Hacking Help - Decrypting EBOOT.bin files

[Deleted User]

So I've been searching for the last three hours on how to decrypt my newly acquired EBOOT.bin and BOOT.bin files from a PPSSPP .iso. Really, all I'm trying to do is view the Japanese text so that I can translate it in Google. I'm not looking to replace any coding or text, I just want to be able to understand the game.

From my research, I know that the packing of the .iso files is different for every game, but most of the time, the bulk of the in-game text is in the EBOOT.bin file. But because it's a .bin file, it's still encrypted, as opening it with HexEdit/HexWorkshop shows that the data starts with ~PSP.

My questions are:

1. Can I even VIEW the Japanese characters in any of these unpacked .iso files so that I can translate them? (It's a visual novel, by the way)
2. If I can, what program do I need to decrypt the EBOOT.bin file? (I've already tried using ISO_Tool on my PPSSPP homebrew, and it worked, but I'm really confused as to where the decrypted files went and how I'm supposed to view them? It was just, in general, very confusing and none of the tutorials I found were answering my questions.)
3. What other programs would I need, if I haven't unpacked or decrypted anything the correct way?

Before you ask, the game does not and will not have an English translation release, so there's no way to patch it or anything like that. I'm really just asking if there's a way to view the Japanese characters/text so that I can copy/paste into Google translate. If this is impossible to do, just say that from the get-go so I can start learning to read Japanese text instead lmao

 

[jjjewel]

This might help for decrypting eboot.bin.
http://www.emunewz.net/forum/showthread.php?tid=14235
(The guide is for older version of JPCSP. It might be slightly different for different version but it should be similar.)

And it depends on games. Not all games store main dialog text in eboot.bin. You'll need to go through files and locate the text. (In many cases, they are stored in easy-to-recognize filename. For example, there might be a folder name script, or story, etc. But again, different games store scripts differently.)

You can view Japanese text in hex editors if the scripts aren't encrypted or compressed.

(It's kind of difficult to explain without knowing which game we're talking about. Anyway, you can try to read other discussion threads on how they find the scripts and what processes they went through to get the scripts out, and you might get some idea.)

 

[Deleted User]

I'm trying to find the text for the game Hakuouki: Zuisouroku. While that method did decrypt the EBOOT.bin file, it now starts with .ELF? I remember seeing that somewhere else, and I couldn't remember if that was good or not.

However, since I didn't see any Japanese text in the EBOOT.bin file, I can only assume the text itself must be elsewhere. If it helps, I can upload images of what files I have in the unpacked .iso.

(inside the UPDATE folder is):

(inside the DAT folder is, what I'm assuming, some data for the different character routes):

If you want to see something else, let me know, but I really do appreciate your reply and help!!

 

[jjjewel]

I don't have the game but if the file structure of your game is the same as another game I have from this game company, you should find SCRIPT.UNI in UNION folder. That is where your scripts are. They should be viewable with any Hexeditor that supports Shift-JIS encoding.

Anyway, if you find SCRIPT.UNI, the proper way is to extract the scripts into sub-files and extract text from them, etc. But if you only want to just get the scripts, you might just look up the already-extracted scripts on the Internet. (I believe there are people who already extracted them but I'm not sure if it's against GBATemp's rules or not to post the link.)

I'm not sure about the .DAT files whether they contain text or not. You can try to open them in HexEditor in Shift-JIS encoding. (I just assume the game uses Shift-JIS encoding as it's quite common, but you might try other Japanese encoding as well.) And it's very likely that even if the files contain text, they might be stored between codes, so look thoroughly, not only at the beginning of the files.

 

[Deleted User]

Ahh, okay!! I'm getting somewhere now, as I can actually see some Japanese text in the hex editor now. I'm using MadEdit with the Shift-JIS encoding like you said, but I'm not sure if it's supposed to be showing up like this?

And it pretty much looks like that through the entire file, except in some cases where the y's are replaced with just simple .'s (which I'm assuming is just empty code or spaces).

So, am I doing something wrong or is this all that I have to work with?

 

[jjjewel]

You're doing it right.

Just that in normal hacking process, we'll need to separate each script files from the .UNI file. (You'll need a program for that or code a program on your own.) But if you just need to look at the scripts, you probably don't need to go to the trouble.

Anyway, the part you showed in the picture doesn't look like dialog scripts. It looks more like some miscellaneous text, like character descriptions, etc.

If it follows usual format, the main dialog should be somewhere in this file too. You just need to look for it.