The best way to get questions answered here? by Vittas at 1:43 AM EST on December 26, 2014
I figured I would figure out the culture of the forum as I spent time here, but it is still proving rather impenetrable most of the time, though there are more recent times when my question(s) are answered swiftly and easily, but others go unanswered indefinitely. This is not a complaint, but a question. What are some general guidelines to follow to avoid irritating people and get the best results when interacting with you all here?
From what I've learned here most of the time people will tell you is to search the forum before making a thread in hopes your questions will be answered but most of the time that's not the case and 90% of the reason is because people are just uninterested about the topic in general even though it would benefit them (yes, even them) and so many people...
We have so many formats for games unsolved here but a limited amount of hackers on this forum who are doing there own stuff and to deduce what they tell you over and over again = "Learn how to do this or that and we will take a look at it and never mention it again" that's most of the mentality here, sad but true and then there are those that promise to do something but in the end don't deliver and then there are those who actually fulfill and come through for the user(s) so it's not all that bad :P
I would say the best thing to do is to learn your own hacks and be pretty knowledgeable about what you are doing or how to hack an unknown format in general on your own time and decide where you want to go from there.
Usually if there's no answer, either nobody can contribute anything meaningful, or people just haven't been checking the forum. It's usually the former.
Free time is becoming more scarce for a lot of us here, so we might not be able to accomplish what we originally plan.
because people are just uninterested about the topic in general even though it would benefit them (yes, even them) and so many people... How do you propose it would "benefit even them" if they have 0% interest in it?
sad but true and then there are those that promise to do something but in the end don't deliver Please link me some examples, I'd love to debunk the shit out of this statement :D
This is reverse engineering of music formats is done in one's free time... you guys seem awfully entitled, that just because your question wasn't answered, your format reversed, that it's somehow on us? ... Start contributing more than you request, start reading and learning instead of begging? There isn't some magic secret to getting people to help you if they aren't already. Lose the entitlement complex.
@dj4uk6cjm "...learn your own hacks and be pretty knowledgeable about what you are doing or how to hack an unknown format in general on your own time..." Sure. Where do I start for PS3 and XBox 360? I know nothing about coding/programming, and don't know which languages to learn in order to be able to work with those systems' games.
@soneek Thanks. So it's probably not a problem on my end necessarily, just that my question probably doesn't have an acceptable answer?
@arbin Please explain how I am acting entitled. I am asking why I seem to be ignored on some of the things I ask, only because it has been bothering me. I am not mad at anyone, and I am not demanding anything. I honestly feel like maybe I got off on the wrong foot, so I am questioning if I have been going about my business here in an acceptable manner.
I would love to contribute. There are still GBA games that do not have their music archived that I would love to add to the collection, as well as on other systems, but I don't at all know how to get the music out of the games. If you would like to point me toward where to start for extracting the files for GBA, PS2, PS3, or XBox 360 (and then what to do with the damned .xsb, .xwb, & .xma files which keep me from actually playing some of the music that I have acquired), I will gladly do what I can to start contributing. I would enjoy it.
Where do I start for PS3 and XBox 360? I know nothing about coding/programming, and don't know which languages to learn in order to be able to work with those systems' games.
I know nothing about PS3 or Xbox 360 myself (not that interested in post-PS2/GC stuff), but you really don't need to know any programming language to work with file formats.
You can use just about any language that has any standard input/output support to process files. There aren't any magical built-in functions in script/programming languages that will automatically guess/process custom formats for you. You will need to know the format(s) before actually writing a program for it/them. Most people here probably use a hex editor to guess the structure of formats. Common conventions when using a hex editor is to look for offsets, sizes, human-readable text and other stuff that makes sense with various data in the file (or even other files that might be related to it).
I learned PHP (a language mostly used for web applications, but technically a strong general-purpose language that's very easy to understand and very forgiving) when I was around 14 or 15 and I have been using it for the last 5+ years to do just about everything. It's only in recent years that I've been interested in trying out new languages. So if you find C languages hard to understand, then I highly recommend you start with PHP, or Python (which is more strict / less forgiving imo).
Oh yeah, there is also a script language called QuickBMS which I notice more and more people are using in the game-modding/research/etc communities, but I've never used it myself so I can't vouch for it. I guess it's supposed to be even easier to use than other languages since it deals with common algorithms and other things seen in game formats.
As soneek, Nisto, and arbin said, free time is at a premium. Many of us who used to contribute to the forum/scene frequently now have families, careers, education, or other endeavors consuming a lot of our free time.
I say follow Nisto's lead, who took the bull by the horns and started doing his own research when no one seemed to follow up.
The following sites helped me greatly during "my day." http://wiki.multimedia.cx/ http://forum.xentax.com/viewforum.php?f=29
Also, not sure if the IRC channels are still active, but that is hands down the best way to learn and get answers: #console_stream, irc.foreverchat.net #usf, irc.freenode.net