ROM Hack Megaman ZX Advent Undub

[Riku Akiyama]

Anyone else having problem with this? or is it just me?

 

[Riku Akiyama]

Lame...I've tried just about everything, So where the F**k is Hypershell when you need him? XD

 

[darkshadow51]

I want to undub this game too but I haven't tried yet. I only did it with Bleach and it was successful. What is the problem undubbing it? Are the files hard to find or it just dosen't work?

 

[Destructobot]

The files are numbered differently in the different versions (assuming I'm looking at the right files). If there were only a small number of files, it might not be too hard to renumber them, but there appear to be about 1500 of them.

 

[darkshadow51]

Wait a second... I only see ONE .sdat file. But I heard on gamefaqs that when you swap the files the game boot then get stuck at the title screen or something.

 

[Jei]

Wait a second... I only see ONE .sdat file. But I heard on gamefaqs that when you swap the files the game boot then get stuck at the title screen or something.

It dosn't work that way this time...

For ZX, there was all the audio in one single file. For Advent, there's a folder called asx (if I recall correctly) that holds all the voice clips for the game, and also a sound dat file that, I believe, holds the game songs (Mirai e Tsuzuku Kaze anyone?).

And as Destructo mentioned, they're numbered differently, and there's lots of them... but the game runs just fine when you swap them, the problem lies in getting the right numbering.

 

[Riku Akiyama]

If someone could get ahold of Hypershell, he probably could figure this out easily

 

[calvin_0]

hmm...i'll try to undub it....

edit: Hmmm look like this time they include a never seen before file extension.....

.ahx, what i get the data from google, its a sound file used by amiga.... --> details click here

so asume it was a sound file.....

there is something wierd with it...

Rockman AHX have 1520 files, with around 18Mb in sizes

Megaman AHX have 1582 files, but only 15Mb in sizes (more file but less in size?)

i found there is some files that is missing in Megaman AHX folders...

they are A0063 - A0074, A0100, A0153 - A0163....thats not all, i asume there are more missing (i dont have the time to scan through 1500++ files)

not only that, there is some file that appear in Megaman AHX but ont in Rockman AHX folders....

they are A0083 - A0084, A0149, A0166, A0169, are some to name....

we need some kind of map and i also think they break down some of the files so they uses lesser space...

Edit 2: well i try to replace the .ahx files, it works, but with missing sound and mess in squencing....so i hope someone can map those files, else undub is impossible.

 

[Kerian]

hmm the solution would be to do something which will require A LOT of time : hack the japanese ROM and replace everything Japanese with the English data of the US Rockman release. Text hacking is not that easy, and imagine the tile work which has to be done.

But it may be easier than figuring out the weird sound file sequences....

 

[moggymatt]

hmm the solution would be to do something which will require A LOT of time : hack the japanese ROM and replace everything Japanese with the English data of the US Rockman release. Text hacking is not that easy, and imagine the tile work which has to be done.

But it may be easier than figuring out the weird sound file sequences....

that'll never work (or far too hard and complicated)

Best trying it the normal way and renaming the files,once you've paired them all up.

why u want the jap sound anyway, i can understand for bleach, can't you just jibber random japanese nonsense while the dub's are playing much easier...

 

[calvin_0]

hmm the solution would be to do something which will require A LOT of time : hack the japanese ROM and replace everything Japanese with the English data of the US Rockman release. Text hacking is not that easy, and imagine the tile work which has to be done.

But it may be easier than figuring out the weird sound file sequences....

well someone did that in Megaman ZX, but the result....just say its much better if you just play it untouch.

 

[Sir VG]

There's 3 parts to hacking the audio.

1 - AHX folder. This contains any dialogue voices.
2 - VX folder. This contains the cutscenes.
3 - sound_data.sdat. This contains in-game sounds (grunts, jumping, title).

2 and 3 are very easy to fix (I've done so and repacked the game). However, the issue is with 1. Likely the reasoning that there's more US audio files then the Japanese is that the English text is longer, therefore the audio is broken into more chunks.

 

[Riku Akiyama]

So, by re-naming them, is it possible to apply them to said rom?

 

[outphase]

Simply renaming will not have the files line up appropriately. The text you are replacing might not even be equivalent between versions. I did a straight copy/replace from the Japanese version, and the text seemed to be out of place and didn't follow the meaning of the sentences. Text boxes seem to have different sizes, and I don't think there's a reasonable way to determine what sound file goes where.

 

[Sir VG]

I don't think there's a reasonable way to determine what sound file goes where.

Until somebody makes an AHX sound editor.

 

[darkshadow51]

So does all this mean we won't be able to undub this one?

 

[impact24]

Oh well...I was hoping to find any pattern between the filenames of both versions in hopes of establishing a mapping of some sort. Renaming could be done easily with perl...but I'm stuck as well.

For what it's worth...here are the files in the ahx directory in case some other readers may want to know without unpacking the rom. Apparently these can be played by xmms...but i'm on windows right now and I'm still looking for a winamp plugin.

Japanese:
A0063.ahx to A1125.ahx (probably dialog in Ashe's scenario?)
bossbombZXA.ahx
G0001.ahx to G1139.ahx (probably dialog in Grey's scenario?)
mirai_mix.ahx
mission.ahx
warningXZA.ahx

English
A0075.ahx to A1430.ahx
bossbombZXA.ahx
G0001.ahx to G1449.ahx
mirai_mix.ahx
mission.ahx
warningXZA.ahx


If japanese A0063 would map starting to from english A0075...then there would be a mapping only until A1137. That would be 293 missing files I think. So this just goes with what you guys said all along....that the english is broken up into more chunks.

A pity this seems complicated...it was so easy with Luminous Arc.

 

[darkshadow51]

Wow! From what I'm understanding, does this mean that, to match the files correctly, somebody would have to know japanese and listen to every file from the jap and english versions and rename them? Unless I'm wrong and there is a easier way and I HOPE I'm wrong.

 

[Kailieann]

That's about the gist of it, yeah, although knowing japanese wouldn't be necessary in the strictest sense.

The alternative would be to play through both versions of the game and compare which clips occur when. Equally time-consuming, but probably more accurate in the long run.

Either way it's going to take time. Basically, two things need to be done.

1, creating a list of which AHX files contain which sound clips in both versions
2, figuring out which filenames in the japanese version corresponds with which filenames in the US version

Now, for the first one, we do have a bit of a head start, because of the way the files are named.
Obviously the files 'bossbombZXA', 'mirai_mix', 'mission', and 'warningZXA' are used in the same places in both versions (and some of them may even be identical in both versions). That leaves the actual dialogue.

It's pretty safe to assume that the G#### files are for Grey's scenario, and A#### for Ashe's.
And since there are (in the Japanese version) 562 more clips for Grey than for Ashe, it's also a safe bet that those extra clips are the NPCs' dialogue.
And if the numbers match up, and (for example) A0063 is used in the same place as G0063, then we only have to worry about figuring out one character's clips, then rename the other's to match/

Of course, that still leaves the problem of finding out the contents of each file. I'm reinstalling linux on my other machine to see if xmms really can play ZX's AHX files (the two supposed-AHX players I found for windows couldn't). If that doesn't work, then we have to get creative.

And even if it does work, the plan is still contingent on someone having enough free time to go through every single audio file (or at least all of Grey's) from each version to find out their contents, and either finding a reliable translator, or people willing to play through both games and find out where every single clip is used and lining them up that way.

At least I have some good news for people who don't care about the Japanese voice acting and just want to get rid of the American VA, you can actually just delete the files from the AHX folder (and optionally replace the VX folder and sound_data.sdat). I've only tested up to the first save point, but so far it works perfectly.

 

[impact24]

I concur with Kailieann. That's basically the way it is I guess. Let us know how the xmms test goes

I just caught up with some other threads on this site. Hypershell approached Rockman Advent from another angle and it worked well. Really interesting.