Hacking Brandish: The Dark Revenant translation

[GHANMI]

Wow... talk about unexpected developments. I'm happy either ways whether Xseed publishes it or... well, you really should give them the benefit of doubt for the time being. I also posted somewhere something, with the assumption "Trails 2" was Xseed's final release for the PSP and it's unlikely they would localize more Falcom games, and he replied that "you shouldn't count us out yet, we might have a trick or two up our sleeves".

As wyrward said, how about tackling other games then... like Nayuta no Kiseki for example
(And if Xseed pulls out a combo, there are always other more translation-friendly PSP games....)

 

[Kelebek]

Looks like XSEED is going to publish this game themselves after all. Might be better to put this project on hold until further notice.

They were just waiting for my tools! Damn them! Lols. Ah well, always nice to see official releases.

 

[flame1234]

I read this as:
1) They may do it
2) Eventually
So fine to keep working on it.

I would stop if it were announced officially. Then things change to: They will do it soon. Or if someone from XSEED asks for us to stop more formally and directly (but not necessarily officially), which they haven't yet.

It's just so strange.
1) Falcom releases Brandish Dark Revenant Mar 2009.
So they have five years to decide if they want to localize it and nothing. And now they decide they want to!?
We've seen there's not much text in the game. I'm pretty sure there was nothing stopping them (other than lack of demand, which I feel is a good reason for them to decide not to localize it).

It's the same with Trails in the Sky.
1) June 2004: Falcom releases Sora no Kiseki (the first chapter)
2) October 2006: Falcom releases Sora no Kiseki (the first chapter) PSP version
3) November 2009: Falcom indicates in their annual report they want more revenue from overseas licensing. RPGamer story. Specifically for their PSP titles but other than that, no specific games are mentioned.
4) April 2010: First localization rumors.
5) February 2011: XSEED announced they are localizing Sora no Kiseki (the first chapter) as Trails in the Sky.
6) March 2011: XSEED releases Trails in the Sky
7) September 2013: XSEED announces intent to publish Sora no Kiseki 2nd Chapter as Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter (this is about 6 years after release of the PSP version of the same, it'll be around 7 years at release time)

So it's clear from (5) that they are waiting until localization is done before making release announcements. Note that (5) did not include a release date announcement.
It's also clear they are waiting a really long time after release to even start localization efforts...

 

[neoxephon]

They could be porting it to Steam, which is what they're doing for Trails in the Sky and Trails in the Sky SC. So PSN digital release and Steam release. Anyway, it's not like there is a lack of other great PSP games that need translations...

 

[Truner]

They could be porting it to Steam, which is what they're doing for Trails in the Sky and Trails in the Sky SC. So PSN digital release and Steam release. Anyway, it's not like there is a lack of other great PSP games that need translations...

Not really, Trails in the Sky started on the PC to begin with. So it's not a port, they are just releasing it on both platforms because they can. With Brandish, this isn't exactly possible, as it's a PSP original. With XSEED, one must also take the fact that they are considering pretty much everything from Falcom for localization. They said this before and they will say it again.

At the very least, this translation (especially if it's a plugin translation) will help those who already own the UMD release from Japan. Those who want to pirate it would pirate the official release as well, so it's not like we are doing any harm. Besides that, we don't know when (if at all) it will be released.

 

[neoxephon]

Not really, Trails in the Sky started on the PC to begin with. So it's not a port, they are just releasing it on both platforms because they can. With Brandish, this isn't exactly possible, as it's a PSP original. With XSEED, one must also take the fact that they are considering pretty much everything from Falcom for localization. They said this before and they will say it again.

At the very least, this translation (especially if it's a plugin translation) will help those who already own the UMD release from Japan. Those who want to pirate it would pirate the official release as well, so it's not like we are doing any harm. Besides that, we don't know when (if at all) it will be released.

I'm well aware of the existence of PC versions for Trails in the Sky and its sequels. I wasn't saying that they were in fact going to port Brandish to the PC, it was more of a hope. And it isn't impossible, it would just require more work.

I personally won't be doing anything more with this game, not while there is even a slim chance that there will be an official localization.

 

[flame1234]

Need a tutorial on how to insert item.tb.
neoxephon got it to work here.
Also, zero_g_monkey got it to work here with a different game.

Any help guys?

I tried modifying /data/txt/item.tb and deleting /data/ext/txt/item.tb and it didn't work at all.
Then I tried deleting all of /data/pa (the .act files) (this causes various artifacts to appear in game, but it will still boot and run). It still didn't work, but when I throw away the leather armor, "leather armor" shows up in the text box, so it's reading from the file I modified in this situation.

 

[Kelebek]

You need to remove the file definitions out of st_ar.act and st_de.act in the data\pa folder, that's where the compressed files are. The simplest way is to just edit the 4 dwords at the start of the file, and that'll keep the filesizes the same. You'll want them to either 16 to end at areaname, or 15 to be before that.

Otherwise you can fully remove them. Each entry is 0x20 bytes (beginning at 0x10 after those 4 dwords for the header, where the header itself is the filecount 4 times for some reason), the filename is the first 0x10 bytes, the location of each file (absolute) is at 0x10 in each entry, 0x14 is compressed size, and 0x18 is uncompressed size.

So, you could go to the location for areaname, delete everything from there to the end of the file, and then zero out the 0x60 bytes for areaname, item and itemlist, and set the dwords at the start of the file to 15. That pretty much entirely removes them, to be on the super safe side. If you do that, remember to fix the filesizes in data.lst as well.

Although you said you deleted all the pa files and it didn't work still, which is odd. Just taking out those compressed files makes it work for me:

Spoiler

EDIT: Ah actually, there's 2 entries per item in item.tb, or at least there are for some of them (that short sword being one of them), forgot to mention that. I suppose you only edited 1, so it didn't change everything.

 

[flame1234]

Okay, I've finished inserting mp1_01 through mp1_14 and item.tb. This is around 25% of the game content (all items and item descriptions).

I have an ISO that I'm happy with. Now it's time: Can someone link me to the "making a patch" tutorial? Or I can just distribute the modified files (they're under 1MB in total) and instructions on how to make a revised image using UMDgen. Let me know. And can you also tell me which distribution services I should be using? Can I really use something like a romhacking.net submission?

Things are not perfect, but it's playable.

As for patch 2 content:
I would like stuff we don't have.
Maybe I could post image files to be worked on?

Maybe Kelebek (our hacker) could help us out with messages like:

You threw away [item name] (throw away item)​

Nothing special here (push triangle anyplace)​

The key won't fit! (harder to get this message)​

These don't appear in the script text; they're somewhere else I think.

We have some things like 4 lines (when only three can fit in the box usually). So we'll have to fix those somehow. I guess I could give the line insert feature of Kelebek's tool a try (it didn't work for the tutorial, various things broke [but not text display]). Another thing I could try is the new box text code that appear in the shopkeeper dialog but not elsewhere, to see if it works elsewhere.

Also currently asterisk is our placeholder for comma, so we'll need to fix that eventually too.

 

[Kelebek]

There are strings in the EBOOT:

Is it in there? That 何も起こらない (the pressing triangle message) is right there, so there's one at least. There's loads of strings here.

About actually editing it though, I don't know, I haven't edited EBOOTs before (their strings anyway). omarrrio should know.

EDIT: Yeah, the line 鍵が合わない！ is in there too. And I've seen 何も起こらない multiple times, so the EBOOT is what you'll need to change.

 

[zero_g_monkey]

If you are referring to editing the dialog strings in the eboot. Go for it. As long as you don't mess with any of the actual coded stuff. The dialogs are fine and almost always contain important stuff. As your probably finding out, Falcom sticks stuff all over the place in their games. You should see the amount of stuff stored in the eboots for the Legend of Heroes games. Almost like a small book some of them.

 

[omarrrio]

There are strings in the EBOOT:

Is it in there? That 何も起こらない (the pressing triangle message) is right there, so there's one at least. There's loads of strings here.

About actually editing it though, I don't know, I haven't edited EBOOTs before (their strings anyway). omarrrio should know.

EDIT: Yeah, the line 鍵が合わない！ is in there too. And I've seen 何も起こらない multiple times, so the EBOOT is what you'll need to change.

do ABSOLUTLY not edit the strings in a text editor, do it in a hex editor instead.

 

[flame1234]

Here's the spreadsheet if you want to help with translation.

Here is the current patch. Around 25% done (don't worry, it's the first 25% of the game). It's just a bag of files; you'll need UMDgen and an ISO of Brandish to make the patched version. Not to be enjoyed; many bugs (mostly poorly formatted dialogs) and a poor translation are the problems. Also there's lots of untranslated stuff even before the 25% mark (see post above), but it should not impact gameplay too much. If you're having issues please post and I'll publish a play guide (what all the buttons do). If you play the tutorial though, you shouldn't have issues.
---------------------
How do I have a longer or shorter string than was there initially in EBOOT.bin?

 

[neoxephon]

I'd recommend against distributing actual game files. What you can do is create a patch file and that will make the necessary changes to the ISO.

Two good choices are xdelta and PPF-O-Matic.

PPF patches can be applied using UMDGen, so that's something to consider.

 

[flame1234]

Okay, I deleted the file at the old link. Here is the current patch (xdelta). No, I am not ignoring you. I could not get PPF to work. PPF-O-Matic is for end users, it can't make patches.

How do I decrypt eboot.bin? Do I even need to? I was able to figure out through searching that boot.bin is the decrypted eboot.bin. I can see something like what omarrio posted when I look at that.

 

[neoxephon]

Okay, I deleted the file at the old link. Here is the current patch (xdelta). No, I am not ignoring you. I could not get PPF to work. PPF-O-Matic is for end users, it can't make patches.

How do I decrypt eboot.bin? Do I even need to? I was able to figure out through searching that boot.bin is the decrypted eboot.bin. I can see something like what omarrio posted when I look at that.

JPCSP, Options > Settings > Crypto > Extract decrypted EBOOT.BIN files to TMP folder

Load the ISO, might be a brief pause and then the game will load. Look in the tmp folder and it should be there. You don't have to re-encrypt, just insert the decrypted EBOOT and it should work fine.

BOOT.BIN is sometimes the decrypted version of the EBOOT, but for a lot of games it is just a file full of null bytes (a dummy file).

 

[flame1234]

Today (right now actually) I am issuing patch 2 which has 50% of the text translated and all of the textual interface stuff translated too. Thanks omarrio, neoxephon and kelebek for their help with this.

Download patch 2.
Have a look at the current state of things on imgur.

For patch 3, the target is 75% of the text. Feel free to test and report any problems.

 

[flame1234]

Sorry to double post (is that allowed?).

I'm now issuing patch 3 with 100% of the text translated. Additionally for this version the enemy names are translated as well. Press triangle to see them when fighting (as mentioned in the tutorial).

Download patch 3.

For the next version I'd like to add the commas, or omarrio can do it himself. This is about as far as I can go with this. Much of the text is translated poorly and needs a better translation, but the game is fully playable with all English text (or at least mostly English). I hope you will enjoy it.

 

[caliburnus]

The patch works but when i arrived at floor 8 the game crashes when i try to open doors and read the message board. But when i tried doing it with an unpatched iso the game runs fine

 

[flame1234]

Hi, this problem is caused by an error between the keyboard and the chair on the remote side of the connection. In other words, I'm an idiot.
Download patch 3.01; this fixes the issue on floor 8. You have to apply this patch to the original ISO; it is not a delta. Your save should work with this version. Please keep testing!

Please note that I had to play to floor 8 to test this fix. If you want fixes faster, please post saves near the bugs. Thanks.