Extracting sounds/music from .dat?

I've been looking for a program to extract music and sounds from the .dat file. Like skill sounds, fighting sounds and what not. Does anyone have a good program to do this? Thnx in advance

Such a program'd be nice. Even at maximum volume, unless I turn other sounds down to half volume or lower, the music is virtually impossible to hear most times, especially during battle. Being able to extract them and playing through my regular media player would mean I'd finally get a chance to actually listen to the music while playing, even if it doesn't match the current area....

There was a tool, GWunpacker, that could do this, only I can't seem to find it anywhere. See the Xentax wiki article for a lot of technical detail and a download link that appears to be dead :/

I had the tool on my computer before, and it came with its own source code that didn't look like it was setting up a keylogger or anything. I modified the code a bit to make it only extract files ending in '.mp3', too. Now if I could just find it.

That would be GW_Unpacker. still hidden away at xentax.com

As with all unofficial stuff, download at your own risk.

I'd hate to res and old thread.

I have googled all over and looked all over xentax for a way to use that unpacker. And I still can't. Anyone know?

Heh, when I posted the above note, I actually had a look at GW_unpacker and thought "nah, too complicated for me."

I know...Isn't It nice that the original guy left some instructions in a readme.txt on how to use it? He notes it uses some runline commands. Well? I don't understand why he didn't devulge on the runline commands because now people who wanna do this without any knowledge of how this program works, can't, because he didn't post a simple runline command to use with it.

Ah..I'll just chill off for a while till someone comes up with something better.

There has to be at least 300,000-500,000 active GW players and probably just another good number who quit or just don't play any more, who were interested on that mysterious gw.dat file.

One of those thousands has got to be working on something...Seriously. I know nothing about programming, more of a hardware/networking guy...otherwise I'd make one.

Well, that's true - GW Unpacker is a very crude software, but it works and it have a basic documentation in it too (which is crude too, but you can work out how to use the tool) .

First of all, some virus scanners find GWUnpacker.exe as a virus, so before downloading the archive and for the time of using it, disable your antivirus software real-time checking (you can keep Firewall, UAC and other system security tools/functions active). In case you are wondering if it's a virus, there is a source code attached to an archive so you can browse it by yourself and the author, BoyC is a kinda-known demoscene person, so expect assembler-like that use functions antiviruses seems as system-intrusive.


Enough babbling. To use the program you have to move your gw.dat file to a path without any space in it. Preferrably move your gw.dat and GWUnpacker.exe files to a short path like C:\gw temporaryle.
Next open cmd.exe (in Vista/Win7 use "run as administrator" option from right-click menu on cmd shortcut).

Now setup the path your files will be extracted to. For example to extract your files to C:\gw\ type:
Files will be extracted to folder c:\gw\GWDat, grouped by a type.

Next type in your cmd window: y:\our\location\to\GWUnpacker.exe y:\our\location\to\gw.dat x firstFileNumber lastFileNumber

Example, assuming both GWUnpacker.exe and gw.dat are in the C:\gw\ directory:
I haven't figured how many files does my gw.dat have, so I just typed 0 999999 in my console to extract all files and guess what? It worked . That will extract all files to the directory from cmd is run (a path before the flashing _ (underline) sign.

[color=red]WARNING! the extraction of all files will take quite a long time and will use ~5GB of disk space![/color]

In case you forgot to find your files, look for it in your system directory (keep in mind it's SysWOW64 on the 64bit systems!)

The program should works on every NT-based Windows OS, because since it worked on my x64 Windows 7, then Vista and XP should be even more compatible.


Sorry that my "guide" is a bit messy, but I was writing it quite fast plus English is not my native language . Anyway, hope it'll work for you, like it worked for me.

PS. To view the help just run the program without parameteres: e.g. PPS. To convert images from ATEX to PNG you need the second program from archive (I haven't used it yet)

Very good info.

I wonder if this will allow access to the two songs in GW that were never part of DirectSong. One is the xmas in lions arch music, and there is another I heard once in a zone and can not find anywhere since.

(I own all DirectSong packs, including the Collector's Editions, as well as Europe's "Special" edition).

About 144 Songs (mp3) compressed at 128kbps, 22 songs (mp3) compressed at 96kbps.

And to answer your question, the wintersday one is in there. A personal favorite.

Is buying the music from direct song more worth it? Yes. Unless you would like to rename 166 songs by hand that in the end have terrible compression.

HYE
I whant Download It
But my NOD32 Sey : Worning Virus
Give Link For GW_Unpacker.zip PLZ !!!!!!!!!
^^

Maybe a false-positive on NOD32? My AV has no problem with it (MS Security Essentials/Spybot S&D).

Happy birthday, thread

My understanding was that whoever compiled it had slipped something in there and that you needed to compile it yourself.

Wonder if anyone is planning on doing the same with the gw2.dat?

Probably working on it as we speak.

Happy birthday, thread!

Lol...

I hope so though, I'm betting like the first game that not everything will be on the soundtrack CD that comes with the CE. I wonder if they'll release a separate soundtrack after the game is out with the complete works Soule wants on the disc.. otherwise like the first game there might be 3-5 good pieces that weren't on the cd that you can only hear in game or rip/extract.

A sidenote for those with concerns about it being potentially malicious. You can submit the file to VirusTotal and have it checked with numerous anti-virus and anti-malware engines.

There is a GW2 .dat extractor which I can PM you the link too if you like?

Back on topic: I used to have a GUI based GW1 .dat extractor which I can dig up if you would prefer? It's a lot easier than the command line one and it lets you preview everything before you extract it.