I'm also wondered about these things.
could anyone help?

OK, but they should at least have the "learn game sounds" option in their game. Sometimes because i don't know what certain sounds mean, i lost the game.
So, in short, there's no way to open those sounds? Thanks.

Best regards,
Kenzon

Ah thank you for your clarify.

Hmm

Was it from a game written with BGT? Just wondering.

Yeah, I think some are hidden archive files that only certain programmes can read. Like the game Phiip made multi-player Tic-tac-Toe which uses DECtalk has a sounds.dat format, but I don't know what he used to programme it. The thing is that when I changed it to a dot zip it worked and I could hear all of the files inside.

Nope, it didn't work for me though. World of war also has a sounds.dat file. I copied it somewhere, changed .dat to .zip and tried extracting it with winrar but no luck. What program did you use, green?

Yeah i know, and i even encountered sound files that are disguysed as other files that is unknown to windows but still can be opened (Such files can be found if you have MSN messenger on windows, they're those .dtd or something files). There are also others that didn't have file extentions but still can be opened. But .dat files can't, i believe.

Guys. I know BGT, and I know how to pack .dat files in it. You can never, never, and I say never, extract them from a BGT game.
Concerning PB games Tic tac toe, Philip did a .zip file and changed it to a .dat, and therefore it works, but this is a single case of a game programmed in 2005 before BGT was out.

Yeah, you're welcome.

Let's clear some stuff up, shall we?

In the case of dat files, or really all files, forget all about file extensions.  They're really just conveniences to the user.  As has already been stated here, dat files in particular can be just about anything.  In the case of games, they're typically sounds, usually encrypted.  But dat files can be other things, too.  In the case of Judgment Day, for example, a dat extension is used to denote a file that, we believe, contains trophy information.  In some installers, dat files are used for temporary files.  Sometimes they're used for licensing information.  The point is that dat is very ambiguous and can be just about whatever the hell a programmer wants.

As has already been seen, sometimes you can rename the dat to zip, or some other archive format, and extract it.  Most of the time this is impossible, and that's because of encryption.  Most developers these days, even in the mainstream world, encrypt just about everything, lock it all down, to prevent modding, stealing of sounds/content, etc.

In short, you can't just open them up and expect anything intelligible – that's the whole point of encryption.  A hex editor or memory tool might get you the decryption key from the executable, but this is highly unlikely.

You can. But make sure it's not encrypted. A developper generally doesn't do .dat files if they're not encrypted. And if he encrypted them in a .dat format, that means a protection for his sounds, because he may have paid for them.
Consider the hard work Philip put in creating Perilous Hearts concept demo or in q9: Can you imagin that those sounds are around? Of course no, because he bought the sound kit library for 4000 dollars, and noone in this Earth will pass around those sounds if he bought them by himself. For example, you've bought some high quality sound effects: What don't you do to protect them?
I know you'll say that you want to extract sounds here for personnal enjoyment: I like doing that too, but we can't. The game that has its sounds extracted more recently is AAC.
And another reason of encrypting sounds is to not spoil the game.