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Data Store Codes

Whenever an object is created on the data store (e.g. a level is uploaded or a new user is registered), the server gives it a unique data id. Some games let you find a specific object by entering a code, which can be directly converted to a data id. This page describes how these codes are generated in the following games:

Game Builder Garage

The first character identifies the type of code: G for game codes, P for programmer codes. The remaining characters contain the data id and a checksum, and are taken from the following alphabet: 0123456789BCDFGHJKLMNPRTVWXY.

To obtain the data id from a game or programmer code, first obtain an integer using the following steps:

  • Remove the first character from the code (G or P)
  • Convert it to an integer using base 28.
  • Apply an XOR with 0xDEAD9ED5

Let’s walk through an example. We will calculate the data id that belongs to G 006 TR2 9JK and verify that its checksum is correct.

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>>> charset = "0123456789BCDFGHJKLMNPRTVWXY"
>>> code = "G 006 TR2 9JK".replace(" ", "")[1:]
>>> number = 0
>>> for char in code:
        number = number * 28 + charset.index(char)
>>> number ^= 0xDEAD9ED5
>>> "%08X" %number
'1A101C34'

The most significant byte contains the checksum (0x1A). The other bytes contain the data id. In our example, the data id is 0x101C34 = 1055796.

Now, let’s verify the checksum. We first generate a single-byte key based on the access key of the server (97b08aad):

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>>> key = 0
>>> for byte in b"97b08aad":
        key ^= byte
        key = (key << 4) | (key >> 4)
        key &= 0xFF

>>> "0x%02X" %key
'0x22'

Then, combine all bytes of the number that we obtained from the code and our key by XOR. If the result is 0, the checksum is correct.

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>>> 0x1A ^ 0x10 ^ 0x1C ^ 0x34 ^ 0x22
0

Super Mario Maker

In this game, a level code consists of four fields separated by dashes, each of which consists of four uppercase hex digits. For example: 77A9-0000-003D-1D4F.

The second field is easy: it always consists of zeros.

The last two fields contain the data id that was generated when the level was uploaded. In this case: 0x3D1D4F = 4005199.

The first field contains a checksum that depends on the data id. Interestingly, the game uses the function that calculates the signature of a PRUDP V0 packet here. This function basically returns the first four bytes of a HMAC-MD5 in reversed byte order, where the key is the MD5 hash of the access key. In this case, the HMAC is calculated over the 8-byte data id in little endian byte order. To combine the checksum with the data id, the two most significant bytes are inserted into the first field of the level code. Because the checksum was returned in little endian byte order, this is actually the same as the third and fourth byte of the HMAC in reversed order.

To make this clear, let’s walk through the checksum algorithm step by step:

  1. The access key of Super Mario Maker is 9f2b4678.
  2. The MD5 hash of the string 9f2b4678 is 9ce21c9e046e85f0cf6ca00d1eaaaf5f. This is the key we will feed into the HMAC algorithm.
  3. If we transform the course id into an 8-byte little endian number we get: 4f1d3d0000000000.
  4. The HMAC of 4f1d3d0000000000 with the key 9ce21c9e046e85f0cf6ca00d1eaaaf5f is 2417a977a502a3eba4d9d971e10c06c5.
  5. Now we take the third and fourth byte (A9 and 77), reverse their order, and we get 77A9, which is exactly what we were expecting.

In Python, this could be implemented like this:

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>>> import struct
>>> import hashlib
>>> import hmac
>>> key = hashlib.md5(b"9f2b4678").digest()
>>> data = struct.pack("<Q", 0x3D1D4F)
>>> checksum = hmac.HMAC(key, data).digest()
>>> checksum[3:1:-1].hex().upper()
'77A9'

Super Mario Maker 2

In Super Mario Maker 2, a level or maker code consists of three fields separated by dashes, each of which consists of three uppercase letters and digits. For example: 2J5-3K2-Y9G.

A code may consist of all digits and letters except for A, E, I, O, U and Z. This leaves the following 30 characters: 0123456789BCDFGHJKLMNPQRSTVWXY.

To obtain the data or user id from a level/maker code one must first convert it to binary form: remove the dashes, reverse the order of the characters and calculate the number in base 30.

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>>> charset = "0123456789BCDFGHJKLMNPQRSTVWXY"
>>> code = "2J5-3K2-Y9G".replace("-", "")[::-1]
>>> number = 0
>>> for char in code:
        number = number * 30 + charset.index(char)

>>> bin(number)[2:]
'10001000110101101000010011111001000101101110'

This binary number can be split up into the following fields:

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 A     B             C           D E      F
1000 100011 01011010000100111110 0 1 000101101110

Fields A and E always contain 1000 and 1 respectively. Field D is always 0 in a level code and 1 in a maker code.

The data/user id can be obtained from field C and field F as follows:

  1. Concatenate field F and field C. In our example, this gives 00010110111001011010000100111110.
  2. Apply an XOR with 00010110100000001110000001111100. This gives 00000000011001010100000101000010 in our example.
  3. Convert the number back to decimal: the data id of the example code is 6635842.

Field B contains a simple checksum: (id - 31) % 64. In our example, this would be (6635842 - 31) % 64 = 35, which is 100011 in binary.

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