This depends a lot on what made the .dat file in the first place.  The long and the short of it is that .dat is one of the extensions you use as the file extension when you don't want to give that info out for free.  The long and the short of it is that you'll find these anywhere from PS2 to windows system directories, and and there's honestly no telling without some serious detective work or knowledge of what program it's for.

I second that. .dat is one of those file extensions which is not associated with a particular file format. It could be anything from a simple text file to some standard format like a .zip, but is probably a proprietary file format written for this particular program, and which absolutely no other program ever written will be able to handle.

In most cases, even if you could extract the individual sound files, you still couldn't use them, because they're encrypted. For example, Super Egg Hunt's .dat files can be extracted using BGT if you know how, but the sounds still can't be used in any way because they're encrypted. In these cases, if the developer really cares about the security of the sounds, the key needed to decrypt the sounds will be a carefully-guarded secret, and won't be obvious even in a memory dump of the active game program.

Hello,
I wouldn't recommend trying to extract them. Sure, the sounds might be nice and all, but the developer who encripted them in the first place probably doesn't want you to get at them. One thing that annoys me though are when developers don't offer a two-way process for modding games. I could see an idea where the developer's main logo would always play at startup, but if the user wished they could mod some sounds. I like what pitermach did when he modded light cars, he kept lighttech's logo in then overlayed his afterwoods. I did a similar thing when I modded March Massacre, I made  version of Dragon App's logo but using some 8 bit stuff, a bit like mainstream game developers sometimes do. When they release a game, they might have characters or sounds in the logo that sound similar to the game. It doesn't happen any more very much, unfortunately, but it's always fun to hear when something like that happens.

Hi, I think that's sad the moddability and customizability of the games have decreased.

@Gellman, this would be a very hellish process because you would need to find a way to basically edit out all the outside interference (ambience, speech, enemies, etc). Don't get me wrong, this is quite stupid to encrypt things. But actually recording each sound is going to be a nightmare that you'd ever attempt. Its just too difficult. It has been done, though.

@Ethin

Yes that's of course right, and I personally have no interest in capturing game sounds.

I just wanted to correct the assumption that sound can be encrypted in a way that can prevent it being captured.

Of course it can, but only if it is kept a secret.

I think if it was even remotely possible the RIAA could have eliminated all music piracy.

hello, I've found a program that seems to be able to extract sounds from .dat files. however i have no idea how to do this the Manual is not translated very well. Its called Dragon unpacker. I was on to something a Moment ago, but when extracting the sounds.dat file, it put a lot of .669 files in the Folder where I wanted them to be, and i couldn't open them with any of my installed programs.

@ogomez92, I've been able to extract the sounds from your games quite easily. It was no big deal on my end; just a few lines of BGT code and it works. Of course, the damn thing still has to run-time error at the end...
If you want, I could put the code up here. It only works on unencrypted pack files, though! (I wish I could use a line of code like
pack.get_original_key();
andi t would work, but sadly, that is not to be.)

I certainly could do that. Would you want me to?

SP? What the hell is that?

Taken directly from the rules page:

As a content contributor to games, I personally appreciate encryption, as more often than not, the only reason people want unencrypted games is so that they can reappropriate sounds for which they've no rights to. Fair point that some people really do just want to mod, but more often than not, people generally just want to rip the sounds off to use elsewhere.

I'm surprised that the moderators have let such a topic stand for so long, especially since several posts have been expressly about cracking the encryption of audio games which, yes, is a form of hacking.

Having spent money on multiple effects I've made for games, I find it very offensive when people freely reappropriate them elsewhere. Fair enough if they ask me for permission first, but usually the audio gamer community seems not to understand boundaries and proper respect, being perfectly ok to rip, circulate, and abuse created content as they so please.

While others are crying for a way to break encryption, I'm hoping someone out there is coming up with stronger encryption and watermarking technology for audio games.

Kai

Defender, I think I defined myself as a content contributor, not an independent sound recordist, sound redistributor, audio engineer, or anything tht might suggest I've gone out to record my own sounds. Nor have I ever pretended to do so, as well you know. May I ask when the last time you went to a site and asked for recording time and set up yoru own equipment was?

The sounds I have and use are rightfully mine, gathered from years and years of purchasing and saving. I won't justify that to you, since I think it irrelevant, but just because I have sounds that others stole, does not make my ownership illegal.

Also, my point was that this topic was freely discussing the reverse engineering and hacking of games. I'm amused that you felt it necessary to attack me on a completely unrelated subject.

Kai