ROM Hack [WIP] Taiko no Tatsujin: Don to Katsu no Jikuu Daibouken - English Translation

[tiduscrying]

Oh man, this is looking REALLY promising. I've always wanted to translate a Taiko Drum Master game but it always seemed kinda daunting. No worries - I don't plan on going near 3DS translation; it seems pretty daunting (that and I'm not sure how image compression works and what have you; are alpha channels needed? etc. etc) Translating the menu images is actually how I got my start into romhacking too!

Now, I'm curious - the font face you're using: what is that font? It's so incredibly spot-on!
(I wasn't sure if it uses a Unicode font and you're just changing hex values here, and they just seem to work, or legitimately drafting up new images via Photoshop)

Anyway yeah, good luck on this project! I'd offer my services but I'm too much of an old fogey that I'm not sure if my experience with DS romhacking would even be practical here (it sounds completely different now)


ONE MORE THING: Are you planning on translating the little text underneath the drum notes (DON DO~N DO~~~N)?

Thanks! We keep doing more and more each day, so hopefully a patch release won't be too far off. The image compression is... complicated. All of the images are .ctpk files that are compressed using the LZ11 compression method, then renamed .txp. In order to get an editable PNG file, I have to first decompress the .txp file and then extract the images using ctpktool. Once that's done, I get a folder with the PNG image and an XML file. From there I can edit the images. Once they're ready, I run the folder through ctpktool, get a ctpk, compress that using LZ11 and then rename the file to a .txp. It is a lengthy process, but once I did it a few times, I got used to it.

As far as the font goes, I do have the official font installed on my computer (it has been floating around the net for some time now and has been used for a bunch of websites and Osu! skins) that I got from this site. Almost everything in this game is an image, so I am taking all the images into Photoshop and redrafting them myself using the method described above. It is really odd to have a game that uses little to no font (as far as I know, the only font that is used is during the story sequences in the RPG mode), but it makes this translation project so much easier.

Hoping you actually finish this, the game is addictive, but I find it hard to get past the japanese

Haha, well you are most certainly the target audience my man! I really want this game to be approachable to people who want to play it, but find the Japanese really daunting or confusing, you know? But a 100% menu patch is completely happening. We will see about the story! We want to get that done too, but I still need to find the right files and give it to @shiduyo to work on. We both still have to figure out the ins and outs of that too, especially considering how the default font is going to be a hassle to work with.

As far as patches go, I am tempted to release an xdelta patch for you guys just to prove what's been done, but I dunno. Both @shiduyo and I agree that we want a bit more translated before releasing a bare-bones patch, so hopefully that is something you guys can look forward to within the week or so.

Anyways, here is another update video! Just fixed graphics this time. Well, and the settings menu. But yeah. Steady as always...

Spoiler

 

[tiduscrying]

Another quick video! Categories and difficulties are now translated on the song-select screen.

Spoiler

 

[tiduscrying]

2/17/16 @ 6:29AM: Added major changes to the OP. Going to be working on the tutorial screen today as well as finishing up the song-select screen.

 

[carona]

Can't wait to try It
Thank you for your work in This project

 

[zzzzzzzzzzz]

Story - Still working on finding the story files. - 0%
I believe these are stored as .DAT files, however when opening them in HxD or NP++, there is so little code there that I have no idea... Getting a translation table is what we apparently need to do, but with so little information right now, it is going to be difficult for @shiduyo and I.

Actually the majority of the story text can be found in the .lua files. If you open these in NP++ it will mark up everything so that you can easily see where the text is. Some of the .dat files do contain text though, like how FieldDataPack.dat contains the character names. The text in those is UTF-8 encoded and can be replaced with a hex editor.

The issue with editing the text though is that your changes likely won't fit on screen due to the font (see the second screenshot from my previous post).

 

[tiduscrying]

Actually the majority of the story text can be found in the .lua files. If you open these in NP++ it will mark up everything so that you can easily see where the text is. Some of the .dat files do contain text though, like how FieldDataPack.dat contains the character names. The text in those is UTF-8 encoded and can be replaced with a hex editor.

The issue with editing the text though is that your changes likely won't fit on screen due to the font (see the second screenshot from my previous post).

Oh snap, I see it now. I had no idea, I thought that all of the .lua files had to do with the game engine and everything, wow. As far as the font goes, is there any way to decrease the spacing between the text? That is an issue caused by the game's native font, right? Would it be possible to edit/replace the font? I'd rather not have font running off into the next box or something, or just not being able to fit in the first place... Hmm. This is definitely interesting.

On another note, the dressing room screen is now translated! The specific clothing items are not translated yet, as I am not sure where those names are contained, but we will try our best to translate those as well. Once the song-select screen is fully translated (only thing left to translate is the rhythm-game modifiers and drum noises) and the tutorial is translated, it might be time for the first version of the basic menu patch!

 

[zzzzzzzzzzz]

Oh snap, I see it now. I had no idea, I thought that all of the .lua files had to do with the game engine and everything, wow. As far as the font goes, is there any way to decrease the spacing between the text? That is an issue caused by the game's native font, right? Would it be possible to edit/replace the font? I'd rather not have font running off into the next box or something, or just not being able to fit in the first place... Hmm. This is definitely interesting.

I haven't even been able to locate where the font is so I really have no clue.

 

[tiduscrying]

I haven't even been able to locate where the font is so I really have no clue.

Hmm, definitely interesting. Were you planning on translating the game at some point as well?

 

[zzzzzzzzzzz]

Hmm, definitely interesting. Were you planning on translating the game at some point as well?

No, it was just that quite a while ago I was interested in pulling sprites from this game and I learned a little about it, so when I saw people posting about translating the game I figured I should chime in.

 

[tiduscrying]

No, it was just that quite a while ago I was interested in pulling sprites from this game and I learned a little about it, so when I saw people posting about translating the game I figured I should chime in.

Nice! Thank you for chiming in, like seriously! If you hadn't, this translation wouldn't be happening due to my ignorance, haha. I knew next to nothing about romhacking before this project, but now we are inching closer and closer to releasing a patch. It's pretty damn nice!

 

[SLiV3R]

Yay! Very excited about this project!

Hopefully you'll keep on working with this

 

[tiduscrying]

Another video! Nothing huge this time. This should have been updated a few days ago, but I never got around to it orz... But hey! Delete data and half of the street pass menu is translated now! That's neat! You can not only delete all your data now, but you can also set up your streetpass profile! Nice! Also, @shiduyo deserves more credit than he gets. Like seriously. He is the one translating this stuff, I am just the one making the graphics do the stuff. P̴͓R̞̙̻̼̀ͅA̖͉̹̱̝ͅI͉̬͉S̸̫̜Ḙ̲͙͕ H̵͚I̡͈͔̳͓̺͔ͅM̡̰

Spoiler

 

[shiduyo]

Hey everyone! Thank you for being patient, as we're officially about to release the first menu patch! It translates all menu graphics from drum sounds to game settings. Only exception so far is story mode graphics and the song list in game. The reason we refrained from doing the song list is:

1. The English names of most songs are way too big to be completely visible on the menu.
2. The images for the names are all stored in packs of single images where all of the names are on one image and are packed super close together! It would be really time-consuming to edit all of those perfectly when we can be working on more important parts of the game.
3. You can hover over the song and it plays a sample, just scroll and find your song. Category names are translated so it shouldn't be too hard to find a song if you know what you're looking for.

My editor monkey @tiduscrying will release the patch later tonight or tomorrow, so look forward to it! Next on is the story translation! More graphics yay ( ╹﹃╹)

 

[tiduscrying]

Hey everyone! Thank you for being patient, as we're officially about to release the first menu patch! It translates all menu graphics from drum sounds to game settings. Only exception so far is story mode graphics and the song list in game. The reason we refrained from doing the song list is:

1. The English names of most songs are way too big to be completely visible on the menu.
2. The images for the names are all stored in packs of single images where all of the names are on one image and are packed super close together! It would be really time-consuming to edit all of those perfectly when we can be working on more important parts of the game.
3. You can hover over the song and it plays a sample, just scroll and find your song. Category names are translated so it shouldn't be too hard to find a song if you know what you're looking for.

My editor monkey @tiduscrying will release the patch later tonight or tomorrow, so look forward to it! Next on is the story translation! More graphics yay ( ╹﹃╹)

Actually... We've run into a problem here. We have translated the tutorial for the game. It was a txp file that I extracted using LZX, then extracted once more with cptktool (made by @Nagato). I edited the graphics (multiple .png files for the top screen, one for the bottom), compressed it as a ctpk file, compressed it with LZX and rebuilt the romfs but the tutorial instantly black-screens and forces the system to reboot. It is beyond bizarre, and anyone with rom-hacking knowledge is free to comment on this one, because honestly I am stumped. The tutorial is a major part of the game's translation, and without it I feel as if the patch would be useless. The black screen happens through HANS and through having the game installed as a .cia file. Oddly enough, it is this same error that made it so we couldn't translate the warning images either.

Anyone have any comments on this? When ctpktool extracts the decompressed txp file, it produces a folder with a PNG and XML file in it. Could there be something in the XML that would cause this sort of thing to happen? This sort of error happens whenever I have made a .txp out of multiple images. For example, the txp for the warning screen is two images, one for the bottom screen, and one for the top. When extracted, I get a folder with both images, and two XML files. After editing those and compressing them back into their proper format, they had the same exact black screen error. Is there a trick to that that I am not getting here? Is there something that must be done with ctpktool?

The images also have an odd transparency of 94% to them, which I have kept throughout all of the edits. Whenever I rebuild the .txp file, I make sure that only the new translated, compressed graphics are where they are supposed to be, so I honestly have no idea what is going on here.

Anyone with some knowledge about this sort of thing, please let us know ASAP what could be going on!

 

[tiduscrying]

Alright, status update of sorts. All of the major graphics are translated, omitting song titles since we can't find exactly where those are stored aside from that one monster png I found. The tutorial screen and warning screen both cause the game to crash due to it loading a multi-image texture as one (I am assuming here). I made a separate thread here discussing it. I was referred to another user to help us translate stuff, but he is currently out of commission due to personal stuff, so any work done on the tutorial and warning screen textures is going to, unfortunately, have to wait. That is, unless, someone else has information to help us with.

@shiduyo is taking a look at the story files as I type this. Turns out the majority of all of the story text is stored in .lua files, which will hopefully make it easy to translate them. The font problems pointed out by @zzzzzzzzzzz will persist until we can figure out how to fix that. People more experienced in romhacking are welcome to offer advice on this, as both @shiduyo and I don't have much knowledge on editing/fixing the fonts. I, for one, can't even figure out where the font is stored in the games files!

Graphics work should progress once more eventually. I will do my best on my own to translate some of the other, less important graphics for both the rhythm game mode and the story mode. I can translate a bit on my own with the use of a translation app that scans images and translates on the fly. Even though that is a machine translation, it isn't the worst in the world, and it does work most of the time, so yeah.

People are still welcome to offer help for the project. Especially with the multi-image ctpk problems highlighted above and in my separate thread. That is a huge thing stunting the release of the patch, so any help on that would be wonderful.

 

[Criminal90]

Did you have any project for translating Taiko no Tatsujin - Chibi Dragon to Fushigi na Orb?
Thanks for your hard work on this project

 

[tiduscrying]

Did you have any project for translating Taiko no Tatsujin - Chibi Dragon to Fushigi na Orb?
Thanks for your hard work on this project

Not at this moment, no. But if we can overcome the difficulties we are facing with Don to Katsu no Jikuu Daibouken then we might at least take a look at Chibi Dragon. It might even be an easier project since it has a way more simplified RPG mode and a smaller song list. I mean, all in all it is just a lesser game in the series. I personally would love to take a crack at DX on the PSP, but PSP romhacking is quite complicated from what I've heard, haha.

So all in all, we're just focusing on this for now! Who knows what we will do next, but we do plan on working on other games (outside the taiko series) in the future, granted we get better at the whole romhacking thing in the first place, haha.

 

[andzalot55]

I support this all the way.

 

[RhythmCat]

I only found out about this today

 

[tiduscrying]

I support this all the way.

I only found out about this today

Thanks for the support! And I am not surprised, haha. This section of the forum is kind of flooded these days with Fire Emblem patches and NTR cheat requests. It's easy for a small project like this to get buried amidst all of that!