Turning off background music in games... by Chocochan at 5:48 AM EDT on August 22, 2009
Hello there everyone.
It was suggested to me by the wonderfully helpful hcs that I come here asking for advice, as I have found little via googling. Is it possible to turn off the background music while playing a Nintendo DS rom? I want to capture some sound effects and voices from Rhythm Tengoku Gold (Rhythm Heaven/Paradise). A rom is the only way I can think of getting the files I need as I don't think I'd ever have the knowledge (or guts) to mess with an original DS card.
I found a dump someone made already, but all the sounds are in pieces and some I don't even know what they are. So I figured why not record them as they come up during gameplay? At least they would be at the right speed and WHOLE. You'll have to forgive me but I have only ever used a DS emulator once, and that was just to record the title screen for Mario Kart DS (for a Mario Kart video I'm making), so I know pretty much nothing about their internals.
If this is possible, the only trouble I'd have is how to play the game without music, unless I play the corresponding MP3 at the same time to keep the rhythm... Please let me know if you can advise anything, and if this IS possible for Wii games too (still thinking of Super Mario Galaxy sound effects, I want those Lumas!), please let me know of what I need to achieve this! Thanks for any help anyone can give.
P.S: For Super Mario Galaxy, I DID try dumpaw, and it was at the least maddening. So much noise! And barely anything to show for it!
1. Acquire NDS documentation/dev shit 2. Modify the source code to some NDS emu such that music functions are nullified 3. ??? 4. No profit, sadly, only the possibility of getting the SFX that you're after
For a DS game, although I don't know if this would work (I kind of doubt it would, but it might), you'd be best off extracting the contents of the ROM (I forget the tool that does this), and modifying the SDAT file to remove the sequences of the music. Or, depending on the game, removing the streamed files. Though, in the case of a game that uses streams, you might have more success if you replace all the songs with files that are simply empty audio (as in, they play silence, looped).
In the case of Super Mario Galaxy, that might work (though, I wouldn't get my hopes up). If you can create silent audio files which are the same format as those used in SMG, then it would probably work if you took those "empty" files, and put them into the game in place of the actual audio files.
But, since I've never done anything like this, I'm only speaking from something that sounds like it makes sense to me. If I recall correctly, Prime Blue has had more experience in this area. He, with help from HCS (through tools HCS wrote), was able to figure out how to remove sound effects from Zelda: Twilight Princess. Theoretically, if you can remove sound effects, then it should be possible to remove the songs, and leave the sound effects in place.
Sorry I can't be of more help, but maybe this will give you some ideas. Good luck. Mouser X over and out.
I'd say zero out the files you want to be silent, and see if internal game error handling will know not to try to play the affected file. How else would it deal with unreadable disk portions, and still be a playable game?
Thanks for the responses everyone. It'll be hard for me as I know nothing about modifying games, but I'll do my best to TRY and locate the tools I need. I have a Super Mario Galaxy ISO already (but you knew that), so I guess I'll just have to find the right tool to remove/replace the sound.
Anyone have any suggestions on what to type in Google? I don't even do stuff like this as a hobby, so I'm a "newb" as some of you might say to all this. I don't want to have to keep asking you guys, so I'd love to know EXACTLY what I need to look for.
As for Rhythm Tengoku Gold, the dump I found had wav, midi and stream folders. The stream folder had all the music in it, so I guess there's a good chance of removing them if I can find out how to modify a rom (once I find it).
Quartoxuma (fun fact: German name for Gohdan) mentioned that he zeroouted some AW files in GALAXY, so that's certainly possibly. I didn't deal with modifying Wii ISOs before, but I guess there's a widespread tool that lets you change files in still encrypted images. From what I read now, Trucha Signer should work.
There is also another thread with a tool hcs wrote, so you might try that one first as it could work for the sound effects you want.
Thanks for the info, but I've seen and tried hcs' tool already and it worked just like dumpaw (unless they're both the same program under different names), with tons of noise and sounds all at wrong speeds, which would take forever to sort out (unless they're meant to come out better than what I got).
I guess my best bet is to try and silence the music somehow, or even it there was a way to get the music to play in one sound channel and the sound effects in another, I could just focus on recording one and then spend time separating the sounds (is that even possible?).
I have Trucha Signer already which I used to extract a "waves" folder full of .aw files, and I also have WinHex too, so I'll just have to figure out what to modify and hope I can make a disc that would play fine on an unmodified Wii.
I haven't found much for Rhythm Tengoku Gold sadly, though I've read on some of the more unfriendly forums that tools like dslazy (or whatever it's called) can extract stuff from DS roms. I'm useless with cheat devices too as I've never used one before (what for? :P), though I expect there may be a code somewhere for what I want to do...
I don't have GALAXY, so I can't confirm the following. Judging from Quartoxuma's post, however, I think the AW files should be divided into instrument (BGM) and normal sound effect (SE) containers, just like with Twilight Princess. If that is the case, get zerout and drop all BGM AW files on zerout.exe (or use the command line to do it). Then replace the old files on the ISO with the zeroed ones, using Trucha Signer, and run the modified game. Optional steps: Go nuts about how it is not working, try to find another way that won't work either and throw your Wii out of the window. Voilà!
Random musing 1: Funny how we're using the same method two years later to achieve the opposite.
Random musing 2: Funny how there's still no rip of the game if the above is true.
OK! I've acquired a Super Mario Galaxy iso (US version as I have a US Wii and I live in the UK... yeah.) as I previously had a Japanese version, and I "zeroed out" the bgm via replacing all files in the "Streams" folder. Now here's where I'm getting worried.
Has anyone softmodded their Wii to play backups (yes, I have googled and seen what can be done, with all that "Twilight Hack" stuff and that you should have a certain model of Wii, but it seems a bit much for someone like me who won't be using homebrew stuff and playing backups all the time)?
I wish there was like a bootdisc or something to add to the iso (like for Dreamcast games, those were the good old days) as I don't want to mess up anything on my Wii just for the sake of sound effects.
If there is a way of temporarily playing a backup on an unmodified Wii, I'd love to hear from anyone who knows about it! I also tried unpacking the RTG/RH DS rom and found a LOT of stuff I know nothing about (overlay BIN files, SDAT files, NANR and other weird extensions starting with N, etc.) , and there is little on the internet about "hacking"/modifying a rom either (just people being cheap downloading roms to play instead).