Ripping music and sounds from Tanktics (PC) by JacintaB19 at 7:12 AM EDT on May 8, 2020
I'm trying to rip sounds and music from older PC games, especially Tanktics. I have a file called tankdata.bin which is a BIN file, and i can't get the sound data from it.
There's not one unique type or definition of BIN files. BIN can be anything, even a ZIP file in disguise. For 90s games you can generally try the console application MultiRipper. Download the EXE, drag-and-drop the "tankdata.bin" over the EXE and press F6 to scan for any known files. File names are not extracted, just file type + a number. All files are created in the same directory as the source file (I believe). In some cases MultiRipper actually recognizes some archive formats and can extract files with their proper names.
Alternatively: upload the "tankdata.bin" file somewhere so we can take a look at it. If the format is simple enough it might be easy to write an extractor for it.
MultiRipper only recognizes well known formats. The "tankdata.bin" itself as well as all files within it are proprietary. It contains no WAV or other known files for MultiRipper to find. The archive contains no filenames, only offsets and size pairs. Filenames are either stored somewhere else or are hardcoded in the game.
The sounds are stored in one continuous data chunk without headers. The headers are stored in a separate chunk. Combining them is not trivial! You can use an audio editor which reads any file as RAW file to separate files by hand if you like. All sounds are 16 bit uncompressed PCM. The archive contains no music btw. Maybe it's Redbook audio, in which case you have to rip the tracks from the CD by yourself.
You can extract the archive using VGM Toolbox: go to "misc tools" -> "extraction tools" -> "generic" -> "virtual file system extractor".
Drag the "tankdata.bin" onto the "Data File" field and set the following configuration:
File count equals 77 File records begin at offset 12 and each record has a size of 12 File offset is at offset 4 and has size 4 and byte order Little Endian Use file offsets to determine file lengths
click "extract files"
A sub folder will be created which contains the extracted files. File 0000001A is the one you're looking for. 0000001B is the header file, which is useless as-is.
Converting these files to WAV requires writing a custom converter, which I could do, but is it worth the effort? I extracted the sounds for you, because explaining how you do it in VGM Toolbox takes forever. These are no WAV files but headerless RAW files without sample rate info. You have to guess the correct sample rates.
So, guessing the correct sample rates will be tough... You will have to play through the game first, or see gameplay videos of it before you can make the sounds sound right, like in the actual game.
In fact, Tanktics is a game made by DMA Design and Interplay for PCs, and I've played it.