ROM Hack Replacing .strm files problem (white screen of death while running game)

[Dexiaz]

Hello.

I've decided to do some hacks with "Resident Evil Deadly Silence" videogame.
First, I thought about the "simple" stream music replacing, but I've got problems almost from the start.

I've read a ton of tutorials and forum threads, and I've managed to replace .strm files inside .sdat archive...but I've got a problem. The game just simply doesn't run anymore. I'm getting only white screen of nothing.

The "original" stream file from .sdat have next parameters: "22 767 Hz; 16 Bit; Mono, Uncompressed"
I've created the same length file, also 22 767 Hz; 16 Bit; Mono, Uncompressed.

After my first fail I've reduced Hz to 22 050 (kinda standart on saving in audio programs), but got the same white screen.

I suppose the game still don't like the difference in sizes, but I don't know what to do exactly. Some hex modding? But what exactly I should "hex"?

I didn't find anything similar to my problem, so I decided to ask here.
Thanks for replies in advance and sorry for bad eng.

 

[FAST6191]

White screen could be anything, though if you failed to rebuild the SDAT and that was the only thing changed then that is a good bet.

What did you use to edit the SDAT and create files for it? While STRM uses PCM or ADPCM audio it does have some stuff around it and not many programs will handle things. I don't know what we are suggesting these days -- I usually just built things up from a raw export and inserted those.

Yeah size changes get fun if you are doing things manually, and many tools that claim to edit SDAT get a bit unstable and corrupt outputs when you try inserting things of different file sizes. Tinke is a good start though.

If you do have to go manually I like to add space to the end of the SDAT and put things there instead. You will have to change a few things ranging from the overall file size to the location of the sections and sizes of new files but it can be done by hand. I always liked http://kiwi.ds.googlepages.com/sdat.htmlas a description of SDAT but there are others.

Changing frequency won't do much -- if it worked it would just be a bit slower than what it should be.

 

[Dexiaz]

Well, later I've discovered by myself that I've failed to rebuild the SDAT. For testing purposes I've extracted and repacked it without real edits. And got white screen too (with my previous method).

I didn't hex those files manually, just because there are tools existing. Just because I don't believe that people who creates stuff can do it useless at all.

Anyway, the every hacking forum says there are no tools for making "wav to strm" at all, except NitroStudio. So I've tried that. And NitroStudio can make a working (inside this tool) .strm file from a new .wav file. And also can insert it inside the SDAT archive.

I've also tried to insert new .strm file inside SDAT via dslazy and Nitro Explorer (#2 and #3 versions).

Only dslazy can rebuild the original SDAT and I can run the game, BUT I'm talking about SDAT without real changes. With my new track created via NitroStudio game "crashes" even with dslazy.

Well, I'm not prepared to work with hex editor, because the SDAT info you've provided I've already downloaded before. And it doesn't really help me just because I'm not so pro to understand those parameters.

But also my main target is changing textures/images, but they are packed in "bin" archives which also can't be extracted. Of course there are a possibility to extract and reinsert it manually but I can't know the headers of those files inside. I saw some "BTX" pictures but those archives must contain much more file types.

So I just looked at all of this and concluded that this is tough for me.

Anyway, thanks for reply.