was a racing game, hack and slash, with role-playing elements. It was released 30/10/2014 in Japan for iOS and Android, service ended 15/12/2015. Last version was 2.0.1.


MINI COMPENDIUM

• General Info Wiki and Wikia
• Official Announcement Trailer (10 Jun, 2014)
• Special Trailer (18 Sep, TGS 2014)
• Full Presentation starts at 22:00 (21 Sep, 2014)
• Trailer (20 Dec, JUMP FESTA 2014)
• thelifestream.net announcement thread
• thelifestream.net Cloud_S photo archive
• PlayStore archived page
• interview 1
• interview 2
• musician birth of a god
• G-Bike CreativeUncut Art
• G-Bike Cloud Bikes
• G-Bike Cloud Weapons
• G-Bike Dyne Model
• G-Bike All Models
• Radigar photo archive
• Cloud_S photo archive #1
• Roulette Premium video
• Dyne Fight video
• Gameplay Run 1
• Gameplay Run 2
• Bahamut Fury gameplay
• Behemoth gameplay
• Phoenix gameplay
• Shiva gameplay
• Tifa assist gameplay

Pretty sure model data has been extracted from the phone caches after people played the game. For instance, such extraction is how Cloud's biker outfit was ported to this Dissida mod. The models can be viewed in programs like Noesis.

The most active and knowledgeable users on G-Bike were Cloud_S and Radigar and riccochet. Hope they can assist you.

 

[Strangelove]

there’s really no reason g-bike couldn’t have moved over to an offline version. i get why it wouldn’t work as well for something like tfs since it’s a multiplayer game, but i don’t remember any sort of online element to g-bike that couldn’t be removed or altered. it had login bonuses and timed events but you could easily retool it to work without them since they weren’t an essential part of the game

same for mobius (which did have a multiplayer mode and a friends feature but you could still take those out and make a stand alone single player version of the main part of the game)

just getting mad all over again at stuff getting shut down forever

 

[Hipnosis]

That pretty much applies to almost every mobile game nowadays, but it's just the way it is. Nowadays more developers are making "offline updates" when the game service ends, and while these usually cut the gameplay aspect, I guess is better than nothing.

same for mobius (which did have a multiplayer mode and a friends feature but you could still take those out and make a stand alone single player version of the main part of the game)

Mobius was the only online mobile game I actually played, and thank god someone actually dumped and uploaded the latest data for both PC and mobile. I will definitively be working on it in the future.