hey was just seeing if there is any big update with this and keep up with the good work
If there's a big update we'll post about it, trust me. =P
The last time I communicated with them was in June or July of last year, around the time I joined the team. I'm just assuming real life got in the way, or something happened (hopefully nothing bad), or something along those lines.
Hello guys just wanted to see how's things are going what kind of help can I help you guys with if you need any and if I can do it.. lol
I still haven't been able to determine where the texts sizing come from, I've tried searching through the files for likely values but haven't found anything yet, I also tried decrypting and examining the eboot.bin and I'm still not sure where the script for generating the font textures is. Lately I've be trying to dump the RAM and use memory breakpoints with JPCSP to see if I can track the execution.
Any help would be appreciated but I won't really be able to give advice since I don't know myself and I likely overlooked something.
Any help would be appreciated but I won't really be able to give advice since I don't know myself and I likely overlooked something.
Well, uhh... that's actually some hardcore stuff, you see, first of all, the *font* is compressed (just like many other files), and even though it's easy to decompress it, the texture itself is generated from the font source at runtime (the font source is the compressed data). This means that each individual text window will have a different font texture, depending on the characters used in that window.
This is not a problem, since *I think* all required characters for an English translations are already included, but it would be a problem if a character bitmap needs editions for some reason.
Now on font screen coordinates, they are read from memory and placed in the GE's opcodes to draw character on screen, you can actually see them when debugging the graphic processor, in the following pic I edited 2 of them, placing the character's starting position in a different spot (out of the text window, lol!)
Just like with any 3D coordinate, you need X (I only edited X in the above example), Y and Z, since this is 2D drawing, Z is always 0 (good, something that does make sense!). In the above example, is easy to see where those coordinates are, in memory, since most data in the game is compressed, it's a little bit more difficult to figure out where it is in the ISO, not impossible though, assuming there is only one file with coordinates text windows, it could be found using memory breakpoint in the above addresses.
~Sky
This is not a problem, since *I think* all required characters for an English translations are already included, but it would be a problem if a character bitmap needs editions for some reason.
Now on font screen coordinates, they are read from memory and placed in the GE's opcodes to draw character on screen, you can actually see them when debugging the graphic processor, in the following pic I edited 2 of them, placing the character's starting position in a different spot (out of the text window, lol!)
Just like with any 3D coordinate, you need X (I only edited X in the above example), Y and Z, since this is 2D drawing, Z is always 0 (good, something that does make sense!). In the above example, is easy to see where those coordinates are, in memory, since most data in the game is compressed, it's a little bit more difficult to figure out where it is in the ISO, not impossible though, assuming there is only one file with coordinates text windows, it could be found using memory breakpoint in the above addresses.
~Sky
The problem I'm having isn't exactly with the font, I already know how to replace the font itself for example I did so for Final Promise Story (same developer, similar file /this thread, post #175) since that didn't have a full alphabet. The issue is with the sizing of the text itself, even if I change the dimensions of the font it still displays at the same size, there's likely a value for that size somewhere I just have no idea where.
Edit: I already found the position data for the text boxes along with the position and sizing data for the standard textures (this thread, post #184), they're spread across loads of the compressed archives but each file has a .lyop extension. The problem is text sizing is set differently to pre-existing textures, likely because as you pointed out the texture is generated at run time (also why I refered to "the script for generating the font textures" in my previous post)
Edit: Another point of interest is text is subject to automatic link breaks, these vary per text box so again I would expect values to control this to be somewhere. Finding this would be the next priority if thinner text was acheived
Good effort by the way, you definitely seemed to figure out the first bit faster than me
Edit: I already found the position data for the text boxes along with the position and sizing data for the standard textures (this thread, post #184), they're spread across loads of the compressed archives but each file has a .lyop extension. The problem is text sizing is set differently to pre-existing textures, likely because as you pointed out the texture is generated at run time (also why I refered to "the script for generating the font textures" in my previous post)
Edit: Another point of interest is text is subject to automatic link breaks, these vary per text box so again I would expect values to control this to be somewhere. Finding this would be the next priority if thinner text was acheived
Good effort by the way, you definitely seemed to figure out the first bit faster than me
Thanks very much for helping Jamrules with this Sky.
If it was my post that guided you here, then I'm very greatful that you complied with the request.
Do your best on both your projects, and I wish you the best of luck.
If it was my post that guided you here, then I'm very greatful that you complied with the request.
Do your best on both your projects, and I wish you the best of luck.
Took ages but I did it
Huge thanks to SkyBladeCloud, thanks to your post I was able to trace the disassembly backwards from the vertex data.
In the end I changed the eboot.bin, smallest asm hack ever (if it counts)
Huge thanks to SkyBladeCloud, thanks to your post I was able to trace the disassembly backwards from the vertex data.
In the end I changed the eboot.bin, smallest asm hack ever (if it counts)
Took ages but I did it
In the end I changed the eboot.bin, smallest asm hack ever (if it counts)
That's really cool (I'd like to learn mips assembly myself too)
You can now use as much letters as you want in a line instead of sacrificing the text quality, and the battle menus will be finally translatable. (similar issues really were detrimental to Muramasa Wii)
Sorry for nitpicking, but it seems as a result that the font doesn't look quite as good as before. Is there any way to modify the letters and accommodate the new width so that they don't look "crushed"?
That's really cool (I'd like to learn mips assembly myself too)
You can now use as much letters as you want in a line instead of sacrificing the text quality, and the battle menus will be finally translatable. (similar issues really were detrimental to Muramasa Wii)
Sorry for nitpicking, but it seems as a result that the font doesn't look quite as good as before. Is there any way to modify the letters and accommodate the new width so that they don't look "crushed"?
Yea it does look squashed, basically I choose "original*0.625" as a very quick example.
I briefly mention on the WordPress but I'm going to change the spacing, current there's a space of -1 pixel (overlaps) so if I change this I can get the letters to match up nicely and then widen them a bit
You'll need to widen them up no matter what width you choose, because they were originally just using barely half of the 16*16 tile width and everything else was left blank, Ｓｏｍｅｔｈｉｎｇ ｌｉｋｅ ｔｈｉｓ. Those blank areas are the problem here: as you stretch the displaying to accomodate more letters, you'll stretch the blank areas as well.
I'd suggest you use original*0.5, and then modify the font to stretch each letter twice the length, in a way that makes them centered and filling the entire tile (of course if you try stretching M/W twice it will overflow, so just a little less than twice for those two will do.
(example from SNES games with "hi-res mode" aka a mode that stretches parts of the graphics, mainly text, *0.5 their width)
Ended up wasting time when I stupidly closed my hex editor without recording the location of the value first,
but this what I got now. Probably needs some size balancing but I made a note this time
Some comparisons:
Original
Edit 1 (current)
Edit 2
Unfortunately kerning is constant across all letters
but this what I got now. Probably needs some size balancing but I made a note this time
Some comparisons:
Original
Edit 1 (current)
Edit 2
Unfortunately kerning is constant across all letters
That's still the norm in lots of games, namely PSP Falcom games, Gods Eater Burst and so on. Coding a VWF isn't a must.
Speaking of those, Edit 2 looks almost exactly like their English versions but I have always disliked how m/w letters were uglier.
Edit 1, the current one, is excellent.
I suggest you do one final edit to the apostrophe to make it more centered than it already is, so that it's nicer on the eye.
While you're at it, I should remark something:
Due to the unusual spacing, the period, commas and double periods look like they're a compound of the punctuation symbol plus a space.
It might be useful to save typing some space characters at times, but if you disagree and don't feel this would work, make them centered too like the apostrophe (to avoid the huge space).
If half-width katakana characters are still there and usable, see if you could make one of them as the single character for the ellipsis three dots "...", again, because of the fixed spacing issues.
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Or, I also heard that if you use flash memory, it can act as more "RAM" at least windows tell me when I stick a flash drive into it. -
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