mksfx

A command-line utility for modifying SFX files from Kula Quest.

Overview

Kula Quest uses a custom binary format known as .SFX for storing sound effects used in gameplay. There is only one of these files on a disc, and mksfx can extract its contents as WAV files, as well as build them from a configuration file.

Installation

The latest pre-compiled binaries are available for download on GitHub.

Usage

To extract an SFX file, use the extract command followed by its path and an output directory:

mksfx extract HIRO.SFX output

This will extract the sound files from the SFX file into a directory, and will also save a yaml configuration file in the directory:

sounds:
- filename: sound001.wav
  pitch_value: 6400
- filename: sound002.wav
  pitch_value: 3328
- filename: sound003.wav
  pitch_value: 3328
- filename: sound004.wav
  pitch_value: 6400
- filename: sound005.wav
  pitch_value: 8704
  ...

You can make any adjustments to the config file or audio files as you'd like, just be sure that you encode your custom WAV files properly and that you update the pitch value if needed (See the FFmpeg section for more information).

To create an SFX file, use the build command followed by the path to create it and the path to a config file:

mksfx build CUSTOM.SFX output/build.yaml

Important

Note: Make sure that your sound files are in the same directory as the config file.

If you would like to extract the sounds as raw SPU-ADPCM files, you can use the --format raw flag:

mksfx extract HIRO.SFX output --format raw

When importing a raw sound, be sure to set format: raw in the config file for that sound:

- filename: sound010.raw
  format: raw
  pitch_value: 7936

FFmpeg

To import a custom sound file, it must be prepared in the correct format. FFmpeg is a popular tool used for converting audio files, and can be downloaded here for your platform. Only the ffmpeg executable is needed for this process.

The following command will encode an audio file, in this case a coin.mp3 file as an example, into the required format for mksfx — a mono (1 audio channel) signed 16-bit PCM WAV file:

ffmpeg -i coin.mp3 -ac 1 -ar 22050 -sample_fmt s16 output_coin.wav

This command will also set the sample rate to 22050hz, so when importing this sound be sure to set the pitch value to 6040. Here is a table with some common sample rates and their associated pitch value:

Sample Rate	Pitch Value
11681hz	3328
22050hz	6040
23363hz	6400
33042hz	7936
39287hz	8704
44100hz	9216

In most cases, just using the example FFmpeg command above with a pitch value of 6040 will be sufficient for custom sounds.