ROM Hack Is anyone working on a Rune Factory 4 undub?

scrangos · Jul 5, 2015

Nazosan said:
What exactly IS this "rephrasing"?

Um, rewriting a sentence to have the same meaning using other words. In this case shorter ones so they actually fit on the window. Reword, paraphrase, put differently etc.

Can also do a bit of editing, remove "..." or redundant things. Some of the lines go past 70 characters, they need to be 70 or shorter or whatever's past gets cut off.

Nazosan · Jul 6, 2015

I'm sorry. I wish I could help more. I could definitely do a lot of rephrasing, but the problem is, I haven't really been able to play this game much (as I said, the dub and having no voices at all really ruins the atmosphere and feel of the game) so this would mean a heck of a lot of spoilers. :-(

Nazosan · Jul 9, 2015

Hey, I found this on the savegames: http://www.maxconsole.com/maxcon_fo...-transfer-Savegames-between-different-Headers
I believe that would essentially apply to your current save situation. Hopefully that at least helps you test things a little more easily.

scrangos · Jul 9, 2015

Nazosan said:
Hey, I found this on the savegames: http://www.maxconsole.com/maxcon_fo...-transfer-Savegames-between-different-Headers
I believe that would essentially apply to your current save situation. Hopefully that at least helps you test things a little more easily.

Thanks, this sheds some light on that. Wonder if its making some random header each time I build, or if its an issue due to me using 3ds and it ignoring the header and just asuming its a different one. At least with that posts info I can grab the header of the next one i build and keep reusing the same header for the ones after.

Solar12 · Jul 28, 2015

seikur0 · Jul 28, 2015

This whole string replacing in the japanese version sounds really annoying.
Maybe replacing the sound in the english version is still the better way to go. Has anyone compared the eng and jpn .bcsar files yet? Unlike the text cutoff in the jpn->eng version the audio cutoff in the eng->jpn version isn't at a fixed position, so I'd assume the playback lengths are in one of the resource files, probably the Rune4_sounddata.bcsar file. (You would define the length of the string buffer in your code, but not the lengths for over 1000 audio streams, you would definitely include these in the resources.)

I think it would be faster to analyze the bcsar file rather than rewriting 9000 atmospheric and well designed sentences to short awkward language sentences.

If someone could get me a japanese Rune4.sounddata.bcsar file, I would be willing to check if I can find something helpful.

scrangos · Jul 28, 2015

Many hours spent playing with it. I attempted to decompress it many times, and to figure out its format (its a container file). It may indeed have the information about the sound lengths but if you attempt to replace it in the other rom it crashes the game. It also seems to contain all the non voice audio in the form of sequential files contained within it.

Its also possible the sound length data is within the script files, specifically rf4.mc (em.bin and emdeb.bin are identical and off by 1 byte respectively). I believe this file to be multiple text files compressed/encrypted OR a compiled binary file from a scripting language (possibly squirrel code, since thats what they used on the first HM 3ds game, different team made it though).

Lastly it could be in the code.bin but scouring through it I didnt see anythign related to that.. but then im terrible at decompiling.

Anyway sending you the file with the bcsar and script files as soon as I upload it somewhere.

ar4757 · Jul 28, 2015

there's not even that much voice acting, but good effort by some of you nonetheless

scrangos · Jul 28, 2015

Yeah.. but games like RF and HM the ambience and feel of the characters make a HUGE difference to the enjoyment and immersion.

Nazosan · Jul 29, 2015

That is absolutely the case -- as I said before, this is something huge I finally figured out about why I found myself kind of missing Rune Factory 3 so much even though 4 is technically superior in almost every way. It's also of note here though that the dub is literally just that bad. Even if you turn off the voices (which utterly ruins the atmosphere) you still have to put up with the title screen among other things, lol. (Speaking of which, can anything be done about the sound that plays in the system menu when you highlight the game? Lol. EDIT: Duh, nevermind. Since the current project is to basically "translate" the Japanese version, that handles the home screen sound automatically since it would be the original instead of the dub. So, ignore that...)

The bad dubbing and lack of proper acting severely harms the feel of the atmosphere of the area and completely destroys all the nuances of the characters. (Part of why I hate so many of these dubs is they don't really put in the effort to do true voice acting. I'm not one of those people who thinks Japanese is somehow inherently better than English for instance. Give me a game like, say, the Blood Omen/Legacy of Kain series -- though obviously their atmosphere won't work here at all -- and I probably won't even notice whether or not it has been dubbed or is the original. Give me one like this where it sounds like they just hired the cheapest people they could find to read lines and it leaves me cringing in almost literal pain.)

seikur0 · Jul 29, 2015

The rf4.m file seems to contain entries of 453 things, got that from the header. Since the dialog streams should have a fixed size and they are 6873/6928 files according to homuhomu, I don't think that's where the sizes are saved. Also the code.bin loads the Rune4_sounddata.bcsar, so I think that's definitely the right place to look for these lengths.

Okay so about one third of the bcsar file is filled with some settings, I couldn't find any direct sound length value, but many values, that seem like flags. This area contains the same number of entries for both languages. First 6874 entries, corresponding to the number of stream files in the stream folder(6873), then the setting format slightly changes and it contains 53 more entries.

I compared these first 6874 entries between the two languages, from that I patched the english Rune4_sounddata.bcsar file to 6 different versions plus one version that contains all patches at once. Some of these might crash the game, maybe one of them can remove the audio cutoff problem, I really don't know. I don't have the japanese rom files, so I can't rebuild the english rom with one of my patched bcsar files and the renamed japanese audio files, I leave that to someone else. The file with all patches contained might be the best to start with, if it doesn't crash and the cutoff issue is still there, it will save the time of trying the rest.

So: decrypt the english rom, decrypt the japanese rom, use homuhomu's bat file to rename the japanese audio files to english named ones, put them into the english rom, replace the Rune4_sounddata.bcsar file in the english rom with one of my patched ones and rebuild the rom. Then test, if the game crashes, if the audio cutoff is there and if you notice other unusual things about the sound. If you think you can do that, it's probably best to write here, which patch you'll apply, then do that and post the results before maybe trying the next patch.

You'll find the files here:
https://mega.nz/#!MxRx2BRA!6su2LJuLH8cnck16gL3_EoyfCZ7r1zzEQwUgQ4LpUqE

scrangos · Jul 30, 2015

Ill test it out tommorow as I can, rebuilding the rom takes a while @.@

seikur0 · Jul 30, 2015

scrangos said:
rebuilding the rom takes a while

It's faster than copying them to my sd card for me. I got a japanese rom now and will start testing the patches:
->All patch: crashes the game when loading it.
-> 0 patch: crashes the game when loading it (same as all). (Hopefully I'm building the rom correctly.)
-> 1 patch: same crash
-> gonna try an unpatched with just replaced audio files next
-> the unpatched one failed, well at least my patch isn't crashing and I'm just too stupid to rebuild the rom

scrangos · Jul 30, 2015

ah, it gets a little weird to get the rom to run with the changed files. Are you using homuhomu's bat file? It doesnt cover every single file, so you need to put all the japanese ones in a separate folder. name change them, remove the extra ones (if you want, i think rom doesnt go over 2gbs anyway). then drop the english originals ontop and tell it to skip files that exist so the ones that are missing are put into place. then the result goes into the stream folder. (otherwise it crashes due to missing files)

edit: just woke up, ill test the all patch myself now

btw in the mc file i meant inside the code as text, like c#, javascript source files and whatnot. would have to decompile each if its true they are compiled binaries. hm new begginnings are in 1100ish script files. there were folk for another game that made a mostly working decompiler but never released it.

seikur0 · Jul 30, 2015

Hm I just tried to just build an unchanged rom and it had the same issue, even though rebuilding the untouched japanese rom before worked just fine.
If you can give me some instructions on how to rebuild the rom, I can help you testing the patches.

scrangos · Jul 30, 2015

sent you through a pm

Frieren · Jul 30, 2015

If you still have any problem with disassembling/assembling rom then message me thru pm. I can provide all instructions.

seikur0 · Jul 30, 2015

Nah, I got it to work, the all patch and patch 4-6 were tested by scrangos and me, patch 4 and 6 didn't fix the cutoff, patch 5 crashed the game at the start screen and patch all crashed the game when pulling out the weapon in the first fight. Patch 1-3 should still be tested, one of them could be working. Right now I'm concentrating on the value for the text buffer length in the code.bin files, it's 70 for jpn 140 for the eng version. Might be findeable.

scrangos · Aug 1, 2015

The address is found, works ingame. was an 8bit entry too pain in the arse. figuring out the release logistics and if it needs some testing. since modifying the game seems to delete saves it would suck if i had to change something further on and inadvertedly delete everyones saves.

Frieren · Aug 1, 2015

scrangos said:
since modifying the game seems to delete saves it would suck if i had to change something further on and inadvertedly delete everyones saves.

If you use exactly the same settings for rom assembling save file remain compatible between two roms assembled with this settings. No matter what you do with game sources. However, save file be incompatible with original rom and with rom that assembled with different settings.

ROM Hack Is anyone working on a Rune Factory 4 undub?

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