Gaming Shining Resonance {PS3} English Patch - Nearly Complete

[RebootRevival]

Current Status 7/20/2023: Release 0.9

I know this was 2 years from creation and the initial test patch I made only took about 2 weeks. In reality this entire process was about 2.5 - 3 months of development and 2 weeks of patch QA. The real problem here was that no CPK tool in the open source community handles the rebuild of files of different sizes properly(that I could find) and I had write a new one. Plus the creation of a text editor tool. I work as a developer full time and have 3 kids so my time is limited and sometimes comes in waves. Having said that...

I have not been able to complete a playthrough of the game or fully debug but from what I have gotten done its more or less playable. There will likely be some alignment issues for text spacing but due to a bunch of things happening in life, I have decided to just release this and finish the minor tweaks as time allows. Any help from the community with screenshots or dialogue that needs fixing or has problems, please let me know. I have added the version of xDelta Patcher I used for this, but if you would rather get it from github directly -> https://github.com/jmacd/xdelta-gpl/releases/tag/v3.1.0
I used the x86_64.exe.zip.

Patch Files and Instructions.
https://drive.google.com/drive/u/3/folders/1yvKcT71FlqUA59uoREjjEKEo48QKaSiP






1/17/2023: I ran into an image boundary issue that took some digging but I did end up figuring out more about some files I had not known much about. It took quite a while but everything is resolved now. Textures are fully finished and Translation is complete. I'm painstakingly QA'ing every aspect of the game now in a playthrough. Even have the Sega Japanese guide book to ensure I get everything. This includes all conversations, items, stores, menu, character charts, etc to make sure everything looks clean. There are special cases here and there where dialogue will need some manual fixing and thats pretty much all I am looking for at this point. I will update as I complete things:

New Off Screen image from QA. Font sizing and new line selections work well.

1/5/2022: Probably the last update until a patch is released. I have made some major improvements to the Text editor which allows for global size changes(per file), implemented Japanese encodings to compare both copies side by side without binary junk getting in the way, and switches for tutorials vs dialogue because box size is different. I have updated a handful of files using the tool and patched them in without issue and testing is going smooth. I may need to make additional updates to the tool to deal with a couple files that have a lot of PS4 only content in the middle of the file, which probably will cause issues. Otherwise, after the text is updated and a few manual line adjustments as needed for cleaner looks, I will only need to update the old textures that seem to have gotten lost at some point.

(The empty spaces in this screen shot are reserved fields by the developers. They are supposed to be blank.)

12/28/2022
CPK tool is completed and functioning. Play testing underway.

I found how to change font sizing, per text basis. I'll see if I can find a way to change the standard size for UI and chat, it is pretty big normally. I have added a new screen below to show it is on a PS3(XMB overlay) and the "Confirm" text in the bottom right is significantly smaller.

CURRENT STATUS 07/19/2022: Continuing to chip away at the patching algorithm and in the process making some refactoring to the core structure to make it easier to manipulate the file structure. Progress is slow due to IRL commitments but its coming together.


STATUS 02/03/2022: Tranlastion has been done for months, CriPack tools are not properly packing the file system. It place the screen wipe transition "code" beyond the EOF header which is what causes some of the glitches detailed below. I managed to manually fix this in hex at one point but attempts to repeat now are failing. Once this repack issue is resolved, a patch file can be made and released.


I have been working on back porting the PS4 English Assets to the PS3 for the last couple weeks and it is 99% complete. This is not a fan translation. It is official localization assets being converted to run on PS3. In less than 10 instances, the English was just not capable of being used(due to size constraints) and had to be rephrased.
Posting now to gauge interest as well as get a few tips for the last items I have.

What is complete:

• Translation of all assets finished.
• All in game text (Dialogue, Field Text, UI, Sequences, etc) has been converted to English. (Special/Bad PS4 encodings updated)
• Any words and characters stored as textures has been updated.
• All Tutorials screens featuring words have been converted to English images.
• Movies have been converted to display English Subtitles with Japanese voice overs(Subtitles are baked into videos, required mixing PS3 audio streams with PS4 video)

Known Issues: (cosmetic only)

• Font sizing. I have not been able to find a way to change the font sizes in the PS3. In some cases the English is a bit lengthy which makes it run outside the proper area. It must do this for those 10-15 instances since the game will not display a 5th row of text. Identified.
• Characters field text can extend beyond the box borders for similar reasons.
• A few items in the Options Menu have a small display box which causes text to be cut off: "Difficul" instead of "Difficulty" (These are textures. Cannot be helped...) Fixed.

Possible Issues:

If the game has trouble wiping the screen and locating the next texture to load, it prompts an error message on the screen. It tells you what texture file is giving issues as well. You are able to press start to continue(for repeated error messages), and eventually you see the "Skip Scene" box in the background. Pressing Start and "O" in proper timing can skip the sequence and continue the game. This has happened during asset testing a few times when changing things improperly. AFAIK, these have been resolved, but I have not fully tested every detail.

I understand the reason for the above issue. It was a problem with the cripack tools ability to properly format the cpk file system.





Off-Screen images from actual console play test.

 

[jijisama]

thanks for your hard work

 

[antediluvian]

Made an account just to tell you thank you and I'm looking forward to this!

 

[jijisama]

is the release soon ?

 

[RebootRevival]

Made an account just to tell you thank you and I'm looking forward to this!

is the release soon ?

UPDATE: I got hit hard with work shortly after this post. I haven't been able to fully play test the game yet, but I am confident it is 95-98% complete. There is likely a few minor misses still and this past week I have found 1 texture that I updated but somehow didn't get into the game. I will try to have a Patch added to the original post by the end of the week.

 

[RebootRevival]

Have to delay the patch release. This game uses a Cripack file to house ALL the game content and another to house all the videos. When I went to replace the 1 missing texture, the whole thing corrupted. I rebuilt it all (there are 500 files that need to be manually replaced, takes about an hour) and the cripack program is not rebuilding it properly. I'm not sure what the deal is.

 

[RebootRevival]

Quick Update: CriPack Browser 6.7 is broken. I'm not sure how I managed to correct the hex data of the old files when I was doing this in the summer. I knew back then that the tool would do some odd things to the data when repacking but none of my attempts has succeeded so far. And I dont think it was breaking in the same way it is now.

I have also been using CriPackTools GUI to look at the files a bit more in depth and I am seeing some consistent issues with header corruption. The GUI tool is at least open source and has the same compression implemented so I am going to work on debugging the patching in the tool and make some adjustments.

 

[Segatasa]

I wish you luck with the translation, I'm looking forward to playing it, and thanks for your hard work.

 

[RebootRevival]

I wish you luck with the translation, I'm looking forward to playing it, and thanks for your hard work.

Thanks. I have not abandoned it. I was making progress on the tool rewrite when COVID hit our family(despite vaccinations) and then staffing issues at work and major projects have completely busted any spare time I had. I will finish this its just not going to be as quick as I hoped.

EDIT: To be clear. The Entire Translation is FINISHED. That only took me a week or two. For a couple month the issue was testing. Then in October I found 1 label that was missed in an initial file copy. When I attempted to repack that into the game, it wrecked everything because the repacker tool didn't want to function anymore. Its not the file, its the CPK tools not populating the cripack right. At this point literally the only thing needing to be done, is repacking the file correctly and then creation of a patch file.

 

[RebootRevival]

Update: I have spent a significant amount of the last 2 weeks working on the CPK tool. Even took 2 days off from work just to clear my head from all that's happening there and worked on this. This tool I am using was the best open source, functioning CPK Tool I could find online, but I knew the code was not very good. After digging in to it, I can't believe it worked at all. It looks like a terrible college student project. No standards or styles. Tons of random loose globals mixed with OOP, huge files with dozens of unrelated class structures, a lot of code that gets executed but has no impact on anything. Just weird. I have finished rewriting the Read/Parsing portion of the code base which was the biggest hurdle. The extraction part shouldn't take to long as its relatively straight forward and then I can get to the problem part. The patching. This is the part of the code that didn't function properly and was incredibly difficult to debug(for the reasons above). I know this has been sitting for a long time and getting dragged on but it will get out eventually. I am using a private git repo for my tool updates right now. If anyone is interested in looking at it, or wanting to help with it, let me know and I can add you.

 

[Segatasa]

Update: I have spent a significant amount of the last 2 weeks working on the CPK tool. Even took 2 days off from work just to clear my head from all that's happening there and worked on this. This tool I am using was the best open source, functioning CPK Tool I could find online, but I knew the code was not very good. After digging in to it, I can't believe it worked at all. It looks like a terrible college student project. No standards or styles. Tons of random loose globals mixed with OOP, huge files with dozens of unrelated class structures, a lot of code that gets executed but has no impact on anything. Just weird. I have finished rewriting the Read/Parsing portion of the code base which was the biggest hurdle. The extraction part shouldn't take to long as its relatively straight forward and then I can get to the problem part. The patching. This is the part of the code that didn't function properly and was incredibly difficult to debug(for the reasons above). I know this has been sitting for a long time and getting dragged on but it will get out eventually. I am using a private git repo for my tool updates right now. If anyone is interested in looking at it, or wanting to help with it, let me know and I can add you.

Thank you for everything you have done, you really are my hero

 

[RebootRevival]

I am very close now. The CPK tool is about 80% completely rewritten. About half of the patching process is still pretty much the same code as original, but isolating the bug was now much easier to do. I made a minor tweak to that bug a few minutes ago and my Patched CPK is now getting generated correctly. In the process of sending it to my PS3 for testing as I type this, but I am expecting good things.

If anyone is curious, the actual bug in the old CPK code ended up being an issue how the CPK Header data was writing the offset locations for parts of the file structure. One thing some people might notice if they are looking is that patches to CPK files(and some others) end up identical in size. That's generally fine. But sometimes that means people have to make some significant changes to the wording. Since I am backporting from PS4 a lot of my files are completely different sizes. I am guess the reason people have to make them byte identical is because most CPK tools have this same bug, which is failing to properly account for size differences and update the offset and size values. Trying to fix that in the original code would have been very very difficult. Fixing it in my rewrite took about 10 minutes.

 

[RebootRevival]

...the actual bug in the old CPK code ended up being an issue how the CPK Header data was writing the offset locations for parts of the file structure.

Update on the progress. The above statement was true but it was only a small problem. Now, I am able to get the game to load, but there are issues, because of the following. I discovered that much of the header information was being completely ignored. As far as I can tell this is true for all of the CPK Tools right now. Instead of actually figuring out what the details mean and making use of them, the code was just using some of it and then implicitly discovering others. I spent the last couple weeks mapping the bytes by hand and cataloguing exactly what ALL of the header details actually represent. And in the process I have been re-writing the tool, again, but from the ground up in a significantly different way. Now that all the meaningful data is actually being captured in the read; at the time of repacking, I will be able to update not only the section headers but every single header byte that has anything to do with the files being packaged. It will be less of a repack mod and more of a new pack rebuild, as 1 byte difference in 1 file will cascade header updates to every single file behind it. For now I am only implementing mappers to headers necessary for Shining Resonance to speed up development. At this point I am at the Extraction phase which shouldn't take long, and then the rebuild portion.

 

[ShinZanmato]

news?

 

[RebootRevival]

news?

I took a couple weeks off on the coding due to work being extra demanding. But I had completed the extraction and began laying out the concepts of rebuilding as there is quite a lot of dependencies. In that process I went back and made a few changes to the reading and extraction portion too. I took today off from work to get a break and dive back in to this.

 

[Naxil81]

CURRENT STATUS 02/03/2022: Tranlastion has been done for months, CriPack tools are not properly packing the file system. It place the screen wipe transition "code" beyond the EOF header which is what causes some of the glitches detailed below. I managed to manually fix this in hex at one point but attempts to repeat now are failing. Once this repack issue is resolved, a patch file can be made and released.


I have been working on back porting the PS4 English Assets to the PS3 for the last couple weeks and it is 99% complete. This is not a fan translation. It is official localization assets being converted to run on PS3. In less than 10 instances, the English was just not capable of being used(due to size constraints) and had to be rephrased.
Posting now to gauge interest as well as get a few tips for the last items I have.

What is complete:

• Translation of all assets finished.
• All in game text (Dialogue, Field Text, UI, Sequences, etc) has been converted to English. (Special/Bad PS4 encodings updated)
• Any words and characters stored as textures has been updated.
• All Tutorials screens featuring words have been converted to English images.
• Movies have been converted to display English Subtitles with Japanese voice overs(Subtitles are baked into videos, required mixing PS3 audio streams with PS4 video)

Known Issues: (cosmetic only)

• Font sizing. I have not been able to find a way to change the font sizes in the PS3. In some cases the English is a bit lengthy which makes it run outside the proper area. It must do this for those 10-15 instances since the game will not display a 5th row of text.
• Characters field text can extend beyond the box borders for similar reasons.
• A few items in the Options Menu have a small display box which causes text to be cut off: "Difficul" instead of "Difficulty" (These are textures. Cannot be helped...) Fixed.

Possible Issues:

If the game has trouble wiping the screen and locating the next texture to load, it prompts an error message on the screen. It tells you what texture file is giving issues as well. You are able to press start to continue(for repeated error messages), and eventually you see the "Skip Scene" box in the background. Pressing Start and "O" in proper timing can skip the sequence and continue the game. This has happened during asset testing a few times when changing things improperly. AFAIK, these have been resolved, but I have not fully tested every detail.

I understand the reason for the above issue. It was a problem with the cripack tools ability to properly format the cpk file system.





Off-Screen images from actual console play test.



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what is the status today?

 

[RebootRevival]

what is the status today?

Still working on the tool. The last bit is difficult but slowly coming together.

I haven't had as much time as I want to work on it, but it is being slowly worked on.

Right now the code is being stored in a private github repo but anyone can request access to it if they want to follow or if they know C# .NET Core 3.1 and AutoFac Dependency Injection I'ld be happy to get some outside ideas.

 

[rererwwewew]

NEWS PLEASE!

 

[RebootRevival]

NEWS PLEASE!

Not great news. This part of the year is always my busiest. Been dealing with ALL KINDS of crap in life(like catalytic converter theft..) so this has sat on the back burner for about a month. I have started to catch up though and should be getting back to it this week. I wont to wrap this up and move on to something else.

 

[OldSchoolGamer86]

I know I am new here, but I saw this and almost fell over. This game right here is one of the few that the PS3 got in Japan but was released in english but only on a console I do not like in the LEAST nor do I care to own. I was after learning about the new potential hacking of the PS4 considering getting a replacement someday just to use as a hacked console for playing what my PS3 cannot.

I still have a handful of PS4 games despite getting rid of the console over 2 years ago, and THIS GAME RIGHT HERE IS ONE OF THEM! I one of the FEW things that made me iffy in regards to letting the PS4 go was the fact I would not be able to continue playing THIS GAME, as well as Tales of Vesperia, and (I know its not well liked but Star Ocean Integrity and Faithlessness. I regardless have always loved tri-ace and supported and played their games but I sadly after giving up current gen, had to accept I could not play to completion Star Ocean I&F(Playable on PS3), Tales of Vesperia(Playable on PS3), Shining Resonance Refrain(Playable on PS3), Odin Sphere Leifthrasir(playable on PS3)....you see where I am going here.

I want to personally say THANK YOU to THE MAN (RebootRevival) who is making one of the PS3 games I never thought I would be able to play in English playable. I would have been happy with honestly just the bare bones game without ANY of the DLC. But you are going above and beyond and I cant thank you enough.

I plan on importing the PS3 games that released in Japan that are in English on PS4 but not PS3 because Sony sucks now IMO at least, so hopeyfully by then I will have an easier time coming across a ISO to patch as I cant download large files as I dont have regular internet as I cant afford it, I can only tether my cellphone and share the data giving me what is today considered very slow speeds aside from a small timeslot where I can get up to 1MB/S (basically 12am-5am). I also no of no places of where to obtain unpatched ISO's so thats my best option I assume anyway.

Keep up the fantastic work @RebootRevival and I can not WAIT till this is playable on my JB 160GB non BC PS3(I plan to gt a BC model sooner than later and take a larger HDD from a slim and replace it with the smaller GB HDD that will come with my JB PS3 be it 20 or 60. I have 3 PS3's as we speak so once I can finally get the model I want I can keep one backup and get rid of the other 2...eventual plan at least. I love the PS3...much more than the PS4.

Thank you for everything @RebootRevival one last time, Best Wishes, Be Good, and Take Care! Keep up the AMAZING work here! I love the Shining series and besides this, I still have hope that someday Shining Wind PS2, Shining Ark/Shining Blade/Shining Hearts PSP will get their much deserved Fan Translations so I can FINALLY have more of an understanding of what's going on playing them.

I will be watching this with eager intent!