Hacking [PSP] La Pucelle Ragnarok Translation

[ChepChep]

I need to modify Falo's tool before I can use it. Hopefully I can get it done tonight.

 

[MrShyCity]

these game remind me of Disgaea

 

[ChepChep]

La Pucelle (January 2002) should remind you of Disgaea (January 2003) since it came out before Disgaea and they based most of the mechanics of Disgaea on this game.

 

[Linka]

Yeah. Though we sorta got messed up for a bit, cause Atlus brought over Disgaea first, and then when that was a success, Mastiff jumped on La Pucelle a year before NISAmerica established. So sometimes people think La Pucelle came after, not before.

But there's definitely a ton of mechanics introduced in La Pucelle that were carried over to the rest of NIS's SRPGs, like the leveling of skills, 9999, a "dark world", chapter separated segments, combo attacks in a form. It really established a lot of things.

 

[ChepChep]

So I got Falo's tool modified to do what I need it to do. I re-translated the intro and one NPC right near the exit to the world map that talks about Eclair becoming heir to the throne. I also fixed the text going off the screen at least for the intro by adding new lines and etc.

So far everything is working good with the tool. I changed a few things to make it easier for me to get the work done. The source and exe is can be found below:
www.tarranoth.com/LPR/LaPucelleToolpackV3.zip

The button "Replace ASCII" only works if you first highlight the text you want to replace. If you highlight nothing and click the button an error is thrown. I have yet to figure out how to catch it in C# since I only just started learning to code in it 2-3 days ago. If anyone has any ideas let me know. Would be nice to fix.

Also if you want to try the new intro here is the file you need to replace into the iso:
www.tarranoth.com/LPR/SCRIPTPACK.DAT

Any questions please let me know.

 

[Airu]

You're doing a great job. A lot of thanks.

 

[ChepChep]

Just a heads up.

I am extremely busy at work and home the next two weeks so most likely I will not have any new patch releases during this time.

 

[Deleted User]

Just a heads up.

I am extremely busy at work and home the next two weeks so most likely I will not have any new patch releases during this time.

Ok don't worry, go kick that life in the nuts!!

 

[Linka]

That's fine! What you've done so far is great.

 

[ChepChep]

Well I still exist and things are starting to settle down. I have been slowly working on the NPC dialogue. Hopefully may have a release for the weekend.

 

[Deleted User]

*clap clap* chep the best!!!

 

[ChepChep]

Just found another fun bug in the Falo's LPR toolkit. Whenever you try to save a PPV number greater than 2 bytes it chops off the bytes. It took me forever to solve this issue tonight. It was chopping off the PPV number so that things like the Rosenqueen shop and events in the game stopped happening. I think I got it now.

 

[ChepChep]

So I made a bunch of fixes to the LaPucelle Toolpack.

Here is the current source I am working from and the current release (V4.0):
http://www.tarranoth.com/LPR/LaPucelleToolpackV4.zip

Hopefully now I can get back to translating now that the tool is making working files.

 

[Deleted User]

Yahoo working files! i love how it sounds!
PS: Could you explain how to use this tool?

 

[ChepChep]

I am mostly just using the Scriptpack features. I am constantly fixing bugs in the code and I have been unable to run files using the other parts of the toolkit on my psp without it crashing. The good news I am starting to understand C# a bit.

If you load a file like talk_jp.dat you can edit each line of text from Japanese to english. It tedious but faster than using hex editor since I can type in english and not hex. Also the best feature is that it will add more space into the file so I can fit the english text.

This toolkit will only work for LPR. I tried opening Disgaea 2 files and it crashes even though its made by NIS with similar tools.

I have an mini update if anyone is interested. Here is many of the NPC translated:
www.tarranoth.com/LPR/SCRIPTPACK.DAT

 

[ChepChep]

So I am now running into another major issues. If I add any more english characters to talk01_jp.dat the game now crashes in the emulator and PSP with the packed SCRIPTPACK.DAT. I think it may have to do with a memory size limitation for a NISPACK.

Anyone have any experience with solving these kinda of issues with the PSP or any other NIS game?

 

[Airu]

I had a similar problem with the psychonauts translation into spanish.The solution was a alfanumeric character which contain the lenght of the dialog's line.
Sorry for my english, im spanish, and i can read english well, but i'm a disaster writing.

 

[ChepChep]

Airu,

I think you are right. NIS split the talk file into 18 different parts. I had ignored it before and thought it was just another "silly" thing they did but it looks like they ran out of "space" in the file. I spent my lunch at work today analyzing the talk.dat format and realized NIS put the first 1000 dialogues from NPC in the file and then appended on the story after it in different chunks across the 18 files.

All,
So my new strategy is going to be to translate the key trigger NPC lines that are needed to progress the story and also tackle the story. That way at least people can play the game but may miss out on the NPC which is mostly flavor text for the circumstance in the story. I have got so much translated that I would hate to quit with this much done and not at least get the story done. This right now is the only solution I can come up without "reprogramming" the game which would be very hard and time consuming.

If anyone has any suggestions let me know.

 

[Linka]

I think that's the best route at least, to translate the trigger/important text. Flavor might be a nice touch, but it's a minor thing overall to the game.

Nice to see you're still working at it, though! I super appreciate it.

 

[ChepChep]

It going alright so far... Kinda frustrated by all the effort translating the NPC but hopefully I can use it again someday.