ROM Hack Trouble Understanding Font Graphics File Format

[Yousurname]

I'm trying to use Tinke to edit the font graphics of a game (Pokémon + Nobunaga no Yabou, the original Japanese version of Pokémon Conquest) for translation purposes. According to this post, it's stored in overlay9_11 (not sure if it's all the fonts or just the most common one), but I don't know how the file is formatted (the image attached in that post may have helped). The file seems to start with some header data, then a list of all the characters supported (in the Shift JIS encoding). After that seems to be the font graphics, or at least something that resembles the graphics for the first three characters (　, 、, and 。), and then what appears to be garbage data. The graphics seem to be either 1bpp or 2bpp.

Font graphics displayed with 1bpp:

Font graphics displayed with 2bpp:

 

[elhobbs]

Maybe this might help? https://gbatemp.net/threads/release-nftr-editor-a-tool-for-editing-nftr-font-files.560278/

 

[Yousurname]

That likely won't help because the file does not have a file extension and does not seem to be in the NTFR file format (does not start with the required header information).

 

[pleonex]

I don't know about the Japanese version of the game, but for the US and EUR regions, the game has 3 fonts. Small and regular fonts are in the overlay 10, the large font is in overlay 11.

The overlay files are executable files, that are loaded into memory with program code. They don't have any specific format, it's code data which is game specific, and there is actual game assembly code before the font data.

In the case of these two regions (again, the Japanese version is probably different), the font structure is as follows:

- Game code (related to font loading)
- Map table (glyph <-> character)
- Glyph images

[TABLE=full]
[TR]
[TH]Font / Parameter[/TH]
[TH]Small[/TH]
[TH]Regular[/TH]
[TH]Large[/TH]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Overlay file[/TD]
[TD]10[/TD]
[TD]10[/TD]
[TD]11[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Glyph width[/TD]
[TD]8[/TD]
[TD]10[/TD]
[TD]14[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Glyph height[/TD]
[TD]11[/TD]
[TD]14[/TD]
[TD]19[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Bits per pixel (bpp)[/TD]
[TD]1[/TD]
[TD]1[/TD]
[TD]2[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Glyph count[/TD]
[TD]209[/TD]
[TD]209[/TD]
[TD]209[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Map offset[/TD]
[TD]0x87D8[/TD]
[TD]0x897C[/TD]
[TD]0x28[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Glyphs offset[/TD]
[TD]0x8B20[/TD]
[TD]0x94EC[/TD]
[TD]0x1CC[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

The map table is a list of shift-jis little-endian codepoints (16-bits) for each of the glyphs in the font, in the order of the font glyphs.
The glyph data format is: 1 byte with the character width (for variable width, probably not present in the Japanese version), followed by the image data.

Unfortunately, I don't think you will be able to edit them with Tinke. Export should be easy, I think you only need to change the width in Tinke to 11, 14 or 19.
I did a custom tool to export and import these fonts for our Spanish translation. I plan to make the tool public available, including its source code, as soon as we release our translation project. We hope to finish it in the next few months (we are in the last testing phase)

 

[Yousurname]

@pleonex Thank you so much for your response. I checked the US version and it seems that the map and glyphs offset for the small and regular font are wrong (or I'm doing something wrong) as overlay9_10 only goes up to 0x7053. Instead, there seems to be a map table starting at 0x4D58. For the large font, everything past the space character glyph still just looks like garbage data to me, and changing the width did not help. Maybe I'm interpreting the glyph image data wrong?

 

[pleonex]

If I remember well the overlays are compressed. Try using a tool like 'blz' from the CUE GBA/DS decompressors to compress and decompress them.

 

[Yousurname]

By decompressing the overlay files, I was able to gather this information for the Japanese version (but was unable to locate the tiny font):

[TABLE=full]
[TR]
[TH][/TH]

[TH]Tiny (Furigana)[/TH]
[TH]Small[/TH]
[TH]Medium[/TH]
[TH]Thin (ASCII)[/TH]
[TH]Regular[/TH]
[TH]Large[/TH]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Overlay file[/TD]
[TD]?[/TD]
[TD]10[/TD]
[TD]10[/TD]
[TD]10[/TD]
[TD]10[/TD]
[TD]11[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Glyph width[/TD]
[TD]6?[/TD]
[TD]8[/TD]
[TD]10[/TD]
[TD]6[/TD]
[TD]12[/TD]
[TD]16[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Glyph height[/TD]
[TD]6?[/TD]
[TD]8[/TD]
[TD]10[/TD]
[TD]12[/TD]
[TD]12[/TD]
[TD]16[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Bits per pixel (bpp)[/TD]
[TD]1[/TD]
[TD]1[/TD]
[TD]1[/TD]
[TD]1[/TD]
[TD]1[/TD]
[TD]2[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Glyph count[/TD]
[TD]89?[/TD]
[TD]179[/TD]
[TD]268[/TD]
[TD]70[/TD]
[TD]800 (462 kanji)[/TD]
[TD]798 (460 kanji)[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Map offset[/TD]
[TD]?[/TD]
[TD]0x890C[/TD]
[TD]0x8A74[/TD]
[TD]0x8880[/TD]
[TD]0x949C[/TD]
[TD]0x2C[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Glyphs offset[/TD]
[TD]?[/TD]
[TD]0x8F04[/TD]
[TD]0x9ADC[/TD]
[TD]0x8C8C[/TD]
[TD]0xA878[/TD]
[TD]0x668[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

The character width byte is not present in any fonts.

 

[Yousurname]

@pleonex Editing the font seems to work fine, but adding characters makes the game crash. I assume I need to change the glyph count stored somewhere. Would you happen to know where the glyph count (and possibly glyph width and height) are stored?

 

[Yousurname]

After some more investigating, I was able to uncover additional font data (for the Japanese version):

	Furigana​	Small​	Thin Medium​	Medium​	Thin​	Regular​	Large​
File	arm9.bin	overlay9_10	overlay9_10	overlay9_10	overlay9_10	overlay9_10	overlay9_11
File offset	0x2004000	0x2227260	0x2227260	0x2227260	0x2227260	0x2227260	0x2227260
Glyph width	6	8	5	10	6	12	16
Glyph height	5	8	10	10	12	12	16
Bits per pixel	1	1	1	1	1	1	2
Glyph count	83	179	18	268	70	800	798
Map offset	0xABFCC	0x890C	0x87DC	0x8A74	0x8880	0x949C	0x2C
Glyphs offset	0xAC074	0x8F04	0x8800	0x9ADC	0x8C8C	0xA878	0x668
Glyph count value offset	0x809A4 (within mov)	0xB8 (within mov)	0x90 (within mov)	0x68 (within mov)	0x40 (within mov)	0x18 (within mov)	0x28 (literal)
Map pointer offset	0x809AC	0xC0	0x98	0x70	0x48	0x20	0x20
Glyphs pointer offset	0x809B0	0xC4	0x9C	0x74	0x4C	0x24	0x24
Glyph width value offset (arm9.bin)	0xABF14 0xABF20 0xABF2C 0xABF38	0xABF30	0xABF28	0xABF24	0xABF10 0xABF1C 0xABF34	0xABF0C	0xABF18
Glyph height value offset (arm9.bin)	0xABFA4 0xABFB0 0xABFBC 0xABFC8	0xABFC0	0xABFB8	0xABFB4	0xABFA0 0xABFAC 0xABFC4	0xABF9C	0xABFA8
BPP value offset (arm9.bin)	0xABF44 0xABF50 0xABF5C 0xABF68	0xABF60	0xABF58	0xABF54	0xABF40 0xABF4C 0xABF64	0xABF3C	0xABF48