Metroid Prime hacking research

MrSinistar

2014-10-05 04:39:26 am

Thank you so much :) *goes back to fangasming from listening to all the sound effects*

Aruki

Edit history:

Aruki: 2014-10-05 12:51:14 pm

Aruki: 2014-10-05 12:50:53 pm

Aruki: 2014-10-05 12:50:24 pm

Aruki: 2014-10-05 12:35:28 pm

2014-10-05 12:34:56 pm

To be honest I don't think I've ever seen a wav file with loop points before (dspadpcm doesn't even dump them out) and I'm not sure I even know of any media players that would actually respect them. Do you have any examples?

I dunno if I'm just misunderstanding, but the pages you linked don't make it sound like a proper loop; it's a set of cue points that alter playback, and it wants a set number of playbacks (I don't see anything that says it can be set to loop from one cue point infinitely). I am also guessing a lot of media players would just ignore it entirely given that it's kinda weird and not very commonly used. Not sure it's really worth implementing.

I could at least set it to dump an info txt file with the loop start/end samples if you'd be fine with that.

MrSinistar

2014-10-05 03:08:46 pm

A txt file dump with the loop points would be awesome as well. :)

I don't know if any other media players support WAV looping as well, however I do know FL Studio (and I believe ACID and Cakewalk) recognizes the loop points in the smpl chunk so they do work, at least in digital audio workstations. Let me grab the hex data from my Charge Beam loop wav and see what the set number of playbacks is set to.

Aruki

2014-10-05 03:11:42 pm

Another slight difficulty is that I'm not sure if there's a loop flag somewhere, so I'd have to find some other way to identify which sounds are looped and which aren't. :P That probably wouldn't be too hard though, I assume at the least the loop length value would be a giveaway.

Antidote

Edit history:

Antidote: 2014-10-05 03:29:12 pm

2014-10-05 03:27:54 pm

If it's any consolation, we DO now how chunks 1 and 2 are organized, just not what they do.
I'm thinking it's a very similar purpose as CAUD in Prime 3, where each effect has it's own specific mix and loop settings.

Aruki

2014-10-05 03:29:44 pm

We do? How?

Antidote

Edit history:

Antidote: 2014-10-05 03:30:25 pm

2014-10-05 03:29:58 pm

I showed you last night. The pastebin link.

MrSinistar

Edit history:

MrSinistar: 2014-10-05 03:49:04 pm

2014-10-05 03:45:37 pm

Quote from Paraxade:

Another slight difficulty is that I'm not sure if there's a loop flag somewhere, so I'd have to find some other way to identify which sounds are looped and which aren't. :P That probably wouldn't be too hard though, I assume at the least the loop length value would be a giveaway.

Yeah, if those fields are other than zero, that should be our flag to dump those numbers. Some sounds like the scan visor ambience, you would think will play fine if it was looped from end to end, but alas, it needs those numbers as it doesn't loop properly.

EDIT: I'm totally cool with a txt file dump...it's more work on my end to convert the hex to dec for the sample number and implement those loop points in FL Studio, but I don't mind.

Aruki

2014-10-05 03:53:43 pm

Well like, it's not hard to dump the loop values in dec. In fact dumping them in hex is actually (slightly) more work.

MrSinistar

2014-10-05 04:01:21 pm

Sweet, decimal would be absolutely perfect! That would save me a lot of time :)

Antidote

2014-10-05 04:11:37 pm

std::cout << std::hex << val << std::endl;
lawl.

Aruki

2014-10-05 04:15:16 pm

I said slightly, lol

Antidote

2014-10-05 04:15:41 pm

I know, i was just demonstrating how slight :P

Aruki

Edit history:

Aruki: 2014-10-05 08:23:53 pm

2014-10-05 05:11:14 pm

Here's the updated version. A text file will be dumped to the output directory on every AGSC file you dump.

edit: see next post

Aruki

2014-10-05 08:25:11 pm

Hmm... I think I made a slight error. Since the file only has a loop start and loop length, the loop end sample has to be manually calculated. Pretty trivial, but I've just realized that the way I did it (loop start + loop length) is actually slightly incorrect... it should be (loop start + loop length - 1). So here's a fixed version.

Aruki

2014-10-05 08:33:04 pm

Quote:

Loop end sample: 4294967295

lol

okay, HERE'S a fixed version :P

attachment:

PrimeAudioDecoder.rar

MrSinistar

2014-10-05 09:10:10 pm

LOL, thanks for the fix! The loop points are matching up perfectly. Paraxade, you are a gentleman and a scholar! (I'm assuming you're a dude, lol)

Aruki

2014-10-05 09:37:30 pm

yeah I am :P

Tahngarthor

2014-10-06 02:11:41 am

Bangaa Bishop

"New to programming" and you wrote all this stuff? I majored in CS (though I drifted away from programming to other tech areas) and i was never capable of anything like this...

Aruki

2014-10-06 02:25:26 am

I dabbled in programming occasionally when I was younger but it's only as of this year that I've started trying to actually do anything with it and actually got past the bare basics of C++, yeah, so I'd consider myself a programming noob. I guess I'm just a quick learner. Also helps to have good help - I have a couple friends who are a lot more experienced than I am who've been awesome about answering my random questions and I've learned a lot from them.

I'm sure if you took the time to learn how it's done you would be able to do this too.

Bearborg

2014-10-06 11:20:46 pm

So apparently, Dark Samus has actual dialogue.

attachments:

DarkSamusVox_0.wav

DarkSamusVox_1.wav

Aruki

2014-10-07 12:47:21 am

I found this one from MP1 pretty interesting... another remnant of the old Phazon Beam.

attachment:

PhazonGun_0.wav

Sunbutt

Edit history:

Sunbutt: 2014-10-09 06:58:02 am

Sunbutt: 2014-10-09 06:21:29 am

Sunbutt: 2014-10-09 06:03:30 am

Sunbutt: 2014-10-09 05:50:15 am

2014-10-09 05:22:57 am

I think Dark Samus says those; you can here her emit the same whispers in-game, but I'm guessing the vocals are covered by music and other sounds, or just simply too low.

Ok, so after I played with all the sounds in Echoes, I came across a few interesting things should anyone be interested.

The thing that caught me the most was that if you explore the sounds of the multiplayer folder in Metroid6, you'll discover ALOT of unused sounds, ranging from variations of pickups to effects that I'm guessing are given by entering the powerup stations. I'm thinking Retro may have planned more for multiplayer, but cut it down for whatever reasons.

The blogg has alot of leftover sounds too. I'm thinking all of them were experiments with creating it's sound.

Another interesting thing in the Metroid5.pak file is something called the 'Elite Luminoth'. I'm pretty sure this was the same dark variant of the Luminoth you see in the MP2 trailer since the vocals it makes are pretty low and menacing. Curious why they removed it; they practically had the frame for it already, and they had the creature vocals and attack sounds.

There is also the Digital Guardian which has sub-folders that contain the sounds that belong to Quadraxis. Again, alot of the sounds inside the folders are unheard to me; and it really makes me curious if these sounds were just for expirimenting or once belonged to a different Quadraxis that was cut out from the game (possibly from the room scattered with the parts?).

I was looking through the 'Cine' folders, and couldn't find the ones for Quadraxis or the scene with the GM troopers and the dark splinter invasion. My interest was seeing if the GM Troopers had some dialogue left over. If I missed something, tell me please.

And one final note, when I extracted the UI3_22 and UI3_23 from the AudioGrp folder, they were in the wrong sample rate of 24000Hz against all the other sounds in the same folder. Their correct rate is 16000Hz. These two are the sound files that say 'Recording to Logbook' and 'Data Recieved' respectively, so you can imagine how they sound left alone.

Also, has there been any way to decode the .DSPs of Echoes?

No matter what the sounds, this was one of two things that buried an old fangame I was making two years ago, so I've started working on that again. Hopefully if the .CMDLs can be easily exported to a much more familiar/common format in the future (I'd attempt this myself but I don't know C++ to save my life; I think I'm going to look into it though), I can have direct references to create accurate sprites.

I think Dark Samus says those; you can here her emit the same whispers in-game, but I'm guessing the vocals are covered by music and other sounds, or just simply too low.

Ok, so after I played with all the sounds in Echoes, I came across a few interesting things should anyone be interested.

The thing that caught me the most was that if you explore the sounds of the multiplayer folder in Metroid6, you'll discover ALOT of unused sounds, ranging from variations of pickups to effects that I'm guessing are given by entering the powerup stations. I'm thinking Retro may have planned more for multiplayer, but cut it down for whatever reasons.

The blogg has alot of leftover sounds too. I'm thinking all of them were experiments with creating it's sound.

Another interesting thing in the Metroid5.pak file is something called the 'Elite Luminoth'. I'm pretty sure this was the same dark variant of the Luminoth you see in the MP2 trailer since the vocals it makes are pretty low and menacing. Curious why they removed it; they practically had the frame for it already, and they had the creature vocals and attack sounds.

There is also the Digital Guardian which has sub-folders that contain the sounds that belong to Quadraxis. Again, alot of the sounds inside the folders are unheard to me; and it really makes me curious if these sounds were just for expirimenting or once belonged to a different Quadraxis that was cut out from the game (possibly from the room scattered with the parts?).

I was looking through the 'Cine' folders, and couldn't find the ones for Quadraxis or the scene with the GM troopers and the dark splinter invasion. My interest was seeing if the GM Troopers had some dialogue left over. If I missed something, tell me please.

And one final note, when I extracted the UI3_22 and UI3_23 from the AudioGrp folder, they were in the wrong sample rate of 24000Hz against all the other sounds in the same folder. Their correct rate is 16000Hz. These two are the sound files that say 'Recording to Logbook' and 'Data Recieved' respectively, so you can imagine how they sound left alone.

Also, has there been any way to decode the .DSPs of Echoes?

[hidden]No matter what the sounds, this was one of two things that buried an old fangame I was making two years ago, so I've started working on that again. Hopefully if the .CMDLs can be easily exported to a much more familiar/common format in the future (I'd attempt this myself but I don't know C++ to save my life; I think I'm going to look into it though), I can have direct references to create accurate sprites.[/hidden]

Bearborg

2014-10-09 10:09:40 am

Regarding the "Elite Luminoth", I'm pretty sure that's actually the Ingsmasher. Metroid5.pak is where the Sanctuary Fortress files are, and it also has a file called EliteLuminothShield, likely referring to the light and dark shields that Ingsmashers create.

I believe the GF Trooper dialogue is all in the pre-rendered video file of their deaths.

This sampling-rate issue seems to apply to all the suit voice sounds in Prime 1 as well, even the ones that aren't in the UI folder (Like "Evacuate immediately" in Crater).

Aruki

Edit history:

Aruki: 2014-10-09 02:11:28 pm

Aruki: 2014-10-09 01:50:10 pm

Aruki: 2014-10-09 01:49:57 pm

Aruki: 2014-10-09 01:41:41 pm

Aruki: 2014-10-09 01:33:26 pm

2014-10-09 01:20:27 pm

Yeah, Elite Luminoth is just the Ingsmasher... nothing unused. Also, I think the GF Trooper cutscene is labeled CineLastStand? There's not a whole lot of stuff in the CineLastStand folder, so most of it is probably part of the prerendered video like Bearborg said. (EDIT: If you have a rip of the demo disc, you might want to check that one instead - it has more CineLastStand sounds than the final.)

Also, the sample rate for those UI sounds is definitely set to 24000 Hz in the file. I don't think the rips are technically incorrect. Not sure what the game does with them to modify playback. (EDIT: The crater "evacuate immediately" clip is actually already set to 16000 Hz, but seems to play at the same speed anyway. That makes me more sure that it's not an issue with the decoder.)

Echoes DSPs are basically a different format... the header is totally different and they use two interleaved audio streams, instead of being mono streams like regular DSPs. I'd be really surprised if there wasn't already a tool that decoded or played them, though. vgmstream probably does it.

Yeah, Elite Luminoth is just the Ingsmasher... nothing unused. Also, I think the GF Trooper cutscene is labeled CineLastStand? There's not a whole lot of stuff in the CineLastStand folder, so most of it is probably part of the prerendered video like Bearborg said. (EDIT: If you have a rip of the demo disc, you might want to check that one instead - it has more CineLastStand sounds than the final.)

Also, the sample rate for those UI sounds is definitely set to 24000 Hz in the file. I don't think the rips are technically incorrect. Not sure what the game does with them to modify playback. (EDIT: The crater "evacuate immediately" clip is actually already set to 16000 Hz, but seems to play at the same speed anyway. That makes me more sure that it's not an issue with the decoder.)

Echoes DSPs are basically a different format... the header is totally different and they use two interleaved audio streams, instead of being mono streams like regular DSPs. I'd be really surprised if there wasn't already a tool that decoded or played them, though. vgmstream probably does it.