Adventures in MTAS datamining (pt. 1/?: art assets)
Because I am incredibly normal about this game, I’ve been poking around in the game’s files (and MTAP’s, too) pretty much ever since I got it. Unity games are pretty easy to datamine, since tools are already out there, which is incredibly fortunate for fueling the hyperfixation. I wanted to share some of the more interesting things I’ve found on my travels. Spoiler warning: There are some midgame spoilers below (i.e. starting with the water tower). There’s also one thing that might be a future spoiler, which is at the very end and marked accordingly.
General disclaimer: If you’re curious to try datamining out yourself, feel free to ask me for how-to’s, but please be careful! Never edit the game’s files directly. Make copies and back up your save files. You’ll also need a good amount of RAM (I recommend at least 16 GB) to be able to handle tools like AssetStudio, since you’ll be loading assets directly into memory. And MTAS has a lot of assets. You may also encounter unreleased future content in there…so preemptive spoiler warning for that as well.