Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes Sound Questions

[E3245]

Hello everyone, I'm new here. I have been lurking around here for almost a year (as a guest most of the time) and I have a question regarding MGS: TTS.

I ripped most of the dialog/sounds via vgmstream. The contents in the STREAMS folder was in .dsp format containing all of the music and dialog that are NOT in cutscenes, but that plays during gameplay.

The content in the AUDIO folder in .spt and .spd with the name Bank followed by numbers, probably the number of the stage that corresponds to the Bank file.

The problem is, I have a 2 dsp files, one containing the Left Channel and the other containing Right Channel. It's a pain converting from wav then using Audacity to combine them into stereo.

Should I leave them as Mono Left and Right .wav for Submission or continue combing them into Stereo wav?

[Mystie]

I'd say combine them into a Stereo .wav.

[puggsoy]

It would be preferred to have them in one stereo .wav file, but I can understand that it'd be a pain to do that manually using Audacity.

I'm not sure if there's a program that does it any quicker or easier than Audacity, unfortunately. Do the corresponding files have similar names that makes it easy to tell that they belong together? If so, I could maybe whip something up to simplify the process.

[E3245]

It would be preferred to have them in one stereo .wav file, but I can understand that it'd be a pain to do that manually using Audacity.

I'm not sure if there's a program that does it any quicker or easier than Audacity, unfortunately. Do the corresponding files have similar names that makes it easy to tell that they belong together? If so, I could maybe whip something up to simplify the process.

Yes, there is fortunately, but they are numbers, like 0013R and 0013L, for example. Same goes for the music.

[puggsoy]

That's fine, if I know which file is which channel then I can make a program that will be able to combine them into one file automatically, but then multiple files at a time. If you could give me a couple of samples to work and test with I should hopefully have something for you in a couple of days.

[E3245]

Here are the audio samples from MGS TTS. Sorry it took so long.

Samples

[puggsoy]

Ah, this is a bit more complicated than I thought it would be. These are stereo files, so I have to figure out how to get their channels into a single channel. That is, the L and R of one file should go in a single L channel, and the same with the other for the R. If they had been mono, I could just use each file's samples as a channel.

So now I gotta figure out how to turn them into mono samples. It's not impossible, but I don't know how to so it might take a while.

[puggsoy]

OK, here it is. Just download and unzip into any folder. It's a command-line program, so here are some brief instructions in case you aren't familiar with how to use them:

Put all the DSP files you want to merge (both L and R ones) in a folder (preferably a subfolder of where you put the program). Then make a text file in the folder of the program, and write:

Code:

ChannelMerge folderName

Replacing "folderName" with the name of the folder you put the DSP files. Save the text file, and rename it so the extension is "bat". Then run that, you'll see a command prompt come up and it'll say what's happening.
When it's done the results will be in a subfolder of the folder that has the DSP files. They'll be .wav files renamed after the files they were made up of, without the L or R bits. So for example, a file made from 0013R.dsp and 0013L.dsp will be called 0013.wav.

If you know how to use the command-line, you can use that too. If you need any more help just say.

[E3245]

Thank you, this will help with the conversion greatly. Hopefully, I can get these rips done in the following weeks. All is left is the SFX bank for each stage in the game.

On another note, is this tool going to be included with VGSC?

[puggsoy]

I'm actually planning to update VGSC soonish. It'll be a command-line program with minimal UI (enough to select files), but it'd be more stable and wouldn't require that annoying installer.

I was going to simply make this a separate program that primarily supports WAV files (I just made this version quickly to fit your uses), and if people need to convert they can use VGSC. Implementing in VGSC would be possible, and I might consider that in the future (once I can actually give the new VGSC a good UI), but for now I'll just have it as a separate application, I think that's simpler on the whole.