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dakrk / manatools

Collection of tools for Dreamcast audio and music formats
GNU General Public License v3.0
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Support for GameCube MLT/MPB files #19

Open RaphaelDrewBoltman opened 2 months ago

RaphaelDrewBoltman commented 2 months ago

Hello there. I've noticed this program and wanted to test out on some of the MLT files I have with me, mainly for Sonic Heroes and Shadow The Hedgehog, and also testing for Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2 for exporting and exploring purposes mostly. Sadly for Sonic Heroes (SH) and Shadow The Hedgehog (ShTH), the program wasn't meant for GameCube structures, nor it is possible to obtain the data from the MPB. I only got the wave files but seems to be lacking the effects on some audio. In regards of Sonic Adventure (SA1) and Sonic Adventure 2 (SA2) which are Dreamcast games, the files load but with a prompt saying these were untested ("Loaded Bank is of an untested version. There may be inaccuracies. (Expected 2, got 1)").

Would there be any possibility to have the program working for GC structures of the MLT/MPB, so exporting audio with effects would be successful for SH/ShTH? I can provide any file from these 3 games as I have them all with me.

I'll await for a response of yours. Thank you for such program which can give a nicer experience on game modding, by the way! Best regards.

dakrk commented 2 months ago

Thank you for the compliment! I'll see about GameCube files when I can, as for the past week I've been quite a lot busier (despite it not seeming so as I'm still trying to get at least a commit a day in, haha). While not the Dreamcast or its arcade counterparts, it still is a Sega file format of the same purpose and presumably similar structure, so I'd be glad to support it.

For effects on audio, I don't particularly think supporting it in this would provide exactly that at the moment, other than providing an insight on what parameters were used for the respective sample, unless eventually I see about doing some sort of emulator. Another important detail for achieving that is that, at least on Dreamcast, there exist FPB files (or SFPB chunks in MLTs) that are seemingly DSP programs that provide the actual effects. Inside the MPBs, each split (sample) can have an FX channel assigned to be processed in in these DSP programs. I will eventually investigate and write tools for these, although I'm not sure it'll be 100% reliable as I'd probably have to make a best guess as to what's in there by signature scanning or something, as it appears to be machine code.

As for the untested version warning, this only really mattered the most for panning values, but that's been supported for version 1 files since 6f051c179ad75c6ec1da0eca75c245f9bd485de7, and I ought to make a new release, especially since mlttool's Windows build is broken in that too and has been long fixed (oops).

RaphaelDrewBoltman commented 2 months ago

Thanks for the response! Nice to know such details and to know about FPB cause i've noticed there's also other files (at least for Sonic Adventure when extracting the MLT file) such as the folder with the wave files, FOB, FPB, MPB, MSB and 2 TXT files, labeled "index.txt" and "version.txt". Sonic Heroes or Shadow The Hedgehog only has the wave folder with the sound files, an "index.txt" and the GC structure I talked about, extension being "*.gcaxMPB" But understandable that the tool is on a major work and that is nice we are having such thing in the first place. if there's anything I can provide sometime, I will be glad to pack what I can from each game and send it here, each inside folders of their respective game names. Wish you the best for the tool!

PiKeyAr commented 2 months ago

Some info on Gamecube formats: https://github.com/X-Hax/sa_tools_research/blob/master/CommandLine/MLTExtract/Gamecube.cs

EDIT: MSBs contain plain MIDI files.

PiKeyAr commented 2 months ago

2 TXT files, labeled "index.txt" and "version.txt". Sonic Heroes or Shadow The Hedgehog only has the wave folder with the sound files, an "index.txt"

These files are generated by SA Tools' archive library for internal use.

dakrk commented 2 months ago

Some info on Gamecube formats: https://github.com/X-Hax/sa_tools_research/blob/master/CommandLine/MLTExtract/Gamecube.cs

Aah, good resource, thank you! I'll work on these once I'm more satisfied with all the Dreamcast stuff.