Guide: Extracting And Recompiling CDI Images

[mrneo240]

Is there something like this for starting with GDI files?

It's a whole entire process. Maybe check out the family Guy self boot script. Check out gd-rom explorer. Check out the Echelon self boot tutorial (don't use it, just read and understand what is going on).

Realize data/data is better than audio/data.

Learn that maybe CDDA might be tricky for you

Gather a whole bunch of tools

Grab all the emulators to test your image.

Realize finding old software is a pain

Realize newer software might not work "correctly" for the dreamcast


Good luck to you though! It's all possible, and definitely doable. We're currently going through and self booting the entire demo collection

[Bob Dobbs]

I tried this but failed in the past. It is most likely I am not doing something correct.

[WingMantis]

Is there something like this for starting with GDI files?

Good luck to you though! It's all possible, and definitely doable. We're currently going through and self booting the entire demo collection

I'm mostly interested in trying to replace textures, models etc. I have a lot of ideas but I'm a noob and hard of learning these days. Hoping I can learn something so I'm not just telling everybody what to do (all the time) lol.

Green Ranger did the Dead or Alive 2 mods so he might be the best on the subject...

[paddyboy]

Hi,i joined just so i could ask for some help with compiling an already selfboot cdi of msr

I wanted to hack the music and have spent a few days and nights no no avail in getting a working image,i have scoured the net trying to fix missing gaps in tutorials that dont explain some things clearly or not at all,one of the main questions i had when following many tutorials was that when i use cdrip,i would end up with 2 bin files and 2 cues,right away it left me lost as to compiling (would i leave out s01t01.bin as it's the smaller iso with less data ?) i tried this and ended up with either hang at sega logo or cd player.

ok,my questions are these as i finally found this thread and tutorial and it got me the furthest but i still have some questions ..

1.i ripped the audio using asf extractor and adx converter,i have normal wave music files that i converted back into adx and then packed again into asf however,i then read somewhere that depending on the converter,i might get scratchy sound,also i wonder if my wave files should have been down sampled in any way before i converted them ?

2.this is the main problem and where the tutorial on this thread gets me lost ....
after i use mkisofs with the iso and the new sort file of which i edit to include ip0003,it seems that i am supposed to then redo the process of making a fixiso and making the sort again but i dont understand why i would need to do this twice if i had just done that process ? also that while i DID use fix iso and follow the instructions but i skipped on the sortfile as described that it may not be required,i then follow the instructions onto bin2boot and this is where i cant go further.

when i run bin2boot,it tells me there is no ip yet i clearly did add the ip.bin that was created into the main root folder and its named with caps IP.BIN i tried this after reading that it MUST be caps but also tried the normal way with no luck,after this point i tell bin2boot to create the ip and then it asks me the name of the binary usually 1st_read.bin ... at this point i have tried typing in al manor of things including st_read.bin but then bin2boot ALWAYS closes abruptly leaving me stuck.

at this point i have also tried leaving out bin2boot and using bootdreams under the dj to create an iso and pointing to the root data folder but every cdi i create will not boot,nor will any of them boot in my dreamcast using the boot disc either.

in short,i am using win7x64 but also ended up installing virtualbox and win xp out of frustration and neither have worked out for me,Also i have used the lba that was given to me when using cdrip and it was 45000 with a value of 0,i have never tried anything else,this is a working cdi of msr that has a custom logo at boot and has everything unlocked so it must have already been hacked,i simply want to change the music,the file size of the music in total is smaller than the original so i am not over filling the iso.

i have spent days on this and would love and appreciate help on getting this to work,been looking forward to enjoying msr with some good music for ages,thanks for reading all that

paddy

[itsthinkingstill]

Okay so a few things. One biin2boot only finds the ip if you have it in the the discroot folder and nothing else. i will supply the ip i use for you. You must also do the sortfile step in order to this method. You simply open the file go to the the bottom of the list of items in the files, hit enter to have a new line and input the 3001(with space). If you look back in this thread i uploaded an updated version of the method with the way of using sort files. As for the lba its kind of confusing but il try my best. So (if i remember correctly) the lba in this example was 11702. However that might not be the lba you get (for example 4500) take note of the lba you get and whenever there is a step that requires the lba use the lba you took note of, not 11702. Every game gives you a different one so you will get a different number.
As for the converting music i think for single tracks wav to adx should be fine. the problem is when you get to the .afs format with games like f355. A good way to check is convert it to adx and then convert it back to wav and tell if its scratchy. Hope this helps, will do some more research for you, its been a while for me

IP.zip

(8.47 KiB) Downloaded 536 times

[mrneo240]

I think itsthinkingstill nailed the response but I'll contribute something in a couple hours as well.

Cdirip seems tricky to use, bin2boot is a million years old, bootdreams is similarly aged.

You should be able to do everything with: daemon tools (pick your flavor+version), isobuster (4.0 plz), disc juggler (pick your version), mkisofs, cdi4dc/mds4dc and some generic tools.

[WingMantis]

at this point i have also tried leaving out bin2boot and using bootdreams under the dj to create an iso and pointing to the root data folder but every cdi i create will not boot,nor will any of them boot in my dreamcast using the boot disc either.

...

i have spent days on this and would love and appreciate help on getting this to work,been looking forward to enjoying msr with some good music for ages,thanks for reading all that paddy

Do you have an emulator set up on your computer? You can load the images you make to see if they will boot into the game or boot to the dashboard (and tell you to insert game disc if you try to play the disc).

This will save a lot of CDRs and the time burning them.

But, is there a music volume control in the game options? Why not just turn the game music off and play your own tunes somehow?

[paddyboy]

omg,thank you soo much for the reply's soo quickly !!!

I will follow again the steps from the start and i will do the sort step twice as described and also use your ip.bin,the steps i had taken were the same as these in the tutorial on this thread,once i had fixediso,it gave me a padding file,fixediso and a bootfile that i renamed to IP.BIN and i placed this in the c\discroot folder as described,this was done on thew windows xp and win7 tests yet it never ever found the ip and would also ask for the binary,i am guessing now that the ip has the title name and descriptor in it and without it,its asking to create an ip and a title,i just dont know why it won't find the ip either with or without caps.

Also many thanks for the info on the wave files,i will now check them over by extracting from the afs and see if they sound ok !

The last thing and this is where i had thought i had went wrong,was the s01t01.bin,am i correct in thinking that this bin along with both cue files for s01t01.bin and s02t02.bin should all be disregarded and deleted ? i ask this as like before i could never find a real answer to this but also that i found 201t01.bin to have files on it,it wasn't merely a dummy file however when i explore it,it does in fact look like a bunch of the exact same files that are also in the second bin file with all the data,basically a few folders for www addresses and a data folder and i think the games movie intro file is on this track but again,i checked s02t02.bin and all these files are on track 2 and are all same file size.

yes i am using nulldc,i can load the untouched cdi no problem,it's just after i extract and compile with any method before i get to the sega screen or the cd player screen,i did use some discs to see if it at least worked apart from the selfboot side of it using the boot loader but none worked.

many many thanks,it's really appreciated

EDIT --
I tried using the supplied IP and doing the steps over again,when following the steps i am asked to do the sort file twice however i think this is because i am asked to make a sort file before any changing of the iso and then at the end asked again as i have made changes but because my extracted iso has the files replaced before i begin,this means that the fist time i make the sortfile,it's reflected with the new audio file sizes as seen in the sortfile when i look through it

my question would be,must i make a sort file "before" i make any changes and if so then why when i am only going to make another newer one with the changes to the audio files,i ask as this is the only step that i can see a possible problem yet i wouldn't think this to be an issue but i could be ... i say this as i used the ip.bin provided and then went through the steps with the sort file again and again when i get to the bin2boot,it still tells me there is no ip and if i would like to create one,also i manually went over the sortfile to look for any errors or clues as i think the sortfile to my understanding works a bit like a cue file ? it lists all files and file sizes,this along with the dummy fools the dreamcast into thinking the file size of the game matches the orginal otherwise no boot,i dont know if i am right but this would make sense.

since i used the provided ip,i now DO get past the sega logo but then a black screen and quickly goes to the cd player,it's as if its trying to load the intro movie to the game,in nulldc i get SPI unknown,googled this and it seems to have something to do with wince or the console type boot,this cdi that normally does boot had come up as a ketana type,i remember as i was asked at some point if i wanted to convert and scramble it,since that time i have reverted back to working with the normal working cdi/extracting and trying to recompile.

this is as much info as i can think of,i don't know what i am doing wrong,it's clearly my error somewhere

EDIT - 2

Ok,i found that the problem with creating the cdi in bin2boot was that i was using the code supplied wrong ..

mkisofs -C 0,11702 -V MODDED_CDI -sort output.txt -l -o new.iso c:\discroot

this part (11702) should have been changed to my own lba of 45000

after this,and going through the usual steps it then made a cdi image however it's not working,as i had expected in some weird way,it now boots up to a black screen and crashes in nulldc,i am yet to try and burn the cdi,it's as if it's looking for the intro movie and crashes,this intro movie is located in track01 as well as track 02,it makes me wonder if i should be trying to include track01 when i build this image ? also there is one thing that i had noticed way before i even started trying to compile,it's when i was looking through the games audio tracks,i found that every single audio track would play however,the audio track that plays when the game starts (the audio that may well be playing over a silent movie track) this audio would NOT transfer over,it would not extract,it would say it was corrupt,this was from the games tokyo asf,the tokyo file has the usual audio but also all the frontend and menu stuff,this audio track does play fine on the dreamcast but will not extract out of the hundreds of audio that do extract,makes me wonder.

also to note,at the stage where i was making a dummy file in bootdreams,i exit before actually making the image,bootdreams had asked me again,telling me it was a ketana image and also if i wanted to scramble,i said no to both and ext before making the image,i don't know if this has anything to do with it booting up,i would love to know if this crash could have anything to do with the modded music,i will now extract and recompile the cdi without making any changes to the game to see if then boots,if so then there is an issue with the audio files im using or the sortlist file sizes,i have modded soo many things over the years,done lots of saturn stuff and rom hacks and so on but the dreamcast is a pain in the ass !!!

had a look at the image in disc juggler and it complains its too large for 1 cd,the audio i hacked in is a little smaller than the original files in total,i don't know why the outputting image ends up larger.

so far,i think i now know how to extract,convert and compile but as of now,a black screen at boot

[itsthinkingstill]

Without spending a bunch of time with MSR i cant say for certain what the issue is, when i deal with sortfile i only ever do it once on the the recompiling stage. You also dont want to follow the step of converting bootfile to ip.bin as it never works right. Just use my ip.bin i gave to you. As for the size this is what Dan of Dreampipe had to say
"I had this problem too, but I'm not sure where or why the size increases

I ran into this with Sonic Adventure modding, I had to downsample the SFDs to make everything fit

Though you can try programs like CDI4DC or MDS4DC and maybe it's algorithm will make it slightly smaller like the original. But I've found in every case for CDI compiling IsoFix+BIN2BOOT results in the best burn/Most times the disc boots on the first try

So you're more or less sacrificing boot reliability over space with my method, but other methods are obviously more space saving as if it were not you wouldn't have the issue you're having

Google "Atreyu187 Pastebin" and you'll have all the documentation you need"
If you want to see what results i had when changing the music they look like something like this



Did a samba Mj edition but that turned out weird

[mistamontiel]

Dark Falaz Tool Kit pretty good too