ROM Hack Summon Night Craft Sword Monogatari - Translation attempt

[paranoodle]

I know there's already a thread for this game, but seeing as I'm trying to start this from scratch, I thought it would be better to make my own thread

I've been wanting to play this game since I found out it existed (sometime around 2008), and after seeing several projects to translate it start and end, I thought I would just try it on my own.

The actual translation part shouldn't be too much trouble: I know enough Japanese to be able to translate fairly accurately if I'm allowed a dictionary. I've been hitting a few problems with the actual "hacking" of the ROM, though. Please keep in mind this is my very first attempt at modifying a game, and two days ago I had never touched a hex editor. (However, I am currently studying IT, so most things I've used so far I'd at least heard about or practiced)

Now onto the work I've done and my current problem(s):

Thanks to Ritchburn's text dump I could see where the script was kept, and using breakpoints figured out it was compressed in lz77. I decompressed it and found readable text, very nicely encoded in Shift-JIS.
However,
1. I cannot locate the pointer tables, leading me to think they are possibly compressed as well.
2. There is a lot of non-text between dialogue bits, and I can't figure out what they're for.
3. I have absolutely no idea how to recompress the text after modifying it so I can insert it again.

I've been told that using Cartographer and Atlas for extracting and inserting the script is the easiest way, but would that still work with compressed text?

If there's anything more you'd need or if there's anything I've done wrong, please tell me! I am also aware this is a bad beginner's project, but it's the one I want to work on and I'm ready to put time into it.

 

[BoxmanWTF]

sweet jesus that sounds hard and amazing, good luck to you my friend, and I can't wait to play it!

 

[SNfan]

please don't let your spirit down

,

really love craft sword series,

someone please help paranoodle and make this project come true n complete.

keep up the spirit!

 

[ubuntuinside]

paranoodle,

I got a head's up on extracting text from your post and later I figured out how to put text back.
However my method has been tested only for the "Kajishi!" in the introduction and it has a limitation too.
In case you are interested, here are the full details:

1. Get WindHex, JWPce, GBADecmp
2. Get the standard Shift JIS table from http://www.romhacking.net/documents/442/
3. Open the table in JWPce and save it as type .sjs
4. Rename the extension to .tbl
5. Extract some text using GBADecmp using LZ77UnComp(use Ritchburn's script dump for offset addresses: the address is what follows after "begin 0x" in the beginning of each file)
6. Open the extracted data in WindHex
7. Load the Shift JIS table file
8. Press Ctrl+D to view text as Unicode
9. Open the table file in JWPce too for easy reference of hex code for each character
If you look carefully, you will notice that there are two sets of English alphabets:one uses a 2 character code and the other uses a 4 character code
The game supports both character codes, but I think fonts are present only for the 4 character code ones as using 2 character code gives scrambled text
10. Use WindHex and directly replace the 4 character code of each Japanese character with the 4 character code of the English alphabet of your choice.
However this means that you can replace the Jpapnese only with English of the same length.
11. Save the file and put it back in the same offset using GBADecmp using LZ77Comp

ubuntuinside

P.S. For getting Windows to display the script dump files in hex order, search for s* in the folder in which they are.

 

[paranoodle]

Ah, thanks a lot ubuntu, but I'd already gotten past that part ^^

The problem is, this only lets me use the same number of characters (which would most likely not be enough...), and you'd get the ugly Fixed-Width Font. I've been way too busy with classes lately, but I've been looking into how to code a variable-width font, and also, how to extract all of the text, since it seems some of the non-dialogue text isn't encoded the same way. From the answers I've gotten on my thread on romhacking.net, it seems the whole game is coded in a high-level language the developers made, which means heavy reverse-engineering on my part.

But thanks again for wanting to help, it's nice to see people wanting to get involved

As it is, I haven't had much progress though, sad to say.

 

[parakarry64]

paranoodle,


Ignore this This might come in handy, the font address of the ROM for all text characters is 0x014D5C86, uncompressed. It has 2bpp planar encoding (gameboy), and each character is 12x12 (a tile and a a half). If you use Tile Layer Pro (with the base palette), when the character is bigger than the 8x8 normal tile, any horizontal "excess" pixels will be drawn in the left side of the tile with another color, and any vertical excess "pixels" will be drawn in the next tile with the same color, if the horizontal excess pixels overlap with the existing tile pixels, they will be of yet another color. Ignore this

Ubuntuinside and me had been working on a few things (mostly images) in the rom (translating them to english), since there are still a few unstranslated we'll be working on that for now.
On compression... so far only the "Character Select" Box and the script are compressed.

EDIT: I forgot to mention, all characters used in the game are 4 character codes in hex (there is no font for 2 character codes).

MAJOR EDIT: The font was actually 16x12 (altough in-game it will look as 12x12) and is located at 0x014d5c88 . It has 1bpp planar. Use Djinn Tile Mapper or else it will show completely messed up.

Good luck paranoodle

P.S: There's a summon night fan-game project going on at the Summon Night Group in Facebook

 

[Pablitox]

how is it going so far?

 

[parakarry64]

Unfortunately not much has been done (aside from a few graphical translations such as names and windows, and changing a bit of text here and there). Progress will be slow (but won't stop) since the font is being replaced (each japanese character will now hold 2 characters) and there are over 1700 possible character combinations. Fortunately there is enough space....but it will take time.

 

[Pablitox]

oh alright, good luck then

 

[SilverBlade]

I wish to join the project team. I can translate and with help, do some coding. My email is [email protected] or you can PM me. I really would love to see this done, so I've decided to help out. I've actually translated quite a bit of Ritchburn/Killfith, so I can do that if neccessary.

 

[jarejare3]

There is this websites that posted translations, But i think you know of it already. try to contact the guy and see if he/she could help you out.

EDIT: Forgot to add this to the original post swordcraftfuntimes.blogspot.com

 

[ammaralmuary]

hope parakarry64 finish the project . really cant wait though , rooting for you man ! i really wan to contribute on something . :/

 

[Legenoblack]

i have noticed that when using rifmonica they call her "him" or "he". Are you going to fix this too?

 

[Just Another Gamer]

Good luck on this, i'm looking forward to a translation regardless who makes it first

 

[Pablitox]

how is it going?

 

[parakarry64]

Ubuntuinside said he was re-translating item names. (They got messed up when trying to use a different font image). I can't do much for now until he finishes modifying the rom (even worse since I'm in classes and can't check too often).

 

[rolo2005]

can you upload what you have until now?

all what ritchburn made was lost and I don't want the same to happen again if you guys lose interest.

also someone may look what is needed to do and help

 

[JonathanGarlit]

http://swordcraftfuntimes.blogspot.com/
Hope this helps! Goodluck!

 

[SNfan]

any news... T_T

 

[Pablitox]

how is itt going?