ROM Hack Tools for translating a game?

[Zephyr66]

I'm looking to get a group together to try to translate Shakugan no Shana DS, seeing as it's not likely to make it to the US, but I'm concerned about how possible it is to do the actual hacking. I don't have the necessary knowledge, and I certainly don't have the tools, but filling in one or both of those positions would be REALLY helpful. The first thing I'd like to know is if there's anything out there to help me find the text, however it's stored, because that's the first think I'd like to figure out (I know I'll need to hack it to use half width characters, and do whatever needs to be done to deal with extra screens of text and such). In any case, are there any tools out there that would make this any easier?

 

[calvin_0]

thanks for trying to translate Shakugan no Shana DS....

if you found the tools, hope you translate Jigoku Shoujo as well XD

good luck.

 

[Normmatt]

the only tool you need is a hex editor, i use windhex.

 

[Zephyr66]

Well, unfortunately, I have no idea how to find what format the text is in, there is a tool being developed that looks at the files stored in .nds files, which look promising...

http://tahaxan.arcnor.com/

Unfortunately, Shakugan no Shana uses vx and .bin files, and so far nobody's posted anything about those files, so I know next to nothing about the game's inner workings, and even where the text is yet.

 

[calvin_0]

.vx is movie format for DS in RAW
.bin is binary file, they can be anything.....but mostly its text and dialogue for the games.

 

[Zephyr66]

Ok, thanks for the pointer on .vx
I seem to have located some of the tileset for the text, though it's somewhat offset in the raw file (I just loaded one of the bins and saw it). That helps narrow things for me.

 

[calvin_0]

wow, that program can read .bin files?....

maybe i should use it to crack MegamanZX....hmm....

 

[FAST6191]

I am with Normmatt, a hex editor is all you need. There was an editor for final fantasy 3 made though.
I have posted in a few threads on the subject and so have a few others. Here is an old copy of my rom hacking docs:
http://www.4shared.com/file/3636881/1f5f088d/rom101.html

Romhacking.net has a bunch of docs for older systems although the principles have barely changed if at all (in many ways it is actually easier):
http://www.romhacking.net/

@calvin_0 megaman ZX US/Eu games use their own table (which I seem to recall castlevania shares: common to the company), as I recall the lower case match up with the upper case ASCII which means you can pretty much read what is going on without even making a table.

 

[Zephyr66]

I've read the rom hacking 101 document already, and my main problem is finding the table they use, after I figure out where the test is stored, unfortunately, filenames don't help me any.

I want to make a table, but If I can locate the text stored in there, I can get a clearer idea of where to look with my relative searches and such.

These are the names of the bin files:
bk.bin
LC12.bin - Seems to have the tiles for the test, though I have no idea where the palette is stored.
lr.bin
lt12.bin
pr.bin - pr = program?
pt.bin
sc.bin - sc = script? Destroying part of just leads to the game crashing after the main menu :/

Overall, they made this game with a pretty stupid structure...

 

[Normmatt]

check the arm9 binary itself as that'd be the place i'd store most of it if i programmed a game

 

[JPH]

Hex editors are past my comprehension...tables and crap - I don't understand how to use them. I've tried to read FAST6191's guide...didn't work out

I wish there was a GBA rom text editor...I wanna fix the Mother 1 & 2 translation....
Too bad they only did it for Pokemon roms...

 

[Zephyr66]

I'm not good with that stuff either, though I know my way around a hex editor.

If anyone wants to help out, it'd be greatly appreciated...

 

[FAST6191]

I would continue with finding text as I doubt it will be graphical for this game.

Tracing a table is not usually my favourite way although it does work.

Japanese has a load of characters which means the text is likely 16bit (the DS has a bit more space cart and memory wise than the 16 bit and earlier consoles so devs usually take the easy route) and of that only the kana and a handful of kanji will be defined usually. Both of these tend to kill and of the older relative search apps which tend to be 8 bit only memory hogs.

As for text I would check it is not unicode or shiftJIS (I have done this for a lot of roms and they have often been one of these). A good tell is if there are a lot of 89XX type things around. (The added bonus is the roman character set is defined as well which means you do not have to hack on in)
ShiftJIS if you have not got a table:
http://www.rikai.com/library/kanjitables/k...odes.sjis.shtml

As for actually finding the text common sense (the first part is usually a pointer map and usually involves a lot of 00's) and corruption (I favour inverting the bits: simple to undo and a good corruption to use).
Get a point in an emulator and save, rinse and repeat.

 

[Zephyr66]

Ok, after finding out most of the fires are compressed and decompressing them, I've found that almost all the bins are marked with the magic code of "4e 43 42" "NCB"
Pretty much all of them have it, except lt12 and LC12, which have the tiles... I'm getting closer to figuring this damned thing out.

 

[calvin_0]

@calvin_0 megaman ZX US/Eu games use their own table (which I seem to recall castlevania shares: common to the company), as I recall the lower case match up with the upper case ASCII which means you can pretty much read what is going on without even making a table.

actually i'm looking for a way to translate Jpn RockmanZX into english....since Megaman ZX dont have voice and replaceing the dialogue and font file is not enough....

 

[Zephyr66]

Hmm, the compression is making things a bit more difficult. GBADecmp apparently won't recompress my files, so I need to find another one that works, because I have to be sure so I can decompress and recompress the files without everything going haywire :/

Also, anyone know what a file witht he magic number NCB at the start is?

So far, I don't know much at all about the file header, I'm taking a wild guess and thinking NCB means Nintendo Compressed Binary, though that may be wishful thinking. Anyway, this is the very first part of pr.bin after it was passed through GBADecmp as a separate file:

4E 43 42 00 68 20 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
60 00 00 00 68 03 00 00 C8 03 00 00 70 00 00 00
FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF 38 04 00 00 30 1C 00 00

Then there are 3 lines of FF

The next section starts:

52 45 43 4E FF FE 00 01 67 03 00 00 10 00 03 00
4B 4B 45 43 34 03 00 00 18 00 01 00 18 00 00 00

Then there's mostly nothing until the next section...