SFX ripping/decoding/dumping features?

[iteachvader]

There's a particular game in which I've been trying my best to decode sound samples from, but can't seem to do for the life of me.
It doesn't seem like Dolphin has any sort of feature to play and dump every sound effect stored in a game. I've also
noticed that someone was able to get the game running (albeit with a ton of visual glitches every second) and the audio
was playing perfectly fine. Is there any way to be able to decipher the format of the audio using Dolphin so I could rip it
manually or possibly through Dolphin? Will we possibly see any sort of feature in the future?

(P.S. I wasn't sure if this was the correct section of the forum to place this question, so I chose what seemed to be the most
logical decision. If I made a mistake, feel free to yell at me.)

[magumagu]

Depending on how exactly a particular game uses the DSP, you might be able to patch Dolphin (specifically DSPHLE) to dump decoded audio before it gets mixed with other effects/music (basically, audio dumping with multiple tracks). And you can use Dolphin to extract files from the game ISO. All the steps in between are handled by code in the game itself, so there is no general solution.

Another way to think about it: your question is almost equivalent to "how do I extract all the sound effects from a Steam game using Windows".

[iteachvader]

(06-15-2014, 10:40 AM)magumagu Wrote: Depending on how exactly a particular game uses the DSP, you might be able to patch Dolphin (specifically DSPHLE) to dump decoded audio before it gets mixed with other effects/music (basically, audio dumping with multiple tracks). And you can use Dolphin to extract files from the game ISO. All the steps in between are handled by code in the game itself, so there is no general solution.

Another way to think about it: your question is almost equivalent to "how do I extract all the sound effects from a Steam game using Windows".

Only problem is, I have not the slightest idea how I'd go about doing that or getting someone to help me.
I know very little about coding, programming, scripting or what have you.

[iteachvader]

Oh, and by the way...

I've already extracted the file containing the sound effects from the game using Dolphin, but have no idea on how to rip the sounds from the file.
It didn't even have an extension associated with it; it was just a 'file.' I want to convert the sounds inside this file to .wav, but it's been eluding
me for quite some time now.

I've tried importing it into every audio editor under the sun in every FORMAT under the sun, all to no avail.

[Shonumi]

I think a few common audio formats that games used are supported by some audio software (we can't help you in that regard since you haven't told us anything about the game you're interested in) but it could very well be a custom audio format of the developer's own making. It would be possible to reverse engineer it, but that doesn't mean it would be a trivial task.

[iteachvader]

Star Wars: Rogue Squadron 2: Rogue Leader.
If I can rip the sounds from that game, I'll die a happy man.

[Shonumi]

Knowing that Factor 5 absolutely loved to do unconventional hardware tricks (the ucodes for their N64 games for example), I'm inclined to say it's a custom format then, more likely than not, especially since it was among the earliest of GC games. They never seemed to do anything in a straightforward manner :p

EDIT: This game does have a Sound Test mode. The password in COMPOSER. You could manually dump things and edit the files in something like Audacity (Dolphin can dump the audio output to a file, it's just the final mixed results of all the current sounds playing, but Sound Test should only have one sound playing at a time). That might be the best course of action rather than spending hours reverse-engineering one of the most obscurely coded games for the GC.

[iteachvader]

(06-16-2014, 03:31 AM)Shonumi Wrote: Knowing that Factor 5 absolutely loved to do unconventional hardware tricks (the ucodes for their N64 games for example), I'm inclined to say it's a custom format then, more likely than not, especially since it was among the earliest of GC games. They never seemed to do anything in a straightforward manner :p

EDIT: This game does have a Sound Test mode. The password in COMPOSER. You could manually dump things and edit the files in something like Audacity (Dolphin can dump the audio output to a file, it's just the final mixed results of all the current sounds playing, but Sound Test should only have one sound playing at a time). That might be the best course of action rather than spending hours reverse-engineering one of the most obscurely coded games for the GC.

The sound test mode of Rogue Squadron 2 is only a cinematic of a TIE Fighter flying in a circle around the screen to test the surround sound feature of the game. There's no way to play each sound that's in the game through that feature. I was hoping there would be a way to do that. I have the game myself and tried it very recently, within the past week.

I can't help but note; you say I could manually dump the things and edit the files in Audacity (which I do happen to have and use quite frequently) but Dolphin can't emulate Rogue Squadron 2 or 3 AT ALL, so how would I even get to the game to rip the sounds? Regardless, if it was the mixed result of ALL the sounds currently playing, there probably wouldn't be a way to isolate the sounds using Audacity.

[Shonumi]

Oh no, I meant with Sound Test (assuming it was a normal sound test that could play every sound and music track) you could have just dumped the audio in Dolphin to a file (playing each SFX one at a time), then with Audacity, you open Dolphin's audio dump manually cut/splice the waveforms and save them into individual .WAVs.

Sucks that the Sound Test isn't what I thought it was. Why would you need to "unlock" something that should be an option available to begin with (I mean, testing surround sound was usually "just there" as an option for games at this time)? Oh well :| I'm out of ideas.

[amozzz]

The game you want to audio dump is like Shonumi said full of weird little quirks - that's why it won't run in Dolphin, and why the file is unreadable.

Play it off a real disc, on a real gamecube, and use a capture card.

I mean, unless you want to reverse engineer their 10 year old proprietary formats.