ROM Hack Metal Max 3 Translation Project

[DarthNemesis]

Yeah, the 袈 is probably a side effect of the line getting cut off before the terminating 00 character.

You'd need to find someone with ARM hacking experience to make more space for text or implement a variable-width font; I can't help there. But another possibility is dual-tile encoding - add a bunch of characters to the font that have two letters combined (for all of the possible letter/punctuation pairs that show up), and then I could modify the inserter to pair them up accordingly.

 

[Lilfut]

It would also probably be easy enough to just remove the 袈 character or replace its graphic data with a blank space. (Where the hell is it even used?)

 

[MetalFan]

It is as you say, the strange thing is that there are lines that exceed 59 characters without problems up to 63 characters, annoying these limits!!!. The variant of implementing a VWF looks great but as DarthNemesis said we would need someone knowledgeable in ASM.
On the other hand almost done with the translation of the graphics I've found , the trouble is there are some that still can not find,I thought they were all on the menu folder but it seems that there are others elsewhere, I'm looking for them. Tomorrow I send you a patch of alpha graphics translated for testing.

 

[Terithian]

Well, I have now finished all the item descriptions. I edited a lot of the item names, as well, mainly removing spaces between words in names that have them so they look more consistent in-game with those that don't, so I'm attaching that again as well. I noticed it looked kind of odd while testing for some to have spaces and others to be crammed together, so I went through and fixed it. It should look a bit better in-game now.

EDIT: I also quickly put all the location names mentioned previously into MAP_INFOW.NAM.txt. I'm not sure all the places they're used, but they are definitely used to show where you are when selecting a save file and for the menu when you use the Dog System to warp somewhere. Unfortunately, they also have the same 11 character limit as enemies and items, so I had to shorten some of them a bit, either by taking out vowels while keeping it legible, as in VllainMseum instead of Villain Museum, or removing sections that aren't as necessary, as in SeaBungalow instead of Seaside Bungalow, or just Wananabani instead of Wananabani Institute. I'm attaching that file as well.

EDIT 2: Just a heads up, I did some testing on dialogue editing, and it seems there are no character or page limits for each line of dialogue, just per page in a line, so each line can be as long as it needs to be, provided it's split up onto a new page with a "\0" before the page character limit. I could be wrong, as I did not test extensively, but I did get up to over 800 characters in one line with no problems, which should hopefully be enough for any situation. Thank god.

EDIT 3: Updated and reuploaded the item descriptions and names, fixing some formatting and consistency issues. Anyone who finds any other issues, please tell me so I can fix them.

 

[Lilfut]

These pointer errors are kind of incredible. This guy's text isn't anywhere NEAR Dr. Mince/Mortem!

What's the exact character limit on pages?

By the way, I didn't get a chance to say this before, but thank you so much for your work on the item names.

 

[Terithian]

I think the character limit was around 59? Maybe 58? I'm not sure, I didn't test it as extensively as other parts. How the heck did that happen, anyway?

 

[Lilfut]

MetalFan says it's an issue with the text inserter. He's looking into it.

 

[MetalFan]

I found the following problems:

1- NCPS Tile Encryption
Some Tiles in NCGR format and NCLR starts with NCPS in the header , DarthNemesis told me they are compressed with LZ77 . But I can not uncompress them ?????? Please Bro you know how to work this type of compression. Thanks in advance
I put an example of one NCGR and one NCLR files with the NCPS header
I already tried the BatchLZ77 1.4 tool and Nintendo_DS_Compressors_v1.4-CUE

2-Inserter Problem????
On the difficulties in the insertion and the text out of place I was looking and I think it can be a insertion problem. Please DarthNemesis could you check this and tell me what you think???? Thanks in advance for all you help and for your great tool brother

The inserter change the position of the first line of text in file H01.MSG offset 140A. That is the text of the guy in the ladder

In the original japanese H01.MSG file the first text is
(In Offset 140A)
// H01_SOTO_N2
「ここは、昔は\n　にぎやかなショッピング・センター\n　だったそうで。\0「それがあの、伝説の$nn308で\n　一夜にして\n　廃墟と化したんだとか・・・。

and after use the inserter the first text change
(In Offset 140A)
to this one
// ENDING_MSG7
「さぁ、よみがえるのだ！\n　この電撃でぇぇぇっ！

I think this change could be the problem??

Correct Dialog before use inserter

Bad Dialog after use the inserter

 

[Lakum]

A little question to those who already played those games and understand Japanese. Are MM2 and 3 in the same world as 1, Season of Steel and 4?

 

[Terithian]

I haven't played Season of Steel and I don't have any way to play 4 yet, but as far as I know, all the games are sort of in the same world, but there are almost zero ties to one another. The only real tie I've ever seen is that the apocalypse in every game stems from the same event, with the exception being Season of Steel, which I've heard is a direct sequel to the original Metal Max, starring the son of the main character of that game.

Spoiler: MM1 Spoiler

A super advanced AI called NOAH, built to solve Earth's environmental crisis, is turned on and spends a long amount of time checking and double checking potential solutions. It eventually comes up with one, and only one, permanent solution: the removal of the source of the problem, humanity. This AI ends up being the final boss of the first game. Every game has ties to this in one form or another, although MM3 has the fewest, as far as I know, since I haven't played MM4 yet.

 

[DarthNemesis]

I finished adding support for the text in the arm9 and the files with pointers in the arm9. I don't know how to safely increase the size of the arm9, so try to keep the replacement lines short so they can still fit in the same space.

Some Tiles in NCGR format and NCLR starts with NCPS in the header , DarthNemesis told me they are compressed with LZ77 . But I can not uncompress them ?????? Please Bro you know how to work this type of compression. Thanks in advance

There's a header that has to be removed before the file can be decompressed. Added support for that.

The inserter change the position of the first line of text in file H01.MSG offset 140A. That is the text of the guy in the ladder

The files I looked at had the pointers and the strings in the same order, but looks like for this file they don't match. Fixed to preserve the order of the strings.

 

[Terithian]

Awesome. Man, you're fantastic. I'll get to work on translating more stuff in the data folder; I've been itching to work on the battle messages and skills.

EDIT: While testing for character and screen space restrictions, I found a problem with the tool. There's an exception that arises if the translated file size is too big, which makes sense, but after this exception, the tool stops working entirely. Every time I try to use it there's another exception involving an unrecognized key, or something like that. I forgot to take a screenshot, unfortunately. Redownloading the tool, replacing the files for the tool, and deleting the cache fixed it, but I just thought you should know.

 

[Lakum]

I haven't played Season of Steel and I don't have any way to play 4 yet, but as far as I know, all the games are sort of in the same world, but there are almost zero ties to one another. The only real tie I've ever seen is that the apocalypse in every game stems from the same event, with the exception being Season of Steel, which I've heard is a direct sequel to the original Metal Max, starring the son of the main character of that game.

Spoiler: MM1 Spoiler

A super advanced AI called NOAH, built to solve Earth's environmental crisis, is turned on and spends a long amount of time checking and double checking potential solutions. It eventually comes up with one, and only one, permanent solution: the removal of the source of the problem, humanity. This AI ends up being the final boss of the first game. Every game has ties to this in one form or another, although MM3 has the fewest, as far as I know, since I haven't played MM4 yet.

You can play Season of Steel on Desmume and Metal Max 4 on Citra. MM4 is stated to be 50 years after ''Great Destruction'' caused by Noah so it's most likely after Season of Steel and PS2 Metal Saga is 1000 years after destruction. There is Dr Mortem in PS2 Metal Saga and MM3 so they seem to be not that much far away from each other on the timeline. I only have doubts about MM2 becuse it seems to be a different universe because apocalypse there was caused by Bias Brad not Noah. Is Noah ever mentioned during MM2:Reloaded?

 

[DarthNemesis]

EDIT: While testing for character and screen space restrictions, I found a problem with the tool. There's an exception that arises if the translated file size is too big, which makes sense, but after this exception, the tool stops working entirely. Every time I try to use it there's another exception involving an unrecognized key, or something like that. I forgot to take a screenshot, unfortunately. Redownloading the tool, replacing the files for the tool, and deleting the cache fixed it, but I just thought you should know.

Yeah, the problem with keys is when the .NAM file gets saved with new strings but the arm9 fails to save with the new pointers, so the files get out of sync. You don't need to redownload the tool in that scenario, just replace the unpacked data and arm9.bin files with backups and reopen it.

But what I can do is capture the exceptions and make sure the pointer changes from the .NAM files get saved even if the arm9.txt changes don't fit, so (hopefully) nothing will get out of sync if there's an error.

 

[Terithian]

You can play Season of Steel on Desmume and Metal Max 4 on Citra. MM4 is stated to be 50 years after ''Great Destruction'' caused by Noah so it's most likely after Season of Steel and PS2 Metal Saga is 1000 years after destruction. There is Dr Mortem in PS2 Metal Saga and MM3 so they seem to be not that much far away from each other on the timeline. I only have doubts about MM2 becuse it seems to be a different universe because apocalypse there was caused by Bias Brad not Noah. Is Noah ever mentioned during MM2:Reloaded?

I'm not particularly interested in playing Season of Steel; I've heard it's not that good. In regards to MM4, the emulator for 3DS still isn't very good, and I'd rather play it on native hardware, anyway. I'm just waiting until I have enough spare money to import a Japanese 3DS to play it, or I find a reliable way to break the region lock on my current 3DS, since I don't want to pay $90+ Canadian importing a game that I might not even be able to play once it arrives. I doubt I'll ever get as good a deal as when I bought MM2:R off Amazon: $20 and free shipping.
I believe MM3, 2R, and 4, all state at some point that it's around 50 years after the apocalypse. Dr. Mortem/Mince is in every Metal Max game, so don't use him as an indicator of timeline. As for whether MM2 is in the same world, it is. If I remember correctly, Bias Vlad didn't cause the apocalypse, he was merely one of the scientists who created NOAH, which did.

In regards to the tool issue, it's not too big a deal. I just need to make sure I keep things within the file size limits. Hopefully that won't be too hard. At least there don't seem to be much for strict character limits in the battle messages, from my testing.

 

[Lilfut]

Woah, sorry I disappeared there for a while.

MM4 is kind of a self-referential orgy - Ted Broiler from MM2 is a bonus boss, in fact.

Anyway, my understanding is that MM2 took place in an alternate universe but Reloaded retcons it to be on the same timeline as the rest of the games.

 

[Terithian]

Ah, I see. I haven't played the original SNES version, only the DS remake. I didn't realize that in the SNES version they had Vlad be the cause of the apocalypse. I just looked it up, and they actually renamed him for the remake too, or perhaps just wrote his name in katakana better, from バイアス・ブラド to バイアス・ヴラド, which explains the Brad/Vlad confusion.
Also, I really want to play MM4. I've heard it's the best of the three MM games in that style, MM3, MM2:R, and MM4. Too bad it's expensive as hell now, especially with the Canadian dollar going to hell; moreso if I happen to want any of the DLC, which I think Ted Broiler is a part of.

 

[Lakum]

Ah, I see. I haven't played the original SNES version, only the DS remake. I didn't realize that in the SNES version they had Vlad be the cause of the apocalypse. I just looked it up, and they actually renamed him for the remake too, or perhaps just wrote his name in katakana better, from バイアス・ブラド to バイアス・ヴラド, which explains the Brad/Vlad confusion.
Also, I really want to play MM4. I've heard it's the best of the three MM games in that style, MM3, MM2:R, and MM4. Too bad it's expensive as hell now, especially with the Canadian dollar going to hell; moreso if I happen to want any of the DLC, which I think Ted Broiler is a part of.

I'm not particularly interested in playing Season of Steel; I've heard it's not that good. In regards to MM4, the emulator for 3DS still isn't very good, and I'd rather play it on native hardware, anyway. I'm just waiting until I have enough spare money to import a Japanese 3DS to play it, or I find a reliable way to break the region lock on my current 3DS, since I don't want to pay $90+ Canadian importing a game that I might not even be able to play once it arrives. I doubt I'll ever get as good a deal as when I bought MM2:R off Amazon: $20 and free shipping.
I believe MM3, 2R, and 4, all state at some point that it's around 50 years after the apocalypse. Dr. Mortem/Mince is in every Metal Max game, so don't use him as an indicator of timeline. As for whether MM2 is in the same world, it is. If I remember correctly, Bias Vlad didn't cause the apocalypse, he was merely one of the scientists who created NOAH, which did.

In regards to the tool issue, it's not too big a deal. I just need to make sure I keep things within the file size limits. Hopefully that won't be too hard. At least there don't seem to be much for strict character limits in the battle messages, from my testing.

Season of Steel is not that great but it's not that bad either and it is a direct continuation of MM1 so I still recommend playing it, have you played PS2 Metal Saga?
I also heard that MM4 is the best in the series and it already works okay on Citra, audio was bad but it improved in the previous week. On emulator you can play at much higher resolutions and DLCs should work too. I think his correct name is Bias Brad not Bias Vlad.

Woah, sorry I disappeared there for a while.

MM4 is kind of a self-referential orgy - Ted Broiler from MM2 is a bonus boss, in fact.

Anyway, my understanding is that MM2 took place in an alternate universe but Reloaded retcons it to be on the same timeline as the rest of the games.

In MM4 Noah, Olga Mode and 4 Grappler Emperors are bonus DLC bosses(I think DLC bounties) though not sure if they got revived or something.
By they way who the the final boss in MM3? It seems to be some kind of dragon on a ship not Olga.

 

[cearp]

But another possibility is dual-tile encoding - add a bunch of characters to the font that have two letters combined

wow, people do this in some translations? that's pretty nasty, clever i guess but ugly

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

I'm just waiting until I have enough spare money to import a Japanese 3DS to play it, or I find a reliable way to break the region lock on my current 3DS

unless you updated recently to 11.0 (so, if you are 10.7 or below), then you are in luck and you can play a real out of region copy/a pirated copy.

 

[Terithian]

Season of Steel is not that great but it's not that bad either and it is a direct continuation of MM1 so I still recommend playing it, have you played PS2 Metal Saga?
I also heard that MM4 is the best in the series and it already works okay on Citra, audio was bad but it improved in the previous week. On emulator you can play at much higher resolutions and DLCs should work too. I think his correct name is Bias Brad not Bias Vlad.

Hm, maybe I will play Season of Steel at some point. I have played the first Metal Saga. I found it decent, but not great. One of the weakest in the series. It's a pity that it being the only one that got localized and not doing great in terms of sales ended up killing all chances of any publishers taking the risk of localizing later games.
About Bias Brad/Bias Vlad, it's definitely Vlad. In the original MM2, they wrote his name as ブラド (burado), which could easily be interpreted at Brad, but I believe it was just a crappy rendition of the name Vlad, as 'V' sounds from other languages are often rendered as 'B' sounds in Japanese, since Japanese has no native 'V' sound. They fixed it for MM2:R by writing his name using the slightly less common katakana character ヴ (vu) as ヴラド (vurado), which can only be interpreted as Vlad. It doesn't have the nice alliteration of Bias Brad, but the name Vlad definitely sounds a bit more imposing than just some guy called Brad. Anyways, I'd take MM2:R to be the definitive source on this.

unless you updated recently to 11.0 (so, if you are 10.7 or below), then you are in luck and you can play a real out of region copy/a pirated copy.

Unfortunately, my 3DS is completely up to date. Oh well.