How to open .spdat files?

[orii]

I was looking into the files of an obscure DS game called "Kuruma de DS" and found a file called "spot_data.spdat". I'm assuming that the rest of the music in this game are located inside this file. I looked at a video of some gameplay and found out that there is still music that I haven't been able to find yet in the main .sdat file of the game. So, how would one go about opening an .spdat file?

 

[FAST6191]

Never heard of spdat before and it is unlikely to be a typo.
It is also under a folder called spot data (the game being GPS related) so I would not tend to assume audio.

There is a folder called voice data as well with a 23 something meg file in it which might also have some things -- did a raw import in audacity (16 bit signed, 22050 HZ. Might not be the exact settings -- open up desmume's audio options and it should note what frequency a given channel is playing with) and got a bunch of pretty clear messages in Japanese (somewhat repeating, don't know if it is different voices or different enthusiasm by the sounds of things).

As you asked though I opened the spdat file up in a hex editor.


I does indeed start with sdat but I think that is an unfortunate coincidence.

From where what could be pointers look to be (when you have a bunch of numbers counting upwards in smaller irregular amounts it is a good bet). 27A9C62F being the last one (when flipped) which is a bit before the end of the file but not by much (don't think it is relative but might be counting from the start of the file).
After that the bulk of the file has 16 bit runs starting with 8,9 and D which for my money means it is going to be shiftJIS
http://rikai.com/library/kanjitables/kanji_codes.sjis.shtml
Indeed with a bit of a tweak (lost everything before what looked like text, replaced 0000 with 0d0a that should serve as new line, opened in web browser and forced it to decode sjiftJIS) have a random sample. Chucking a few sections of that in machine translation gives output that looks like minor info on tourist destinations.


The other place I might look for sound could be in the overlays as there do appear to be a few here, though smaller in size. Largest in overlay 0003 has a bunch of ASCII towards the end dealing with sound options which actually would correspond to the repeated sounds I heard when I imported the voice data (I am not great at Japanese but there was a male and female and various enthusiasm levels that even I could detect).

 

[orii]

Never heard of spdat before and it is unlikely to be a typo.
It is also under a folder called spot data (the game being GPS related) so I would not tend to assume audio.

There is a folder called voice data as well with a 23 something meg file in it which might also have some things -- did a raw import in audacity (16 bit signed, 22050 HZ. Might not be the exact settings -- open up desmume's audio options and it should note what frequency a given channel is playing with) and got a bunch of pretty clear messages in Japanese (somewhat repeating, don't know if it is different voices or different enthusiasm by the sounds of things).

As you asked though I opened the spdat file up in a hex editor.


I does indeed start with sdat but I think that is an unfortunate coincidence.

From where what could be pointers look to be (when you have a bunch of numbers counting upwards in smaller irregular amounts it is a good bet). 27A9C62F being the last one (when flipped) which is a bit before the end of the file but not by much (don't think it is relative but might be counting from the start of the file).
After that the bulk of the file has 16 bit runs starting with 8,9 and D which for my money means it is going to be shiftJIS
http://rikai.com/library/kanjitables/kanji_codes.sjis.shtml
Indeed with a bit of a tweak (lost everything before what looked like text, replaced 0000 with 0d0a that should serve as new line, opened in web browser and forced it to decode sjiftJIS) have a random sample. Chucking a few sections of that in machine translation gives output that looks like minor info on tourist destinations.
View attachment 302247

The other place I might look for sound could be in the overlays as there do appear to be a few here, though smaller in size. Largest in overlay 0003 has a bunch of ASCII towards the end dealing with sound options which actually would correspond to the repeated sounds I heard when I imported the voice data (I am not great at Japanese but there was a male and female and various enthusiasm levels that even I could detect).

Woah, thank you for looking into this! I appreciate it!
I really thought there were going to be sounds in the .spdat file considering its similarities to the .sdat file, but it didn't occur to me that the overlays could have sounds too (I'm very much a beginner when it comes to exploring and modifying ROM's).

Again, thanks!

 

[FAST6191]

It is rare for overlays to have sounds in them -- normally they are supposed to be for code to swap in and out (no need to have say the credits animation code always loaded if you only see the credits once every 50 boots and can afford to wait a few seconds, if not less, to load it in). Many devs will use them for little extras (small bits of text, possibly the odd level layout, maybe some stats tables, occasionally a graphic...), and a handful of games use them for essentially everything (though even those tend to leave out sound as a standalone thing).
I just noted that this game has a lot of overlays (it is rare you get more than about 20 with it usually being lower than that) so made it worth looking.

One thing that can be worth looking at -- utility.bin in dwc directories and swl.bin in various places. These tend to be download play clients and can be opened with the same tools you used to open/unpack the base rom. While they can be different they are usually cut down versions of the base game with everything that is there tending to be used for something (you have 4 megs which also includes RAM to run the thing once it is there so cut down is the order of the day).

 

[orii]

Ah, I see. Thank you for the extra information! Might look into them sometime soon.