Wedge's excellent
Wing Commander site provides a lot of assistance to those looking to extract audio from
WC4. Wedge's WC4 TREIndex is especially useful.
I tried using HCL's
TREMan to extract the audio from the WC4 TREs, but I wasn't able to make much progress, although it may work better with WC3. However, I did have more luck with the WC4 extraction with Game Audio Player 1.32.
GAME AUDIO PLAYER
Game Audio Player (GAP) 1.32 is a freeware utility developed by ANX Software 1999-2001. GAP allows the playback and extraction of audio files embedded in a variety of PC games, including WC4 -- I tried extracting WC3 TREs with GAP, but it wasn't able to detect any audio when scanning the TREs -- perhaps using TREMan is more applicable here?
GAP Download
GAP (696KB) can be downloaded
here, although the link is a bit flaky. I've mirrored it
here.
GAP Installation
Extract the contents of the zip file to a directory of your choice (e.g. C:\Program Files\GAP 1.32 or similar) and create a shortcut to the program executable (GAP.exe) on your desktop or in your Start menu as applicable.
Using GAP to Extract WC4 Audio
Firstly, I would recommend copying all of the WC4 TRE files from the CDs/DVD to the hard drive for quicker scanning and easier editing and extraction.
1. Run the GAP shortcut. GAP will launch as pictured below:
2. Before opening the playlist, I would recommend opening the
Options menu and under the
Saving tab, make sure that the
Multi-Converting WAV Format is set to
PCM if you want to save in lossless WAV format for later editing.
3. Click the red playlist button to open the
Playlist screen as pictured below:
4. Click the
File Menu and then select
Scan Directory. Navigate to the directory where you copied the WC4 TREs and select them as pictured below:
5. GAP will scan through the TREs and populate the playlist with the audio files it detects.
6. GAP doesn't appear to be able to detect the individual audio file names, so it lists every file as
<Unknown>. Files can be individually named by clicking on the
<Unknown> file title and typing a new descriptor that identifies the audio, such as
Pilot Eject.
7. Double-clicking any file will result in playback of the file. Alternatively, select any file and click the
Play button. If GAP is unable to playback the file, the following dialog box will pop up:
I would say that GAP is able to playback about 60%-70% of the WC4 files that it detects during scanning. Keep cycling through the files in order until you find the next file that can be played back successfully.
7. Once you've named and selected the files you want to extract, click the
File menu and then select
Save As. The following
Save As dialog box occurs -- specify the directory where you want to save the files and click
OK. This should save the files to your preferred directory in easy-to-edit (with the excellent and free,
Audacity, for example) PCM WAV format.
I would recommend saving the playlist as you amend and update the audio file names (
File -->
Save List) to retain the amended file names, as closing down GAP and then rescanning the TREs would require renaming all of the files again if the playlist wasn't saved -- much easier to just load the playlist that's been built up.
Hope this helps.
Cheers,
Bryn