WWISER

A Wwise .bnk parser, to assist in handling audio from games using the Wwise engine.

Simply open wwiser without arguments to start the GUI. From there you can load and view banks, dump contents or make TXTP (used to simulate audio). It reads and shows all .bnk chunks, including HIRC (audio scripting) data, and properly identifies all fields. wwiser can't modify banks.

MINI GUIDE

How to play audio simulating the Wwise engine:

• open wwiser.pyz
• press Load dirs... and select a base folder with .bnk and .wem inside
  • if game has SoundbanksInfo.xml, Wwise_IDs.h, (bankname).txt or similar files you are set, otherwise you may want to generate a name list and put it as wwnames.txt in the base folder
• press Generate TXTP to make .txtp
  • this will make files that simulate how Wwise plays audio, based on loaded bank info
  • may want to set language to SFX to skip voice lines (ignore if `SFX`` isn't shown)
• enter the base folder and open those .txtp with some player like foobar2000/winamp/audacious with the vgmstream plugin installed
  • if generated TXTP aren't fully satisfactory, fiddle with TXTP Generator options
  • note that TXTP currently can't simulate all Wwise features
  • when making audio rips to distribute, may be better to set TXTP subdir to empty so that .txtp are generated in the base folder
• you can also press View banks to explore, or Dump banks to save readable info, if needed
  • info is presented as-is and may be a bit hard to understand, but isn't important to generate TXTP
• Wwise is very complex so this program can only help so much, you may want to read and understand doc/WWISER.md

OTHER INFO

All actions (and more) can be done from the command line as well: wwiser [options] (files)

• wwiser bgm.bnk
  • (dumps bgm.bnk info to bgm.bnk.xml)
• wwiser -d txt init.bnk bgm.bnk -o banks.txt
  • (loads multiple .bnk, like Wwise does, and dumps to banks.txt)
• wwiser *.bnk -r -v
  • (loads all .bnk in current folder and subfolders recursively and starts the viewer)
• wwiser -g bgm.bnk
  • (generates TXTP files from banks to use with vgmstream)
• wwiser wwconfig.txt
  • (loads a text list of any CLI commands, to simplify complex usage)
• wwiser -h
  • (shows all available actions)

Loaded banks can be explored using the viewer, a web browser-based tool (if you'd prefer a native GUI, please understand there are multiple reasons behind this), or dumped to a file. For best results make sure to load init.bnk then one or more related banks, since banks can point to data in other banks.

If companion files like SoundbankInfo.xml or (bank name).txt are found in the .bnk dir they'll automatically be used to show names. wwiser also supports some artificial ways to add reversed names (wwnames.txt and wwnames.db3).

Be aware that depending on the bank size loading may be slow, memory usage high, dump output big, and txtp generation slow. Dumped .xml can be opened with a browser to see contents (like a simple html/GUI) but since they can be huge browsers may run out of memory; the viewer is a safer bet (looks the same).

wwiser requires Python 3 installed. The viewer also needs a modern-ish browser.

Extra info:

• doc/WWISER.md: detailed Wwise info and usage explanations
• wwiser-utils (https://github.com/bnnm/wwiser-utils): info and helpers for audio rips
• For further help try asking on hcs64.com forums or discord

WWISE ENGINE AND WWISER USAGE

TL;DR: Wwise never plays .wem directly and always uses events inside .bnk that play one or many .wem indirectly. You want to open main .bnk (leaving companion xml and txt files together to get names) with wwiser, maybe explore a bit, and automatically generate TXTP for events, to use with vgmstream to play music (https://github.com/vgmstream/vgmstream).

Wwise has two "modes", a sound module that plays single sfx or tracks capable of simple looping (some games loop like this), and a music module that dynamically plays multiple audio stems mixed in realtime (other games loop by using multiple separate files). You want TXTP to handle the later, but they also give consistency and (sometimes) original names to the former. In short, for games using Wwise audio don't play .wem directly but use wwiser's generated .txtp.

WWISER OUTPUT

Web view or dumped .xml shows what is stored in .bnk, trying to follow original (Audiokinetic's) names. Since Wwise is a complex engine it can be a bit hard to understand at first. Most concepts are explained in doc/WWISER.md, though to get most of it install Wwise (free) and play around with the editor to get a better feel of how Wwise deals with audio.

TXTP GENERATION

You can generate .txtp files from .bnk that allow vgmstream to (mostly) play audio simulating Wwise. Make sure .wem go to the /txtp/wem folder and open .txtp with a player like foobar2000 or Winamp with the vgmstream plugin installed (or use vgmstream's CLI tools).

This function tries its best to make good, usable .txtp to improve the listening experience of Wwise audio rips (like giving names when possible, or handling complex loops). However Wwise is a very complex, dynamic audio engine, so you may need to tweak various options to improve output. vgmstream also has some limitations and audio simulation is not always perfect.

See WWISER doc for detailed explanations.

LIMITATIONS

This tool is not, and will never be, a .bnk editor (can't replace files). It's only meant to show bank data and generate TXTP. But feel free to use info here to make other programs.

Almost all .bnk versions should work, except the first two, used in Shadowrun (X360) (unsupported) and Too Human (X360) (mostly supported but can't make .txtp). Report if you get errors or incorrect behavior. All fields should be correctly identified and named, save a few bit flags in some versions and some lesser objects like plugins.

LEGAL STUFF

Everything from wwiser was researched and reverse-engineered by studying public SDKs, executables and files, by bnnm.