Fun with sounds.dat
 

Not a day goes by, it seems, without somebody asking me the question. It is a question that has driven men insane, that has tested the greatest minds that have ever lived. Well, I finally broke under the constant pestering, and I have found an answer to that age-old question:

What happens if I replace the Abe's Exoddus sounds.dat file with the first 5:47 of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody?

The answer?

This.



I may well post some gameplay videos soon, so you may at last be free from endless wondering.

Sorry about quality/squashing of the video. Blame CamStudio, not me.

nice! looks good :) +rep

Hahhahhaa! This is great :D
Hey, can you use any lenght of songs? :)
Does any .mp3 work like .dat? ;)

I will know how to do but just asking for cormfing :)

My own sounds.dat files:
http://uploading.com/files/f2f766mf/...at%2Bfiles.zip

Edited with goldwave.

lol @ the paramite part

Thanks!

Any sound file will do, but it can't be longer than 5:4something (check it yourself, or I'll check next time I replace it)

Hey! Get your own thread! :p I've noticed you posting your own stuff in other people's threads quite a lot, and just so you know, it's not particularly polite.

I think the singing Glukkon was the funniest.

Gameplay demo vids soon, then maybe one of me playing. After that, I might be accepting suggestions for songs. If you can think of one that sounds good cut up, like scat or a capella, tell me!

Why a new thread for minor things?

Why not your own thread for all of your minor things together?

I should post everything at once? So it is major, instead of minor.
Or too many threads = each thread have it's own content.

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And then please go back to this thread, regarding your original post.

If you need help recording, I can help, but this is nice work!

Funny stuff :p

AI gameplay demos video. Fixed the resolution, but the audio becomes waaay out of sync by the end.



EDIT: I like the musical explosions.

Can you make a video of my sound files?
They are:
sounds.dat.corrupted
sounds.dat.melodyned
sounds.dat.transcoded

Then after extraction, rename them to only sounds.dat
Then run the game and enjoy the sound changes.

Am I right in saying the in-game background music is also being changed by this?

It's definitely not the default music; it sounds to me like it's audio clips from Bohemian Rhapsody arranged to sound like the default music.

Compare it to a corrupted sample library.

I noticed this myself. I think some of the background is music, some is normally made up of sound effects, which I screwed up.

NovaMan, do it yourself! Besides, you didn't even link the files.

That's pretty interesting if it's true; would it mean the music in AE wasn't just a single looping track, but dynamic in some way?

Your next task needs to be to figure out which parts of the sounds.dat file correspond to which in-game sounds, and engineer it so GameSpeak is made up of specific lyrics from the song.

("Hi!" > "Hello." > "Follow me." > "Okay." = "Is" > "this" > "the real" > "life?")

From memory, didn't it change when you possessed sligs, or when being chased by them?

Yes, but to what seems to be a pre-defined and separate tune, not a dynamic rearrangement of the current level's music.

There were definitely dynamic elements: Do me a favour and go play the Scrabanian Temple Chase or the first secret area in the Stockyards (through the bird portal in the background) again. When you fall into the path of a Scrab the music changes, as we all know (and saved my life on numerous occasions as I became aware of the presence of an unseen preadator), but listen carefully as you jump over chasms. Every time the Scrab jumps a big drumbeat hits.

Also posessing Glukkons in AE. As you walk a little tinkly xylophone thing goes on very quietly in the background, like the drumming of your little toes.

Hah, nice idea, but it won't happen. I'm just not that good. Have you listened to the sounds.dat? It's five and a half minutes of unceasing sound effects. I'd never be able to cut them all apart. After I do a couple of gameplay videos I'm handing this thread over to the forum masses for their own contributions. I expect Crashpunk will have posted a Scatman John version by the end of the month.

Maybe I've missed something, but what file format is sounds.dat in?

I have never once noticed this before. That's amazingly subtle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DAT
I think you answered your own question.

It's cool, isn't it? It's like the game saying 'I'm coming to get you...'

Nice work! Well done. +rep :)

What I'd like to see is the whistles in Abe's Oddysee changed to high-pitched and low-pitched farts. Imagine what it would be like when you meet those whistling farting native mudokons :)

Again: http://uploading.com/files/f2f766mf/...at%2Bfiles.zip or http://freakshare.com/files/yzgx56c8...files.zip.html

lol

Okay, my question was badly worded. I meant to ask how the file is encoded and how I convert an mp3 to a .dat.

I used Audacity for this (Sound program, not converter). I removed sounds.dat from inside and replaced with song. Opening raw files is possible with Audacity.

But if someone know's better program to do this tell me :) :fuzgrin:

kapteeni13.
Have you tried goldwave?

No idea. I just opened the .dat in Goldwave, pasted Bohemian Rhapsody over it and saved it again.

NovaMan, I'm not your employee.