ROM Hack bgm hacking

[sandwichwater]

greetings , im having a problem with trying to edit the bgm of the game kingdom hearts 358/2 days and im not quite sure what the problem is . i can edit the swar of sound effects and battle quotes for example and they play just fine in game , but when i edit a music swar and try it in game , nothing plays at all , almost as if the swar was blank . other sound effects such as walking and menu sounds play fine so i know its an issue with the swar itself

is this an issue with the sbnk not recognizing the files ¿ this is the most likely but ive read that the sbnk itself doesnt have any audio files actually in it , just tells the game which swav to play and when to play it and at what volume or length etc

the other strange thing is that it plays fine in a program like vgmtrans , yet not in the game itself . the individual swav files play fine in tinke too

any help with this would be very much appreciated

 

[sandwichwater]

anyone ¿ surely there must be a simple fix or explanation as to why this is happening

 

[FAST6191]

For the sake of providing an overview

sseq is what contains the what note, what timings, what repetition and a few other things like what. Much akin to midi, or sheet music if you prefer that analogy.

sbnk (presumably short for soundbank) is the archive detailing the instruments/samples the sseq calls upon. Much akin to instrument libraries or sound fonts.

swav. Short clips of wave type audio (rarely going to be more than about 10 seconds, and usually a lot less than that). Sound effects, catchphrases and very short monologues being this.

swar is an archive of swav files. Sometimes thousands, often without a name where the others might have something indicated somewhat in this all.

strm is long form audio, typically in a more raw form PCM or ADPCM with its own strm header. If the game does not support it out of the box then the compiler tends to remove the functionality, though there are means to add playback of long form audio.

All these typically get bundled into a format called sdat.

smap is a file detailing the contents of the SDAT file and all it contains. Is normally deleted by the developers when assembling the final ROM, however a few slipped out over the years with the earlier ones being responsible for figuring out the format rather faster than it might have. Tools like vgmtoolbox will also aim to generate such a file as well and can help when looking at file contents more than playing with stuff like vgmtrans, crystaltile2, tinke, ndssndext and all the others.

https://kiwi.ds.googlepages.com/sdat.html
http://www.romhacking.net/documents/469




Usual issue here in general editing of files is you did not match the format with what you inserted, or did not alter its listing of what it expected to see. This can also include the injection/rebuilding method you used not being what it should be. As vgmtrans does its own thing rather than emulating what a game might see (some of the playback means in stuff like 2sf are basically an emulator with a cut down sound player from a ROM, hence the difficulty in finding the tools to make them) then it might be more capable in some ways than the base player you are trying to use.
The other option is what you inserted pushed it over a limit (usually memory or length, which can be situational as well), try a smaller clip of it to see what happens.

 

[sandwichwater]

my first guess was the swav was too big therefore pushing over its memory limit but the new one i used was smaller than the original one the game used , im fairly sure its the same format as ive done the same for sfx , so i guess the last option would be that i didnt alter the listing of what it expects to see . how would i go about doing that ¿

 

[sandwichwater]

nevermind ! i fixed it by compressing only the audio files i changed in the swar , the original ones kept the same file sizes so i didnt need to compress them . the issue was that it was pushed over the limit , my bad . mustve been thinking of something else . either way im surprised more people dont know about this .. everywhere i tried looking for instrument replacement help everyone said it couldnt be done but here i am doing it

anyway , thanks for your help mr fast