ROM Hack Translation Issue: Edited text not showing up

[astralturf]

Hi GBAtemp!

My sister and I have decided to translate Fabstyle into English, a game similar to Style Savvy, but a little nicer looking. We didn't really have any idea how to do so a couple days ago, but we've so far managed to unpack the ROM and start the translation process. We have managed to translate the persondata.bin file containing every character's names and occupations so far, and it's worked; we repacked to ROM to test it and the new text showed up fine.

We hit a snag when we started to translate the itemdata.bin file that contained the names of all the clothing. We replaced all instances of 'Simple U-neck Tshirt' in the file, repacked it, and tried to play. When we looked at the item, though, the name was still in Japanese.

Being newbs, we don't know what went wrong, and would appreciate help.
Thanks in advance.

 

[Foxi4]

It's likely that the lenght of this particular string is fixed - either your name is too long or too short and the game ignores it.

 

[astralturf]

We tried replacing just 'シンプル' with 'simpleee' so that they took up the same amount of space for testing, and it still wouldn't change in the game.
We also changed the length of the strings when translating the persondata.bin file, and it still worked, so we don't believe that's the issue.

 

[DS1]

I'm sorry I don't have any experience with hacking, but I commend your choice of game. It's definitely on my top 10 DS games that should be put into English.

edit: Style Savvy is like my 3rd favorite game of all time... I actually wrote part of a post about the differences between the two games, but can't really finish it until I've played through all of FabStyle

 

[penguin673]

It sounds like the game doesn't have a font for half-width alphanumerics. Try full-width like "ＳＩＭＰ". You might need to edit the font (and some code to change the advance of the font) if that's the case.

 

[DarthNemesis]

Have you tried also replacing the name in designdata.bin?

 

[rastsan]

Uh most obvious thing to point out... look for all instances of that string in the game and replace them. As it may not be a full width problem. or solely in just that file.
Also you unpacked the files in the rom... but did you check for compressed files? there may be text in some (possibly) compressed files in there.
or worse the text could be reverse encoded... or dual encoding both sjis and unicode. which may make searching for it more difficult.


good luck.

 

[astralturf]

I'm sorry I don't have any experience with hacking, but I commend your choice of game. It's definitely on my top 10 DS games that should be put into English.

edit: Style Savvy is like my 3rd favorite game of all time... I actually wrote part of a post about the differences between the two games, but can't really finish it until I've played through all of FabStyle

Thanks for the support . And yeah, we really liked Style Savvy too. I was looking for more games like this, and there isn't really another good one in English, so we turned to FabStyle.

It sounds like the game doesn't have a font for half-width alphanumerics. Try full-width like "ＳＩＭＰ". You might need to edit the font (and some code to change the advance of the font) if that's the case.

This doesn't appear to be the case -- both half and full-width works when I used DarthNemesis' solution.

Have you tried also replacing the name in designdata.bin?

It worked! Thanks a ton! I guess we should've looked thoroughly through all the files first, but we'll learn from this experience .

Uh most obvious thing to point out... look for all instances of that string in the game and replace them. As it may not be a full width problem. or solely in just that file.
Also you unpacked the files in the rom... but did you check for compressed files? there may be text in some (possibly) compressed files in there.
or worse the text could be reverse encoded... or dual encoding both sjis and unicode. which may make searching for it more difficult.


good luck.

Thanks for the advice and the support! We're new to this, and really appreciate any tidbit of information that can help.

 

[jjjewel]

The Simple U-neck Tshirt you'll see early in the game is in designdata.bin.

A little warning. Most of the game texts are in Msg folder which doesn't use normal encoding.

The game supports alphanumeric, however not all of them. You can use A-Z, a-z, then , & - / : ' ! .
Other signs won't show up. (Ex. You don't have a ?. If you want to use it, you will need to use the Japanese full-width question mark.)

You'll have problem with line break later because the game reuse text when you unlock your closet but it will automatically cut off the text.

BTW, I've also been working on this game and was about to release a test patch to my friend today. >_

 

[astralturf]

Oh xD. We hadn't found any translation projects for the game, which is why we decided to start one. It looks like you're further along than we are.

Didn't expect we'd be hanging up our hats so soon after we started.

 

[jjjewel]

Oh xD. We hadn't found any translation projects for the game, which is why we decided to start one. It looks like you're further along than we are.

Didn't expect we'd be hanging up our hats so soon after we started.

I've been waiting for the game to be listed on the GBATemp release but I've started working on it since the ROM was released.
And I already have one active project so I don't plan to release this to public until much later. (Probably until I finish my Love Revo project first.)

Anyway, please continue. I'll drop mine as I still have other games I want to work on. I think it's better to have more people who are interested in hacking girlish games. I can give you some helps if you need but please continue.

 

[astralturf]

Thanks
We were planning on figuring out the different encoding when we got to it, but knowing someone more experienced is willing to help is a relief.
Be sure to check back on us when you're done with your other projects.

 

[jjjewel]

The tricks on text in Msg folder is that there are codes to switch from half-width katakana to full-width Katakana and full-width Hiragana. The Kanji's stay the same.

There will be texts in arm9.bin and overlay files as well. (These texts have very strict length limit. Keep changing and testing how they appear in game otherwise some will got cut off in the middle.)

Most graphics are standard graphics.

There are Nnstga graphics which are not quite standard, but when you get to them and if you can't figure out the format, please let me know.

(Edited some typos.)

 

[HinaNaru Cutie]

Hi GBAtemp!

My sister and I have decided to translate Fabstyle into English, a game similar to Style Savvy, but a little nicer looking. We didn't really have any idea how to do so a couple days ago, but we've so far managed to unpack the ROM and start the translation process. We have managed to translate the persondata.bin file containing every character's names and occupations so far, and it's worked; we repacked to ROM to test it and the new text showed up fine.

We hit a snag when we started to translate the itemdata.bin file that contained the names of all the clothing. We replaced all instances of 'Simple U-neck Tshirt' in the file, repacked it, and tried to play. When we looked at the item, though, the name was still in Japanese.

Being newbs, we don't know what went wrong, and would appreciate help.
Thanks in advance.

um quick question but have you finished translating the game yet? I really would love the english patch ; n ;

 

[Dgrin]

too bad this project was dropped, it seems like a very fun game!

 

[HinaNaru Cutie]

too bad this project was dropped, it seems like a very fun game!

Oh man..that sucks

 

[Angely]

Oh man..that sucks

Lol I agree, & 3 yrs further no one picked it up again & the 3ds version probably not coming this way either.....

If this game had furigana I think I could've played it. So maybe option for other projects a furigana version of JP games might make the games more accessible for people to play/translate. Instead of undub only or full to english a furigana version option might be really nice, might save a lot if time for some tranlations.