Music Modding

[Appelflap64]

I noticed that the music files are changed to .akb while the music files from Final Fantasy 3 are in ogg file format. audacity has no problem to import the akb files. exporting however is not so easy. I tried different formats for example i tried to export it as ogg. and named it bgm01.akb
this doesn't seem to work i also tried it with different formats but it didn't make a difference.
If somebody know's or encountered this format before and know's how to change it. Please let me know!

[Aletheia]

I think you need a certain program to make your own akb files... But which one ? I don't know. They are database files.

[Appelflap64]

Renaming them to ogg or any other format doesn't seem to corupt them and act's like another normal music file even in audacity the loop point's are still intact so why is it so hard to put it back :P Well i guess i just keep looking

[KadMac]

Your absolutely right about Audacity. As far as the exporting of .akb format, Aletheia had it right that it is a database file. I believe it is associated with Oracle Siebel 8.0. It allows you to create databases and export via .akb format. I am not aware of any other software that does this.

I talked about this more in an earlier thread about modding.

[Appelflap64]

Thanks for the info i really appreciate it!

[Appelflap64]

If you have any news about solving this problem. Please let me now.

[biggs]

Internally it's just an ogg file with a different header. I don't know the format of the AKB header but I can see the first eight bytes are the same: 41 4B 42 20 02 00 44 00

[KadMac]

Too bad this version just didn't have ogg file as the sound like FF3. Easier to change with that. The akb format just makes things extra difficult, even though it houses the ogg file inside.

[mLegion]

you can use the UnxUtils 'tails' command with +205 as the byte parameter to dump all the Ogg's with a batch file since the akb header is always 204 bytes. (Which is basically a free OST, yay.) Havent tested whether or not you can just paste the header from the original file onto an Ogg file and have the game play it.

[KadMac]

You should try it.

Everything I've been researching tells me that .akb is a proprietary format which makes all this really difficult to edit or mod. I believe the format belongs to Oracle.

[mLegion]

Ok so pasting the first 204 bytes of the original akb into another Ogg file works.
So to replace the prelude music copy the first 204 bytes of BGM01.akb and then paste that at the start of another Ogg file and rename it to BGM01.akb and put it in the music folder.

So you dont actually need to know anything about the format it seems you just need the 204-byte akb header of the song you're replacing.

[KadMac]

Nice!!! I'm afraid the UnxUtils tails command is something I am not very familiar with. Can you put some steps together on how to do this?

[mLegion]

http://sourceforge.net/projects/unxutils/ has a download for the Unix utilities for windows, one of the utilities is 'tails' which outputs the end of a file, so just copy the music files to a directory and put the tails executable in there with them and create a .bat file which does:

for /f "usebackq delims=|" %%f in (`dir /b "<path to music dir>\*.akb" `) do <path to music dir>\tail --bytes=+205 %%f > %%f.ogg

This will create a BGMxx.akb.ogg file for each AKB file in that directory. The 'head' command on the other hand outputs the START of a file so replacing the 'do' part of that bat file with:

do <path to music dir>\head --bytes=204 %%f > %%f.header

would output the header of each akb file to a file named BGMxx.akb.header, this allows you to later use the 'cat' command to add the right headers to any ogg file for example using
'cat BGM01.akb.header MY_CUSTOM_BGM01.ogg > BGM01.akb'
would create a new BGM01.akb using your cutom ogg music file with the header from the original BGM01.akb

[Andrew Evenstar]

Good work guys, I'm looking forward to using the orginal audio with this game !

[KadMac]

MLegion, you are amazing. Thank you so much for this. I am in the process now of converting the SNES music to replace the DS music. Yes, Panopticon, that is the goal. mLegion just unlocked the key for us when it comes to music and sound effect replacement.

[KadMac]

Hm, looks like I am hitting a snag. mLegion, after following your steps I successfully replaced the BGM01.akb file with the ogg I wanted to replace (SNES version of the tile screen music). Once I replaced the file, when I play the game it crashes once it tries to pull the music for that section.