[RELEASE][Shenmue II HD] Japanese audio restored (redreamcasted)

AltGr

AltGr

Joined
Oct 29, 2018
Link: https://www.nexusmods.com/shenmue2/mods/9

I've added the audio files from the Dreamcast discs converted to WAV (a la Shenmue Audio Restoration Project) to the "redreamcasted" mod I was working on. Besides the restored audio quality it also brings:
  • Uncensored voice tracks: d3t cut and removed some voice tracks, like a bookie introducing Ryo as a "kamikaze boy" but mainly what some npcs think about Yuan.
  • ~70 additional (missing) voice tracks. If you have come across some line with only subtitles and no audio that's probably one of them.
  • The English subtitles from the Dreamcast PAL release, except Yuan remains as "he/him".
  • Dreamcast voice timings (and lipsync): no more awkward pauses during conversations with npcs.
  • Dreamcast dialogue (same voice tracks being used). Though I don't think it differs much from the Xbox.
  • A notebook font that isn't downright terrible at least. With arrows and stars (fortune tellers symbol) as in the Dreamcast version. The loading screen and moves list font is also a little bit different.
To install it just extract the "redreamcasted" folder into steamapps/common/SMLaunch/sm2/archives/dx11/data.
 
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AltGr said:
Link: https://www.nexusmods.com/shenmue2/mods/9

I've added the audio files from the Dreamcast discs converted to WAV (a la Shenmue Audio Restoration Project) to the "redreamcasted" mod I was working on. Besides the restored audio quality it also brings:
  • Uncensored voice tracks: d3t cut and removed some voice tracks, like a bookie introducing Ryo as a "kamikaze boy" but mainly what some npcs think about Yuan.
  • ~70 additional (missing) voice tracks. If you have come across some line with only subtitles and no audio that's probably one of them.
  • The English subtitles from the Dreamcast PAL release, except Yuan remains as "he/him".
  • Dreamcast voice timings (and lipsync): no more awkward pauses during conversations with npcs.
  • Dreamcast dialogue (same voice tracks being used). Though I don't think it differs much from the Xbox.
  • A notebook font that isn't downright terrible at least. With arrows and stars (fortune tellers symbol) as in the Dreamcast version. The loading screen and moves list font is also a little bit different.
To install it just extract the "redreamcasted" folder into steamapps/common/SMLaunch/sm2/archives/dx11/data.
Click to expand...

Amazing work thank you!
 
Dewey said:
Safe to assume you used this, given you said this was done "a la SARP" and without it, would either have to reduplicate efforts/write your own scripts, or spend way too much time renaming files yourself?

github.com

GitHub - DaviDokuro/SARP-Toolset: Shenmue DC audio to PC tools

Shenmue DC audio to PC tools. Contribute to DaviDokuro/SARP-Toolset development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com github.com
Click to expand...
I wrote "a la SARP" to avoid writing further explanations since everyone here probably knows your mod and since it has the same effect, nothing more. If I would have followed that documentation or used those scripts I would have talked to you first and/or gived you credit. I simply used this commands:
Bash: 
$ for file in [!B]*.AFS; do list=${file##*/}; mono ~/AFSPacker.exe -e $file audio0X/out/ audio0X/lists/$list; done

$ for file in audio0X/out/*.[as]*; do vgmstream_cli $file; done

$ for file in audio0X/out/*.wav; do output=${file%.wav}; mv $file $output; done

$ for file in audio0X/lists/*.AFS; do output=${file##*/}; mono ~/AFSPacker.exe -c audio0X/out/ audio0X/afswav/$output $file; done

There's nothing extraordinary or time consuming there: unpack, convert, replace and pack. And it's the exact same basic for loop that I had used to go through the Dremcast subtitles files and the pks inside humans.afs before. And as far as I know, there's no need to rename anything else (other than simply removing the .wav extension so AFSPacker packs the converted files) because I copied the idx of the FREE0X.afs too and because I had already changed the subtitles tables inside the humans.afs from the English ones to the Japanese ones. And so the game uses the Dreamcast dialogue and there's no need to follow or mimic every change dt3 did, rather I wanted precisely to undo what they did because it's all a very ugly hack:
1) Using the Japanese voice tracks with the English subtitles tables gives you bad voice timings.
2) They messed around with some afs/idx to add some xbox only track or something and caused bad lip sync.
3) They censured some tracks.
4) Their FREE0X.afs are missing tracks. They grabbed the Japanese audio solely from the Japanese release and that one has less voice tracks than the PAL release or the Xbox release. And since they are using the Xbox subtitles tables you get characters moving their mouths but not saying anything.

Thus, my initial intention was not even of doing the audio restoration but to fix that stuff. I just noticed after doing the DC subtitles that the "kamikaze boy" line did not match at all with what was being said, so I compared the 0008.afs and noted that they had censured the thing (In English too I think). So I replaced it and it worked, then I noticed that that was fixing the bad lip sync of the Come Over guy too and so I ended up just doing all the afs.
 
This is awesome! 😍
Dude, you rock! Thank you so much for this, that new audio quality is outstanding! 😮

I hated the audio quality on this re-release, I had Dewey's awesome mod but I believe he's still working on the Shenmue II Japanese audio so this is a God send for this playthrough.

I have a question though, does this mod contain the European-Japanese dub with a Female voice actor for Yuan or the Japanese dub with a Male voice actor for Yuan?
 
Billy Sastard said:
This is awesome! 😍
Dude, you rock! Thank you so much for this, that new audio quality is outstanding! 😮

I hated the audio quality on this re-release, I had Dewey's awesome mod but I believe he's still working on the Shenmue II Japanese audio so this is a God send for this playthrough.

I have a question though, does this mod contain the European-Japanese dub with a Female voice actor for Yuan or the Japanese dub with a Male voice actor for Yuan?
Click to expand...
Male voice. I guess it wouldn't be too complicated to also add the audios with the female voice and the corresponding subtitles (they are already there, just not showing up), not sure if anyone is interested in that though.
 
AltGr said:
Male voice. I guess it wouldn't be too complicated to also add the audios with the female voice and the corresponding subtitles (they are already there, just not showing up), not sure if anyone is interested in that though.
Click to expand...
Nice! I definitely do prefer Yu Suzuki's original vision with using the Male voice actor. I just wish SEGA didn't force censorship onto this game to begin with. A lot of things still remain censored unfortunately.

I made a post about the censorship here if you're interested in learning more:
 
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AltGr said:
Male voice. I guess it wouldn't be too complicated to also add the audios with the female voice and the corresponding subtitles (they are already there, just not showing up), not sure if anyone is interested in that though.
Click to expand...
I wouldn't mean to have the female voice for one single reason: Nostalgia. That was the voice that I remember from playing this game back when I was a kid, and probably I am not the only one.

Also, Yuan's voice was not the only change they made on the PAL Japanese voice. The last dialogue of the cassette in Kowloon was totally changed, in Japanese, it was a conversation that implies something about sex while the PAL version used the voice of Shenmue 1 character Gui Zhang.

In this regard, I am more of the opinion that the best option is to have ALL options, English voices, NTSCJ Japanese voices, PAL Japanese voices, I wouldn't mind replaying the HD version multiple times with the 3 different versions.
 
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Does this work with the Dreamcast Music Replacement mod? It seems to work well at the beginning but I want to make sure there isn't any unintended side affects, as I know some music was changed in this mod. The mod is incredible and great work for bringing the re-release closer to the original!
 
mrazizpizza said:
Does this work with the Dreamcast Music Replacement mod? It seems to work well at the beginning but I want to make sure there isn't any unintended side affects, as I know some music was changed in this mod. The mod is incredible and great work for bringing the re-release closer to the original!
Click to expand...
Thanks! Yes, they'll work together. That mod replaces .SND files and this one .xWMA files.
 
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