Darkspore helix audio files

[fungus3]

Why not today? :3

And HOW did you rip them? I thought that almost all of them are un-rippable with EALayer!

[GBAura]

Why not today? :3

And HOW did you rip them? I thought that almost all of them are un-rippable with EALayer!

I had to do a bit of modding. I had to figure out what sound files are what and where they play, make a mod in SporeMaster is temporarily replace the music, open the game and record it in Audacity. However since I recorded the music with an older version of the program, I had to get rid of the white noise in GoldWave. I also had to jack up the volume to get the songs in the best quality possible so it'll be lossless. That's how I was able to find the unused songs in the older Spore games. There's also a TON of unused songs in Darkspore, some of which suggest that the game's soundtrack was meant to be in dubstep before they got Junkie XL on board to make the songs more varied.

I'm certain that the sound files can be run in Spore Creature Creator (at least from what Rob told me), but I haven't got it working and I'm glad I nabbed all the songs I can back when Darkspore is still alive. Some of the songs went missing or can't be played for some reason, so I'll have to grab what I can. Though if you have any other Maxis games that uses a similar sound format like The Sims 3, you could mod it to get the music playing.

Let me tell you, this is a really painful process. No one should have to do all that junk for themselves.

Also, it's late at night when I made that post and I had to go to work, the life of an adult.

[fungus3]

I'm sorry, but GBAura once again got distracted from releasing the Darkspore audio files. I know that nobody owes me anything, but wasn't she already planning on releasing them anyway?

[ThrowSomething]

Is it just me, or does fungus3.r seem a bit pushy, sarcastic, arrogant and entitled?
Not a good way to present yourself, You're 21? Act like it.

[Flames Kid]

something

not related but do you have direct communication with davo?
Cause I'm organizing with something but he takes forever to reply

[fungus3]

Is it just me, or does fungus3.r seem a bit pushy, sarcastic, arrogant and entitled?
Not a good way to present yourself, You're 21? Act like it.

I'm autistic and have ADHD; I get that all the time.

[ThrowSomething]

something

not related but do you have direct communication with davo?
Cause I'm organizing with something but he takes forever to reply

Yes....in constant communication. I'm going to his house right now....

I'll show him this post.

[Davo]

Hi

[Shrooblord]

Yo. This is a severe necro, but I've been attempting to rip the audio files myself, and have met moderate success. So far, I ripped all the game's actual sound effects, through the following method:

- Extract the Audio.package file using SporeMaster 2.0.
- Use ffmpeg's built-in ea_cdata library, which converts EA's widely used XAS ADPCM format into readable (listenable?? xD) WAV format.
- ???
- profit!

Using the following command in-line on Windows CMD:

Code: Select all

ffmpeg -f ea_cdata -i "INFILE" "OUTFILE.wav"

Or the following in a .bat file for batch processing:

Code: Select all

for %%a in ("*.*") do "C:\Users\<YOUR_USER>\Documents\Darkspore\ffmpeg\bin\ffmpeg.exe" -f ea_cdata -i "%%a" "newfiles\%%~na.wav"
pause

(Note that this assumes that you're running the .bat file from the folder containing the .#01A527DB files, and that you have created a folder within that folder called "newfiles", and that you have put all of this in your Documents folder under the folder "Darkspore", and that you have installed a copy of ffmpeg within said Darkspore folder.)

This converts all files with the .#01A527DB extension from the Audio.package folder into .WAV files the audio player of your choice can play back.

However, when attempting the same with the Locale/en-us/Audio.package, using the same method to extract its .#01A527DB files, you run into the ffmpeg error "unknown header 0x0504 -- operation not permitted". So far, I've only seen this error when trying to decode the files in the top-level Audio.package (so: not the Locale one) that didn't have the .#01A527DB extension (they're most likely .prop files or something like that).

This leads me to believe the audio files in the Locale folder were perhaps not encoded using the same "generic" EA XAS ADPCM format, though they share an extension with the files that were. Would anyone know anything more about this, perhaps?

I'm currently still digging around the Internet. I'll post again if I know more.

=====

EDIT: SUCCESS!

I was able to extract the remaining audio files using EALayer 3.
https://bitbucket.org/Zenchreal/ealayer3/downloads/
https://forum.xentax.com/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=4922

Simply put, put a file next to EALayer 3, use the CMD line

Code: Select all

ealayer3 "INFILE" -w

and EALayer 3 will spit out the HELIX voice file.

Alternatively, extract the HELIX files from Locale/en-us/Audio.package first, then put the following .bat file in the same folder:

Code: Select all

for %%a in ("*.*") do "C:\Users\<YOUR_USER>\Documents\Darkspore\ealayer3-0.7.0-win32\ealayer3.exe" "%%a" -w
pause

(Note that this assumes that you're running the .bat file from the folder containing the .#01A527DB files, and that you have put all of this in your Documents folder under the folder "Darkspore", and that you have installed a copy of ealayer3 within said Darkspore folder.)

This will spit out HELIX's voice files within the same folder as .WAV files.


Happy ripping!

====

EDIT II:

I was able to rip a lot of music, too. The process follows the same method described above, using EALayer 3. The only difference is that, this time, we target the files with the .#01EEF63A extension.

I was unable to convert about 19 files this way, however, some of them quite large. I fear these might be the cutscene audio files, which is what I was actually looking for in the first place. The search continues. But for now... let's listen to the results. ^^

====

EDIT III:

Indeed, they were a bunch of ambient and music files. Notably, none of the music is actually the music that plays in the background of any of the cutscenes. This is quite telling: there's still some missing content somewhere. I suspect these files, which are the largest filesizes, and fail to convert using the previous methods:
#0B103B08.#01EEF63A
#1D3896C5.#01EEF63A
#3D541BD8.#01EEF63A
#07BDB888.#01EEF63A
#08A6AE68.#01EEF63A
#18E08BDA.#01EEF63A
#21AF3D7D.#01EEF63A
#23CB1230.#01EEF63A
#41B3187B.#01EEF63A
#42C8F53A.#01EEF63A
#84FD21FE.#01EEF63A
#799CAAAF.#01EEF63A
#906FCCAD.#01EEF63A
#03436E32.#01EEF63A
#40305B1B.#01EEF63A
#A453B855.#01EEF63A
#A6628920.#01EEF63A
#BAC8DF71.#01EEF63A
#BC0BF358.#01EEF63A
#C8DA8985.#01EEF63A
#C2683150.#01EEF63A
#C7338903.#01EEF63A
#DD5A2393.#01EEF63A
#DFFF2902.#01EEF63A
#E96BB3D0.#01EEF63A
#EE9469A7.#01EEF63A My quest takes me further...

[vanillacold]

- Extract the Audio.package file using SporeMaster 2.0.

You should probably use SporeModder FX instead, since SporeMaster doesn't fully unpack the base-game packages for either Spore or DarkSpore.