Hacking NPC Chibi Robo Translation

[panmusic]

How possible is to make an english patch for J-NPC Chibi Robo?
The English translation is ready from the GC version and I suppose that it would be fairly simple to create an english patch.

I apologize because I do not know anything about hacking,so I can not help at all.
But the idea is very tempting,at least for me.

So,is anyone interested in this?Or even more importantly,is this possible at all?

 

[W hat]

It's probably possible. It was done with the Japanese releases of Metroid Prime 1 and 2. Even though you're not a hacker, you can find out some information on how easy it would be. If you do this and post your results, hackers might see it and find out it'd be easy to do.

You'd need a backup of the US GC release and the JPN Wii release. Once you have both as ISOs, extract each ISO into a filesystem dump using WIT.

WIT

If you're on Windows XP, these are the commands you'll use. I'm pretty sure Windows Vista and 7 would have similar commands.

First, rename the Wii backup wcr.iso. Rename the GC backup gcr.iso. Put the WIT folder on the same drive (like C:\ or D:\) as the two ISOs. Open WIT by double-clicking wit-console.bat. Then type these commands. Press enter after each line.

cd c:\games\

Note: c is the drive letter that the games are stored on. Replace c for d or f or whatever, depending on where the games are. I used a folder called "games", but they can be anywhere. They could be on c:\chibirobo\ or anything else.

wit x c:\games\wcr.iso c:\games\wcr\

This extracts every file in the Wii game to a folder, for hacking purposes.

wit x c:\games\gcr.iso c:\games\gcr\

This extracts every file in the GC game to a folder.

Open each directory and try to find where the files start to match. Wii discs have a folder called "data" that you'll probably want to make the starting point for the Wii game. Try to find a similar folder in the GameCube directory with files that match. Now download WinMerge. Point it at the two directories and compare them (include subdirectories). In WinMerge, make sure View->Show Identical Items is checked. Then take a screenshot (or multiple screenshots) and upload them to show us which files match.

 

[Tonitonichopchop]

Edit: Gah, spoke too soon.

 

[WiiPower]

Metroid Prime 1&2 had all the english language files already on disc, you did only need to patch the main.dol to use them instead of the japanes ones. (4 bytes that needed to be changed if i remember correctly)

 

[W hat]

Metroid Prime 1&2 had all the english language files already on disc, you did only need to patch the main.dol to use them instead of the japanes ones. (4 bytes that needed to be changed if i remember correctly)

Oops.

It may still be possible.

 

[Tonitonichopchop]

I have a feeling it would need to be done manually. A quick patch would be awesome, but unlikely.

 

[W hat]

I replaced every instance of JP (when it wasn't gibberish) / JPN with US / USA. As expected, it didn't work. As unexpected, it still loaded. More work is required to find out where the repeated fs I see are being loaded from. Looks like the GC Chibi Robo has a completely different structure from the Wii one. The GC game has a centralized script file (qp.bin), but it seems the Wii script is encoded into individual cutscene files.

 

[panmusic]

Can the Xenoblade translation team help us?

 

[W hat]

Is NPC Chibi Robo any good? The Pikmin games had horrible controls in their Wii ports.

 

[panmusic]

I have not played it yet.The GC game was a piece of perfection!

 

[xuliko]

The Port Wii, some archives is compressed in strange format. Those letters in that photo seems that doesn't exist font occidental.

 

[jojones88]

I really wish someone with this knowledge would jump on this. I'm an idiot when it comes to translating/hacking games.

This a terrific game, and this seems to be the best version of it. Improved graphics, wide screen support, and a reconfigured controls. The only one of the NPC games that I didn't care for was Mario Power Tennis. Pikmin 1 and 2 / Metroid Prime 1 and 2 / DK Jungle Beat were great improvements. The controls made sense, and made the games much easier (and funner) to play.

I'm sure some of you brilliant guys/gals here could figure this one out.

 

[LucaLink]

I don't know if this will be of some help, since anyone can just search for a gc copy instead, but if someone can do it easily, why not.

 

[tgbnhy123]

I replaced every instance of JP (when it wasn't gibberish) / JPN with US / USA. As expected, it didn't work. As unexpected, it still loaded. More work is required to find out where the repeated fs I see are being loaded from. Looks like the GC Chibi Robo has a completely different structure from the Wii one. The GC game has a centralized script file (qp.bin), but it seems the Wii script is encoded into individual cutscene files.

When i finally downloaded this game and put it on my wii successfully, (After 1 1/2 years of trying!!!) I got all the text just like on that picture with the F's the dots and the -'s! And i didn't even attempt translate it at all.

weird, huh?

 

[Lumstar]

Hmm. Perhaps you need to set the Wii into Japanese mode?

At least that was an issue for Gamecube, where English didn't contain the character set.

 

[pinballman85]

I would really like to play this in english. If anyone can translate this somehow that would be amazing.

 

[skaman]

Sorry to dig up an old thread but I was successful in changing a portion of text to English.

Like mentioned previously, the GC has all of the text in qp.bin. The Wii has text in 40 .bin files in /files/bin.

The earlier attempts in this thread that produced the f's were probably due to patching in text with the wrong charset. You can't cut and paste the GC English into the Wii files. I believe the GC English text uses UTF-8 while the Wii Japanese uses Shift-JIS.

My method was to edit the Wii .bin files with an editor that works with Shift-JIS. I used MadEdit to edit the globals.bin and a few stageXX.bins and replaced portions of the Japanese text with English. The resulting changes displayed properly in my tests using Dolphin. Maybe I'll eventually test on an actual Wii if the translation progresses.

Patching all of the Japanese in the .bin files is a tedious task and not something that I'm inclined to do. Hopefully someone can use my findings to make a complete translation.

Good Luck!

 

[wyndcrosser]

The above poster is right, just like Earth Seeker, you need to use an editor with SHIFT-JIS font table. Very easy to do. If you'd like help, I can probably assist.

 

[Ospoortus]

Sorry to dig up an old thread but I was successful in changing a portion of text to English.

Like mentioned previously, the GC has all of the text in qp.bin. The Wii has text in 40 .bin files in /files/bin.

The earlier attempts in this thread that produced the f's were probably due to patching in text with the wrong charset. You can't cut and paste the GC English into the Wii files. I believe the GC English text uses UTF-8 while the Wii Japanese uses Shift-JIS.

My method was to edit the Wii .bin files with an editor that works with Shift-JIS. I used MadEdit to edit the globals.bin and a few stageXX.bins and replaced portions of the Japanese text with English. The resulting changes displayed properly in my tests using Dolphin. Maybe I'll eventually test on an actual Wii if the translation progresses.

Patching all of the Japanese in the .bin files is a tedious task and not something that I'm inclined to do. Hopefully someone can use my findings to make a complete translation.

Good Luck!

View attachment 5928

Did you finish this? And if so, can you provide a download link?