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Community => General Chatter => Topic started by: Wodd on June 12, 2016, 18:15:49

Title: Sound Effect Extraction
Post by: Wodd on June 12, 2016, 18:15:49
I would like to extract the sound effects from 3 games, namely: One Must Fall: 2097, Rayman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayman_(video_game)), and Amazing Learning Games With Rayman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayman_Junior). I have used X-Ripper (http://www.zeus-software.com/downloads/xripper) to extract audio and video but the aforementioned games' sound effects must be in a format (or formats) that X-Ripper doesn't support by default. Does someone know: 1) what format those games' sound effect files are in? 2) how to add file formats to X-Ripper? 3) what I can use for the extraction of the audio?
Title: Re: Sound Effect Extraction
Post by: LPChip on June 12, 2016, 19:54:11
I don't know what sound effect formats this game uses as I'm only interested in the background music.

The background music for OMF 2097 are modules and can be downloaded here: http://www.mirsoft.info/gmb/music_info.php?id_ele=NzYz
Title: Re: Sound Effect Extraction
Post by: Saga Musix on June 12, 2016, 20:13:56
What a great post with 0 new information. :P
The rips/conversions at MirSoft are not good, the music was originally written in MultiTracker, not ScreamTracker, so it would make more sense to get the original MTM files (https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=search&query=fall*.mtm&submit=Find&search_type=filename_or_songtitle).
But given that Wodd wants to extract the sounds, he most likely already has the music because OpenMPT can already open the PSM files that ship with the game.

Back to topic, you can load SOUNDS.DAT as a RAW sample into OpenMPT (8-bit unsigned mono) and extract the sounds yourself, or reverse-engineer the file format to write your own extractor. From a very quick look, it looks like the offset for each sample might be stored as a 32-bit integer at the start of the file.

Many games of that time have simple uncompressed 8-bit or 16-bit PCM samples stored in custom data files, so you will probably be able to extract them the same way in those two other games.
Title: Re: Sound Effect Extraction
Post by: LPChip on June 12, 2016, 20:22:06
Quote from: Saga Musix on June 12, 2016, 20:13:56
What a great post with 0 new information. :P
I'm good at that... xD

Quote from: Saga Musix on June 12, 2016, 20:13:56
The rips/conversions at MirSoft are not good, the music was originally written in MultiTracker, not ScreamTracker, so it would make more sense to get the original MTM files (https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=search&query=fall*.mtm&submit=Find&search_type=filename_or_songtitle).

I downloaded these songs and they sounded accurate to me. After that, I shared them. Many years ago, I did attempt to rip game music myself, and IIRC I also ended up with s3m files back then.
Title: Re: Sound Effect Extraction
Post by: Saga Musix on June 12, 2016, 20:31:52
QuoteI did attempt to rip game music myself, and IIRC I also ended up with s3m files back then.
Maybe because you used PSM2S3M, which for some time was the only available tool for converting those files, and it did a bad job. Just listen to 09-END.S3M from that package and compare it to FALL6.MTM, the difference should be obvious from the very first second on. ;)
Title: Re: Sound Effect Extraction
Post by: Brozilla on June 12, 2016, 23:25:39
Well personally I've never tried it but I'm sure search engines have an answer. To say the least if you can manage to play back the sound effect you should be able to record it. If you own an actual PSX it might be trickier but through windows you can Wave or Stereo Mix to record. Best I've got.
Title: Re: Sound Effect Extraction
Post by: Wodd on June 14, 2016, 05:14:39
Quote from: Saga Musixhe most likely already has the music
Yes, I have the music already. You are correct. In fact, I have the game running as I am making this post. ;)
Quote from: Saga Musixyou can load SOUNDS.DAT as a RAW sample into OpenMPT (8-bit unsigned mono)
That is worth a try.
Quote from: Saga MusixMany games of that time have simple uncompressed 8-bit or 16-bit PCM samples stored in custom data files, so you will probably be able to extract them the same way in those two other games.
Perhaps
Quote from: Enumeratingw7if you can manage to play back the sound effect you should be able to record it
This is a nice thought. Although I do not prefer to record unless there is no other avenue (such as recoding Microsoft Narrator echoing back keystrokes).

Note for Saga Musix: Loading the raw data does work. However, the quality makes some speech sounds difficult to understand and some are intelligible in the Rayman games. Also, the sounds clearly play at different frequencies. Zooming the sample might help with isolating the sounds, but I don't know how I would do quality restoration. Even adjusting the frequency would provably be easier (although quite time consuming).
Title: Re: Sound Effect Extraction
Post by: Saga Musix on June 14, 2016, 13:01:51
QuoteAlso, the sounds clearly play at different frequencies
Well, it's obviously your job to find the correct sample rate. Although in the case of OMF, I think it's 11025 Hz for all samples. Since the game didn't use high-quality interpolation mechanisms like OpenMPT does, you can make the speech sound more intellegible by switching to linear or no interpolation.