Hacking Force or add input language?

[Arizato]

So I am currently playing around with my japanese copy of NieR Replicant which I got yesterday. I made a thread a few weeks ago about making a translation patch for the game by editing the existing english script so it fits better with the japanese voice acting.

There is just one obstacle that I have no idea to overcome yet. Every character in the game now has their english name, which is awesome, but I can only input a name for the main character in Katakana, making his name the only word with japanese letters in the entire game for me right now.

I want to mod the game or force my PS3 to get me more Input choices when typing the main character's name.

I want to go from this:

To this:

Now this second picture is from my EU copy of the game, which gives me the choice to choose French, english and another language. But the japanese version only gives me katakana as the only option.

Is there any way to force more input options into a Playstation 3 game via modding the files or using some function in the CFW?

 

[FAST6191]

I doubt it would be a CFW option. You might be able to pull something off there but it would not be the way most would set about it and probably not suggested by the CFW makers.

It does seem to be firmware provided input though so I imagine the game is calling some function from the menu for it. Afraid I have not looked into the PS3 remotely close to this level though so I am not sure what goes, I would not be surprised to find it is ultimately a 1 byte change though.
It is not impossible that there would be some fallout from this (custom names is savegames is often a trouble for ROm hackings), hopefully any troubles are limited to existing saves rather than new ones though.

 

[Arizato]

It does seem to be firmware provided input though so I imagine the game is calling some function from the menu for it. Afraid I have not looked into the PS3 remotely close to this level though so I am not sure what goes, I would not be surprised to find it is ultimately a 1 byte change though.
It is not impossible that there would be some fallout from this (custom names is savegames is often a trouble for ROm hackings), hopefully any troubles are limited to existing saves rather than new ones though.

This is my suspicion as well, since it uses the built in PS3 interface. If I can actually get in an english input the game should be able to handle it, the english font works flawlessly after all.

I just delved deeper into PS3 hacking myself just recently and I haven't found a single piece of information on anything related to this whole keyboard/language deal.

 

[Riku]

Here's everything you need:
https://github.com/kakaroto/ps3ida
https://github.com/twinaphex/cellframework2/blob/master/utility/oskutil.c
http://estorepeesetres.googlecode.com/svn-history/r9/trunk/includes/keyboard.c
https://zerkman.sector1.fr/ps3/psl1ght/osk_8h.html

You're looking for something like 'cellOskDialogSetKeyLayoutOption', 'cellOskDialogSetLayoutMode', etc...

 

[Arizato]

Here's everything you need:
https://github.com/kakaroto/ps3ida
https://github.com/twinaphex/cellframework2/blob/master/utility/oskutil.c
http://estorepeesetres.googlecode.com/svn-history/r9/trunk/includes/keyboard.c
https://zerkman.sector1.fr/ps3/psl1ght/osk_8h.html

You're looking for something like 'cellOskDialogSetKeyLayoutOption', 'cellOskDialogSetLayoutMode', etc...

Woah, thanks! Seems like I have to expand my basic knowledge about this stuff, though. This is way above my level of knowledge right now.

 

[Riku]

Decrypt EBOOT.BIN, at 0x7C50 replace 3C000040 with 38000002, re-encrypt using this command:

scetool --verbose --skip-sections=FALSE --sce-type=SELF --compress-data=FALSE --key-revision=0A --self-app-version=0001000000000000 --self-auth-id=1010000001000003 --self-vendor-id=01000002 --self-ctrl-flags=0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 --self-cap-flags=00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000003B0000000100040000 --self-type=APP --self-fw-version=0003005500000000 --encrypt BOOT.ELF EBOOT.BIN

 

[SvenCakemann]

Decrypt EBOOT.BIN, at 0x7C50 replace 3C000040 with 38000002, re-encrypt using this command:

scetool --verbose --skip-sections=FALSE --sce-type=SELF --compress-data=FALSE --key-revision=0A --self-app-version=0001000000000000 --self-auth-id=1010000001000003 --self-vendor-id=01000002 --self-ctrl-flags=0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 --self-cap-flags=00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000003B0000000100040000 --self-type=APP --self-fw-version=0003005500000000 --encrypt BOOT.ELF EBOOT.BIN

In case any others come across this in the future, this method does work for changing the keyboard language that shows up.

However, the game still only accepts Japanese character names. English letters cause it to say it is an "invalid name" on real hardware and on emulator. I have found that you can swap the save file in from another region of the game (hell, even the 360 version of Nier Gestalt works) to have an English name, but I have no idea if the above eboot hack will let you re-enter the name at the end of the game.

There's gotta be something else in the game forcing it to only accept katakana as a valid input name.