ROM Hack Changing text in DQ4, help!

[gukid]

Of course seeing that all of the text was in ".txt" like files I thought this would be easy, but I'm obviously doing something wrong. The files are .MTP, with some sort of header, and then all of the text with control codes fairly easy to read. What I'm trying to do is change dialogue and well as spell/enemy/item names, town names, etc. (I'm a DW purist...)

When I make any changes at all to the files however, all I get are error messages. Say for example I change the file with items, any time I get an item, the item will be . It's also every item, not just the ones I've changed. I'm thinking there my be some sort of pointer table that would need to be changed as well? (I'm assuming now that this is the "header" that I'm seeing, which isn't plain text...)

If anyone can help point me in the right direction with this project, it would be greatly appreciated.

Edit:

Reading a bit more, about little/big endian, hex and how I would need to "byte swap" function the pointer table for it to make any sense to me, gave that a try with anything above the first text, and got something similar to this (excerpt):

UPDATED, now start of file:

(504D is just the file extension in ascii but messed up because of the swap)
504D 30 54 03 D4
0000 46 29 00 0F
46A5 00 0F 00 33
0000 00 20 00 00
0134 00 00 02 80
(new info on the line above, 0154 is where the data starts, says 0134 here. Another file is similar, where the data starts 20 more than what it says on this line... and oddly enough there is always a "20" in the line above. 280 appears to be the exact amount of characters in the data portion for this file.)

(these next lines are the pointer matched up with the data at the end.)
0000 00 00 00 04 @0M@
0000 00 01 00 04 @0F@
0001 00 02 00 0C @0M@1Ragnar@
0002 00 03 00 0B @0F@1Alena@.
0005 00 04 00 0B @0M@1Kiryl@.
0008 00 05 00 0B @0M@1Borya@.
000B 00 06 00 0D @0M@1Torneko@...
000E 00 07 00 0B @0F@1Meena@.
0012 00 08 00 0A @0F@1Maya@..
0015 00 0A 00 0D @0F@1Aigneas@...
0018 00 0B 00 0C @0N@1Healie@
001C 00 0C 00 01 @...
001F 00 0D 00 01 @...
0020 00 0E 00 0A @0M@1Fido@..
0021 00 0F 00 0C @0M@1Hardie@

...

(spaces and line breaks inserted for added effect and I also matched up the #s with the order of the text. I also apologize if posting a sample here against the rules as well, as it could potentially be "copyrighted"... If so, please delete the infringing portion of my post.)

Looks like the first value is an offset of some sort, which I can't figure out. The 3rd value is sequential numbering, sometimes goes up by more than 1 but never out of order. The 5th value turns out to be the size of the text, in hex.

You can also notice in the full string here, the first value 0M/F is for Male or Female, the 2nd 1name is the characters name. All of the files seem to have the data in this sort of structure so it might be easy to create an editor once this is all figured out...

Oh, and I also tried changing one character. In the file with the town names and chapter titles, it seemed to break it and give

 

[gukid]

So no love for this project?

I've messed with the tables a bit more, and have figured out what I THINK is the actual table format, but am still having some trouble making any changes to the files. Here is what I have now:

(first 4 bytes)
504D 3054

 

[gukid]

So maybe to inspire some interest... turns out that DQ4 has a lot more wrong with it then the sketchy, unfaithful localization. Half of the dialogue is missing from the English version of the game, in the form of ALL of the party speak for the first 4 chapters. I guess it would be too much effort to localize it all with all them accents and whatnot, into 5 languages, so S-E pulled a Namco and just diabled accessing them until Chapter 5. Looking into the rom, the missing text in japanese is about 1 megabyte. The rest of the entire english script is only 800k...

Anyone out there a real good hacker who may be able to reimplement the option for party speak for the first 4 chapters, and then maybe we could get the text translated for the very BEST version of DQ4?

Correction, party speak is completely missing. All the text is gone and the ability to do it in the game has been disabled. FUN! THIS SUCKS!

 

[gukid]

I know it's not pokemon, and no one seems interested, but I figured out the rest of the data.

The 3rd column is how many sets of "4 bytes" of data, and the periods are there to pad any data up to a multiple of 4. So now I'm having an editor created and I'll get to start removing the accents, changing back the spell names/items/town names/character names/most enemy names and whatever else I feel needs to be corrected.

And maybe eventually get the party talk translated and put back into the game.

 

[PizzaPasta]

I know it's not pokemon, and no one seems interested, but I figured out the rest of the data.

The 3rd column is how many sets of "4 bytes" of data, and the periods are there to pad any data up to a multiple of 4. So now I'm having an editor created and I'll get to start removing the accents, changing back the spell names/items/town names/character names/most enemy names and whatever else I feel needs to be corrected.

And maybe eventually get the party talk translated and put back into the game.

I'm interested. I hope this actually gets done because I would love to see what this party talk thing is all about.

I am also hoping that this gets fixed before I finish the game: http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=105...t&p=1405694

Have you finished the EU release yet? I am hoping that this is just an R4 problem since I am using a Cyclo.

So don't lose hope, I'm interested in your work!

 

[InuYasha]

I know it's not pokemon, and no one seems interested, but I figured out the rest of the data.

The 3rd column is how many sets of "4 bytes" of data, and the periods are there to pad any data up to a multiple of 4. So now I'm having an editor created and I'll get to start removing the accents, changing back the spell names/items/town names/character names/most enemy names and whatever else I feel needs to be corrected.

And maybe eventually get the party talk translated and put back into the game.

I'm interested. I hope this actually gets done because I would love to see what this party talk thing is all about.

I am also hoping that this gets fixed before I finish the game: http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=105...t&p=1405694

Have you finished the EU release yet? I am hoping that this is just an R4 problem since I am using a Cyclo.

So don't lose hope, I'm interested in your work!

Party talk is just more text from the original game it's not that big of a feature.....

 

[gukid]

Party talk is absent from both the EU and US versions of the game, I checked.

Also, I have a tool now, and all the magic names have been changed back to their originals, as have most names, town names, some items. I've also removed the accents from the entire first chapter of the game, and am now playtesting it for typos. Getting the party talk translated will be a much much bigger project, I feel.

 

[War]

Party talk is absent from both the EU and US versions of the game, I checked.

Also, I have a tool now, and all the magic names have been changed back to their originals, as have most names, town names, some items. I've also removed the accents from the entire first chapter of the game, and am now playtesting it for typos. Getting the party talk translated will be a much much bigger project, I feel.

If you remove the accents, I will absolutely be in love with this project. They are the only reason why I HATE DQ4.

 

[Lumstar]

Please make this consistent with the official DQ8 translation, if you can. I loved the English dialog/names/etc of it.

 

[gukid]

It's actually going to be more in line with the older Dragon Warriors, just regular text. I actually hated what they did to DQ8 and never played it :\

But I'm sure I can release the editor once it's working really well, so anyone can rewrite the script into whatever they want.

 

[War]

Well, if you release an editor, I wouldn't mind working together with you to make a full English translation

 

[PizzaPasta]

It's actually going to be more in line with the older Dragon Warriors, just regular text. I actually hated what they did to DQ8 and never played it :\

But I'm sure I can release the editor once it's working really well, so anyone can rewrite the script into whatever they want.

I would love to see some Hurtmore and Healmore instead of the newer spell names. And what the fuck is a bubble slime?! It's a BABBLE!

 

[Johnboy]

Hello, I just wanted to say thanks for working on this, and I hope you still are. It doesn't seem right for SE to take half the text out of a game and still charge the same price for it.

In any case, thanks for even trying, I know a good amount of people that were upset by the NA and EU release.