[XD375]

I'm currently attempting to redo the voices in Sonic Rivals for a friend of mine. The only problem is that I can't seem to figure out where the voice files are located - these would be handy for my archive of sound clips even if I don't get a chance to finish this project.

I'm assuming the voices are hiding in the USRDIR area of the image as this is where the meat of the game lies:

FMV - This folder contains the SEGA logo as well as the Backbone intro as seen at the beginning of the game, as .pmf files. I have no need for these but maybe I can find a way to convert them in the future for archival purposes if anyone is interested.
FONTS - This contains three .fnt files. Basically just the fonts used for in-game text.
MODULES - Everything in here is a .prx file. They're all extremely small in size and I assume they have something to do with the coding of the game.
SOUNDS - This folder doesn't contain anything but another folder, called MUSIC.
---MUSIC - These are all .at3 files and they CAN be renamed if you'd like to change where certain music plays. I haven't tried taking .at3 files from other games yet but that would certainly be an interesting (if a little trivial) little project.
STREAMS - This is where things get really interesting. Everything here is a .str file. If you switch them around, you can switch which characters are which. For example, I renamed Knuckles' two .str files as well as Sonic's and they switched places. Putting Shadow against "Knuckles" in the challenge mode caused him to race what looked and sounded like Sonic. However, things got really interesting when I played as "Knuckles" against "Sonic". The camera actually focused on the actual Knuckles as player 1, but I had control of player 2, so something in the game's programming still referenced the characters as they should be. I'm sorry if the way I worded this made no sense.
TEXT This contains a .txt file containing all the text in the game. I changed Takashi Iizuka's name to Shane Marchis and upon playing the game, all the text was gone and the game froze before a level would load. What gets really weird is that when I changed it back to Iizuka, these problems still existed, so it seems any attempt to modify the text, even if reversed, will destroy the game.
TEXTURES - Nothing but UI...
---UI - Nothing but LOAD_SCREENS...
------LOAD_SCREENS - This has a bunch of .bmp files. They're all the load screens of the game.

Since Sonic's and Knuckles voices also changed when I switched the .str files around, I'm assuming the voice files are encoded into there. Does anyone know how to extract these?

Sonic Rivals 2 is very similarily-built to this game, so once I figure this out I'm sure Rivals 2 will be a cinch.

This post has been edited by XD375: 17 October 2011 - 08:45 PM

[ultima espio]

They may just be your average at3, so if you could find something that could rip/inject those, then you'll be fine.

If they are a custom format, then your out of luck probably :/

Dunno if this will help at all:
http://forum.xentax....it=sonic#p59456

This post has been edited by ultima espio: 17 October 2011 - 09:53 AM

[XD375]

Unfortunately if there are any .at3 files, they're encoded within the .str files that I still cannot open. These .str files are also used in Rock Band: Unplugged and people have made custom songs by modifying the contents of those, but the programs used for Rock Band don't seem to work for Sonic.

[TomoAlien]

XD375, on 16 October 2011 - 07:03 PM, said:

TEXT This contains a .txt file containing all the text in the game. I changed Takashi Iizuka's name to Shane Marchis and upon playing the game, all the text was gone and the game froze before a level would load. What gets really weird is that when I changed it back to Iizuka, these problems still existed, so it seems any attempt to modify the text, even if reversed, will destroy the game.

Well, you could've saved it in a wrong text format, since there's a lot of them (UTF-8 and Unicode for example). Try modifying it using a Hex Editor since Hex Editors won't change the formating and will keep all the unmodified bytes intact. Seriously, try opening a rom with notepad, resave it and well... your rom's broken.

This post has been edited by TomoAlien: 31 October 2011 - 05:07 AM

[XD375]

Ooh, that's some really good advice and I'm surprised it didn't come to me naturally as normally I'd be good with that sort of stuff.

I'll try it out later and I'll come back with the results!

[FraGag]

TomoAlien, on 31 October 2011 - 05:07 AM, said:

XD375, on 16 October 2011 - 07:03 PM, said:

TEXT This contains a .txt file containing all the text in the game. I changed Takashi Iizuka's name to Shane Marchis and upon playing the game, all the text was gone and the game froze before a level would load. What gets really weird is that when I changed it back to Iizuka, these problems still existed, so it seems any attempt to modify the text, even if reversed, will destroy the game.

Well, you could've saved it in a wrong text format, since there's a lot of them (UTF-8 and Unicode for example). Try modifying it using a Hex Editor since Hex Editors won't change the formating and will keep all the unmodified bytes intact. Seriously, try opening a rom with notepad, resave it and well... your rom's broken.

The most likely issue in this case is not the choice of encoding itself (because Notepad will save in the same format it loaded, except it will add a UTF-8 "BOM" if the file was loaded as UTF-8 and it didn't have the BOM); Notepad will convert null characters to spaces. This inevitably causes the data to change (00 becomes 20). If the .txt file contains null characters, you must use an hex editor or an editor that supports null characters, like Notepad2 or Notepad++ (or anything based on Scintilla), amongst others.

[Aquaslash]

Man I'm lazy . I had the Metal Sonic voices extracted from Rivals 2 years ago. Silver's too. I can't remember exactly what I did, but the program Jaeder Naub was a big help in that. I usually keep my tools around so I'll have a look and see how exactly I got those things out of there. I DO remember that it is a format that is covered by VGMstream, but I haven't the foggiest idea on how to get the clips back in the game.

EDIT: looks like it was Jaeder Naub, and the results were .vag files (insert dirty joke here) I'll rip another set later on if I can and see if I can provide instructions