ROM Hack Luminous Arc 3

cavalierextreme

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Some of us have gotten together to create a patch for Luminous arc 3, as it seems increasingly unlikely that it will make it over to the west. As far as progress is concerned, we've done a large part of the menus, weapons and skill translations.

However, we want to release a storyline translation as well, but the problem here is the text limit. My question to the people at GBAtemp is:

Is it possible to circumvent the text limit, via hacking or whatever, in Luminous Arc 3? If it is, could we have some help on that?

Thanks a lot in advance.
 

kosheh

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You could try pointer hacking.
[pretty straightforward name; you're editing a part of the file header where the game "points" to "start" text and "end" text]
Worst case scenario you could see if there's extra space at the end of the file, write in any overflowing text and modify the pointers to "point" there...though pointers only point to one place at a time.

The downside is that you'll still have the "text box" limit...think of this as how many times the character says something in field dialogue before another character starts speaking. If character A has two "boxes" of dialogue and then character B says something, character A has a box limit of only those two boxes. You could change the speaking characters maybe if the dialogue container file is simplistic enough...but that'd go against what you want.

Basically, pointer hacking is good if it's just adding like 5 extra characters in a line...and if you put in too much text, the text box will overflow and it'll look goofy with the text going off to the side.

It sounds scary advanced but it's...pretty easy once you get the hang of it...though, it depends from game to game. Some games might have goofy methods of displaying text/pointers, or the way pointers are edited/text is modified may differ from game to game and publisher to publisher.

If one of you on the team is extra daring and knows what they're doing you could also write a dialogue editor....but that's not really something to be taken lightly ._.



There might be other people on the forum more experienced with this stuff [Noitora, psycoblaster if they still post] and have better, more efficient methods of texthacking, but pointerhacking's the best way I know to get around the text limit without modifying the font or the kerning of the text (which is what some of the ~extreme, superior text hackers~ here do)

but yeah!!!!!
 

.Darky

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I was really dissapointed when it seemed the game may not be released oficially in english. I'm glad someone is working on a translation.
 

Ogogin

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Another translator is already at the public beta testing for the Luminous Arc 3 patch in English, so you may want to cooperate with him more then start from scratch. I don't know if public the link of the site is allowed (as the site contain ROMs), but the username of the translator is Yuukiwa-kun.

Cavalierextreme, I sent to you the link in PM so you can contact the translator by yourself.
 

Normmatt

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If you provide more detailed information on which files contain text then I might write up a text editor for you to use that will take care of repointing stuff for you.

EDIT: By the look of it the pointers are extremely simple. First 32bit value in file is the number of pointers then follows number of pointer * 32bit each giving an offset to the start of each string. I made a quick editor for it although I haven't yet tested saving.
 

Auryn

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I loved the first game but I dumped in the middle for the too high rate of enemy encounters....I hope this one is better.

Anyway it looks like a good work from the screens.
 

jagerstaffel

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I was really dissapointed when it seemed the game may not be released oficially in english. I'm glad someone is working on a translation.

Yeah, I was really disappointed when it wasn't announced for an english license. Sure would be nice to at least get menu's and weapons in english, and then work from there.
 

The Minecrafter

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So is the patch given above the complete translation?
No, its not the complete patch. There is a small amount of edited dialogue, but they have been mostly editing the item names and such.
I can't give you a link to the site, as the site contains links to roms, but just Google luminous arc 3 English patch, and the site should be at the top of the list.

Apparently, Yuukiwa-kun is the main translator, and he said that he is done or almost done with the non story elements (weapons and such)
Deathfire was supposed to be translating the storylines, but I don't think many(if anyone) has heard from him
 

The Minecrafter

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There has been a new update for the game. Not sure how much has been changed, but here is the xdelta .patch
https://filetrip.net/dl?avZGoKtbw0
 

KristinMoonCloud

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very happy to have found this thread!
although the newest link says:
"Sorry, this file has been temporarily disabled. It is most likely under review by our team."
is there another download mirror somewhere or do we have to wait?
 

boombox

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With things like Kickstarter around, I hope localization will become an easier task for fans. If they get permission from the creators of the original game and the attention from like-minded fans, maybe there will be a lot of translation starters in the future?
I'd totally donate to something like this if it existed on that site.

Luminous Arc is my favourite strategy series ever. So I'm really chuffed people are translating it :D
 

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