sndbanker

Bullfrog DAT sound bank creator

Packs a list of .wav sample files to Bullfrog sound bank .dat file.

About

sndbanker is a tool for creating SOUND.DAT file for Bullfrog Productions games. While the original iteration of the tool was for Dungeon Keeper, this particular branch is intended only for Syndicate Wars.

Using a properly formatted .txt file and source sound files, the tool can assemble a set of sound samples into a SOUND.DAT file usable by the game.

Place the tool in the root directory of the sound files from the syndwarsfx-sfx repository.

Usage

sndbanker.exe [options] (filename)

e.g. sndbanker.exe -o SOUND.DAT filelist_eng.txt

Options:

-o or --output [filename] - specify the filename to create, otherwise the description line in the .txt file will be used. It's recommended to set -o SOUND.DAT -v or --verbose - verbose output of what the tool is doing at each stage

Building

This tool should build and work on any CPU architecture.

General building instructions

To build Bullfrog Engine graphic formats converter, you will need the following:

• GNU Autotools
• GNU C++ compiler

Once you've made sure you have the above, proceed with the following steps:

1. go into the directory with sndbanker source release (containing res, src etc.)
2. do autoreconf -if to create build scripts from templates
3. do ./configure to make the build scripts find required toolchain and libraries
4. do make to compile the executable file

You should now have a working sndbanker executable file.

Build example - Ubuntu 22.04

Here are specific commands required to compile the executable on Ubuntu linux.

Install the dependencies:

sudo apt install gcc-multilib g++-multilib lib32z1
sudo apt install build-essential autoconf libtool make pkg-config

Now as our host is ready, we can start working on the actual sndbanker sources. Go to that folder, and generate build scripts from templates using autotools:

autoreconf -ivf

Next, proceed with the build steps; we will do that in a separate folder.

mkdir -p release; cd release
../configure
make V=1

The V=1 variable makes make print each command it executes, which makes diagnosing issues easier.

On success, you will have the executable.

Finally, you can copy the files to some installation folder, ie. pkg:

make V=1 DESTDIR=$PWD/pkg install

Done

This concludes the document. Remember that with most console tools you can use --help.