Anyone tried making mods yet?

[MCINDUS]

I looked into the game files, and it seems like a lot of the information may be moddable. It seems to be using the Phyre Engine - and there are many tools out there used to decode those types of files - and it seems like the FFX port uses it also??
I see .dds textures and .dae models in there, but I have no Python or Noesis knowledge and have no idea how to unpack and repack the files - and wanted to know if there was anyone out there looking into it? I'm a 3d and texture artist, and would -love- to do at least a character and/or costume mod.

[MangoMan]

I can see that the .sab files are pretty close to the .mab format, but not exactly the same. in particular they have an "snd" header that doesn't seem to match the "musc" header that they have identified in the .mab files.

but, it seems to just be a wrapper around hca format anyway, and they have source code that reads and writes hca files. (you can see the hca file start at offset 0x230). so it might be possible to read and write the hca format, and just guestimate the parts of the .sab format that need to be updated (like file size and number of samples in particular).

(oh, but it does sound like it's going to be encrypted. there are others who have tried to playback .hca files generated from games only to hear noise, which is because it's encrypted.)

[Nariom]

You can read the files with VGMstream[github.com] and foobar2000[www.foobar2000.org] (or anything that VGMstream works with), from what i gathered it's either not encrypted or the key is known and used to read the file. I also found a library called VCAudio[github.com] to encode the music in the CRI HCA format that is used. I understand that the sab file is a binary and contains C structures, I could write code to generate such a file if I knew the exact structures and what they are supposed to contain, but I guess editing existing files would be way easier. How do you do that?

[MangoMan]

yes, vgmstream is what I've been looking at so far, though I haven't tried downloading their whole repo yet.

how do you know:
that vgmstream works with .sab files?
that these .sab files aren't encrypted?

there was one thread where a bunch of keys were listed for various games, each having a different one. I doubt the key for SoM has been discovered yet, unless it's in an obvious place.

Nariom の投稿を引用：

I guess editing existing files would be way easier. How do you do that?

not sure what you mean. I just meant that if we can't figure out the .sab format completely, that we could at least try to guess our way through it by writing a similar header with a replaced hca body.

what they worked out about the .mab format is here (though I haven't gone through their code yet, so maybe there's more .mab/.sab stuff in there somewhere?)

https://gist.github.com/Thealexbarney/698664af1aed7122a33f591f96498f30

following the pattern outlined there, these .sab files are extremely similar, except for the snd header seems different from the .mab musc header.

[Nariom]

well i found a forum that said to use foobar and vgm and i tried and it worked (turned out the question was too old to be the remake but IT WORKED xD) (edit nvm the post is dated old but the attached files are from the remake)

for VGM you only need the extension for foobar not the whole thing

i dont remember where i read the key thing but seems like those sab files have been used for other games (some people looked into worms 4 files for example iirc)

yes ive seen the mab stuff, i understand the language but i lack context here, can't make much sense of it just like that

[Nariom]

the forums where i found some information were xentax.com and zenhax.com

[MangoMan]

it worked as in it plays the .sab as music? can it save music as .sab? it would be nice if it was already done.

even if it can't save, if it's open-source then we could theoretically look at the source to figure out what it's reading (or maybe it just skips the .sab header and plays the hca?)

can't make much sense of it just like that

I'm not sure what it's written in. it's C-like, but says it's a "binary template". but I walked through it and it almost fits the .sab files.

start at the line "char magic[4];". treat lines like this as a "read".
so "char magic[4]" is the binary magic number that identifies the file (sabf in this case).
then 1 byte for the version.
then an unknown byte.
then the size of the header (2 bytes little endian).
an unknown byte.
the descriptor length (1 byte)
an unknown short
the file size as a 32-bit integer.
etc.

the function FTell() returns the current file position.
the function FSeek() sets the current file position.
the function GetNextMultiple is called with the value 16, and just advances to the next position that is divisible by 16 bytes.

[MangoMan]

can you post a link to the thread that is talking about the remake files?

I see a thread on zenhax where they've decrypted a dialogue text file but that's all I get searching for "mana"

[Nariom]

yeah it plays, can't save in sab format though, it also have some information such as the sample rate, channels, bitrate, codec, ... there even mention of a "Square-Enix SAB header" as metadata_source

[Nariom]

http://forum.xentax.com/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=17707

[Nariom]

i was focusing on music but there are like over 500 sound effects that's pretty funny to play with xD

edit: 3600 VOICES FILE HAHAHAHA and that's only english

[MangoMan]

I have the foobar program playing the lich theme now 8)

I found the .sab format file in the vgmstream repo:

https://github.com/kode54/vgmstream/blob/master/src/meta/sqex_sead.c

so... all that would have to be done is reverse that to be able to write sab files instead of read them, and then I guess just need a way to turn mp3 files into hca, and then wrap them in the sab format, I think.

theoretically I think we have all the necessary information, just a matter of implementing it.

[Nariom]

Reverse engineering the reverse engineering program to fall back on original file? Oh, the irony...

[MangoMan]

I've started a small console project to theoretically generate .sab files. I work during the week so it could take a couple weeks. no idea how it will go.

possible that I will make it convert hca to sab instead of mp3 to sab and then that would save the trouble of converting mp3 to hca. I see that there is at least one mp3 to hca converter already out there, although I didn't get it to work.

I'll work on the .sab generating part first and then once I get to the part where I need hca data, I'll figure out the best way to get hca data.

let me know if you find anything that already does some or all of this.

[Nariom]

yeah probably best to go from hca, people gonna want to go from a variety of formats
im gonna ask on the hsc64.com forum if they have any kind of documentation on sab before trying anything

[AliceEngine]

https://twitter.com/lynatan/status/968859908060794880