Sands of Destruction by Rainierman at 9:06 PM EDT on September 28, 2010
Hello everyone. I recently discovered by accident this and many other game riping sites and I'm surprised searches hadn't given me any results until now.
So I have a couple of game rips I'd like, but above them there's Sands of Destruction for the DS. That's a game that has music from Yasunori Mitsuda (same guy that did both Chrono's). So instead of bothering someone else for it, I try to learn and do it myself. Thing is... well I think there's might be some advance stuff behind this one, because none of the methods that vgmtoolbox has work for me (and they did with older games, so I think I'm doing it right).
Well I really want to have this soundtrack as lossless as possible (the youtube rips of it aren't even complete), so the question is: can someone please push me in the right direction to figure out this one? I'm willing to do all the hardwork that it could possible involve, but I could use some help being told what that hardwork is, lol.
Well, thanks in advance for any guidance. I'll be waiting for an answer.
by arbingordon at 10:24 PM EDT on September 28, 2010
About how many different songs are there in the game? I ripped what looked liked music (and not SFX), you can grab it here. Is there more music than this in game?
It looks like the .iear files have all sorts of different stuff in them, and what music there is seems to be sequenced, sorry.
by Rainierman at 9:10 PM EDT on September 29, 2010
Oh woah, how did you achieve that? Those are the Press Start and Credits songs. Thanks a lot, they both sound great o_o.
And I just realized something. You know, Sands of Destruction was originally called World Destruction, but when it got localized, it got lots of improvements made on it.
Why do I mention this? New songs were made for it. But it wasn't a total replacement of the old score, only just partial. In all my ignorance about how DS audio works and everything, couldn't that mean that both sets of songs could have different structure?
Not sure what the .iear comment means, but I'll investigate.
Anyways, I'm downloading the original #2700 one (which will take a while because my internet is poor) to try if any of the automated methods work with that one. I'll update here as soon as I try it. It could help.
And yeah arbingordon. If I had to guess, I'd say there might be a bit more than 30 songs.
Thanks again both of you.
edited 9:11 PM EDT September 29, 2010
by arbingordon at 9:43 PM EDT on September 29, 2010
the IEAR files are archives of a bunch of other files, could be textures 3D model data etc, as hcs said as hcs also said, however, the music seems to be sequenced, which in short means it's not going to get ripped (other than what I posted)
by Rainierman at 10:26 PM EDT on September 29, 2010
Is that really a death sentence or it just means a lot of hard work? Why? =/
It is a fair amount of hard work, but importantly it would be new work, because no one has hacked one of these Procyon Studio custom jobs before (afaik). Closest we've come is the streams, which are those ones that arbingordon uploaded for you. It isn't that it can't be done, it probably isn't much more work than went into making the two rip kits, but you'll note that that's only been done twice...
by Rainierman at 11:36 PM EDT on September 29, 2010
Ah yeah, now I do completely understand your tone :/ Well I'm very grateful to you for doing what was possible. Thanks to you both.
Then I will be looking forward to the distant future when it does become possible, I guess. The soundtrack from this game reminds me a lot of Chrono Cross and I love both soundtracks. It's a real shame.
as hcs also said, however, the music seems to be sequenced, which in short means it's not going to get ripped (other than what I posted)I was under the impression DS music was sequenced anyway, which is why it can be converted to MIDI and DLS.
Unless the stuff in there is another sequence format entirely.
I might just be completely mind-dead today and am missing something entirely.
There is a standard sequence format, Nintendo's sequencer, which is provided with the devkit. While it has some variations, it seems to be just generally extended as time goes on. This is what the standard Yoshi's Island and Ys rip kit(s) support. This game, and a good number of others, use a totally different sequencer from Procyon. It might be the same one in each case, or it might likewise be varied and extended over time. There are a few other custom sequencers out there, as well, which are likewise not supported.
Note that not all DS music is sequenced; though it is much rarer to have streams than on optical media, there are a few games that rely on them heavily.
That explains why Pokémon Diamond and Pearl were not working on the Yoshi Island DS driver then.
When the YS one came along they suddenly worked.
It also explains why Diddy Kong Racing DS works on the first playthrough and then when it loops, instruments on some songs drop. The drivers are slightly different as they go on.
I assume that this is a completely different driver altogether? (Seeing as they are contained inside another file and not just in the SDAT.