Hacking Mobile Suit Gundam: Senjou no Kizuna translation revived

[SirGouki]

Spoiler: Old stuff

I originally intended to start this process 3 years ago (and there's a post about it titled similarly).

As I originally thought, the RZP file IS an archive, that I was able to extract using the "Lord of Arcana" script for QuickBMS

Most text in the game so far is in some form of an image, and I've been using PPSSPP to find and edit those images.

Current issues:
While I have a good idea where the images are, they of course exist in formats I have no idea how to open yet. The directories and even the majority of files are named in english so figuring out what is what is the easy part. If anyone knows how to open .TEX, .NMP, .MES, .MNU, .TTL, or other weird PSP formats, please tell me as I'm having a very hard time finding useful information via google and these forums.

For a lot of these extensions, if you open them up in notepad++ or a hex editor, it confirms the file type: MNU is UNM2. Others, though, show the extension reversed: .TEX is XET.
This is the same for every file with those extensions.

Edit: Might feel stupid with one of these... looks like it might be LaTeX
Thankfully, if they are LaTeX, they are not normal LaTeX files. (Thankfully as in I don't feel stupid).

Update: 7Dec2019
Just a notice that I am still working on this. Using PPSSPP, I've been able to learn a lot about how the PSP is drawing the text in this game, but I'm still having trouble finding ways to open some files. I have found a little of the text, but no where near enough. I've even gone so far as to downloading other Gundam games for the psp, a couple of which seem to have used a similar archiving type and have been translated, but no docs on the process that was used or any hints on how or what they did.

Update: 11Jul2021
I've gotten all the textures that PPSSPP finds with text in them isolated, and a few of them translated. A lot of the kanji is weird and it didn't help that I was writing kanji the wrong way when double checking the meanings. As far as finding the ingame text, I have tried the eboot.bin (decrypted), and have tried multiple strings across almost every file in the game... either something is still archived or something else is going on. I'm turning up a zilch even on something as simple as looking for GM (ジム) since a lot of things reference that specifically, due to a lot of the EFSF mobilesuits being GM variants (GM cannon, GM sniper, etc). I can translate a lot of this stuff, but I can not edit it into the game because I have no idea where it is. I've tried almost all the .tex files (which I think are texture files, I was able to open them up in something before but I can't remember what it was... if I can figure this out, I can do the texture edits and repack them into the game so it can be played without PPSSPP's texture replacement function - neither photoshop nor GIMP recognize these files), .MNU which appears to be some sort of script, and others. Also, for the few of you who've posted or are watching this, please keep in mind that I'm pretty much working on this myself.

Update: 8 Jan 2022
Somehow, some people found me on discord, and I talked them through everything I've found so far. Some progress has been made in the way of confirming that TEX files are textures, and there is text in a few files I had checked previously, I just did not know how to see that it was there (I'm still very new to all of this).

Update: 24Jan2022

Progress has been made:

Pics are not mine, but provided by the other people working on the translation. I've helped with a small fraction of the translation, but have mostly been trying to tweak the existing tool they found to make things easier. Note that these pictures are intentionally of translation done to non-textured text to show that it's been injected into the game successfully, and isn't just a PPSSPP texture replacement. The final output will be an xdelta patch so that it works on legit hardware, as evidenced in the 2nd pic.

I will keep this post updated as progress happens.

 

[RedL]

Edit: Might feel stupid with one of these... looks like it might be LaTeX

I want to hear more of this, because LaTeX really isn't a "common" format O___O

For a lot of these extensions, if you open them up in notepad++ or a hex editor, it confirms the file type: MNU is UNM2. Others, though, show the extension reversed: .TEX is XET.

Probably just "magic numbers"?

 

[SirGouki]

Actually, its not uncommon for the header of a file format to contain the windows extension for it: .jpg has JFIF, .png has PNG at the very beginning, .pdf has PDF at the beginning.. it's quite common.

Also, read my newest edit, the TEX files aren't LaTeX even though that is an extension for a LaTeX script. And I know what magic numbers are, I'm quite familiar with DEADBEEF.

I *know* these are file formats because that's how I extracted the files in the first place: opening the RFB and RZP in HxD to figure out they were compressed and what version they used, which is how I determined to use quickBMS and the specific script I used, though I had to modify it because it was looking for a different file index (it was RZL instead of RFB). I also know this because thats how every single one of those files I mentioned starts, with its extension or the reverse of its extension, or with a combination of the extension and presumable version (the RFB had RGF1 in it, some data I can't decode, then a mess of directories.)

My reasoning for thinking .tex was LaTeX is: the psp toolchain has requires a TeX handler (LaTeX is a version of TeX), TeX was used for quick spriting by Nintendo in the 80s, and it was the only thing google kept coming up with when I searched for .tex files to see if something was available.

 

[RedL]

My reasoning for thinking .tex was LaTeX is: the psp toolchain has requires a TeX handler (LaTeX is a version of TeX), TeX was used for quick spriting by Nintendo in the 80s, and it was the only thing google kept coming up with when I searched for .tex files to see if something was available.

I get it now, apologies for "doubting" you =)

I'm so used to LaTeX being...a pain (to be polite) to use/install/etc... that I had a HUGE doubt bias over it being present in a PSP game, but now that you've mentioned it was in the PSP toolchain, it makes more sense, thanks for the lesson

 

[gtuansdiammx]

Good luck, really looking forward to this

 

[Zeltrax]

YOOOO is this still alive been waiting for a translation of this for years!

 

[SirGouki]

I'm slowly working on it, but the most I've been able to do is texture edits thanks to PPSSPP allowing easy replacement of those... I've got a feeling I'm not going to come up with anything on my own that will work on real hardware, though. I just can't seem to find a way into the text outside of the images. Also, what I have done I've lost twice now.

Also, I'm having a really hard time reading some kanji due to how blurry it is.

 

[SirGouki]

This comment is to show those who might be watching this space that this project is still being worked on, as evidenced by the recent edits to the OP.

 

[TigerTiger]

I was about to get mad about another random necropost. Nice work op!