How to extract MIDI files from Dreamcast games? by fedex1 at 5:54 AM EDT on March 19, 2021
In particular I would like to extract midi from these two games:
- Nobunaga no Yabou: Reppuuden - Nobunaga no Yabou: Shouseiroku with Power-Up Kit
First of all, I tried downloading the .dsf files from the zophar domain (which are the music files) but I can't convert them to midi with any of the available software.
Then I tried downloading the full ROM and extract the content from the .bin and I can find a "SOUND" folder, but inside the music tracks are .NB8 extension (for the "Reppuuden" ROM) and .MLT (for the "Shouseiroku" ROM).
How to extract midi from .NB8 and .MLT extension, if possible?
DSF files could technically contain fully formed MIDI data, but they usually don't.
The format is a native ARM RAM dump from the Dreamcast, containing raw ARM code, data, and samples. The data is uploaded to an emulator (or technically could be uploaded to a real Dreamcast), then the ARM is booted, and the code executes, and begins playing music.
There are two ways to turn this into usable MIDI data.
1) Log register writes. This is horribly unreliable, and tends to produce terrible results.
2) Convert the original sequence data. This requires per-game work, since any given game could use any format it wants for its data, and even use different formats within the same game. Likely to produce accurate results, though.