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[zinkoxyde]

I don't claim to know what I am talking about, but I have a vauge idea.  Enough to be dangerous Anyways, I was kinda thinking about BIOS hacking lately, after the whole blue flubber thing.  It wasn't the blue flubber that sparked my imagination, it was the complex video that was posted.  I read somewhere that the xbox has no drivers loaded at that point in the boot process, so all data is poked directly to hardware.  It kinda stood to reason that the best format would be RAW for the textures and the sound.  In the complex video, the stage rotates and the logo stays in line with the camera, so I am guessing that the flubber is only a 2d texture on a plain.  I also asume that we are just changing the lighting filters in D3d when tweaking the bios to get blue flubbers.  This said, I think it would be more then reasonable to suppose that the audio and texture are in raw format along side with the MS logo in XBE files.  I loaded up an unpacked bios in cool edit, and played it through as an 8bit unsigned, 8 khz, mono RAW file. Most of it is the garbage that you would expect to hear, but about halfway through there is a steady tone, then what sounds like the opening sequence audio.  I may very well be wrong.  I've just been looking at the raw hex, looking for patterns.  Crazy?  Yes!  It be neat to have a custom logo and music play when starting the box.

[Xbox-Savage]

 got any more info?

[zinkoxyde]

Well, this is a copy of what the "audio" looks like in Cool Edit
Image

and this is what it sounds like (obviously too fast)
Audio

Looks to be between 714D8h and 72F05h

IMHO, that looks too perfect not to be audio.  Its exactly 0db peak-to-peak.  The rest is random garbage.

Any bites at helping me with this?  

I might just try to change some hex values where I think the audio is, and see if I can corrupt the sound.  Then I'll know I am on the right track.

UPDATE:  Damn, I'm useless!  I tried to repack the bios and toss it on my xbox.  Nothing seems to be different?  Perhapse I am not doing something right, but I would have at least expected that I would have a corrupt BIOS.    

[82ross]

Im pretty sure the flubber/complex isnt 2D. Its just a seperate entity from the rest of the scene so seems to be unaffected by camera changes.

If you mess about with the radius of the flubber, make it larger you will see that the oscillations can move beyond the camera position and back again while its "flubbering". If it was 2d it couldnt behave in this way.

I think the way light behaves with it aswell takes it beyond 2d.




About packing the bios alls you need todo is click pack in XBtool and select the xboxkrnl.img that you altered and saved. Then input a new name. Flash it and run it

[zinkoxyde]

QUOTE (82ross @ Apr 8 2004, 04:08 PM)

Im pretty sure the flubber/complex isnt 2D. Its just a seperate entity from the rest of the scene so seems to be unaffected by camera changes.

Yeah, that was a pretty stupid thought now that I reflect on it.  

I was running through the unassembled code, I guess if it were easy, it would be in XBtool already

The bios must be repacking okay, because, like I said, it runs.  I must be going about this wrong.

[82ross]

Ive been looking at the xboxkrnl.img in sonic foundry (only sound editor ive got) and its pretty difficult to get a decent sound out of it when you dont know what your doing.

What your doing though is a very good idea. I hope you stick with it and come up with something.


Do you think the audio is one long piece or a group of smaller samples which are played in a particualar order with repeated parts and overlaps? (Im not to good with propper audio editing terms so bear with me lol)

[zinkoxyde]

At first I thought that it was all in one long clip, but now I am wondering if it is layered as you suggest.  That was the thought I had when I was trying to come up with a way to keep the size down, but let the audio be Hi-fi.

[82ross]

Heres an example of why i thought it could be seperated:

http://www.evertonfc....com/SP0000.WAV

This should sound familiar to most people. But expanding the clip a second or two before and after this you get less clear stuff/crap.


http://www.evertonfc....com/SP0001.WAV


I think the first clip is played multiple times in the flubber audio. Anyone got a recording of the complete thing?

[zinkoxyde]

Heya folks!  Good news,  As 82ross and I thought, the sounds are layered.  I sucessfuly edited the sound that is played in the opening without even the use of a hex editor.  I'll post sounds and methods when I get things figured out.  In the mean time, keep working on it.  I might miss something  


Here is the semi finished product in MP3 format:
Cow Moo Bios Start  
I just replaced the rushing sound as heard above with the cow clip in the AIM95 directory.  Sounds like the Xbox is doing realtime deforms of the clip.  Still trying to figure out how to change the rest and maybe change the order of clips.

[DJLotus]

this is pretty cool. its interesting to see that somebody is trying to no modify the startup sound. i hope you figure out how to do it. btw i like the cow startup. its pretty funny.

[zinkoxyde]

I am going to try to deASM the kernal.  I am pretty sure that if I put a JMP right at the beginning of the clip and a RTN at the end that I can redirect the player to a clip to another memory location.  This will probibly mean a 512k BIOS though as the original BIOS uses a series of clips overlapping to keep the size down.  Not sure I want to monkey with that.  I am pretty surprised that more people aren't interested in doing this stuff.  After seeing how easy it was to mod the sound, I am going to go after the flubber itself next.  Its probibly easy to hack, just no ones bothered to do it for themselves yet.

[Pillzburydoofus]

QUOTE (zinkoxyde @ Apr 9 2004, 06:37 PM)

I am going to try to deASM the kernal.  I am pretty sure that if I put a JMP right at the beginning of the clip and a RTN at the end that I can redirect the player to a clip to another memory location.  This will probibly mean a 512k BIOS though as the original BIOS uses a series of clips overlapping to keep the size down.  Not sure I want to monkey with that.  I am pretty surprised that more people aren't interested in doing this stuff.  After seeing how easy it was to mod the sound, I am going to go after the flubber itself next.  Its probibly easy to hack, just no ones bothered to do it for themselves yet.

Correction.  Complex successfully modified the flubber to spell out the word "Complex" but work on that was discontinued and no information was released.

[Pillzburydoofus]

QUOTE (zinkoxyde @ Apr 9 2004, 06:37 PM)

I am going to try to deASM the kernal.  I am pretty sure that if I put a JMP right at the beginning of the clip and a RTN at the end that I can redirect the player to a clip to another memory location.  This will probibly mean a 512k BIOS though as the original BIOS uses a series of clips overlapping to keep the size down.  Not sure I want to monkey with that.  I am pretty surprised that more people aren't interested in doing this stuff.  After seeing how easy it was to mod the sound, I am going to go after the flubber itself next.  Its probibly easy to hack, just no ones bothered to do it for themselves yet.

Correction:  Complex sucessfully modded the bios flubber to spell out the word "Complex"  but quickly discontinued this project and never released any information on it.  I don't remember the links, but somewhere in this forum if you search, you can find links to startup pictures with the Complex Flubber mod.

[BloodyMary]

QUOTE (Pillzburydoofus @ Apr 9 2004, 02:41 PM)

Correction:  Complex sucessfully modded the bios flubber to spell out the word "Complex"  but quickly discontinued this project and never released any information on it.  I don't remember the links, but somewhere in this forum if you search, you can find links to startup pictures with the Complex Flubber mod.

You know.. groups not sharing information with others that are working on devoloping things for the xbox-scene is really silly...

zinkoxyde - Great work on the sound mod

82ross - please keep us updated in these forums... if things progress enough I might be interested in jumping in the way back machine and grabing some of my long lost assembly language programming skills and bringing to try some modding of my own...

[82ross]

QUOTE (zinkoxyde @ Apr 9 2004, 03:31 AM)

Heya folks!  Good news,  As 82ross and I thought, the sounds are layered.  I sucessfuly edited the sound that is played in the opening without even the use of a hex editor.  I'll post sounds and methods when I get things figured out.  In the mean time, keep working on it.  I might miss something   Here is the semi finished product in MP3 format: Cow Moo Bios Start   I just replaced the rushing sound as heard above with the cow clip in the AIM95 directory.  Sounds like the Xbox is doing realtime deforms of the clip.  Still trying to figure out how to change the rest and maybe change the order of clips.

Thats fkin funny mate

Im going to compare a few different bios in a minute see if the audio is in the same position in each. Maybe note down some offsets.