Yoshi's Island DS Music Hack... by mikehaggar at 9:40 AM EST on February 5, 2007
Hey guys...I'm new here...but it seems like a fun site!
Recently I've bee playing Yoshi's Island DS. Although the game itself is really good, I'm having trouble stomaching the music. Compared to the original game for the SNES, the music in this game is absolutely horrendous. I feel it really does change the experience of the game! So I'm wondering...does anybody out there have the skills to create a hack of this game that uses the music from the original Yoshi's Island?? Is this even possible??
What do you guys think? I'd personally send anybody here that can pull it off 10 bucks! (Not much, I know...but if others chip in, it could be quite lucrative!)...it's worth it to me as it would improve the entire gameplay experience 10 fold!
So what do you guys think? If this is impossible, I will put my idea to rest.....
by unknownfile at 11:25 AM EST on February 5, 2007
While I'd personally like to get paid to rip xSFs, I am currently not working on DS hacking (Gamecube comes first nowadays). I will get around to doing DS when a good, open source, working emulator with sound is available. (Though there might be one, and I don't even know it.)
It should be possible. The Nitro Composer format has already been hacked (see the topic about DS hacking where I posted a tutorial on how to do it). However, you can't edit with it. You'd need to find a way to edit the SSEQ files, apply new instruments if needed and then repack the SDAT file. Then, you'd need to repack the NDS file (use NDSTool to do it) and find some way to run it (emulate it, or use some hardware to run it on the DS)
And yes, the music is atrocious. So is the difficulty spike later in the game. I'm at 5-5, and from mid-world 3 (3-2, 3-3) it becomes to get extremely hard. World 4 is a nightmare, World 5 is impossible! And some of the graphics make me want to vomit (Chomps in 5-1).
UNKNOWNFILE, you want Desmume. It's open source, it has sound, and it runs YIDS well. Some sprites and animations look incorrect because some forms of sprite manipulation aren't supported, and the bosses are a little weird as they don't appear on the top screen, but it's playable, even though it's slow. Also, transitions are messed up, and backgrounds don't appear on the top screen. I'm not sure if some of these may have been fixed though, as while looking for the link I noticed a new version has been released. Here it is: http://desmume.sourceforge.net
So it's possible! Fantastic!! Any brave soul out there willing to take this project on??!
And man, I haven't beaten World 1 yet because I have hopes that somebody can hack the music before I get seriously into it....but wow, the difficulty gets that hard huh? How is it compared to the original game? Is the game even harder than the bonus levels in the original Yoshi's Island?
I'm not sure, because I never really got into the original. I do know it gets really hard though. There's a level where you must ride along a platform through the sea. Enemies attack you from the air, and if you fall into the water, Lunge Fish eats you. And that's easy compared to what you face later. I think that was 3-2 or 3-3. You need to be really good to play this game. I would hack it myself by replacing it with music from another game, but I have no way to repack the SDAT files. If I did, I would do it. I'll go see if I can find something to do it with.
edit: After much searching, no luck! I decided to use a hex editor to replace it. using XVI32, I replaced the 1-1 music. It is just a series of clicks in-game (the music is the Mario & Luigi Partners in Time training music - best remix of the Super Mario Bros overworld ever), but I will try to replace the instruments as well to see if it will fix this.
edit 2: Mission unsuccessful. I succeeded in silencing the music and making the ROM crash VGMTrans upon opening. I'm not sure though if it may be because of the fact the MLPIT sample archive for instruments is 2MB, though.. I'll try a different piece of music. Maybe something from New Super Mario Bros.
I just realised that the initials for this game are "Yids." Nintendo = Neo Nazi? :S
EDIT: Last time I checked, Desmume didn't have its sourcecode online, unless the download site is back up. As soon as I get the sourcecode to it, I'll get hacking.
Go to the site I mentioned, and go to the Downloads page. I believe the link there should work.
By the way, on replacing the music, I believe it messes up because of the offsets (and also why all the instruments were clicky). The file is of a different size, but I didn't edit the offsets in the header. I'll be working on this. Thanks to Windows Calculator, the handy SMAP file Sdattool generates and Xvi32, this should hopefully work soon.
edit: Arrgh. I'll have to start again. Just realised I imported a MIDI file of the music I wanted (I used SSEQ2MID to make MIDI files of all the SSEQs, and left them in the folder) and not the SSEQ.
edit2: Hmm. I added it in, and corrected all the file offsets in the filesystem header, and it works. Somewhat. VGMTrans opens it, which means I've got the filesystem stuff right. I also just realised I replaced the wrong sequence, other than the one I intended to. At least I know I haven't messed it up TOO much (YIDS contains two SDAT files - one contains 2 sequences, the other contains everything else, I used the smaller one as it would be easier to learn with) as the second sequence plays fine in VGMtrans. I'll go open the original ROM to see what the first sequence was.
edit3: Hopefully, when I add the instruments and banks, it will work fine. I extracted my hacked SDAT with Sdattool and used Sseq2mid on the new sequence. Plays fine, just like the original did. So I've replaced it well.
edit4: Success! Later, I'll try and add the instruments. for now though, the music plays fine in-game, even though the instruments are wrong.
by the way, do you have the original Yoshi's Island OST on SPC?
Also, I think Yoshi's Island has enough music to do the job....I think it has 2 different overworld themes, the underground music, the map music (which updates in every world!) (which owns SO hard over the new map music), castle music, boss music, and the last boss music....
I think it should be a simple subsitution as far as format goes...
If you need help in the organization department or anything else that's non technical, let me know!
If the standard YIDS ROM works, this should. I'm just editing a file in the ROM's filesystem. It will take some time to be done (I have to find good music tracks for everything) as for each piece of music, I have to replace 3 files in the SDAT file. And I haven't fully tested it, there may be other problems. I don't think there will though as YIDS does nothing special to the music. While games like NSMB speed it up, YIDS leaves it intact throughout. I took a break from it, but I'm going to try adding the instruments now. If I get it done, I'll post the SDAT file and instructions on how to apply it, because I'm not sure about the legality of posting ROMs here, and my connection doesn't want to upload a 32MB file. Got any suggestions for music tracks I can use?