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).
Got a bit silly there. I meant ISO. I have an original copy, but had no idea how to extract it to my PC, so I had to get it via "other means"...
Edit: Fixed mistake in previous post...
by arbingordon at 12:15 AM EDT on September 1, 2009
hmmm i think i might just do the mario galaxy bit now that I've got the setup for it
what's the stuff that needs to be ripped, and what's the stuff that I need to zero out? (I need to know what extra stuff there is that needs to be ripped unless I can find that information easily on the iso, however I think that I can figure out which files do need to be zeroed out)
Chocochan: Wii - Hacking on GBATEmp great tut on softmodding wiis "completely" following that tut, you can get usb loader gx installed - with it, you can format a drive (I recommend 4+ GB, as the compressed galaxy iso is ~3.3GiB) to WBFS, dump the game, and then copy it to your computer with a wbfs manager. very easy to do once you're familiar with it
I've done everything I needed to do to the ISO I have already which was to zero out the bgm files (basically everything found in the "Streams" folder), so that only the sound effects and voices are heard (hopefully). It's just the opposite to what was done to Twilight Princess to get the music...
I just wanted to know if softmodding was safe and if anyone used it to do something similar successfully? I think I did read that tutorial at GBATemp, in fact I was hoping they had some info on how to get the sound effects and voices from DS games too, but that information was very hard to come across. I know I'll HAVE to buy a DS flash card as Rhythm Tengoku Gold/ Rhythm Heaven is near impossible to play on an emulator due to the "flicking" command.
I would prefer to do this myself as I don't really want to bother anyone with extra work, plus I'll have everything just the way I want it. I intend to modify the games and record the sound as I play . Then in Audacity I could just chop up the sounds into individual files and single out what I need. A problem I found with dumped sounds sometimes is that if the sound is VERY short, it won't play, or to say it will, but you don't hear it unless you click play constantly.
Well, that's what happens when I use Winamp anyway. I would probably add a second or two of silence before the sound to guarantee I could hear it fully. It's just as well I have an original copy of SMG as I heard that playing the backup from the start with no save means you're screwed. Apparently, after the first movie the game crashes. I'll make it easier for me to get the sounds too as only certain galaxies have certain sounds.
But I guess no one here knows much about SDAT files? I'd like to get this DS thing out of the way...
by arbingordon at 4:57 AM EDT on September 1, 2009
if you can explain really thoroughly, i might be able to help you with the ds game thing
softmods are safe and easy if you know what you're doing, or have a good tutorial/people to talk to about it i'd recommend against asking in the wiibrew chat for help, as the twiizer people are anti piracy to the point where you're not allowed to ask decent questions (like about cIOSs for usb 2.0 support in a media player)
just join the console stream chat, and I or mouser x can help you if you need anything
as far as messed up saves with the backup - that doesn't happen for me, my backed up iso works fine off my usb drive, same stars found etc
Well, I need mostly the voices and sound effects of all the characters in the game Rhythm Tengoku Gold (it must be the Japanese version of the game and not the western version Rhythm Heaven or the European version Rhythm Paradise as the English voices are really bad like there was no effort put into them).
If you've played the game or seen some gameplay videos, you'll know what sounds I'm after. Basically the all voices and sounds that play during a minigame. They can be in any order, just as long as they are complete and at the right speed. I can't handle trying to piece together bits of sounds from dumps.
Zeroing out the music and playing the game as is and letting the sounds just happen sounds better to me than trying to dump them. I've nabbed a DVD-R off my brother (don't tell him!), so I'll probably be brave and do the softmod sometime soon and burn the ISO while I'm at it.
Prime Blue:
You may ask indeed! No, seriously, I'll tell you if you really want to know. I enjoy sculpting figures of video game characters and usually cast them in plastic (resin). I had a fun idea since the Rhythm game (DS) was so popular, I would make several DS Stylus pens that make sound effects from the game and feature a little figure of the character on top (or hanging off it, I haven't decided yet).
I'm a fan of the minigame "DJ School" (VERY popular on YouTube) and DJ Yellow's voice is just awesome. Wouldn't you love a DJ Yellow stylus that says "Scratch-O! Hey!" when you press its button? I know I would. I found a company that makes sound modules that fit into pens and you can have them record a sound in or do it yourself if you have the right equipment.
If I can get the sounds and make the stylus casings right, I can finish off the figures and cast them all out in different colours! As for Super Mario Galaxy, I want to eventually do a Stop Motion animation about that game and wanted the voices and sound effects to use when required, or I might make something that plays a sound effect when pressed similar to the Super Mario "Sound Drops" collection you can buy from Japan.
I'd love for someday Nintendo to notice my work and perhaps allow me to be licensed by them to make merchandise for their games...
Note: I *actually* have one of the sound drops of a Luma. It plays 3 different Luma sounds randomly, but sounds horrid if you try to record from it. XD
Sorry, I'm a bit daft today as I'm tired (spent whole day at a college trying to enrol in an Art & Design course), but WHERE is the console stream chat?
You can get sound samples here, extracted from Rhythm Tengoku Gold with VGMTrans. I have no idea if they contain what you want, so have fun checking...
by arbingordon at 3:21 PM EDT on September 1, 2009
why waste a dvdr though, all you need is a usb drive, then afterwards you can format it to fat32 again ('cuz fat32 is awesome)
Sorry Prime Blue, it's just like the last one I downloaded. It's a dump filled with bits of sounds you have to search through and paste together. WAY too tedious.
I have a 4GB USB key/flash drive. Would that really work OK arbingordon?
I'd think that most of the time while playing Super Mario Galaxy there'd be more than one sound effect playing at a time, which would complicate that particular method quite a bit. If you manage it, though, I'd quite like the Luma and Toad sounds... Especially Mail Toad's "No Mail!" sound and the squeal of a transforming Luma! :D
While on the subject, would anyone happen to know if the sound effects from Pikmin 1 and/or 2 have been ripped?
by arbingordon at 1:13 AM EDT on September 2, 2009
Chocochan: yea that'd work fine. you have format it as WBFS, so back up whatever you have on it, then, the when loading the program on the wii, it will autodetect the flash drive, and if it's not already formatted to WBFS, then it will prompt you to do so. The iso will fit on 4GB, because it is shrunk (in a bigger way than wiiscrubber even).
I tried... and failed. I spent all day softmodding my Wii and finally burnt the backup... Only to find it doesn't work. Let me explain what happened. The game plays, oh yeah, but while there's no music (success!), there's no title screen either (failure!). You just see the space background and that's it. After a while, it freezes and I literally have to unplug the Wii from the power socket to get it going again.
I didn't think silencing the music would do that! I'm not sure what to do. I've wasted a DVD-R I know (ah, I needed something to sit my cup on), so I'm going to now try the USB method (have to figure out what I need first). I'll put back the title screen and file select bgms and see if I can at least get into the game. I never modified anything else, so I'm not sure what I did wrong...
Well, USB Loader GX is useless as it won't even see my USB key. I tried formatting it to WBFS first via WBFS Manager and even put the SMG ISO on it too. Wouldn't see it. Tried formatting the USB to FAT32 and plugged it in (did the whole 30 seconds searching thing twice). Still nothing showing.
Don't have the money to buy any new USB device now (then there's the fear of it not even being seen), so I don't really know what else to do unless I go down the DVD+RW route and make sure it's booked properly (was that the right term?). At least I can wipe it if it doesn't work...
Everything in the "Stream" folder when you open it with Trucha Signer. All the files in there were playable in Winamp (vgmstream plugin) and I confirmed them as the all the bgm for the entire game (except for the alternate version of File Select, which I have NEVER seen extracted yet, funny that).
When I extracted the folder, the files were AST files. They were named like this:
I told you to zerout AW files on the first page, not AST files. That will delete all sequenced music in the game. Travel to an area in the game where music that is not included in the AST files is played and where Lumas are lurking about, making those funny noises you want to record.
But when I dumped the AW files, those were SOUND EFFECTS AND VOICES (amidst the noise)! Why would I zero out what I want to record? And there's NO place where the Lumas are about where music not included in the files play. Seriously. That folder I mentioned contains all the music in every galaxy, so there's nowhere I can avoid it. If only I could show you what I mean...
Just to add, I tried an unmodified ISO and it worked perfectly. Also, I was surprised that my Wii liked the DVD+RW I used and I didn't have to change a single setting in ImgBurn or in the backup player (NeoGamma). I'll keep experimenting.
I was REALLY close this time! I actually got into the game with no music and was running about talking to Lumas and the Mail Toad! It wasn't perfect however, as I didn't realise the Lumas in the Comet Observatory had a "sparkling" sound which was constant, so it spoiled everything. THAT sound in particular must be in the "Waves" folder which contains all the AW files (which I can't listen to easily, so I can't pick out what to silence). In fact, it seems the "Waves" folder has some music in it too as the "Star Selection" music played and the "Level Intro" as well.
The Lumas in the galaxies don't "sparkle" however, so I went to the Good Egg Galaxy first as there's less going on there. I avoided falling star bits as they made a lot of unwanted noise, and was going well until I killed an enemy and collected a coin. The game froze and the coin sound stuttered. Had to unplug the Wii yet again. I realised that this wasn't a one off either as I tried again, and after I spoke to the Mail Toad (who sounds pretty funny when there's no mail), and took a few steps, the game froze with stuttering sound again.
It seems very, very difficult to get these sounds without the game going funny on me. If only there was a way to play AW files completely, I wouldn't have these problems at all. Damn you Nintendo with your awesome music and sound effects, yet making them hard to extract! I'm preparing to give up and see what I can completely erase from my Wii in terms of the softmodding. I'm not keen on leaving that stuff in there...
If you have the Homebrew Channel installed (which you almost certainly do), then use Any Title Deleter or, for a more user-friendly experience, try the other versions.
I haven't done this myself, but theoretically, it should enable you to remove essentially anything and everything you want. Though, I would STRONGLY recommend doing a BootMii NAND backup (if you haven't already), just in case things don't go well.
As for the problems you're experiencing, I can't help, sorry. But I can say that to me, it sounds like you're "close enough" to do what you want. Sure, it'll crash on you frequently. But you didn't want the game to be playable (I realize that would make things significantly easier), you wanted to be able to record the sound effects. To me, it sounds like you can now do this, at least to a point. Sure, it will take a lot of patience (and rebooting/unplugging/etc.), but if you can play the game at all, and get what you're looking for at all, then at least you've got something (whereas before you had nothing whatsoever).
Good luck, no matter what you choose. Since I've never needed to use Any Title Deleter, I can't vouch for it. It's on WiiBrew though, so it should be at least "pretty good." Hope that helps. Mouser X over and out.
Good to hear from you again. I've already deleted the softmod stuff already and I did use Any Title Deleter Mod instead of the original. The only thing nagging me is that there are two spaces where the Homebrew Channel and USB Loader GX were and I would prefer all the channels to be neat.
I have no idea how to move channels directly to those spaces, so I'll just leave it as is. I'm not bothered anymore now, I'm just going to make some figures regardless. It would've been fun to have sound effects for them, but it's something that can never be unless I had direct ties with Nintendo.
I don't really want to do anything to my Wii anymore and all that plugging and unplugging from the mains won't be good for it. I won't give up on the DS side of things though. There must be a way to do the same thing for RTG/RH and it might not crash as bad as SMG being on a cartridge an' all. Nevertheless, I appreciate all the help I was given and it was interesting to try what probably tons of gamers are doing.
Though I'm quite happy just buying games knowing that they'll work 100% and my Wii will remain "unbricked" (that really scares me as I'm really poor at the moment). Well it'll live until it's drive finally dies anyway. :P Thanks again!
Edit: Just realised I could move the channels all along. Doh!
Honestly, I meant to mention that. I didn't because I forgot, was too lazy to edit my post, and figured they probably weren't planning on doing it anyway (the play/crash/reboot thing). On the positive side, at least those who didn't know before, know now. Mouser X over and out.
If it was as easy as that I wouldn't have mentioned unplugging the mains at all. No, it crashes really bad that even holding the power button won't turn it off successfully. I KNOW how to turn off a Wii when it's working normally y'know...
Remember we're talking about playing a modified backup here! Anyway, malice aside, I'm not going to mess with it anymore. I already had to deal with the "funny drive sounds" problem before, and I don't want to do anything more to it. Maybe other people can afford to buy a new Wii if they screw theirs up with experiments, but I can't.
I'll still be able to do something cool, just without the sound effects, that's all. ^_^
edited 9:04 AM EDT September 3, 2009
by arbingordon at 10:40 AM EDT on September 3, 2009
ive never had anything like that happen when playing my er... cough *backups* cough
"I KNOW how to turn off a Wii when it's working normally y'know..." You have to hold the button down for several seconds when it is frozen up, longer than you normally would.
by arbingordon at 10:57 AM EDT on September 3, 2009
I have held it longer. I've mentioned I've tried the whole thing more than once. Honestly, I hate the internet sometimes for the sole reason that it's hard to make people believe you even when you're telling the truth. Can't people read? I mentioned a modified backup. Not all situations are the same, so many different variables, so many different outcomes. I already mentioned in a previous post that I did a normal backup (as in I didn't zero out any files) and it worked perfectly.
Why would I mention I had to unplug it if holding the power button actually worked? Don't you think I had common sense enough to try holding the power button for a good while? If you must know, I've held it for up to 20 seconds one time and it remained the same. It's not good to always assume things. I'm ending this now anyway as I've found someone who willing to help me with the DS sound files who I'll be chatting to shortly.
Feel free to continue posting or close the thread or whatever, as I don't have all the downloads to softmod anymore and don't intend to download them again. Like I said before, I appreciate the help and all, but I personally doubt what I want can be done. Am I assuming? Yes, as surely someone with more knowledge would've tried it already at least with a different Wii game.
I'm seriously tired of people doubting me. It's happened twice already and both I went out of my way to prove wrong (one involved money and DS Lite parts, so I had to). I may not know everything, but I know what I need to know, y'know (lol)? Case closed.
The question I'm left to wonder about is how long you held the button down for. The reason I wonder this at all, is because I succeeded in corrupting my Wii's main IOS (I've since fixed it, but largely because I had Preloader installed). I'd turn on my Wii, and severly corrupted text would appear. The first time it happened, I couldn't even read it. Eventually, I realized it was saying something like "Your system file is corrupt. Please read the manual for more information." Even with the main "OS" corrupted, holding down the power button worked.
Who said they were doubting you? I didn't say that. What I'm doubting is that the power button was held long enough. I'm fairly certain it's 30 seconds (you mentioned 20), or longer. When my Wii crashes (it's done it a number of times with some bad Homebrew stuff), I just hold the power button button until it resets. Sometimes, this can seem like a very long time, but I can only think of once, maybe twice, where that didn't work. And those times were more likely due to impatience (not holding it long enough. It was awhile ago, so I might not have realized it needed to be held down for so long), than due to not powering off properly.
I'm sorry you got so upset over this issue. No ill feelings were meant about it, I can assure you (I know most of these people reasonably well. That's just the way they type). You're right, it's possible the Wii was messed up worse than any of us have ever screwed it up, but, at least in my case (currupted system menu?), I'm not so sure about that.
Sorry I (we, actually) couldn't help you any more. Good luck, and hopefully the DS stuff works out. Mouser X over and out.
Holding the main power button on the system itself should be a pretty low-level signal telling the hardware to power-down. Even a modified backup probably contains only high-level software errors.
I always thought holding the main power would signal the system to shut down, no matter the state.
Sorry for helping. Make more fun of my stupid nickname.