It's me, the n00b who's trying to hack Chrono Trigger. Anyway, what type of file is the music from this game, and are there any converters or patching tools that would allow me to convert a WAV file to the same type and replace the music from this game?
1. CT doesn't use files. Emulators may save the current sound and music data to a SPC file though. See snesmusic.org or other archives for already dumped ones.
2. There might be a tool that converts a sound into one or more BRR blocks; search the "Utilities" section & the web. Chances are though that you'll have to write your own tools.
I hate to break it to you, but you're not going to be able to this without learning a whole lot.
Music on the SNES is not stored in any type of files. The SPC700 is the sound coprocessor. A custom program is loaded into this CPU from the main CPU via a communications routine.
This player program executes and handles everything from changing songs, playing songs, to loading up instruments. MOST of the music is done via tracker/MIDI type song storage. I say 'type' because the songs are usually stored in a custom format. Square used a pretty advanced player program for Chrono Trigger from what I've seen, so I'd guess the songs are most likely stored in a fairly complex format which will be difficult to try and decipher their format.
You CANNOT play WAV files in Chrono Trigger even if converted to BRR blocks without hacking the SPC700 routine to pieces to be able to play streaming BRR blocks. The game as it is has no support for anything aside from playing a few short simple sound effect samples.
The only other way to change the music is to trace where a song is loaded and decipher the storage format.
Either way, this task is NOT easy and you're not going to be able to do it without alot of reading, some understanding of the sound hardware, and assembly knowledge.
The easiest thing to do is probably to track down song data in the ROM, poke around and hope you can figure out a few things about the format.
RHDN Forum Archive
Author
