Help with DKz Studio and ADX files for translation project

[skull_diggery]

Hi there!

So I'm relatively new to Dreamcast modding and am currently testing if something is possible with a game for a translation project.

Long story short I am looking to replace the ADX audio files in a game with different ones. I have tested unpacking the AFS file into the ADX files and found that the only way that I can get it back into the AFS is to directly replace the files in DKz studio, saving the AFS file afterwards as 'patching in folder' or 'patching in file' either don't seem to work or I'm misunderstanding what this is supposed to do (I can't find any documentation about the tool sadly). I was wondering if anyone has any experience replacing ADX files in dreamcast games? Because I'm finding currently that my method can replace some sound files perfectly fine, namely the start-up logos etc. however if I replace any audiofile in game, it will work until that audiofile, play the replaced file, then go silent after that. If anyone has any knowledge in this area I would really appreciate some advice as to what I might be doing wrong or if I can even replace these files and keep the game running.

Thanks!

[Green Ranger]

Hi there!

So I'm relatively new to Dreamcast modding and am currently testing if something is possible with a game for a translation project.

Long story short I am looking to replace the ADX audio files in a game with different ones. I have tested unpacking the AFS file into the ADX files and found that the only way that I can get it back into the AFS is to directly replace the files in DKz studio, saving the AFS file afterwards as 'patching in folder' or 'patching in file' either don't seem to work or I'm misunderstanding what this is supposed to do (I can't find any documentation about the tool sadly). I was wondering if anyone has any experience replacing ADX files in dreamcast games? Because I'm finding currently that my method can replace some sound files perfectly fine, namely the start-up logos etc. however if I replace any audiofile in game, it will work until that audiofile, play the replaced file, then go silent after that. If anyone has any knowledge in this area I would really appreciate some advice as to what I might be doing wrong or if I can even replace these files and keep the game running.

Thanks!

If you haven't already, try using AFS Explorer 3.7 for extraction and insertion of ADX files into your AFS.

AFSExplorer_3_7.zip

(226.78 KiB) Downloaded 18 times

[skull_diggery]

ah! I'll give that a go, I've been using adx-utils and DKz studio for it.

Can I ask, is there special considerations I need to make when it comes to adx files? such as keeping the files the same size or hashes or something? Trying to work out why it won't play the ADX files after the altered one I insert.

[Green Ranger]

The program displays the size of each original ADX file as well the maximum filesize each one can be replaced with. As long as you're within the size parameters displayed, you should be good. If your insertion is too large the program should highlight it in red to let you know it's problematic. A new ADX file can be smaller than the original, it just can't be bigger than the allowed max size.

You can also use AFS Explorer's internal sound player to ensure the audio works after injecting it into the AFS file. And of course, make sure your new ADX has the same name as the one you're replacing.

[skull_diggery]

Thank you so much, I will try this tool going forward. I know to replace the file with the same name, it has definitly worked to play the sounds, it just doesn't play anything after that yet. Hoping AFS explorer will solve this. Thank you again!

[skull_diggery]

The program displays the size of each original ADX file as well the maximum filesize each one can be replaced with. As long as you're within the size parameters displayed, you should be good. If your insertion is too large the program should highlight it in red to let you know it's problematic. A new ADX file can be smaller than the original, it just can't be bigger than the allowed max size.

You can also use AFS Explorer's internal sound player to ensure the audio works after injecting it into the AFS file. And of course, make sure your new ADX has the same name as the one you're replacing.

So initial test with the tool has been semi-successful but has ended up at the same hurdle so far. With the sound stopping after the edited file and with the menu sounds not being able to be replaced. Also I partly wonder if certain parts of the file are 'write' protected as I get an error if I try and patch the AFS file in place and instead need to make a new file and delete the old one. Still hoping this will be possible but haven't found a way around these issues so far!

[Green Ranger]

Ah so the problem persists. Hopefully you can figure it out. How are you converting your music/audio files into ADX? Is it from MP3 to ADX, or WAV to ADX? Perhaps trying a different ADX converter program will help.

See if any of these yield better results-
1) ADX Converter/Player
2) radx- ADX encoder/decoder

[skull_diggery]

Oh Awesome, thank you again I'll give those a go when I next can.

The game is WARP's 'Kaze No Regret' by the way, which is an audio game, as far as I can tell ADX files play one after the other so I'm hoping to be able to replace the files with english audio equivalents.

[skull_diggery]

So I have used the adx converter that you posted and it works great, I'll have to see which of my tools is best for the conversion. However sadly the problem persists with silence after my replaced adx file and being unable to replace the menu files for some reason.

Do you (Or does anyone) have any experience replacing adx files in DC games? Because I might be missing how the files work or how the game program reads them etc.

Thank you so much for your help so far Green Ranger

[ateam]

There's no restriction such as "file sizes must be the same or smaller". That's only true if you're doing in-line replacement of the files inside an AFS archive (which is a bad way to go about it). AFS archives can be rebuilt using files of any size, though.

Of course, there are going to be caveats to that (we're not talking about 1GB files here, which the Dreamcast wouldn't have RAM for, or enough large files to exceed the space in RAM originally allocated for the individual files). I believe there's also a limit to the number of files, but someone recently figured out a way around that.

Furthermore, there are certainly quirks with ADX-encoded audio that I'm not too familiar with (stuff like loops, etc).

However, give this little kit I put together a try. It contains the original DISK01.AFS file, as well as a folder of all its extracted contents (DISK01_EXTRACTED). Inside that folder is also an entries.txt file, which contains all of the AFS archive's files in the order that they appeared in the original archive. Inside that folder is also a CLI AFS extractor/builder (AFSPacker.exe).

Swap out some of the ADX files inside the extracted folder using identical filenames, then run the rebuild_afs.bat script in the main folder. It will produce a new file called DISK01_NEW.AFS. Give this a try in the game (after renaming it, of course).

kaze_afs.zip
https://drive.google.com/uc?export=down ... VE0eA3mN3t

Note that there could be several points of failure here causing issues, but this should at least produce a working rebuilt AFS.