ROM Hack Draglade 2 translation project

[kosheh]

This game was released July 10, 2008. It's been like 8 months since its release, and I doubt this is going to be released in the US due to licensing issues.
Banpresto, maker of the game is now fully owned by Namco Bandai. N-B won't let third party companies (ATLUS) publish their IPs. Therefore, it will probably be YEARS before the game is released Westside if ever - but chances are it won't be released in the West.
It's a niche title appealing to core gamers, similar to Trauma Center thus lowering its chances of being localized.

Tell me about this game.
Draglade 2 is the sequel to...well, Draglade 1, released in the US/Europe around 2007.
What makes this game unique is that it's a fighting game with RPG and rhythm-based elements.
If you put Jump Superstars, Kingdom Hearts and Parappa the Rapper in a blender and set it on frappe, you'd get this game.
A lot of fixes have been made to the battle system making it a nice little rounded-out fighter and an excellent alternative to JUS (which is balance hell).

If you've never played Draglade, I highly reccomend picking up the first one. You'll like the fighting aspects and the beat-em-up missions and it's got some depth like that of an RPG. The stages are symmetrical and stage hazards can be turned on or off.
The second one dumps all the hidden characters from the first in favor of four new, more balanced characters and introduces the "Beat Drive" system, which is similar to that of a tug-of-war underneath the opponent lifebars. When your segment reaches the opponent's side, you'll get either enhanced stats or a temporary-machine super.


Also, I love the corny anime opening music from both this game and its predecessor.

Boxart

Videos
Video showcasing characters, gameplay, and cool gift you get upon purchase
Top screen video of actual gameplay. Recorded from no$gba apparently (which explains its butchered sound)


Translation Progress

Link to version .01 of the patch. LOOK LOOK THE PATCH IS HERE LOOK OVER HERE YOU LAZY GUY
How to use: Unzip into folder with Draglade 2 and click on patcher.bat.
WHAT WOW

What's translated:

Battle Mode (renamed VS Mode...I think I'll probably name it back) pause menu
Main Menu, VS Mode submenus and Information submenu headers. I didn't translate one menu because I wasn't sure what it did. It's "Clear Save Data" but since I said I'd have the patch posted by sunday, yeah. :<
Dragon Sequencer 2.0 main screen is translated.

Known bugs:
"Deck Maker" and "Grap 101" in main menu sometimes have random symbols around them. When replacing the tiles...somehow, those appear

 

[kosheh]

Currently, I'm having trouble accessing the dialogue/text.

From the Translation Request topic:

All I need is a person who can help me figure out how text is stored, find offsets for character/"bullet" names, and help me devise up tables for the ingame alphabet (there are 4: one for displays, one for main menu topscreen descriptions, one for ingame character 'name tags' and lastly the ingame dialogue). English lettering IIRC already exists in the game so it's not like we have to draw up an entire alphabet and insert it like you do in a JRPG.
I can't find text anywhere except an arm9 file and that's just the English alphabet which doesn't appear anywhere ingame. The big "display" text are images so it kinda kills me that I can't find them within the game's tiles....maybe they're compressed.

You should create a project thread if you're actually starting a translation.

The bin archives are extremely simple - the first 4 bytes store the number of files n, then there are n entries after that consisting of the starting offset and length for each file. The individual script files are all LZ77 compressed; the text itself uses Unicode encoding.

To uncompress the LZ77 files, is there anything in particular I should use? And don't I have to compress it again and then inject it back into the ROM?

 

[DarthNemesis]

BatchLZ77 v1.1
Yes, you need to recompress it before you add it back in. The file size will most likely change, so you'll have to update the bin file header appropriately.

 

[shaaynn]

Awesome! I loved the first draglade.
I dont understand Japanese, otherwise i would have helped you 100%.
Great to see you are going to do this. ^^

 

[jesterscourt]

Has an English localization been announced yet?

 

[MadClaw]

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG FINALLY THANKYOU, /me waits patiently

Erm, i could test it

EDIT:
Hey could you tell me what programs you're using to do this? Thanks.

 

[Sanderino]

w00t thanks for doing this, I wish you luck!

 

[psycoblaster]

BatchLZ77 v1.1
Yes, you need to recompress it before you add it back in. The file size will most likely change, so you'll have to update the bin file header appropriately.

I like using crystaltile better

 

[kosheh]

Hey, thanks for the support, you guys!

Awesome! I loved the first draglade.
I dont understand Japanese, otherwise i would have helped you 100%.
Great to see you are going to do this. ^^
tbh I don't understand a LOT of Japanese myself - I can read most of the menus but I can't figure out the ingame dialogue ):

Has an English localization been announced yet?If there was I wouldn't be working on this. x3
This game is too niche for it to recieve an official translation from Namco-Bandai IMO. They profit more from RPGs, really and Atlus currently holds the licensing for Draglade in the US. Namco-Bandai Japan refuses to let third parties publish their IPs elsewhere.

in other words, expect in announcement in 10 years when the copyright expires

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG FINALLY THANKYOU, /me waits patiently

Erm, i could test it

EDIT:
Hey could you tell me what programs you're using to do this? Thanks.

Hey, don't worry about it. I'll be releasing a patch around the end of next week *the latest*. Hopefully I can get it done on like Monday. It'll be a simple menu translation, nothing TOO complicated.
Right now I'm on pause menus but I'm having a *little* problem with them...which is why you see the words on the polar opposite sides of the textbox.

The words cut off on the second textbox right after "Main", so if I could find a phrase like "Main Menu Back" that would make sense but I'm really persnickety about grammar.
QUOTE(psycoblaster @ Mar 28 2009, 09:50 AM) QUOTE(DarthNemesis @ Mar 28 2009, 04:32 AM)

BatchLZ77 v1.1
Yes, you need to recompress it before you add it back in. The file size will most likely change, so you'll have to update the bin file header appropriately.

I like using crystaltile better

That's actually what I'm using.

However, I...have no idea what I'm doing lol. The options under the "Tools" submenu ask for an .lz77 file. I recall using something to extract the LZ77 data with, but when I did that I had zero leads. :I

I mean I can figure out how to replace the images ingame, but for some reason modifying the text completely eludes me.

 

[psycoblaster]

Well it seems you are using the wrong option.
Make sure you are in the hex editor, and press tools -> *** (U)
It doesn't ask you for a .lz77 file- it is asking what extension you want to save it as.
Press *** Â to compress back.
You notice how it says LZ77(10) ?
10 is the flag.
To make it sound easy, a flag is like a code that represents the beginning of something.
The flag 10 (Hex value 0x10) usually notify the beginning of an lz77 compression.
Place your cursor there, and then decompress by the method by tools -> *** (U)

 

[HernanZh]

Well, if Darthnemesis is correct and the script files are packed in bin files and individually compressed, then you can't get around creating an unpacker and packer for the bin files. Crystaltile won't do that for you. Do you know how to program?

 

[kosheh]

Well, if Darthnemesis is correct and the script files are packed in bin files and individually compressed, then you can't get around creating an unpacker and packer for the bin files. Crystaltile won't do that for you. Do you know how to program?

...



no. ;_;

In that case then I'm officially stuck...


I guess I'll just work on the menus for now and if someone is cool enough to program/figure out the LZ77/ride a bike I'll supply my help.


Good thing most of the UI is image-based ._.

If someone is cool enough to hop aboard, It'd be nice to do
*Mission names
*VS Character names [good thing there's only 10]
*Locations
*Bullet data
There are like 300 bullets so that'd be the most time-consuming...so I'd just leave it for last

 

[nIxx]

Hmm i took a look at the script_data.bin and could extract some text it with gbalzss

In anyway it´s lz77 compressed and the offsets are at the beginning of the BIN file.

EDIT: And they are using UTF16BE and UTF16LE encoding for text file.
What i found unusall is that sometimes there is BE and LE encoding in one file

About the script_data.bin
5C 02 00 00 E4 12 00 00 0C 00 00 00 F0 12 00 00
40 00 00 00 30 13 00 00 14 04 00 00 44 17 00 00

4bytes - 5C020000 = is count files
4bytes - E4120000 = 0x12E4 offset to first text
4bytes - 0C000000 = 0x0C text length
and so on.

 

[kosheh]

How is everyone able to see the compressed data but me?! T__T

I used gbalzss and the output file was 1KB. script_data.bin is 413KB


...

dhsjhd

EDIT: oh, an edit ~ i'll take a look at this

 

[nIxx]

How is everyone able to see the compressed data but me?! T__T

I used gbalzss and the output file was 1KB. script_data.bin is 413KB


...

dhsjhd

EDIT: oh, an edit ~ i'll take a look at this

Each Text is compressed seperate so if you want the third text you need to look at adress
30130000 -> 0x1330 There you should find something like 10XXXX there is the still compressed text.
Hope this helps a bit

 

[psycoblaster]

Here's a quick program I made for you.
http://cfile210.uf.daum.net/attach/1979741449CE5022B8853F
When unpacking, select the file you want to unpack. Then a directory with the same file name in the same directory will be created containing the unpacked files.
When repacking, select the base file you unpacked, NOT the files in the created folder.

 

[nIxx]

And don´t forget some files are using UTF16LE and UTF16BE encoding

 

[Gundam Eclipse]

Kosheh, i would like to make a small request. Since you have already translated Menus (from the looks of it), do you think you could release a Menu Patch while uh, translating other stuff?
Possible o.o?

 

[kosheh]

Oh, yeah sure. At the rate I'm going I'll release one tomorrow night.

Today I just kind of lost motivation when I saw all the other menus I had to translate lol. But I'm looking for one specific image in the menus, which I can't find...which oddly enough is the Yes/No from Story Mode. >_>

EDIT: psycoblaster how did I forget but oh my god you are the man. I was playing with that program all morning extracting character images lol
For some reason I still can't get the script to load properly in CrystalTile so I ...did other things today

 

[psycoblaster]

http://cfile229.uf.daum.net/attach/135DA31049CF14E7831D45
Here's a new version of the unpacker.
I fixed the bug where it didn't add the header size to each pointer, so the pointers pointed to the wrong offset.
I also added an auto lz77 decompress/compressor.
So you do not need to decompress everything yourself anymore, as it does it on the fly.
A file that was compressed will be decompressed with a .lz77 extension.
The files that are NOT compressed will NOT have the .lz77 extension.
It was just an easy way for me to make the file packing re-compress the .lz77 files, while the non .lz77 files will stay uncompressed.