Extract Music?

[luciferin]

I'm definetely up to waiting, but I'm not going to pay for music that I have already paid for.

Arg.  I see why you get so frustrated Alec.  I'm going now.

For the record, if you put it out I at least will buy it, for whatever that knowledge is worth to you.

[Alec]

Again, if someone made an app that could extract stuff from data.000, I'd be cool with that.

[Danger Mouse]

It would help if we knew how it was packed to a .000 and I wouldn't have tried this without permission anyways.

[Alec]

I don't think anyone ever said it'd be particularly easy.

[Danger Mouse]

I'm not into torrents for a couple of reasons:

1. Most torrents are for illegal material.

2. So many people I know that do use them end up with some new virus or trojan that has been rediculously difficult to remove.

I'd much rather wait for a release from blit-blot, or get permission to extract them myself for personal use only.

[luciferin]

Alec, not sure if you are willing to answer this, but is their any sort of compression/encryption on data.000?  You don't have to tell me what it is of course, just if it exists before I spend time trying to figure something out and bang my head against the wall in frustration.

[Alec]

Yeah, I think it has encryption on it? I can double check next time I'm in windows. So it might be brutal.

[billyea]

I see a zlib library so there's probably gzip compression on it too.
Just a guess.

[DragonXVI]

Yep, good ol' ZLib Compression, you'll see it on a few games

http://www.zlib.net/

What you'd probably have to do is write a program that uses the zlib.library to extract all the files from data.000
I suspect there may be some out there to be honest, but I've not used zlib before so I'm not sure if there's special encryption or what not involved...

Also, somebody asked what Alec uses for making the music in the game.  If I'm not mistaken it's  FL Studio (http://www.flstudio.com/) - I'd recognise FL Slayer anywhere...

Reguards the Soundtrack: While I'd love a nice little booklet with a nice little CD and all that, I wouldn't be heartbroken if all I got were mp3s/oggs since at the end of the day that's what I'll rip'em too anyway.  You *could* sell 'em this is true (via iTunes or whathaveyou), or just upload 'em and people could pick and choose - It's pretty much up to the guy who created them, since you're the one with the copyright

[megablake]

I wouldn't worry about the soundtrack torrents out there.  People who download it will be either folks who never intended to buy it, or folks who couldn't wait and don't have the technical expertise to even look at a game data file.  The second category will no doubt go out of there way get the soundtrack in a format that supports the artists.

Personally, I vouch for a free download of the soundtrack, with the paid version containing extras (tabs & notation, early versions of the songs, maybe some separated sound files of Jenna, and a remix or two).  Why do I suggest this?  Only because I really want OverClocked Remix to get their hands on the soundtrack so they could put together an Aquaria-themed remix album (like they've done before for a number of other game soundtracks).

The more people hear this amazing game music, the more people will follow the links back and buy the game.  Then those people are happy ('cause they played Aquaria and are a better person for it), the creators are happy ('cause they can get mad bling), and I'm happy ('cause someone did a hard metal version of the Abyss theme.  Hey, I can dream.)

That said, the Abyss theme is currently set to my alarm clock.  I love to let it loop.

[Glamador]

Hmm...I suppose if I listened to music I would take the time to extract these.  But I've never really understood the purpose of soundtracks.  I mean, you've already purchased the game, and all the sounds are in there.  The way I see it, I've already purchased the songs, I don't need to pay for a formalized listing of them.

[tulkas]

Yep, good ol' ZLib Compression, you'll see it on a few games

http://www.zlib.net/

What you'd probably have to do is write a program that uses the zlib.library to extract all the files from data.000
I suspect there may be some out there to be honest, but I've not used zlib before so I'm not sure if there's special encryption or what not involved...

I think that the zlib compression is used for save game files and their screenshots.

I have written a small app that attempted to open the data file using the zlib library.  It didn't work with the data file, I even tried to open the data file at different offsets (also without the stream header.)

I also ran some statistics on the data file, it seems that the data file is at least deliberately randomized (if not encrypted.)  The file contains almost equal counts of all characters in the ascii set (0.02% maximum difference.)  That does not happen even when compression is used (.bz2 compression has maximum difference around 0.15%, zip has 0.3% and an average mp3 file has 0.5% for comparable file sizes.)

I also figured out some information about the structure of the data file.  The "random" content starts at byte 17.  The first 16 bytes of the data file is the header.  The first 4 bytes of the header hold the file size, the further 12 bytes seem static between different data files.

Hope this information helps someone.   

Also, I want to say that this game is one of the best games that I've ever played. 

[ryos]

Hey Alec,

Here are links to two services for distribution of self-produced music, one for iTunes and the other from Amazon. I am not a musician, but these both look like excellent services.

TuneCore (for iTunes)
Amazon CreateSpace

TuneCore will get your music on iTunes for what looks to me like a nominal fee. Amazon CreateSpace will manufacture physical CDs (and DVDs and books and who knows what else) for you whenever people buy them, and it also looks like you can get your music on the Amazon MP3 store.

You could also pay for professional duplication, but that seems less attractive to me for three reasons:
1) You incur an out-of-pocket expense of a few thousand dollars (depending of course on the size of your run),
2) You have to mess with warehousing (a bunch of boxes in your residence), order fulfillment, and customer support - what a mess!
3) Whenever you run out of stock, you need to order more prints.

Finally, you could just sell MP3 files direct on your web site. Peter Breinholt does this, and as a customer I think it's great and wish him well. You would get more money from these sales since Amazon/Apple wouldn't be taking their cut. You may or may not get as many sales this way, but it's probably worth doing just because you'd get more money from each sale.

Actually, you could do all three of those. Why not, eh?

Anyway, I know you didn't actually ask for this, but you did kind of beg the question. May you find these links useful in your quest to produce a soundtrack, which I'm probably going to buy (but not until after I beat the game, and I'm waiting for the Mac version. So, uh, take your time on releasing the soundtrack ).

[bungiefan]

2. So many people I know that do use them end up with some new virus or trojan that has been rediculously difficult to remove.

That's why you use torrents linked to a forum. That way there's feedback on the torrent, and if there is a virus in the files, it will be reported on the forum topic you download the torrent from, and the site admins will remove the torrent from the site and tracker. You also run a scan on the files as soon as they're assembled before you execute them, if you actually chance it being one of the first people to download a torrent. There's plenty of benefits to using the protocol for file distribution, and linking to forums for feedback and comments keeps the downsides to a minimum.

[Kdansky]

The mentioned torrent is probably distributed by someone affiliated with Aquaria, as it contains low quality songs and most of them end in the middle. Not so useful.