Nintendo DS sound effect/sample replacing? by Mario123311 at 2:52 AM EDT on September 19, 2019
So, I've been trying to make a little mod for Sonic Colors that replaces Roger Craig Smith's voice with Jason Griffith, However upon doing so with Tinke and repacking the soundbank, The sound is all slowed down and distorted, It's like that when I reopen the soundbank in Tinke as well and play after packing/saving.

Anybody know a workaround for this at all? It's a noobish, question I know - But I honestly would like to get this small patch out there.
by icecream at 9:56 PM EDT on September 19, 2019
Does the game have an .SDAT? How are you inserting the audio?
by Mario123311 at 3:40 PM EDT on September 20, 2019
Yes it uses SDAT, more specifically I’m exporting clips from Sonic Rush and re-importing them using Tinke, But it keeps fucking things up. I did try a few other programs and none of them worked. I also tried replacing the clips using Nitro Studio and then reimporting the new sdat with Tinke, Now whenever I play a level the game is completely silent yet whenever I play the sounds in Tinke they playback just fine. Seriously, what is going on here?

by ArcticJaguar725 at 6:12 PM EDT on September 20, 2019
I'm not entirely sure if I follow what the issue is, but could you try uploading the files involved with this to make it easier on our end?
by Mario123311 at 7:04 PM EDT on September 20, 2019
If you have a ROM of Sonic Colors onto the DS, Try loading it up in Tinke. I'm trying to replace Sonic's voice clips with these ones right here that I ripped from Sonic Rush. However, Every time I import them with Tinke, Repack the SWAR in it titled "WAVE_ZONE" and then save the sdat, It corrupts for whatever reason and fucks up the sound. I have no idea what is going wrong and I am using the latest version of Tinke.

Here's a link to the samples I am using, They are literally the same KHz as the ones in Sonic Colors so what gives?
https://www.mediafire.com/file/upi7h2efij1fqy0/SonicRush.zip/file
by icecream at 12:02 PM EDT on September 21, 2019
Not sure of an exact solution, but in my experience you can't simply edit an .SDAT; simply replacing one file completely corrupts how the game reads it, even if it will work fine in Nitro Studio or whatever.
by ArcticJaguar725 at 6:42 PM EDT on September 21, 2019
If you can figure out a way to convert each individual sound effect to SWAV, you might be able to overwrite the original sounds using a hex editor and see working results. This however comes with limitations in that the new SWAV cannot be any larger than whatever is being replaced. (Technically it can't be any smaller either, but that can probably be circumvented with a bunch of zeroes at the end of the file.) It would also be a pain in the ass to do it this way relative to Nitro Studio or something of the like, but if those don't work, then I'm at something of a loss otherwise.

Granted, I don't own Sonic Colors nor do I have an SDAT from that game, so I have no way to actually test this stuff.
by icecream at 11:41 PM EDT on September 21, 2019
If you have the SDK, rebuilding the .SDAT from the ground up with the modifications is also an option, but that is an exercise in tedium.
by Mario123311 at 2:30 AM EDT on September 22, 2019
So sound replacing is almost impossible? I swear I’ve seen NSMB hacks replace sound effects. (Mainly one that tried to replicate the beta, replaced several clips with other SM64/SM64DS ones.)
by ArcticJaguar725 at 3:04 AM EDT on September 22, 2019
I highly doubt it's impossible, but the main question is whether or not the current tools can handle it correctly. I know Nitro Studio seems to work well with SSEQ replacement for me, so I don't see why it wouldn't work well with sounds. Perhaps it has something to do with the encoding information?
by icecream at 9:01 AM EDT on September 22, 2019
ArcticJaguar pretty much hit the nail on the head: most tools just garble up the .SDAT information. I think it's some file indexing, but that's why you can only replace .SSEQ and .SWAR when they are smaller, and replacing .SBNK flat out doesn't work at all. As for NSMB, my guess is that either they're using smaller files or the simplicity of that game's .SDAT compared to other DS games lets it get away with more bs.

Which exact files are you replacing, and how can test to make certain?

edited 11:05 AM EDT September 22, 2019
by Mario123311 at 2:26 PM EDT on September 22, 2019
Again: I'm replacing the sample swav's that contain Sonic's voice clips, Specifically in the ZIP I provided above. The only problem is whenever I edit them in, save and then reimport the modified sdat, The game gets it's sound corrupted.

EDIT: Just realized I didn't attach the sdat file in my ZIP, I'll upload it shortly

edited 2:27 PM EDT September 22, 2019
by icecream at 2:54 PM EDT on September 22, 2019
I mean the names lol, unless the filenames in the SDAT are fairly obvious.
by Mario123311 at 11:47 AM EDT on September 23, 2019
@IceCream They are fairly obvious, But I'm specifically talking about the one listed under the folder "gmcom".
by icecream at 7:13 PM EDT on September 23, 2019
Yeah, not surprised: simple file replacement with Tinke and Nitro Studio doesn't work. Recreating the .SDAT using the SDK (with the custom sounds of course) does. AS far as I can tell (since I have never played the game so I can't say for sure), none of the audio seems screwed up either.



edited 7:17 PM EDT September 23, 2019
by RoadrunnerWMC at 6:08 PM EDT on September 25, 2019
I'm one of the lead developers for the Newer Super Mario Bros. DS project that released in late 2017. As part of that, I developed a Python library called ndspy that fully supports editing SDATs, including SSARs and other parts that most other tools aren't very good at.

It rebuilds the entire SDAT every time it saves, so there are no limitations regarding increases in file sizes (unless the game runs out of RAM at runtime, which can be a real concern on the DS). I've mainly used it with NSMB, but I have tested unpacking and repacking SDATs from dozens of games to ensure byte-for-byte resaving accuracy, so it should work with pretty much every DS game (and if not, that's a bug I'm interested in fixing). You have to do some coding in Python to use it, but I'm more than happy to help with that if you join the Discord server.

Sorry if this comes off as advertising; I just noticed this thread and thought my tool might be helpful in this case.
by Mario123311 at 10:40 PM EDT on September 25, 2019
@RoadrunnerWMC

I'd be willing to look into it. Feel free to post the link if possible.
by icecream at 12:01 PM EDT on September 26, 2019
Absolutely no problem with the advertising. If this tool really does everything it says it does (haven't had the chance to try yet), then I feel bad that more people don't know about it, because this is a godsend the DS hacking scene has needed (to technically be aware of :p) for some time.
by Chocolate2890 at 9:15 PM EDT on October 7, 2019
@RoadrunnerWMC Which discord server? I'm interested.
by icecream at 2:22 PM EDT on October 8, 2019
It's on the github page:
https://github.com/RoadrunnerWMC/ndspy
by keyblade at 1:09 AM EDT on July 31, 2022
@icecream "simple file replacement with Tinke and Nitro Studio doesn't work"
it actually does work , extremely well too . its how ive been doing all my audio hacks for a while now

edited 1:09 AM EDT July 31, 2022
by SoundGLSI at 1:42 AM EDT on August 1, 2022
I successfully customized the wave archive with Sonic Rush voices (rebuilt using the SDK) they're playing well in Nitro Studio 2. However when I insert the custom SDAT in Sonic Colors, game freezes upon entering any stage. SDAT customizing stuff is really finicky, it seems.
I've heard this happens with Pokémon games too.

edited 3:00 AM EDT August 1, 2022


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