ROM Hack Densetsu no Stafy

[Hardback247]

Could anyone help show me how to make English translations for Densestu no Stafy 2, 3 and 4? I don't know where to begin.

 

[FAST6191]

What have you tried already and what have you read by way of a guide?

 

[Deleted User]

Could anyone help show me how to make English translations for Densestu no Stafy 2, 3 and 4? I don't know where to begin.

I think you will have a much easier time if you ask for help on the romhacking forum.
http://www.romhacking.net/start/

 

[FAST6191]

I think you will have a much easier time if you ask for help on the romhacking forum.
http://www.romhacking.net/start/

This is the ROM hacking section and it is not like we don't do ROM hacking around here.

 

[Hardback247]

I guess I'll start off by taking pictures of the Japanese text, and typing them up on Google Translate.

 

[cearp]

I guess I'll start off by taking pictures of the Japanese text, and typing them up on Google Translate.

an 'easy' way to find text in games depends on if you can enter any text yourself, for example, naming your character or save file.
check for changes when you are entering your text, then you'll be able to work out each letter's value.
then find some text in game, for example, 'Welcome Player', put together the necessary values to match that string, search for that in a hex editor. congratulations, you found where the game stores that text.
whip up no$gba and set a breakpoint when that area of rom is read, so we can see how the game loads the 'Welcome Player' text.
spend a bunch of hours reversing the asm to find how the game stores all of the text, hopefully it's something simple (game asks for string 33, and the game retrieves it) - by debugging you'll be able to recreate the code to fetch the strings yourself from the rom.
if there's any compression, it will be much harder, I've never had to work with that myself thankfully.

pretty much the process of how I made this:
https://github.com/llakssz/SeiSaboten
(I still need to write a proper write up about it...)

 

[Necron]

I guess I'll start off by taking pictures of the Japanese text, and typing them up on Google Translate.

I'd suggest having someone knowledgeable at Japanese. But I guess the nature of the game is simple enough to not have complicated dialogue (Japanese is very context heavy), so machine translation can cut it.

After that, you need a way to insert that text back to the game. Do you have any coding skills?

 

[Hardback247]

After that, you need a way to insert that text back to the game. Do you have any coding skills?

No.

 

[Necron]

No.

Then I think trying to learn about how text insertion and extraction works, that one should be one of the first steps to take.

 

[Hardback247]

I already don't know where to find this Japanese letter. It's kind of hard to tell what it looks like elsewhere, because of the way the pixels make it look.

 

[cearp]

I already don't know where to find this Japanese letter. It's kind of hard to tell what it looks like elsewhere, because of the way the pixels make it look.

'so'

 

[Hardback247]

'so'

Domo arigato!

 

[Hardback247]

If only there was a way to actually extract the game's Japanese text files.

 

[Kwyjor]

If only there was a way to actually extract the game's Japanese text files.

As it's a GBA game, it doesn't really have an internal "file system" at all.

If you were just going to use the text with Google Translate anyway, why not play the game with RetroArch? An "auto-translate" feature was introduced in recent versions.

 

[Hardback247]

The first sign confused me a little when I translated it on Google Translate:

ダッシュで
押せるのじゃ!

It apparently translates to "To dash, you can press it!"
It's the "it" part that confuses me, because the later signs have button icons.

 

[Hardback247]

I don't know why no nobody has even ATTEMPTED to translate the other Starfy games.

 

[FAST6191]

Likely because for the most part it is reasonably niche series outside Japan and being a platformer then you can usually play along quite happily when you know the menus and commands.

Also some people have looked at them in the past, think I even did myself at one point. Don't recall anything likely to trip up translation efforts beyond what is normally seen but still not going to be a quick and easy thing.

 

[Hardback247]

Likely because for the most part it is reasonably niche series outside Japan and being a platformer then you can usually play along quite happily when you know the menus and commands.

Also some people have looked at them in the past, think I even did myself at one point. Don't recall anything likely to trip up translation efforts beyond what is normally seen but still not going to be a quick and easy thing.

But the fact that there are characters you talk to in the game, and the text boxes can only be read in Japanese, really annoys me. I can't get invested in the characters and story if I can't understand any of it.

 

[cearp]

But the fact that there are characters you talk to in the game, and the text boxes can only be read in Japanese, really annoys me. I can't get invested in the characters and story if I can't understand any of it.

Welcome to the world of Japan-only games... either learn enough Japanese to get through, or be at the mercy of translators

 

[Kwyjor]

I don't know why no nobody has even ATTEMPTED to translate the other Starfy games.

Has it really not occurred to you that maybe someone ATTEMPTED and then gave up after assessing the difficulty? It's not always easy to make a translation patch.

But the fact that there are characters you talk to in the game, and the text boxes can only be read in Japanese, really annoys me. I can't get invested in the characters and story if I can't understand any of it.

Perhaps if a platform game requires you to get invested in the characters and story before you can enjoy it, then it's not a very good platform game?