Shenmue Dreamcast Modding - Create a custom DISC 3 image with removed BGM/Background music

Here’s how I removed music for my Shenmue Dreamcast footage.

There are different ways to achieve this, but for the sake of a simpler guide, I’ll only talk about my preferred method, which I find to also be the easiest.

THINGS YOU NEED:

- a GDI copy of Shenmue for Dreamcast. If you don’t have it, I recommend “Shenmue Undub: Definitive Edition” by Shenmue Master and PRS, available on Phantom River Stone fan site. Be sure to download the images in “GDI” format.
https://www.phantomriverstone.com/2020/09/shenmue-undub-definitive-edition-video.html

- GDI Builder v1.2 by sappharad, at the bottom of the page in “Previous release(s)”. This will build our new custom .gdi images for us! Ignore v.1.3 as it doesn’t seem to work at all.
https://projects.sappharad.com/tools/gdibuilder.html

- GD-ROM Explorer by Japanese_cake, a program to explore and extract files from a Dreamcast image file. You can also download this on sappharad’s page, under the name “Unofficial GD-ROM Explorer”.
https://projects.sappharad.com/tools/gdibuilder.html

INSTRUCTIONS - Make a custom DISC 3 .gdi image "BGM free" (works for all DC versions of Shenmue):

1. Open “GD-ROM Explorer”, then “File”, “Open”, then go to your “Shenmue Definitive Edition” folder, select the DISC 3 “.gdi” image file you want to extract files from;

2. Right-click “DREAMCAST”, then “Extract content to” and select a new folder (call it “Disc 3” to remember where the files came from) where all the extracted files will be put, then press “Ok”;

3. Right-click “IP.BIN”, then “Extract Initial Program as a file to” and select the same folder you created for the extracted files, then press “Save”;

4. You can now close GD-ROM Explorer. Now open your extracted file folder;

5. Go to “Scene”, “03”, then “SOUND”;

6. From here, remove the following files* (Make backups if you want to restore them later!): remove from “AMB012” to “AMB052”, remove from “BGM001” to “BGM201”, remove from “FRE0000” to “FRE2400”, remove from “RIM004” to “RIM099”, finally remove from “TSM001” to “YKM005”. Your game now lacks most of the music tracks! Be sure not to remove any other file other than the one I've pointed out. For example, removing "BATTLE_1.SND" will remove almost all sound effects from FREE battles!

*If you’re editing any other disc, the files you need to remove may be different. You’ll need to figure them out by trial and error.

NOTE: There are actually other audio tracks located in STREAM (I think?), like the credits theme, the menu theme etc. They’re AFS files, which can be edited, but I have never messed with that. I don’t think it’s worth going through the trouble of removing these tracks. If you do want to remove them, I'm afraid you’ll need to figure out a way on your own.

7. Open “GDIbuilder”. In “Data files”, click “Browse” and pick the folder where your extracted files are located; in “IP.BIN”, select the file “IP.BIN” located in the extracted files folder;

8. In “CDDA”, click “Browse”, then go to your original Shenmue folder, then select “Track 4” first, then “Track 5” (they’re the CD audio tracks)*;

* Track 4 must come first, Track 5 later. If you do the opposite, the game may not boot.

9. Before talking about “Output dir”, create a new folder called “output”, then go to your original Shenmue folder, copy all files (the gdi image file and all tracks) and paste them in “output”. You must also rename the gdi image "disc" (disc.gdi), otherwise GDIbuilder won't update the gdi file and the game won't boot later!

10. Now, back to GDIbuilder, in “Output dir”, select that “output” folder I made you create, then finally click “Create GD-ROM”;

11. GDIbuilder will ask you if you’d like to overwrite “track03.bin” and “track06.bin”. Agree by pressing “Yes” and the program will create new custom track03 and track06. Finally, press “Create GD-ROM”, and click “Yes” to overwrite Track03 and Track06 with new custom files.

12. By creating these new track.bin files into a folder that contains the original files, GDI builder will update all track info automatically. That’s a godsend because that’s what makes the game get past the booting screen. Applying this track data manually would be a nightmare!

13. Enjoy your custom BGM-free DISC 3 build of Shenmue!