
Datamining Bandersnatch - arunc
https://blog.thecybershadow.net/2019/08/02/datamining-bandersnatch/
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dahart
Ha! My brother and I tried watching all the variations of Bandersnatch that we
could, assuming there wouldn’t be very many and that we’d see all possible
clips after 3 or 4 watchings. We got impatient after 3 times through and quit,
but still guessed we’d almost covered every possibility. Looks like we were
pretty wrong about our guess.

~~~
gooseus
I watched refusing to make any decisions and waited for the timer to run out
and force Netflix to go with their default.

I'm pretty sure that it just walks through every branch and I eventually got
to a final spot where it wanted me to put in a special code and when I didn't
it finally ended. So I think I only missed one ending by doing nothing at all.

~~~
dwighttk
if the article is correct and it didn't take you a few days, you probably
missed a lot more than one ending.

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carapace
I wonder what the authoring software is like?

(I hope for Inform 7 for movies... )

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inform#Inform_7](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inform#Inform_7)

~~~
mturk
I believe it was made with Twine:

[https://www.konbini.com/en/techandinnovation/twine-free-
tool...](https://www.konbini.com/en/techandinnovation/twine-free-tool-made-
interactive-episode-black-mirror-possible-2/)

[http://twinery.org/](http://twinery.org/)

~~~
csande17
They made the first prototypes/scripts for Bandersnatch in Twine, but they
later moved to a Netflix-internal tool called "Branch Manager".

~~~
carapace
Cool, thank you both.

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SilasX
So the author took the JSON/video file provided by Netflix and reverse
engineered the encoding and ran it on a Netflix player emulator?

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dcow
No. They pulled all the logic out, converted to truth tables, and generated a
flowchart of the entire game. In doing so they uncovered some interesting bugs
like unreachable content and incorrect logic expressions. Yes they used a
player emulator in the process to verify their work.

~~~
SilasX
That sounds like reverse engineering the encoding and running it on an
emulator.

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dcow
Perhaps. I interpreted your comment as asking about the actual video encoding.
The focus of this write up is about interpreting the accompanying logic
associated with the clips of video. My point is to make it clear that this is
not just an “I played Bandersnatch on an emulator” post which would be rather
boring IMO.

~~~
SilasX
Ah, okay, I meant "reverse engineered the [JSON] encoding [of the gameplay
logic] and ran [the video] on an emulator [to interpret the state]".

