Years have passed...
Lives were wasted...
And there's not a single pirate in this sea,
that could have extracted all the bcstm,
in Animal Crossing: City Folk's rv_forest.brsar.
I am talking seriously. Does anyone know if someone has "extracted" them or knows how to do it?
I found some, here, but they're not too much... Nearly all the hourly music in weather different than sunny is missing, and some of them sound quite different than in the game (e.g. 11 PM, at 01:16), so I'm not sure about that place...
Sorry for repeating the question, but, does anyone know where can I find that streamed music, possibly all packed up? If not, how could I extract them, using updated software?
Thank you all, people that helped into this through the last decade.
(NOTE: Everything is sampled at 32kHz for a reason.)
NOTE: These are compressed BRSTMs using ADPCM encoding. Unlike most things compressed in this format, Animal Crossing's music is not very complex, and some of the music has a slight yet audible drop in quality as a result. I currently have no way of encoding these files to a lossless looping format, so this is the best I can do. However, I have the original WAV files backed up, so I could redo it all if I discover a method to losslessly loop the files. The WAVs have precisely zero static in them, so their quality cannot be exceeded unless a flawless xsf format is produced sometime in the future.
http://www.mediafire.com/file/ph8mjbl7am2t6b4/ACCF_WAVs.rar
EDIT: Upon closer listening to the WAV files, I have picked up on some weird distortions that seem to be present with some tracks. I'm not really sure why they're there, but whether or not they are noticeable depends on whatever player you are using, whether or not you are using an equalizer, and your sound setup.
edited 1:17 AM EST January 15, 2017
Phineas' music box theme is actually comprised of hidden audio tracks that play over the normal City music when he is present. Even though Phineas only appears when visiting the City during the daytime, there are hidden audio tracks with unique versions of his theme in the late night and early morning versions of the City music. These can be found in Sound/rvÌ forest.brsar as BGMÌ TOWNÌ MIDNIGHT and BGMÌ TOWNÌ EARLY, respectively.
I was wondering if anyone has this music (for any/all times of day), or could help me find it? I’m not experienced with game file extraction at all, but I figured this was my best chance. Thanks.
A general note about these dumps that I didn't realize back in the day is that they contain no reverb effects whatsoever comparative to the actual game. The only real way to dump these accurately thus far would be to disable all SFX and dump them straight from the game. That would be an absolute monster of a project and would certainly require even more effort than I've already put into these.
As another note, none of the city themes or hourly themes are looped in those WAVs, though everything else is. I don't know how you were doing it, but I've found you can figure out the looping point by extracting the rseq via hex editing, using rseq2midi and you have to half the tempo. The loop points are converted to markers in the MIDI. However if these dumps are indeed significantly inaccurate, I suppose the only options left would be to create an xSF format (which I've seen a lot of talk of, but nothing actually happen) or as you said to record in-game while muting sound effects. My only idea as to how to do the latter would be removing other sounds in the brsar or replacing them with silence, though I get the feeling that wouldn't work well.
http://www.mediafire.com/file/7o71z3tzb98c01c/ACCF_-_6_AM.zip/file
I'm still not sure if there's an easier way to get proper dumps of these tracks without doing it through the main game. I don't foresee myself doing another full game dump like the first one, but I can at least leave you with a BRSAR that I made a while ago that has its sound effects wiped: http://www.mediafire.com/file/hknb7fwd20ndm2c/rv_forest_%2528no_sfx%2529.brsar/file
If you do mess around with this, let me know if you run into any issues or need help along the way, and I'll see if I have any more insight. :)
edited 12:38 PM EST February 23, 2021
Regardless, the MIDI+sf2 combo has some other issues, like poorly timed note releases and a bunch of other things. The MIDIs are really nice to have as a reference, but I don't see them being ideal for creating proper rips for listening purposes.
There are a handful of tracks missing from ArcticJaguar725's, the most notable of which is the Bunny Day music (https://youtu.be/RIF04kCDP7A) that plays when the player approaches Zipper T. Bunny during the Bunny Day (Easter) event. Using VGMTrans, I've extracted every single MIDI, DLS, SF2, and WAV from the BRSAR, and I've been in the process of sorting these MIDIs with their banks into named folders, but as with some game music, I have been unable to find the Bunny Day music. It could be in there, as the file names are confusing, but I haven't seen it so far. It is in PieJee1's OST (in the comments he says he recorded in-game with a muted town tune).
The Museum (Bugs) track is missing (https://youtu.be/4pN3PkJSFyM). I think this is because the track is exactly the same as the Museum (Fish) track (https://youtu.be/XZ3CWbXh-Xw), so it was probably omitted intentionally (though I think it should still be included).
There are also some files that I found are missing but it's probably fine, as these may not belong in the OST anyway. The Channel Intro (https://youtu.be/ol6q4GE1Cc0) track, I could not find this so far in the files I extracted from ACCF, so I'm not sure where a lossless source for this would be. The Default Town Tune (https://youtu.be/lGICFxtOi3c), The City (New Hour) (https://youtu.be/oHq_ElGId5I), 10 TV tracks (one example: https://youtu.be/usFDyUQzogY), and 7 furniture tracks including Pinball Machine, Music Box, Master Sword, Triforce, Metroid, Starwing, and Pikmin (one example: https://youtu.be/gfvtGyUEBCo).
I would love to hear anyone's thoughts! Sorry for my lengthy post, I have a lot to say about this topic!
edited 11:48 PM EST February 28, 2021
I'd also invite both of you (and anyone else interested) to join the Animal Crossing Modding Discord server, where we have a channel dedicated to our project for creating comprehensive soundtracks for not only ACCF but all games in the series. (New Leaf is almost done!) (Edit: as a note I feel I should mention this is not the main focus of the server, in fact if anything that's the ongoing translation of the Japan-only Doubutsu no Mori e+. But it is still one of the server's projects and you will no doubt be welcome there.)
While the BRSAR dumps have no doubt proven valuable, with this project I believe we will be recording in-game using the modified BRSAR for most tracks, because, as has been demonstrated, there is a significant difference, at least for some tracks. In my opinion, it will be tedious, but it will be worth it.
edited 3:56 AM EST March 1, 2021
edited 3:50 AM EST March 2, 2021
Problem is, that's way easier said than done. I have some experience hex editing and writing my own Gecko codes for use with Dolphin, but I think it may be a bit beyond me at this time to disassemble this game's code and find what I need. If anybody else is experienced enough to take a shot at it, that would be extremely helpful to getting these rips, since getting every last piece of BGM through normal game dumps really can't be too fun either.
EDIT: It's probably also worth mentioning I believe this is the case for every single Wii game that uses a brsar with sequences. This means an xsf format would probably not fix the Reverb/FX issues either unless somebody generated the files considering said game's code file as well.
EDIT 2: For anyone that decides to look into this further, here are some keywords to look out for:
• FxBase
• FxReverbHi
• FxReverbStd
• FxChorus
• FxDelay
I'm not sure if the last three are used at all in ACCF, but the first two are definitely present in some form. You can trace them somewhat either through a memory editor in Dolphin or by hex editing the main.dol file. What I need is the parameters associated with the first two classes, and that should be sufficient (hopefully). There are some other details related to the effects like auxillary outputs, but that in itself is less important.
edited 12:13 AM EST March 2, 2021
In the SoundArchivePlayer, you will also need to navigate to SEND PARAMS and set 'fx send a' to 0.25.
I have verified through phase inversion that these parameters do in fact match the dump of the game exactly. There are only a couple of issues left to deal with. The first issue is that I don't know with certainty that these parameters never change. I've tried using them on a few random tracks and found them all to match, but I don't know if say, some of the K.K. Slider stuff is different for example. If you come across something that you think might possibly use different parameters, I would recommend trying a phase version just to verify that it is indeed the same. If it is, you can probably safely assume everything else related will match.
The second thing that I'm worried about is getting the channel information. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the channel information (for things like rain, snow, etc.) is stored in the form of code rather than in the BRSAR. However, I still have a text file I preserved here that contains said information. The problem with this text file is it was created through careful listening rather than a proper dump, so don't take it completely for granted. I would expect it to be at least 99% correct, but it's not impossible that I missed something in there.
So even with the discovery of the reverb parameters, I still don't know if I have it in me to do another full game dump on my own. At the very least, I hope this will benefit anybody that does attempt to make a proper music dump of the game, and I'll hopefully still be around here every so often if anybody wants to ask me anything else. :)
edited 5:06 PM EST March 2, 2021
I am the one who made the rip you find on youtube on pieterjee's account many years ago. It was a line-in recording as emulating a wii was too slow back then.
From what I've remembered, I recorded it line-in by changing all RSEQ's that contained no music with 0xFF (end of track) in the data. As for the other ones:
- the channel intro is in the opening.bnr as channel.bns. It's not encoded so it plays just fine in vgmstream once extracted.
- The bunny day track were just line-in recording without a modified brsar and I have no idea where it is in the brsar. I set the town tune to empty and waited when there was a hour transition. It's a short track so it was easy to record and edit.
- The TV tracks were just line-in recordings. No idea how these tracks were made.
- The furniture music was just ripped as RWAV, except the Music Box. Could not find it either in the RSAR.
- the default town tune is constructed of lots of small RSEQ's that play a single note programmatically. same for the hourly tune in the city
edited 4:55 PM EST March 5, 2021
So I went into a hex editor and threw in a channel identifier to what I believe it was intended to be, and it sounds better, albeit also quite different. I've uploaded the music dumps of the original/fixed sequence for anybody who wants to check them out and compare. In addition, here is the updated BRSAR for anybody interested in that as well.
Also, for jurassicPieter/PieJee1: were your recordings in game or in the sound viewer? If the former, then the issue with reverb shouldn't matter. I'm not sure about how line-in recordings work, but if the tracks are lossless(I know there's an mp3 download, is there wav or flac?) then only the few missing ones would need to be dumped, which would save the project a lot of time and effort.
About the other rips that I've seen: almost everything that I've encountered on YouTube seems to be panned in reverse for whatever reason. I'm also fairly confident that issue lies in those rips rather than on my end somehow. Additionally, even if there are FLACs somewhere, they're not technically lossless if they were recorded line-in. Line-in recordings tend to come with a lot of noise that usually results in more loss than a high quality mp3 conversion even in good conditions. It's not a big deal if it's being published for the masses, but it is a problem if you're looking for the highest quality possible.
Something else I encountered is (unless there's some weird issues with my emulator that I haven't uncovered,) it looks to me like some of the tracks don't have the reverb fx applied to them at all in game. This would mean that some of the dumps I had before are already correct and could be used instead. The issue is tracking down which tracks actually use the fx_send and which don't. I've done some searching through the BRSAR and with a hex editor to no avail, so it seems we might be back at square one in that regard. At minimum though, I know that the hourly music for sure has the reverb effects applied. Chances are you would only need to check a singular KK Slider and Aircheck tune to figure out the parameters for the other 70 something tracks. Those alone make up most of the rip (154/243 total BGM sequences).
I should mention that I made a mistake when setting the parameters in the screenshot. The 'pre delay time max' should be set to 0.05, not 0.01. Either way, I honestly doubt that particular field matters that much, so that probably isn't why it's not matching very well.
edited 5:30 AM EDT April 12, 2021
Once your two waveforms are lined up, you'll need to highlight the entire second waveform and navigate to Effect->Invert. From here, you should be able to check how well the phase inversion worked through playback. To properly visualize the difference, you'll want to select everything (Ctrl+A) and navigate to Tracks->Mix->Mix and Render to New Track (or just Ctrl+Shift+M) to generate a new waveform that you can inspect visually.
Make sure when inspecting differences through phase inversion to zoom in vertically on the resulting waveform, as the reverb differences may not be very visible even if present. If the two waveforms match, you shouldn't see much more than small bits of noise at full zoom.
Here's an example of a match:
EDIT: I should note also that there is at least one instrument in my experience (I think the vibraphone) that does not produce a matching output between dvdroot and game dumps. I don't know if this is because these dumps are coming from two different versions of Dolphin or something else, but the difference should be minute enough that you can probably ignore it for compiling game rips. Heck, if you were trying to phase invert the City Midnight Theme, it might not match at all since the entire thing is basically vibraphone.
edited 5:39 PM EDT April 12, 2021
This tells me that the city themes most likely all use the same reverb parameters (although I will have to investigate the vibraphone issue), and next I will check some indoor shop themes. I get the feeling they all use the reverb but I want to make sure. Thanks once again for your help.
Edit: actually the Marquee doesn't. so I suspect, but am not sure, that indoor themes do not use reverb.
edited 8:58 PM EDT April 12, 2021
They were all recorded in-game and manually edited to get proper looping points.
A line in recording is by connecting the wii audio cables with a few conversion cables to your line-in input of your soundcard on your pc. The higher quality the soundcard, the less noise you have (cheap soundcards interfere the cables and produce noise) I did record silence and did get some noise which I removed with sound editing afterwards.
I had a different recording method that uses a modified Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Life as a King to make recordings for some of the Wii channels back then, but that method could only be used with brsar's that did not have streaming so I could not use it for Animal Crossing. Since the reverb was in the lua-script of that game I could control the reverb with that method (and it confirms brsar does not contain reverb information). If we ever get a wii gsf/2sf like format it would be easy to use that game to make a generic brsar player
Hi! I've been a long time listener and admirer since I first found your rips back in 2011, so firstly a big thankyou for your work. Anyway, I'm attempting to put together a sort of archive of rips at the moment and I was wondering if you might possibly be able to upload some of your rips in FLAC? Also, some of the uploads were missing parts or perhaps those parts were deleted (eg Brawl and Wii Music) so would it be possible for you to upload those as well?
I understand that you're busy these days and probably too busy to go through the process of uploading to a file host, but perhaps some of the more painless alternatives that you can set and forget (eg soulseek and the like) would be alright? If you're able and you'd like to get in touch, you can email me at ^my username above^ at proton mail dott com.
Thanks!
(Sorry for hijacking the thread, but I wasn't sure where else I could ask you.)
Firstly, how would you recommend trimming the beginnings and loop points of the tracks down to the sample, as you did? Perhaps the MIDIs would come in handy for reference... I'm also considering making BRSTMs like you did, again I'm not sure how. Lastly, it seems that your rips all are slightly more amplified compared to anything I dump from the game itself or the sound player. It's not really a big deal but I wanted to save myself some work for the tracks that you've already dumped without reverb, and I don't know if it's too much of an inconsistency or the reason for it. Thanks!
Edit: Oh, another thing I realized is the DSP engine used to dump these. Do you know which you used? Apparently LLE Interpreter is the most "accurate"— this slows down the game significantly, but it's not much of a problem with the bare-bones sound player. This could also account for the difference you heard in the night city theme, maybe? I don't know how much this affects the accuracy of sound in ACCF, but I do know it can depend on the game; I determined (via phase inversion) that any of Dolphin's DSP engines function the same for GC Animal Crossing, and it didn't affect the emulation speed.
edited 1:40 AM EDT August 8, 2021
I sound a bit like a choosing beggar here, but if nobodies made much progress on the front and there's a somewhat comprehensive guide on how to go about doing it then I'll happily do it myself :P
Also, the link to that Discord server posted a few posts back is dead. Is the community for this still active in anyway?
Here's a new link to that Discord: https://discord.gg/HcpymVA
The community is still active but on this project, currently, it's pretty much Only Me. Even if we're still figuring out a new method, your help would still be appreciated!