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Research: Pokemon D/P/Pt Music Replacement research thread

D4Ni3L

    • 27
    Posts
    16
    Years
    • Seen Feb 24, 2014
    Hello, i've been looking for a way to change songs in diamond for a LONG time and recently i found out how to do it. But its not very accurate.


    Programs Needed
    ___________________
    - Nitro Explorer 2
    - Crystal Tile 2
    - DS Roms

    My Research so far
    ___________________
    Well I opened a couple of roms with Nitro Explorer 2 and found out the sound data file which is mostly ".sdat" and they cotain the music files which are in folders based on what type they are. They can be found in Data/Sound/sound_data.sdat in a pokemon diamond rom. for other roms they have a similar name.
    The folders that can be found in "sound_data.sdat" are "Bank" which contains files that are ".sbnk" and there's a "Sequence" folder that has ".sseq" files and there's the "Wave Archive" which has ".swar" files in it. "sbnk" & ".swar" files seem to have the notes and the digital instruments for the songs. i assume that they have to be replaced too if you want the song to work correctly. Because i tried it and the battle song sounded very glitchy. Now that i'm done with the facts lemme show you how to use them:
    With crystal tile 2 i opened a kirby squeek squad rom and then exported a .sseq file (side note: the songs you want to put in your game must be smaller or equall to the original one, NOT bigger) and saved it as "SEQ_BA_POKE.sseq" which is the music for wild pokemon battles. Then i opened pokemon Diamond's "sound_data.sdat" and imported the saved ".sseq" from kirby to pokemon diamond, and then saved it. As i said before it sounded very glitchy but there's still hope ^_^ as long as the connections between the ".sbnk" & ".swar" files with ".sseq" can be found and the mystery behind which ".sbnk" & ".swar" files to replace can be solved.
    If anyone knows how to continue, please contribute to this thread. Thank you.

    Edit: Thanks to Jhauk for finding this page containing information about music hacking for NSMB which is similar to D/P
     
    Last edited:
    Presumably, the track sounding strange can be partly blamed on the the two games storing instruments in different places in the Sound Bank/Wave Archive files.

    Diamond, Pearl and Platinum generally follow the General MIDI standard (with some exceptions), so that a track in the song set to instrument number 57 would make a trumpet sound. In Kirby Squeak Squad, the trumpet instrument is found at patch number 13 instead.
     
    So, I did a quick test. Grabbed a MIDI, changed the instrument patches to match up with the game's instrument bank, converted it to SSEQ and imported it.

    The instruments themselves were fine, but the track was glitchy and jumpy. I don't know if this is the fault of the MIDI -> SSEQ conversion process, the method of SSEQ insertion or what.

    e: Well, I copied a SSEQ file directly from Legacy Of Ys: Books 1 & 2 to Platinum (they both use General MIDI instrument patches) and it sounded fine.
     
    Last edited:
    Great Mazinger said:
    So, I did a quick test. Grabbed a MIDI, changed the instrument patches to match up with the game's instrument bank, converted it to SSEQ and imported it.

    The instruments themselves were fine, but the track was glitchy and jumpy. I don't know if this is the fault of the MIDI -> SSEQ conversion process, the method of SSEQ insertion or what.

    e: Well, I copied a SSEQ file directly from Legacy Of Ys: Books 1 & 2 to Platinum (they both use General MIDI instrument patches) and it sounded fine.
    Click to expand...

    That means it is most likely the conversion,
    Or the Midi was not patched properly?
     
    I'd bet it being something to do with the MIDI file or the converter.



    This is how it sounded when i swapped SSEQ files, and then the result of trying to convert a MIDI to SSEQ.
     
    The videos don't play. How exactly did you overwrite the data? I mean, using HexWorkshop or CristalTyle or what?
     
    That's pretty cool. The songs I mean, would you mind making/posting a tutorial on how to do this? It seems like something I'd be interested in.
     
    Heh, hexing in music... I did the same exact thing with Black and White, except I ported over HGSS' battle music to BW. It sounded... very unfavorable. So in FL studio I tried modifying the tracks so they'll use the same instruments as BW's instruments (all I did was change the patch number shifting events). Then I remembered that when I convert a midi to a .sseq it doesn't get any looping, so I thought "Hey, why don't I just copy the song track by track and place them over the original .sseq's tracks?" (the original being the hexed-in HGSS wild battle now in BW). Well, that didn't work. At all. It made a whole other track doing who knows what, and it makes this weird low buzzing sound. On top of that, I compared the .sseq exported (and fixed manually using the methods Team Fail put in his guide) with HGSS' original .SSEQ, and there are stark differences in the tracks. Seriously, there's a bunch of random values thrown in that weren't suppose to be there before :/

    If it'll help anyone, I can show a little comparison image I took (actually no I can't because I need to make more posts apparently... >_>; will show if/when I do)
     
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