Hacking Translation Text File
- Thread starter Telorrebus24
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What have you tried already?
There are four main approaches.
On systems with file names then file names, directory names, extensions, file sizes can be used to find or at least eliminate things that are sure not to be text.
Brute force, corruption and such. Start editing and swapping around files (can be easier with an idea about the files in the game and files in general) and seeing what changes in the game. Eventually you will find what you want, though eventually can be a very very very long time.
Relative search and other mathematical methods.
https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/513/
Relative search does not work as well for Japanese as it does English and related languages/Roman character using languages but it can still be a powerful tool.
I cover some mathematical approaches in
https://gbatemp.net/threads/gbatemp-rom-hacking-documentation-project-new-2016-edition-out.73394/
More involved techniques like tracing, compression searching, region comparative searches and emulator logs.
https://www.romhacking.net/documents/361/ is for the GBA and an old emulator there but the principles apply to most things. For the Switch then as you have a file system you will have to wander through that too, though that has its own perks.
There are four main approaches.
On systems with file names then file names, directory names, extensions, file sizes can be used to find or at least eliminate things that are sure not to be text.
Brute force, corruption and such. Start editing and swapping around files (can be easier with an idea about the files in the game and files in general) and seeing what changes in the game. Eventually you will find what you want, though eventually can be a very very very long time.
Relative search and other mathematical methods.
https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/513/
Relative search does not work as well for Japanese as it does English and related languages/Roman character using languages but it can still be a powerful tool.
I cover some mathematical approaches in
https://gbatemp.net/threads/gbatemp-rom-hacking-documentation-project-new-2016-edition-out.73394/
More involved techniques like tracing, compression searching, region comparative searches and emulator logs.
https://www.romhacking.net/documents/361/ is for the GBA and an old emulator there but the principles apply to most things. For the Switch then as you have a file system you will have to wander through that too, though that has its own perks.
Text files are rarely standard. To that end there are three approaches people normally take
1) Some kind of manual setup.
2) One of the various general purpose tools/workflows.
3) Custom build their own tool.
Tables are a fairly standard concept in hacking ( https://transcorp.romhacking.net/scratchpad/Table File Format.txt for a more involved one), various hex editors and such support them, pointers are often easy enough to calculate (if end of line marks a pointer then you can figure them out from a basic search and possibly some basic maths on top of that), formatting in translation tends to remain the same, as does any placeholder type things, fonts are graphics most of the time (albeit annoying ones more often than basic sprite work and backgrounds) and you can edit it all manually. Don't do this beyond figuring out what needs to be handled, or fixing a typo after all is said and done.
General purpose... trouble with this is as text can have so many variations and themes (see the table thing linked earlier, along with formatting and placeholders, pointers also having their own fun and games) that anything that aspires to be all encompassing necessarily becomes complicated.
There are maybe three combos of tools people use here.
Atlas and Cartographer.
The gold standard for much of the English speaking ROM hacking world.
https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/224/
https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/647/
Various other things are built to enhance that https://www.romhacking.net/?page=ut...l=&perpage=20&title=&desc=atlas&utilsearch=Go
Can be more tricky with newer things as it is built more around.
Kruptar7, usually flanked with Oriton ( http://www.magicteam.net/index.php?page=programs , though it is more of a table maker than anything else).
https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/612/
https://romhack.github.io/doc/kruptarPlugins/
https://bitbucket.org/magicteam_net/kruptar/src/master/
For my money a bit simpler and more limited than Atlas-Cartographer but at the same time way easier to pick up and get working.
Crystaltile2 originally started out as a program called crystalscript and still has quite extensive options within it for it, though I would not suggest it for changing text as much as searching for it in the first place.
https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/818/
Custom tools is then much as it sounds and you take the manual approach but as you know what makes up the text engine and thus don't have to make it as abstract to deal with all eventualities that could be/have been seen in games over the years you can fairly happily code a tool (usually in some kind of very high level language -- would be a great project to learn python, c#, ruby, visual basic, java, perl or similar with). Plenty of these already exist for games, and a few general formats (back on the DS and Wii there was the BMG format https://szs.wiimm.de/info/bmg-text.html some games used, though unlike sound and graphics most devs still rolled their own formats), so you could even take a look at those and get some ideas. Sometimes you might even find an open source one that works for an older game in the franchise or from the same developer and can tweak it to support whatever new features or changes were introduced in this entry, yugioh having had some hacks in the past though not as many as something like mario or pokemon (most people being more interested in changing cards and AI related things).
1) Some kind of manual setup.
2) One of the various general purpose tools/workflows.
3) Custom build their own tool.
Tables are a fairly standard concept in hacking ( https://transcorp.romhacking.net/scratchpad/Table File Format.txt for a more involved one), various hex editors and such support them, pointers are often easy enough to calculate (if end of line marks a pointer then you can figure them out from a basic search and possibly some basic maths on top of that), formatting in translation tends to remain the same, as does any placeholder type things, fonts are graphics most of the time (albeit annoying ones more often than basic sprite work and backgrounds) and you can edit it all manually. Don't do this beyond figuring out what needs to be handled, or fixing a typo after all is said and done.
General purpose... trouble with this is as text can have so many variations and themes (see the table thing linked earlier, along with formatting and placeholders, pointers also having their own fun and games) that anything that aspires to be all encompassing necessarily becomes complicated.
There are maybe three combos of tools people use here.
Atlas and Cartographer.
The gold standard for much of the English speaking ROM hacking world.
https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/224/
https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/647/
Various other things are built to enhance that https://www.romhacking.net/?page=ut...l=&perpage=20&title=&desc=atlas&utilsearch=Go
Can be more tricky with newer things as it is built more around.
Kruptar7, usually flanked with Oriton ( http://www.magicteam.net/index.php?page=programs , though it is more of a table maker than anything else).
https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/612/
https://romhack.github.io/doc/kruptarPlugins/
https://bitbucket.org/magicteam_net/kruptar/src/master/
For my money a bit simpler and more limited than Atlas-Cartographer but at the same time way easier to pick up and get working.
Crystaltile2 originally started out as a program called crystalscript and still has quite extensive options within it for it, though I would not suggest it for changing text as much as searching for it in the first place.
https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/818/
Custom tools is then much as it sounds and you take the manual approach but as you know what makes up the text engine and thus don't have to make it as abstract to deal with all eventualities that could be/have been seen in games over the years you can fairly happily code a tool (usually in some kind of very high level language -- would be a great project to learn python, c#, ruby, visual basic, java, perl or similar with). Plenty of these already exist for games, and a few general formats (back on the DS and Wii there was the BMG format https://szs.wiimm.de/info/bmg-text.html some games used, though unlike sound and graphics most devs still rolled their own formats), so you could even take a look at those and get some ideas. Sometimes you might even find an open source one that works for an older game in the franchise or from the same developer and can tweak it to support whatever new features or changes were introduced in this entry, yugioh having had some hacks in the past though not as many as something like mario or pokemon (most people being more interested in changing cards and AI related things).
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