Manly! Archive Gorgeous Milk +alpha official thread of extravaganza by Knurek at 4:28 PM EST on March 7, 2009
Okay, so let's just pretend the last two years didn't happen.
Thanks to the amazing work of UNKNOWNFILE (2SF format design), CaitSith2 (No Brain 2SF ripkit), snakemeat (awesome tools that make our life easier), hcs et al (VGMStream, streamed formats reverse engineering) and Mysterious Plugin Guy (vio2SF plugin suite), you can enjoy the music from Nintendo DS games(*1) at your leisure.
Enter Manly! Archive Gorgeous Milk +α, a community driven archive of everything(*2) related to Nintendo DS music.
Grand opening of the site will let you experience music from about 60 games, with more to come in the near future.
So get started, grab some sets you find attractive, software for playing them and have a blast.
FAQ:
Q: How do I use these files? A: Windows: 2SF/mini2SF files can be played by vio2SF plugin suite, current version as of this writing is 0.17, streamed files (STRM, ADX, various other extensions, generally large files) are handled by VGMStream, there are few other games using widely supported formats (Microsoft WAVE, Protracked Modules), which should be supported out of the box by most players out there.
Linux: I have no way of checking that, but Audacious is said to support both 2SF and VGMStream (and loads of other formats too).
Mac: No idea actually, I hope someone using one can provide some info.
Q: Help, there's no music playing! A: When extracting vio2SF, make sure you extract both the actual plugin and vio2sf.bin file into the plugins subfolder. Another thing to note is that the mini2SF files require the included 2SFlib file for playback. If you have only problems with stream formats, make sure to read VGMStream readme for needed actions.
Q: Any way to play those on a real DS? A: For 2SF files, it's possible, but there's no easy, automated way to do it currently. Streamed formats are not possible yet.
Q: Wow, this is nice, any way I can contribute? A: If you want to dump a game's music, and simply can't wait for one of our busybody contributors to get around to it, feel free to join us at #console_stream @ irc.foreverchat.net, someone there will guide you through the dumping process. About as complicated as say, running Winamp, and if you can't do that, what are you doing here? :) You can also provide tags for currently untagged games (ie most of them). If you do, just upload the renaming batch or tagged mini2SF files to any one-click hosting sites like SendSpace or RapidShare. Do not to upload the 2SFlib, it's completely unneeded for tagging purposes and just wastes bandwidth. Please note that songs should be ordered (according to the OST or ingame order, either is fine), unordered contributions will not be used. So, '01 Opening.mini2sf' good, 'Opening.mini2sf' bad. Composer contributions or error/typo spotting can just go in this thread.
Q: What's the point with all these NTR-XXXX filenames, why don't you conform to my arbitrary standards, why are there so many crappy games here when my favourite game YYYY still isn't done, other LOLyousuck comments in general. A: I couldn't really care less what you think about me, and how I spend my free time isn't really something you have any say in. All things on the site are made the way they are for a reason, mostly to ease life of dumpers.
Q: D00d, where are the ROMZ????one A: Dude, not here.
*1 Not guaranteed to be enjoyable for all games *2 Not everything *3 Old version of the site, housing more music, can be found here: Older rips, not supported in any way
Please read the FAQ section (specifically question 1 and 2) in the first post. Knuek explains how to play 2SFs in that post very clearly. It should be noted that VGMstream is to play streamed music. As in, stuff similar to WAV, MP3, CDA (that is, CD Audio), OGG, FLAC, etc. 2SFs are more like MIDI, or SPC, or NSF, etc. and as such are not streamed. As such VGMstream will not play them. Hope that helps. Mouser X over and out.