ROM Hack I'm making a FFIV translation patch...

[Raganook]

BelmontSlayer

I guess my previous post passed unnoticed. Could you answer it please?

To the translation team: I don’t want to bother you too much. You sure need rest after all that good work. But could you tell me in what file(s) the characters and places names are stored if you found them? I searched through the .msd files with BabelPad without success. What editor do you use? I really would like the names to appear in English in the game. Thank you again for this phenomenal work!

We actually cannot find the names of characters. They are referenced within the game as "%Char#%" (no quotes), where the #=character. For example %Char8% is Yang. I thought perhaps it references an image, but if so, that image is compressed and as of yet we cannot find it.

If you figure out where character names are, that would be wonderful.

Place names are clumped together somewhere, I'm too lazy to find where I wrote that down, but its useless information unless you know how to edit the pointers, because it takes one kanji to describe what we need 10 characters to describe. Its not easy shortening "Underground" into two letters. You can very easily find them using a hex editor.

 

[B4mV]

i find a little mistake today in the patch : the Demon Wall called Leviathan in the beastiary

,but it's no problem.A very good Patch,you're quick

 

[Raganook]

Yeah, noticed that a few days ago. I was so close to the end of monsters, i think I got a bit sloppy

Anyways, on the patch thats soon to drop, that has been fixed : )

 

[Sephirothclone7]

Does the Main Menu Category include the Pōchika menu, or are there no plans to translate that?

 

[ZeroSeven]

I seem to have a problem.

I'm using the R4's latest firmware (the one that fixed the white screen problem), I was then playing it patchless for a while, then patched it, and now the white screen problem is back on it.

Is there anyway to fix this without changing the firmware or do I have to just switch my firmware constantly when I go from FFIVDS to Geometry Wars Galaxies?

 

[Disposition96]

ZeroSeven,

I think if you patch it you have to re-start, I could be wrong but I had the same problem.

I played, didn't like, patched, had to restart and now understand what's going on.

The newest Firmware "should" work for all games, if it doesn't maybe post that bug in the R4 forums?

Regards,

 

[ZeroSeven]

EDIT:I'm an idiot.
I accidentally closed the black box the first time I patched it, I repatched it and it works now.

Sorry to bother everyone.

 

[Ryoma123]

what about the story???haha...anyway...good job in translations

 

[Ashcroft00]

Zero,

I just ordered an R4 for my DS and I wanted to make sure that flash card worked okay for the FF IV ROM & patch. Someone on another forum said that the ROM and English patch could not be played on R4, but could be played on DSTT. I thought that sounded funny, but thought I would check with everyone on here. My R4 should arrive early next week and I look forward to starting on the FF IV ROM with the DS patch. Thanks!

 

[Disposition96]

Ashcroft00,

Actually when the game came out, it didn't work. It has been since patched and works 100% fine.

Regards,

 

[Ashcroft00]

Disposition96,

Thank you for letting me know. Hopefully the version of the ROM that I have downloaded onto my PC is the patched one that will work on the R4. I will check back on this forum if I have any problems. I am anxious to start FFIV--it looks like the translation team has done an outstanding job. Take care and thank you again for your help.

 

[Disposition96]

Ashcroft00,

It wasn't the game that had the problems, it was the R4. Games don't have firmware, sorry for the misunderstanding.

When you get your R4 just download the latest firmware, follow the instructions on how to install it and everything will work fine.

Regards,

 

[alex_rulz]

If there is any interest in translating the story sequences, I'll gladly help. I can speak and read Japanese pretty well, and I'd be happy to translate some stuff (even a huge chunk) if you'd like to send me any raw text dumps. I've been playing it in Japanese, it's great

 

[Ashcroft00]

Disposition96,

No problem at all. I am brand new to all of this. I have never done ROM hacking/patching before, but I really wanted to play FF IV on DS and thought this would be a good time to start. Please excuse my ignorance! :--) I will download the latest firmware for the R4 when it arrives and I will try to follow the instructions that were provided on this site in terms of how to patch. Thank you again for your help. Take care.

 

[Ashcroft00]

Alex,

That would be awesome. I can imagine that translating the text would be a tremendous amount of work, but it's nice to know that there are people willing to help. I wish I could read/speak Japanese so that I could help as well. Thank you again for offering--hopefully others will assist you in the effort. Take care.

 

[metroplex2k7]

Alex, you need to get with BelmontSl. and Rag. They have been doing the translation. They made it abundantly clear that they will not do the story, but maybe they'd help you get what you need to do it?

 

[swarmster]

If there is any interest in translating the story sequences, I'll gladly help. I can speak and read Japanese pretty well, and I'd be happy to translate some stuff (even a huge chunk) if you'd like to send me any raw text dumps. I've been playing it in Japanese, it's great

If I understand properly, it's not so much the translating that's the problem. The game's been released in english many times and there are texts available. I think the problem is that the game/rom has some space and text-handling limitations that would be a real pain to hack around.

I certainly don't want to put down your offer or all the work that's gone into this patch, but it looks like the english story lovers will have to wait for an actual port. For reference, Final Fantasy III DS took 3 months, but Final Fantasy XII DS took 7. Square hasn't said anything about IV's US release.

 

[FranckKnight]

Some games come with a pre-built in language system, but are missing the 'selector' and the 'game text'. DQ4 is one example of what how they might work. All of the text was already in, but missing some control codes and handlers, which were probably in the game already but we didn't know how to turn them on.

Most games once properly decompressed will have text in a different file. It would only require making sure the game can properly find it's pointers . Doing it character per character, like the menus, will limit in space, but I think most games don't have that limit anymore, in prevision of future translations.

Back in the SNES/NES days, I was doing some translations and I had to keep it within the same space, but I didn't have ways of changing pointers or decompressing ROMs like today, and the ROMs weren't made for translations, they were practically remade for others languages.

For FFXII's defense, there was voice acting to do, not just text. FF6 was released within 3 months of the Japanese release. The DQ4DS has 95% complete translations in 6 langages hidden in the ROM. Translating text only isn't so hard or long if the game's pointers are properly set, and control codes already implemented. You then just need to turn them on for the text to all fall into place neatly. That's more easily done with source codes, which is why it's usually faster for the game's makers to do it than fan translations.

 

[BelmontSlayer]

Some games come with a pre-built in language system, but are missing the 'selector' and the 'game text'. DQ4 is one example of what how they might work. All of the text was already in, but missing some control codes and handlers, which were probably in the game already but we didn't know how to turn them on.
DQIV is the only game on the DS that has a almost complete translation that isn't "activated".

Most games once properly decompressed will have text in a different file. It would only require making sure the game can properly find it's pointers . Doing it character per character, like the menus, will limit in space, but I think most games don't have that limit anymore, in prevision of future translations.
Correct. However, FFIV DS is not one of those games. While the menus, items and descriptions all have their seperate files, the script is scattered throughout the ROM. While using pointers would indeed allow more characters in the same line, finding the pointers in an individual DS ROM is beyond most hackers expertise. Sadly, the days of SNES & NES hacking aren't applicable here.

Back in the SNES/NES days, I was doing some translations and I had to keep it within the same space, but I didn't have ways of changing pointers or decompressing ROMs like today, and the ROMs weren't made for translations, they were practically remade for others languages.
DS games were not made for translations. If they were, then we would have hundreds of translation projects available instead of a handfull. GBA on the other hand is VERY easy to translate. Such is why there are so many GBA projects but so little DS ones.

QUOTE(FranckKnight @ Dec 31 2007, 03:01 PM)

Translating text only isn't so hard or long if the game's pointers are properly set, and control codes already implemented.

Again with the "difficulty". DS games are not easy to translate! Pointers don't follow the standard rules in DS games.

Sorry for tearing your speech apart, but I hate it when false info is spread amongst as fact. Everything you said applies to GBA translation projects, but DS projects are completely different.

tl;dr - DS games are not easy to translate. The above techniques only apply to GBA games and older consoles.

 

[BelmontSlayer]

Anyways, back onto subject. A semi-final version will be released within the hour. Sadly, the v1.0 release is going to take us longer than expected. We all have lives outside of hacking ROMs, so no complaining. Estimated release for v1.0 is about 2 weeks.

EDIT: Version 0.99 has just been released! You can grab it from the first post in this thread. Give your thanks to Raganook as he did most of the work for this update!