ROM Hack Culdcept DS [open translation]

[diphen]

I was able to reproduce the above issue. It also happened when I used Holy Word X and then checked the Cepter screen. The game displays garbled characters, but only froze when I hit left or right to see another Cepter's stats. I was able to hit the B button to back out without a freeze occurring.
I opened the cepter menu to look at the enemy, so I probably hit left or right immediately which is why mine froze. Its good to know that you can avoid the lock, though.

QUOTE(mixinluv2u @ Jan 20 2010, 06:40 PM) woohoo another programer. =) welcome to the project. i am sure theli would enjoy some more help.

well, another hacker would be better ...
but, diphen, if you are really interested i can just send you the whole MESS of sourcecode (it is REALLY REALLY ugly .. i'm so embarrassed of that shit

)

though i currently don't know of a way programmer may help .. things that are left are reverse-engineering formats of the remaining parts

I am definitely interested. Like I said, I haven't messed with patching an NDS rom before, but poking around is always a good way to learn.

 

[mixinluv2u]

i am back to working on translating the manual pages when i have time. If anyone can help me do a screenshot of the pre-battle screen (where they tally up the assist/land bonus) and send it to me that will be appreciate it. It'll be best if it's against Miranda and if there are at least some assist/land bonus being displayed. if not that's okay too, i can manually edit them.

my no$gba is freezing a lot, i don't know if it's because my computer can't handle it or what. it freezes whenever someone passes a fort, which made reading a battle tough. it also doesn't display the taunt dialogues so maybe something to do with my graphics card?

 

[injected11]

I think I found the image in the manual that you need the screenshots for, so I tried to match up a few details to reduce your work. I noticed a Minotaur image behind the stats on the left half, and a Kraken image behind the stats on the right half. Screenshot 1 has the setup you requested, and has a Kraken in the right-side background. Screenshot 2 has the same setup, with a Minotaur in the left-side background.

Screenshot1: http://omploader.org/vM2JiNg/image1.bmp

Screenshot2: http://omploader.org/vM2JiOQ/image2.bmp

Let me know if you need something different. I'm working on getting some with more bonuses for you to work with.

No$gba isn't freezing (regularly) for me, but taunt text doesn't appear for me also. I think that is just a shortcoming of the emulator.

 

[mixinluv2u]

wow nice thanks man! i'll take a look when i get home tonight, but it sounds like those will work nicely. =D

 

[diphen]

A few questions, if you folks don't mind...

First, is there somewhere on the wiki that has a list of entries that still need translation, or do I need to dig through everything and look for empty spots? While playing I came across some missing taunts, just wondering how the actual translation is being organized, if I should edit the wiki or what?

Secondly, I've done what searching I can on the basics of taking these things apart. After unpacking I only ended up with a few files, which makes me assume that the text table is embedded in the .dat file, since .sdat should be sound, and I'm guessing that the .mc is video. I assume you know where this stuff is, theli, since you already have the script

Also, I'm assuming the text on the command menu buttons are part of the images, because they scale when selected. Although its possible that the text is added to an image or texture at runtime, there are so few of them that it wouldn't make much sense to do it that way. Have you found the locaton of the images? It would be pretty nice to swap out those images (like the territory button) with something that has some english on it. Shouldn't be that hard, assuming we can find the images.

I'd definitely like to see how you took this guy apart, theli.

 

[mixinluv2u]

i can try to answer a little... (i mostly work on graphic editing of the project)

on the main page of the wiki, anything that says 98% have all the text translated, meaning only proof-reading and small fixes like linebreaks (if necessary, often needs to be checked in game) are left. once progress is made on the translation people simply update the main page to reflect this, it is not handled automatically.

if i remembered correctly, only taunts and menus have some remaining text that needs to be translated. do you have japanese capability? the wiki is set up to auto update the patch when new text gets translated. So if you translate the text on the wiki for taunts, they will get inserted into the patch automatically (twice a day).

as far as graphical side of things go, theli setup an editor for the game that extracts some of the images (like the manual). i edit them and send to theli for insertion once finished.

most of the graphic UI, however, are handled differently. as of right now i believe theli has to manually extract them one by one. he still sends them to me for translation and edition, i send them back to him once i am done and he inserts them again manually.

that's as far as i know, hope that helped. theli can answer more in detail. =)


EDIT:
i went ahead and added progress to different section of the taunt script on the main page of the wiki. that should probably help with the remainder of the translation. =)

 

[diphen]

Cool cool, It looks like the technical aspects are well under control. Mainly wondering about the images and whatnot cause I'd like to learn more about how it works.

For sure I can help translate, especially the easier stuff like the taunt dialogues. I've gotten really fast and kanji lookup because I started working on an english wiki for MHF, but since 95% of the items are named things like ?????? all it really is is knowing/looking up the kanji

Using it in a sentence is a different matter entirely...

 

[mixinluv2u]

do you actually know japanese?

 

[diphen]

I took a couple years of it. My vocabulary is terrible, and I'm not fluent by any means but I get by.

 

[mixinluv2u]

diphen, i think the part that we need the most help on right now is the graphical UI part. which involves extracting and replacing the tiles correctly. i am really unfamiliar with rom hacking myself so not sure how much help i can give. I heard people use a program called Crystaltile though. if that's something you can figure out that would be awesome. or cook up some sort of program that can aid in helping to extract graphical UI's.

i can edit them with photoshop no problem, but once it gets to the actual extraction and insertion i am pretty useless.

if anyone else reading this can help with this that would be awesome too!!

-------------------
Update on the status of manual pages.

there are total 114 images for the manual. half of them are the actual instructions on rules and teaching you how to play (80 images), the other half is just the index with keywords (34 images).

I edited 54 images out of the first half already, so if you don't count index we are 67.5% done with only 26 images to go.

chexxor was the one that helped translate these pages for me while i edit the actual image. he hasn't sent me any update in a while though so i don't know if he got busy or what. injected if your friend would like to continue to help with translation that would be pretty kickass. =) although taunts might be more important than these since they appear in game more than manual pages....

here's the link to the images.

http://omploader.org/vMWprbw/pictures.7z

manual pages are 00773 - 00886.
00773 - 00826 are edited already. chexxor has up to 00828 translated, after that is where we need help.

00953 - 01019 are the sequences/slide show that plays when you "complete an element." i am guessing that happens when you collected all the cards from one of the elements. if those are translated i can edit them as well.

a text or word file with the translation typed up would be sufficient. just have the image # from the file name listed, then the translation following will be enough. i can figure out what's goes where since i have some limited ability in Japanese.

 

[diphen]

Cool. I already had CrystalTile, but I haven't had much luck with it. I just dont know enough about the structure of the .DAT files yet, but I'll keep pokin around.

@theli Would you PM me next time you're on? I've like to pick your brain.

 

[theli]

CrystalTile wont help much here
CULDCEPT.DAT is an archive .. and most files inside it are compressed with lha

 

[mixinluv2u]

theli,

What tools do you suggest we use to work with the images?

 

[diphen]

CrystalTile wont help much here
CULDCEPT.DAT is an archive .. and most files inside it are compressed with lha

Yeah I realized it was an archive and pulled out the files, but haven't had time to look at them yet. I assumed they were using LZ77, but lha makes sense. How many of those files have you gotten real data out of so far? If you have the offsets to either the files you've figured out, or the ones you haven't, then I can narrow down what I should be focusing on. If you don't have em, thats cool. I'm content with re-tracing your steps anyway

This looks like a nasty ROM to start off with, since everything is stuck in this one big archive. I just pulled apart Itadaki DS and its got a nice little directory structure with easy filenames. Oh well.

 

[theli]

here is a pack of sourcecode for utils i've written to aid in editing...
http://omploader.org/vM2RrZg/CuldceptDSEditor.rar
but, beware, code is really-really horrible and messy ... anyway i'm putting this here in case someone finds something usefull there or wants to help

 

[injected11]

@Theli: Mixinluv2u asked me to look into the "Holy Word" errors again, and I've gathered some more info that might be of help fixing it.

1) It freezes (on DS, not emulator) when you open the Cepter Info screen and press left or right after any Holy Word spell is cast.

2) When using the same save file with an unpatched Japanese rom, the error does NOT occur.

3) So you know what text was originally in the place where the error occurs, here is a screenshot of the Cepter Info screen after I had cast "Holy Word X" on the J version.
http://omploader.org/vM2RubA/Holy%20Word%2...0text%20(J).png

Is there anything else I could test or snap screenshots of that would help?

 

[mixinluv2u]

Thanks!

 

[theli]

i wonder, does it freeze with other cards that leave some effect on cepter?
like "Magic Die"

 

[injected11]

On the Cepter Info screen, the game freezes when moving to any player afflicted with the following, and the beginning quotation mark, numbers and letters that follow are those that appear where the effect's name should be.

Backward = Freeze "2261B54
Barrier = Freeze "2261CD4
Bind = Freeze
Haste = Freeze
Holy Word 3 = Freeze "2262B9C
Holy Word 6 = Freeze "2262C70
Holy Word X = Freeze "2262D4C
Life Force = Freeze "2263864
Magic Die = Freeze "22632AC
Mind Blast = Freeze
Slow = Freeze "2260430
Soul Steal = Freeze "2260680
Waste = Freeze

Will update this post with more info as I get it.

 

[mixinluv2u]

I checked it with "Haste", i don't believe i saw garbled text, but when i move left/right to check other Cepter's info the freeze occurs.