[Billkwando]

Hello all!

This is my first post here. Is this idea possible to do? I got into Burning Rangers because of Phantasy Star Online/Universe's BR levels, which always used the Japanese audio tracks. I want to swap the music from the Japanese iso to the English one without affecting the dialog. If it can be done, what would be the easiest way?

I'm hoping that the music and spoken English dialogue are stored separately, and that the music files are the same size, format, and name in both versions, so I can just do a straight swap. I'm guessing reality isn't so kind, but here's to hoping!

Just to reiterate, these are ADX audio, not CD tracks. I did try googling around, and did find some Dreamcast hacking info, but I don't know how relevant it is to the Saturn.

I should go ahead and admit that the only "hacking" I've done in the past is hex editing my save file in Shenmue so I could continue my US save on the UK version of Shenmue 2.

Thanks!

[Billkwando]

For anybody who runs across this thread on Google looking for the same thing, I did figure out how to burn a working Saturn hack. The problem was that I was googling things like "hacking Saturn ISOs" and "Saturn rom hacking". Once I did a search on how to AUTHOR Saturn ISOs, in regards to hacking, I found what I needed pretty quickly.

 I got mkisofs from here: http://smithii.com/cdrtools

 I used these instructions:
http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?21353-Saturn-iso-creation-from-extracted-files&p=327152&viewfull=1#post327152

 Except I used PowerISO, and I got my IP.BIN from here (since CDRWin won't see my drives): http://phemusat.tripod.com/ by downloading the "SMS emu version 2" file (it has the file inside the zip). I then grabbed the BGM file from the Japanese version and pasted it into the US one, and burned the ISO using the instructions above.

 I noticed that the opening movie still had the crappy English song, so I found this program, which lets you listen to ADX (.ACX) files and cinepak movies. I got it from here:
http://web.archive.org/web/20020205055921/http://home.interlink.or.jp/~lcm/Lib/room1.html
(Edit: YAY! I found the English version: http://web.axelero.hu/fka2636/adxplay_english.rar )

 This allowed me to isolate the OP.CAK file which (logically) was the opening, which I then swapped in and overwrote the original opening. So now I have a working image that plays the Japanese opening movie and music, and the English dialogue is untouched. The only problem is it seems that the order of the audio files isn't exactly the same, so I get a weird floaty ballad on the Sonic Team logo. The program I used to preview the media files will let me extract them as waves. Does anybody know of a program I could use to pack them back up as an ADX if I were to unpack and reorder them all correctly using the English set as a guide?

 I realize my original request might have been a tall order for hacking advice, but I think I've demonstrated that I'm smart enough, and more than willing to help myself....but still I would appreciate a little guidance if anyone has any to offer.

Edit 2: I've determined that the US version has 1 additional audio track, #24 (of 47). It's a  1:19 version of BR theme that fades out at the chorus. it's 22050Hz. I can edit a copy of the Japanese theme down to 1:19, but I still don't know how to edit the ADX/.ACX container file.

[Billkwando]

I wanted to bring anyone who's looking up to speed on my progress.

I found a bunch of tools for working with ADX files here:

http://shenmuesubs.sourceforge.net/download/ (under "Additional Tools")

The "ADX Tools" package includes an ADX encoder, which allowed me to convert my 1:19 BR theme to ADX format. I can't remember if it was the encoder I used to establish which files need to loop, but I'm pretty sure it was.

The conundrum then is, as it always has been, how to pack the audio tracks back into an ACX. Welllll, there's this lovely app called Puyo Tools:

http://code.google.com/p/puyotools/

It was created by a very nice fellow over at Puyo Nexus, and it allows you to take a pile of ADX files and create an ACX with them. He was kind enough to advise me (for your reference) when it asks about block size, for Burning Rangers (and perhaps all Saturn games?) it is 2048, not 4. Also ACX files do not require filenames or extensions for the files contained within, so the files can be named anything, with any extension (or none), and they will still be read. I'm assuming that all that matters is the order they're placed in.

So far, I am unable to create an ACX that the Saturn or SSF will recognize, but the ACX will play in any ADX player, and you can skip from song to song as expected, with no difficulties.

I am in the process of solving this issue now (I hope!) and have burned a shocking number of coasters in the process. Fortunately I'm wasting my old Imation CDs for testing, and not the amazing Taiyo Yuden discs I would typically use for a final copy.

I hope this info is useful to forum members and future googlers!

FYI: ACX/ADX files are Big Endian, viewable in a hex editor, and the header is not located in the top of the file. It can be found by looking for (c)CRI. A big thanks to kode54 from the RHDN IRC channel for that info!