ROM Hack Puzzle Series translations

[Dirtie]

I'm pretty much clueless on translations, but I wouldn't mind attempting to translate "0678 - Puzzle Series Vol. 5 - Slither Link" into English (and then possibly some of the others in the series).

The rom only contains 2 files: "sound_data.sdat" (obviously for audio) and "add01dat.bin". I think it's pretty safe to say that all the text is in the second one

Now, if I've got this right, with old roms you had to make a translation table to define which data corresponds to which characters, then use some sort of special app to search for text and replace it (it got harder when you had to insert/create your own font IIRC).

With this one I don't know where to start (a single bin file isn't exactly very helpful). I've had a look through the bin file in Tile Molester, but there's a whole bunch of formats I could try, and I'm not going to choose one then scroll through the whole file for each and every one, looking for a font or some graphics. What are some of the most common formats?

I also heard that in a lot of NDS roms, the text is encoded in standard unicode/japanese encoding.

So basically what I need to know is where I should start, and what are some of tools I'll need (I have a hex and tile editor - so those are accounted for unless I need ones with special functionality).

Cheers

 

[Deleted User]

you want me to take a look inside ?

 

[Dirtie]

If you want (but if you find anything out, I wanna know about it and how you managed to get to that point

)

It's most definitely appreciated.

 

[FAST6191]

I have one or two other projects on the go right now so I doubt I can be of that much help but these sort of games (simple puzzle/platformers) are often 90% graphical, this seems to be no exception (look through add01dat.bin using 4bpp GBA). It appears to be uncompressed as well but I will have to take a look closer at the hex or disassmble the rom to tell.

As for actual font finding (which should not be that important for early stages like this) a lot of Japanese text is 16bit which makes relative searching a bit harder (it is not that easy even if it is 8bit as it is normally only kana in any form of order).

 

[Deleted User]

add01dat.bin as an header of int pointing to offsets of files. graphics files seems tile based and uncompressed. a simple graphic hack and repacking will make it.

 

[Dirtie]

So, how does the pointer format work and would you extract the graphics or just go about editing them directly? (I'm really clueless about this stuff)
It'd be nice to have the correct palettes when editing either way though

 

[FAST6191]

+1 to deufeufeu, flip the bytes (32bit unsigned) from the start to 1A9F (the next section starts with ASCII: RCEP) to get the offset list.
The spolier tags do not seem to be working so I do not really want to give a massive list (1704 lines).

As it is uncompressed I doubt you will really even need to unpack/repack and I would probably just edit them directly, if you want to unpack just head to the offset in the list and copy until the next offset (the files all seem to start with ASCII).
With regard to the palette I have not deciphered the header yet but the chances are the sections either 516 bytes (512+4) or 20 bytes (16+4) are your best bet, this being said there may be other info in the files so it may be slightly more (often the files themselves have a length contained within).

 

[Deleted User]

I've sent you a pm with a link to full archive splitted, in this way you can detect easily palettes and graphics and other stuff

 

[Dirtie]

Hehe, thanks a lot, that's awesome.

Just fooling around, I discovered the one that starts at 0028675C (the biggest file - also 000c8340 which is a dupe or vice-versa) is the animated background for the main title screen.
I still don't know how to go about getting those palettes

I did manage to do this particular one though, by loading the rom in desmume, and using the palette viewer, then painstakingly editing each value by hand by using the eyedropper tool in photoshop then copying the RGB values into the tile editor (there's no way I'm doing this for every graphic that needs to be translated, and it was kinda wasted on this one since it has no text).

Edit: Discovered 00275328 was all the name entry screen stuff, now I'm off to sleep.
All I need now is an easy way of getting those palettes and I'm good to go (now I just gotta learn Japanese)

I don't mind using the emulator and then using photoshop to generate a palette if that's what it takes - but to do that I need a tile editor that will accept either .pal or .act palette file formats.

 

[Dirtie]

Each format has a different ASCII header (as you already mentioned).

RGI = graphics.
IMG = graphics. (they both can be viewed with the same format in Tile Molester so it doesn't look like there's a difference)
RSC files seem to consist of ASCII, there's a few with character tables.
There are also RCP, RCET and RCEP files which I can't make any sense of.

Edit: I can't make any sense of this palette thing

I've tried searching the rgb values, the converted rgb to SNES 15bit format values, swapping the bytes, etc.

Edit 2: I've made a text file for each file "format" and listed all the files which use that format. I've uploaded it here: http://neopro.orcon.net.nz/slitherlink.zip
Two of the ASCII "headers" were PLT and PAT, so it's possible one of those is the format for the palette files.

 

[Dirtie]

I found the palettes!

Thanks to SNES Palette Editor which makes it heaps easier (can be found here) I've determined the RCP files contain the palettes. Now I just have to get them usable.

Edit: Does this officially make me a rom hacker yet?:

(I changed the background from green to orange

)

 

[Deleted User]

for your mom you'll always be the best

 

[Dirtie]

I've finally got the palettes sorted. Thanks a lot for all your help, this was pretty much just an education process for me, and your guidance was appreciated.

 

[thegame07]

good luck dirtie. cant wait to try your finished work

 

[FAST6191]

Might I suggest you use TilEd 2002 Dirtie, it has the ability to load palettes from the file you are working on (which is not so great for DS/FDS stuff but it has saved me lots of grief before):
Homepage recently died but:
http://www.romhacking.net/?page=utilities&...der=&record=360

 

[Dirtie]

Yup, that's what I'm already using

That way I can load up the palette files, specify the starting offset, then export it in a format I can use (Tile Ed 2002 isn't so great for actual editing as it lacks stuff like byte shifting).

Tile molester can import from the file you are currently editing as well, the only problem is that there is no way to use a palette from one file, in a different file - it's locked to the file you got it from (there's no export option either). TM's other import formats are limited to save states only as well :/
There is a workaround however - just edit the un-split "add01dat.bin" file directly

My current method is using Tile Ed to export palettes to the .pal format, then using an app called PaletteEdGBA to convert to .tlp format, then importing them into Tile Layer Pro.

Edit: Just found a way to transfer palettes from one file to another in Tile Molester - it just involves a little editing of the XML files in the program's dir

 

[FAST6191]

When you say it lacks byte shifting do you mean in things smaller than a byte or for making the tiles start at a different address?

If it is the latter try moving the bar below the (unfortunately decimal only) address bar.
It only does 4bpp for GBA (which is good enough for a lot of things and OK here but not later GBA and most DS stuff) but yy-chr is pretty good as well:
http://www.briansemu.com/yymarioed/

Oh and if you are really interested it might be worth learning to use this:
http://tahaxan.arcnor.com/

 

[Dirtie]

yy-chr lacks the ability to widen the area you're viewing (essential for some of the graphics because of the way the tiles are arranged).

I had a look at tahaxan, but it's not really possible to use in this case, since all the data is smooshed into that one file (which it doesn't recognize the format of). I suppose, however, that a plugin could probably be written for it. It's an app that could be useful in the future for sure.

When I was talking about byte shifting, I mean the next step down from tile shifting - basically getting the pixels aligned if they aren't already. Often you need to do a little bit of finer tuning with the offset or whatever it's called to get it looking right. Have a look a further down this page (the FAQ part) to see what I mean: http://www.spriters-resource.com/resources...olest/index.php
In yy-chr the +/- buttons do the same thing.

Edit: My bad, you can indeed get it looking right in Tile Ed just like you said, I'm sure I tried that earlier :/

 

[Dirtie]

My latest progress: http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=477...ndpost&p=604297

 

[neochaos]

That looks absolutely great! Dirty, I was thinking that there are perhaps many people here who aren't proficient with the technical side of rom hacking things but maybe still they'd like to translate the odd ROM...after you've finished with all this, could you perhaps provide us with a tutorial or at least some summary of what you exactly did to change texts, etc.? I really have little clue to what you actually did here to make it all work but I would be very interested to learn...just the stuff that's posted here, it makes little sense to me yet.