Working on Metroid: Other M

[Unknowni123]

Hi guys.

So a couple of years ago I found this amazing collection of every single in-game sound effect in Metroid: Other M. Unfortunately, I lost it. I have no recollection of where I found it in the first place either, so it's just gone. I do have a couple of files leftover though, just a few enemy screeches. (If anyone knows where that collection was from, please let me know!)

Because I wasn't able to find this .zip collection again, and the Sounds Resource only has the cutscene audio and dialogue, not in-game sound effects, I've taken matters into my own hands. However, ripping from it is much more difficult than I expected. The "sound" folder only contains the aforementioned cutscenes and dialogue that's already on the Sounds Resource, in .aix format. I've already tried opening the .aixs to see if they contain multipl clips, but they seem like they're just single clips. I don't see any BRSARs, and the only str file is 40 B large. A couple U8s, but they're mostly models and textures. The rest of the possible locations are in extentionless, numbered files (the absolute WORST ugh).

Does anyone have any knowledge of programs I could use for this? Any games with similar makeups? Or has anyone already made progress with Other M? I KNOW it's possible because I once had it all, and that's the worst part lol.

As a bonus, I've included the few sound effects I retained from the old collection. I'm not crazy, it did exist!
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ii5w2c4soiqas7...s.zip?dl=0

[Unknowni123]

DAY 2. No luck. Decided to post an update out of desperation.

- I used Trid to look into the unnamed files and discovered most of them are BRRES models, as I suspected. Slapping a .brres on the end of the filename makes it accessible. That's no real surprise, those are already ripped on the Models Resource. There are literally thousands more of these unnamed files though, so it's possible some audio files are lurking in there. Trid doesn't recognize anything that isn't a BRRES so far.
- I tried adding audio file extensions such as .aix, .adx, or even just .pak to the unnamed files with no luck.
- I looked into other recent Metroid games such as Samus Returns and discovered they have a similar problem; the global sound effects don't seem to be in the "sound" folder, only the ambience, cutscene audio, and music. Which is great, but those are already ripped on YouTube and such. This might be a thing lots of Metroid games do?
- I've looked into any potential Other M modding scene for any leads and found pretty much nothing. One guy made an amateur hack called Maxximum Edition, but it doesn't change any of sound effects I'm looking for, just cutscene audio. I've yet to reach out to this mod-maker due to him being gone from all social media; he deleted his reddit account and I can't find any other traces of him (I think he goes by JKMaxx?)
- Again, I tried opening the .aix audio files to see if they had multiple clips in them, but there was only one in each. The ones we already have uploaded were all kept in separate files, they are not archives.
- I got really desperate and dug up my old laptop that had the Other M sounds zip folder years ago. I'd factory reset it since then before I gave it to a brother, so I tried using Recuva to get them back - nothing showed up. If I didn't have those few samples already, I would think I'd gone mad and imagined the whole thing.

I'm at my wits end, but I'm not giving up yet. Will post another update when I've worked on it some more. I'm very amateur at this so I'm probably missing something obvious, but hey, part of the learning process.

[Unknowni123]

DAY 3. So far, progress!

I used a hex editor (HxD specifically) to methodically look at most of the unnamed files, hoping to find some sort of text strings that would lead me to new info. Found some of the later ones (4240 onwards) have certain strings such as "SNDPAK", "SE", and "RSAR" in them, which is very promising! Will update again if I manage to crack into them.

UPDATE 1: So it seems like they are indeed .brsar files. They have the "RSAR", "SYMB", and "INFO" strings in ascii, just like it says on the tockdom site http://wiki.tockdom.com/wiki/BRSAR_(File_Format). However, BrawlBox can't open them. They might be encrypted. Any ideas?

UPDATE 2: I straight-up deleted the "SNDPAK" header that came before the "RSAR" header and the files became accessible! *hacker voice* I'm in. RippingMama and foobar get them to .wavs pretty easily. Now I just have to figure out how to mass convert the unnamed files to .BRSARs so it doesn't take forever... there are about 400 to pick apart.

[Unknowni123]

DAY 4. Dawn of the Final Day.

So yeah, I cracked in and got all the sounds I could. Whipped up a quick program in python to help delete the "SNDPAK" headers in hex and rename the files to ".BRSAR" en masse, then foobar converted the ones I needed. Now I've got hundreds of sounds. Success! And not only that, but it gave me a lot of insights into how similarly Samus Returns on 3DS stores its files... you may see me uploading more Metroid sounds shortly lol.

Unfortunately, it seems that only Phantoon and the Queen Metroid's voice clips are all missing. The disguised .BRSARs numbered 4240 to 4654 are missing about six numbers (there are no files called 4322, 4326, 4329, 4331, 4334, or 4337), so they could be what's missing - however, they're also surrounded by the sounds used for Samus' powerups, so that would be pretty unorganized if true. Maybe Dolphin extracted the .iso wrong, or my game's .iso is buggy. Not sure. Gonna have to look into this some more, but for now I'm gonna upload what I have. Will update one more time if I find the missing files.

UPDATE: Turns out I'm stupid, I just skipped some files LOL. I got so caught up in finally finding the Ridley sound effects I skipped Phantoon, Queen Metroid, AND the RB Ferrocrusher robot thing. Totally forgot about that last one. All good here!

No one even replied to this thread lol, but maybe it'll help someone else's Other M ripping exploits in the future.

[AJD-262]

Leaving info for other is always good IMO.