Splinter Cell 2 .SS0 Music

[Zench]

I have done some investigating into the format of music in Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow, and I figured out the format (the key is that it uses a variant of IMA-ADPCM for compression). I wrote a program to extract it. The music is in pieces, just like the in other Splinter Cell games. It seems that no one else has found a way to extract the music from the .SS0 files. Is this something that is still of interest?

[Bioscope]

Well, to quote Star Trek: Put it on screen....

There are many who would like to get their hands on this program.

[Zench]

Well... here it is. The source code is included (C++). It is a command line program. It is important to note that all of the music is in chunks, and my program cannot yet thread those chunks together, nor does it attempt to figure out at what offset in the file it's at or how long it is. This information comes from MAPS.SM0. I am still not sure of the format of the header, so my program just assumes a constant size of it, but this is probably not the case.

Now, for actually using my program:
You must tell it the filename (*.SS0), the name of the file to write to (-o Filename), the offset (-i Offset), the size (-s Size), and whether it is stereo (--stereo) or mono (--mono). You can write to a standard wave file (option -w or --wave), or just output raw audio (option -r or --raw). I included some batch files for examples.

Example of How to Use It:

Code: Select all

DecUbiSnd "C:\Program Files\UBISOFT\Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow\offline\data\sounds\Music_Emb.SS0" -i 9015072 -s 3238562 -w -o EmbassySearch.wav --stereo

I installed the demo of Splinter Cell Double Agent, and I found that this uses the same audio compression method. So my program is able to decode this audio (with a little workaround). The header is different though, and I will probably add official support for this later.

[OrangeC]

So will this work for all ubifsoft games that use the SS0 files?

[Zench]

I don't know, but it seems like this could be the case most of the time. Sounds in UbiSoft .SS0 files have a 1-byte version number, so that is probably what we should go by.

SC Pandora Tomorrow: Version 3
SC Double Agent (Demo?): Version 5

Another UbiSoft game I checked had version 5 also, but I don't own very many UbiSoft games. Perhaps I could find demos? I have not yet added support for type 5, but it can decode the files anyway (see one of the batch files I included in the zip file). It is very similar to type 3, so it shouldn't be difficult. I also want to give it the ability to scan for audio pieces (the only lookup table for offsets and lengths is in MAPS.SM0, but that file is pretty complicated). I have not yet figured out the audio decompression method for the original Splinter Cell, but it seems to be older and has a simpler stream.

[OrangeC]

Ubisoft also use other formats like SS5 and SS4, any support in the future for those, or are they the same?

[Kataah]

Formats like SS5 and SS4 are not the problems if he his tool scan/convert direct the stream.

[OrangeC]

Ahh okay, because when i input a ss5 or 4 file it doesn't support it.

[Zench]

It doesn't matter what the file extention is, but if the first byte of it is a 3 or a 5, it can decode it.

By the way, does anyone have any questions about how to use my program? Even though I made it, I think it's difficult to use.

[OrangeC]

yes it is kinda tricky to use, I hope it can decode beowulf if its a 3 or 5, but thats the problem, ubisoft always make changes to there audio system and you have to constantly keep on tweaking the program, correct me if im wrong on this.

[Mirrodin]

I haven't had the chance to go diving into the files. Most of the ones for Pandora Tomorrow (the ambient SS0 files) are accompanied by .UAX files that are much much smaller, perhaps a file table? My question is how are you finding the offset and sizes of each audio file within the package?

Also, I stumbled upon a page talking about the similar file formats for Myst from Ubisoft.
http://simonwoodside.com/weblog/2004/11/10

According to this page, at least for Myst, the LS0 files are straight ogg files that can just be renamed with the extension .ogg. I attempted this on the LS0 files in the english folder for all splinter cell games and failed every time. However, on that very page mentioned above, the author mentioned a program called Revelator
http://homepage.mac.com/rshayter/Revelator.html

It is available for Windows and Mac. The program is a .jar and it didn't convert any files but maybe this may help in finding out more about all the different file types associated with audio for Ubisoft games. And perhaps someone would be kind enough to add this link to the Game Specific Tools page for anyone wishing to extract files from Myst as it seems perfectly capable of at least working with that game! I'd do it myself but I'm not used to the wiki formatting.

[Zench]

... ubisoft always make changes to there audio system and you have to constantly keep on tweaking the program, correct me if im wrong on this.

This is partially right. UbiSoft changes the format of the MAPS.SM0 file for almost every game. This file contains the list of offsets and sizes, and some sound effects I think. But the format of the chunks in .SS* files does not change often. I thought that the .UAX files might contain offsets and sizes, but they don't. I think they contain IDs that match up with the ones in MAPS.SM0, but I'm not sure. It is also possible to scan through the data looking for these chunks, and I am extending my program to do that.

Well, here is the latest version of it. I added a new feature which will string the segments of music together, so that you don't have to do it manually afterwords. There are seperate files (you have to create yourself) which hold each offset and size. See the batch files for examples.

[OrangeC]

Ive tried to test ss files from other games like rainbow six vegas for psp which uses ss5 but it decoded into a bunch of static, it needs to be a type 3 or 5 but thats the thing, im not sure how to even in a hex editor. I would really like to test other games on this.

[Zench]

Post some of the files and I'll have a look at them.

[OrangeC]

Don't have the rainbow six vegas anymore but here is a BAO file from beowulf, now this behaves the same way as an ss file, its just when i loaded into goldwave it sounds all distorted, it manages to play fine, all other files are like this, except some play clearly while others are just plain static.

anyway here it is.
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=QCXU5P9B