ROM Hack [Release] Persona Q Undub

[Canzah]

This Persona Q Undub (US) was brought to you by:
Askedforthis - CPK Repack, Text Timing
Canzah - ROM Repack, Movie Encoding, Text Styling and Correction
NilleN20 - Movie Translation

This will replace the English voiceovers in Persona Q with the original Japanese ones.
We currently have no way of testing if the DLCs will also be in Japanese, but unless something changed from SMT4, they should be.

You need Gateway or a 3DS with 4.5 CFW in which case you'll have to convert the rom to CIA yourself.
We may make EU-Region compatible version as well once someone dumps the ROM for it.

I'm also currently looking for someone willing to help reverse engineer the 3DS .moflex video format, so that I can properly finish my SMT4 Undub.
I need a way to swap audio streams of the .moflex files, so that I can replace audio stream from the English version's movies with audio stream from the Japanese movies.
If there's anyone willing to help, please contact me.
If anyone owns SMT4 (US) DLC and plans on getting Persona Q (US) DLC, please contact me or Askedforthis via PM.

Can't post download link here, but you can try the "usual" 3DS website or a certain well known tracker for Japanese stuff like anime.

 

[SuzieJoeBob]

Personally, I see this as a major milestone for the 3DS dev scene. Being able to successfully replace files in a commercial videogame is a feat in itself, but being able to play the modified game successfully is a huge leap. Sure, someone could replace every address in a file with 0xFF using a hex-editor, but that only means they how to use a GUI, while most-likely watching a YouTube video.

 

[Canzah]

Certainly, being able to repack roms was a big milestone.

 

[Askedforthis]

Thanks for your patience, and enjoy Persona Q people! This was one hell of a repack to do, but it was worth it and everyone here learned a lot.

Here's a quick guide if you want to repack the ROM manually instead of "acquiring" it. Do keep in mind that if you choose to repack the game manually like this the videos will not have subs. Download our release if you want subs.

You'll need:

• The English and Japanese versions of the game
• cpkmakec (you can probably find it around by using Google)
• QuickBMS with the CPK script (or other cpk extraction utilities like unpack_cpk)
• The standard repacking tools like ctrtool, makerom, ExheaderInjector, CTR Decryptor, and a way to recreate the ROMFS.bin

I won't go through the decryption process as that is pretty well documented already, just create the xorpads and unpack it as per usual. Neither the English or Japanese releases uses the 7.x encryption key, so it should be very easy to do.

Once the game is decrypted, use your cpk extraction tools to extract the gigantic data.cpk file. You'll end up with a lot of different folders that will pop up. Do this for both the Japanese and English version.

When you've completed both of them, simply delete the Sound folder in the English one and replace it with the Japanese sound folder. You'll also need to replace the files inside "battle/model/player/se", "battle/model/enemy/se" and "battle/skill/se" as there's one file here that is changed in the English version for some unknown reason (we don't know how to uncompress these acb files yet into hca files, but the skill sound effect that was changed might speak or some similar reason). You also need to replace the file "v490001.awb" in the Dungeon folder with it's Japanese equivalent.

If you want Japanese audio in the videos instead of the English audio, you'll need to replace the movies folder.

Once those are replaced, you can repack the cpk using cpkmakec. This is done by using the handcrafted CSV in the folder below. Put cpkmakec and its respective dlls into the decrypted data.cpk folder where all the game files are located, open up a command prompt and feed it the following:

cpkmakec.exe [path/to/filelist.csv] data.cpk -align=2048 -mode=FILENAME

It will now recreate the cpk with the proper compression and file order. Once that is completed you can repack the ROM using the normal repacking procedures. Here's a RSF for that purpose, but I'd highly recommend injecting the original exheader after it is done.

After repacking and injecting the exheader you can put it on your card and hopefully it'll play without errors. Good luck!

 

[gamefan5]

This... is a major milestone. MILLION THANKS.

 

[Canzah]

Here's a quick guide if you want to repack the ROM manually instead of "acquiring" it

This method won't give them translated movies...

 

[AbdulaPizdec]

 

[anhminh]

Next time you should put your release topic's name in the post so people can Google it faster.
Not everyone go to that site you know.

 

[Shinon]

Can't post download link here, but you can try the "usual" 3DS website or a certain well known tracker for Japanese stuff like anime.

...Upload this as torrent

 

[Askedforthis]

I'd like to give a warning, there might be an error done in this release. For some reason (at least for me personally) the release gave videos in English sound and voices, while the rest of the game was in Japanese.

We're currently working on getting that one hundred percent confirmed. If that is the case with everyone, the release would need to be fixed for the Japanese audio to work in videos.

We're extremely sorry about that if that is the case, and are working on confirming it. I'll edit this post soon with my findings.

Edit: It seems like this is indeed the case. I won't bother to decrypt the ROM to fully confirm it (as it would require generating the romfs xorpads for the repacked ROM) so we'll need to wait for Canzah who has the videos at hand.

 

[Meteo]

This is great. That means translated jp exclusives is a real possibility now?

 

[fvig2001]

Thanks for the undub. Can anyone point me in a good tutorial that teaches you to unpack decrypted roms so that I can convert this to CIA? I am stuck at the part where I try extracting romfs.bin that was extracted through ctrtool. It returns romfs corrupted.

 

[ScarletCrystals]

Good work.
Although Persona Q has some of the best English VA I've ever heard

 

[octopus]

Do you plan to undub the european version? It’s already available.

 

[Canzah]

God damnit. It seems I was so tired yesterday at night that I used wrong audio when encoding videos.
Time for 1.1 I guess.
Sorry everyone, this is embarrassing.

EDIT
1.1 version is now on the "usual" websites.

 

[Askedforthis]

As Canzah mentioned, the fixed version is out without the unfortunate English dubbing mistake during the videos. "That Japanese cat sound place" and "that other 3DS place" has them up and going.

Good work.
Although Persona Q has some of the best English VA I've ever heard

I respect your opinion, but alas my opinion severely differs in that regard. I've been listening to both versions a lot during the undubbing process and if you ask me the English one is absolutely atrocious in comparison. I have no idea why some people think the English dubs in Persona games are anything other than garbage, especially without hearing both versions, but that's the beauty of undubs: You can actually make a choice.

Do you plan to undub the european version? It’s already available.

I don't think there's any form of difference between the EU and US versions. If you know the EU version of PQ differs from the US version we might get it working if that's really needed.

 

[Kurt117]

thanks for 1.1
i personally couldn't stand the english dub :| like there was something wrong with the game (same thing happens with anime,i absolutely can't watch dubbed anime )

 

[ScarletCrystals]

I respect your opinion, but alas my opinion severely differs in that regard. I've been listening to both versions a lot during the undubbing process and if you ask me the English one is absolutely atrocious in comparison. I have no idea why some people think the English dubs in Persona games are anything other than garbage, especially without hearing both versions, but that's the beauty of undubs: You can actually make a choice.

Of course choice is good and you're entitled to your opinions.
But calling the English dub garbage is a bit harsh. I have in fact heard both versions and feel that Altus did an admirable job preserving the personalities that the voices gives in the localization (Although Teddy got less annoying, which is good. Fuuka sounds less like the female version of Jeff Goldblum. Rise doesn't sound like she inhaled helium)
I wouldn't say that the English VA is superior to the Japanese. But they're pretty close IMO.

 

[octopus]

I don't think there's any form of difference between the EU and US versions. If you know the EU version of PQ differs from the US version we might get it working if that's really needed.

There are actually several reasons.
1) The people who have started the game on another region’s ROM won’t be able to transfer the save.
2) If you’ll play the ROM of different region you won’t be able to use streetpass in some cases, it might nag you to accept the EULA every time, won’t be able to buy DLC, get patches (if they are not dumped).

I might sound demanding but I really don't see why won't you make versions for every region. You have figured all out so I don't think that there is a lot of difference between the structure in US and EU roms.

 

[Yolox]

Hello, Mr, Total n00b here.
I recently bought the game (US Version) but I really dun like english dubs and have totally no idea of how to install this undub D: Where do I get a tutorial that teaches me step by step how to do it?