Hacking Xenoblade menu translation

[ferdi-t]

I'll be keeping an eye on this thread. Thanks for your hard work, I'm really excited about the prospect of being able to understand this game.

 

[HisshouBuraiKen]

Yeah I got your pm limit but it had the same order so either the file itself has been pulled out wrong or something, I dunno. I'll keep at it, I may just have to do trial and error. At least it's contained to each area - there's not labels from Colony 9 appearing in Colony 6 for example. Just that everything in Colony 9's jumbled up.



I got a save file at the endgame so I can check/mess with more stuff now. And no I'm saying it's fine in Japanese but the translations end up in the wrong spot. Might be a painful process. Also I don't think it's any insult to Zeforte if we try to get more programmers involved right away, he's still contributed a ton and the more help we have on that front the better. Eventually we might need more translators too but no sense in looking for them when we don't have any material for them to work on

VV

 

[iamatmylimit]

i got a reply from zeforte...his reply "I won't be able to work on this until March/April and I doubt the source will do you any good since pkbs work differently and have to be split into bdats first."


@HisshouBuraiKen - i found more .xls files thanks to zeforte's message.i found the .xls in common.pkb and map.pkb...i sent you a pm with link...


i dont think theres a single 2 mb file with all the story text but rather all the text from various areas put together make up the story and all these files are in map.pkb.......falo mentions himself "and dialog text are now ripable" .when all the dialogue is put together thats what we have a story..unless they are that well hidden somewhere...the common.pkb has the rest of the menu we were missing which is like memo,quest descriptions etc........the 12 xls linkzero found i found but in 1 big file with 12 rows and original bdat says 1_12 which means 1-12...so there may be 2 ways to open these files since he got the same thing but in 12 sheets......

the bad news is we cant repack these files (not yet anyway)...theres so much to work on by the time you and sephy finish zeforte may come back or we'll have a packer ready....i learned more stuff and ill post here in a few......tomorrow ill add the last video to the tutorial....it just shows what we are doing to extract these files and how we change the text to put back inside.....though we are stuck at "how to repack .pkb files" but im reading what i can find.......tomorrow ill post an up to date translation and i think we should name it like beta 1 or something...put a name HisshouBuraiKen that we can start...

 

[Linkzeror2]

i dont think theres a single 2 mb file with all the story text but rather all the text from various areas put together make up the story and all these files are in map.pkb.......falo mentions himself "and dialog text are now ripable" .when all the dialogue is put together thats what we have a story..unless they are that well hidden somewhere...the common.pkb has the rest of the menu we were missing which is like memo,quest descriptions etc........the 12 xls linkzero found i found but in 1 big file with 12 rows and original bdat says 1_12 which means 1-12...so there may be 2 ways to open these files since he got the same thing but in 12 sheets......

the bad news is we cant repack these files (not yet anyway)...theres so much to work on by the time you and sephy finish zeforte may come back or we'll have a packer ready....i learned more stuff and ill post here in a few......

common.pkb can be repacked with no problem (i tested days ago) the zeforte tool works great in this case.
anyway i think @falo hasn't looked the kanji inside the map.pkb, because dont have nothing to do with the cut-scene
however the .lod file dont contain text (are loading file for the .dap) im sure, the no player computer text and cut-scene are in script.pkb.
also the bdat.bin inside the dap files arent so much important compared to static and common.

Edit:
common.pkb have more than 12 sheets, have all quest divided into section
all bdat.bin inside are around 35 sheets

 

[iamatmylimit]

I Deleted the tutorial...We dont really need em anymore

heres my old video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvmf-WGvuB0

 

[Matrix21]

Great work and info there, limit.

What stage would you say the menus are complete? Is a lot more playable for English speakers now?

I have held off from playing this game as I have patience and will wait but I just wanted to know how far you guys are in to it.

Did you find the story text yet, or can I help out for looking as well?

Thanks again to everyone working on this, I only wish I could help.

 

[xfcrowman]

Great work everyone on this translation!

 

[iamatmylimit]

@Matrix21 - i think the game is very playable....HisshouBuraiKen is the only one who could say how far it is in terms of percent since he worked on 90-95% of the translation....

@Linkzeror2 - your right about the 35 sheets.....using falo's script on common.pkb i only get 35 .dat files and 1 .bdat.....the 35 dat files have xls inside of them however.....

im gonna post the problems we have and proposed solutions....

1.Menu text is in static.arc and common.pkb...
zeforte's tool made it so we can repack static.arc easy (space issues aside..ill get to this below).
for the common file i found a way to get the xls out (different from what linkzero did apparanetly) but i cant repack this file...ill show method later

2.Story and cut scene text...some dialogue is in map.pkb and this no one can repack right now.
HisshouBuraiKen says the files we found are not all story texts.

3.Space issues the problem..Theres space issues with text being cut off you will see.....zeforte mentioned he wanted to do break points in memory checks using dolphin but that he couldnt get the debugger to work properly....i can only guess his aim was to put a long sentence somewhere and set a breakpoint to this offset (where ever he put this text) and start playing the game using dolphin....if it crashes then the text is too long and he can go back and see the exact location where it crashed since he is playing the game and using the debugger at the same time....like driving with a camera...if you crash your car you have a camera to show exactly where you crashed...

4.Space issues the answer..using breakpoints apparently we may find out where the space issues come up and then be able to fix them...

Breakpoints = a way of alerting you when there is an error so you can check where it "breaks" and be able to fix/change this wrong/bad code
breakpoints tutorial by Romaap

Pointers = a sort of index.a book has pages and instead of flipping every page to get to chapter 4 you can look at the index and "skip" to chaper 4
so a pointer lists both the chapter (object) and the location of the object (page number).......(Foxx's definition)


5. Here is why we cant repack .pkb files...there are dap and lod files inside..all rare extensions ....not much research has been done on .pkb
.pkb = Oracle PL/SQL package body file........maybe an sql coder,programmer knows how to unpack/repack this specific file

.dap = dragon age origins has a profile.dap and there is a toolset(for the game) maybe this tool can open xenoblade .dap files = untested...i dont have game

.lod = "load file, which injects the objects required at game time for a particular scene"...we will need this to repack the .pkb so need to look into this

6.The dolphin debugger does work but is not very stable/reliable...theres videos showing people using it and ill post one maybe
the only debugger that works(costly) is using a usb gecko + gecko os + wiird/gecko.net...usb gecko is 50$ (a developers tools) and if someone has one maybe they could help...

 

[HisshouBuraiKen]

Good job on extracting the new stuff! Keeping it organized in google docs is gonna be a pain in the ass though

So here's what we're looking at:

autotalklist: Stuff that pops up when you get near certain NPCs. A lot of blank/placeholders in here.

extalklist: dialogue when you go to trade with someone. These are all exactly the same save one - 0801.xls. Dunno why.

GimMess: The labels for items on the field you can interact with and their related pop-up messages, e.g. "Elevator Button" and when you press A "The power's not on"

MNU_qt0101 - Quests! These are for the colony 9 and Tephra Cave areas - has everything but the quest's title (which is in the first round of xls files). In other words the problem description, the text that appears as you accomplish goals, and the epilogue when you complete the quest. These are gonna be a lot of work

poplist: internal enemy / npc names. don't touch.

 

[seam]

so i think ive found a small problem with the patch. In the Tephra caves when you talk to the first guard upstairs on the left he offers you a quest. Shulk says "Not right now... sorry." if you choose no. and that dialogue bubble never goes away. it just floats above his head until you win a battle or talk to someone else. it just stays above your head as you walk around. hasnt done that when talking to anyone else yet.

 

[Linkzeror2]

this are the most important files from common.pkb in .xls format
download here: [Click] (right click, save target as..)

 

[iamatmylimit]

thanks for those xls Linkzeror2...i never saw those before....i could only get 35 dat files which i was able to get 33 xls out of them...2 i couldnt open...im guessing now theres 33+5(i never found these) = 38 xls files

@seam - to be honest i havent been playing the game as im looking for more .xls and/or trying to figure out the space issue....im glad you pointed that out though thats why i put that patch and video so people could point out errors as you play...it would be nice if someone else got to that part and let us know if they also get the error..ill look into that one....

 

[seam]

yea i tried it more than once to make sure it wasnt a one time error. its only happened at that ONE part so far. ive made it to Colony 6 in the game as of today. if needed i could try to upload a video of the issue later.

 

[HisshouBuraiKen]

Good job linkzeror, here's what you found

*The descriptions for play awards

*The descriptions for the skill lines/links screen

*Item descriptions (weapons, armor, and the like)

*All of the text on the arts leveling up screen

*The story memos. Quite important because it would make the game almost playable once the menus are done. It'd be like reading the plot through wikipedia but eh

So at this point it looks like we have pretty much all the menu stuff available to us. What we are missing is all the dialog - that includes cinematics, cutscenes, NPC town dialogue, and bonding talks. It also seems we have no way of repacking what we've extracted so far, so...get on that ;P

 

[iamatmylimit]

@seam - try to upload a video

@HisshouBuraiKen - well Linkzeror2 says he did the repacking for common.pkb.i dont know his method but i tried it on my own and at the first battle of a new game it froze.....i was surprised the game even started and it even went through the cut scene..usually just changing lines in text wont even let it boot.....dolphin gave me 2 errors...ill try again tomorrow...

 

[Sephy]

Hi and sorry for the long period of absence again. Since I graduated university this month I'm kinda busy with job applications and stuff. But I haven't forgotten about this project. My biggest problem, however, is:

Google Docs is still telling me I have "View Only" rights...

Any ideas? Maybe I should try and make a gmail-account, after all, though I can't really imagine that they wouldn't allow you to edit the files unless you've got a googlemail-adress...

Or maybe Zeforte has to add me to the folder, too?

 

[HisshouBuraiKen]

Congrats on graduating! Best of luck with your job hunt

I don't think you need a gmail account per se but you DO need a google account, if you're not logged in to google you won't be able to edit. If it's not working try making a gmail account and we'll take another stab at it.

I'll try contacting linkzeror2 when I get some stuff translated and see if he can repack it and send me the file. Linkzeror you think you can write an unpacking/repacking script?

It would be cool if you guys could try and recruit some other people who did english patches, especially to help with the inevitable "easy one-click patching" option like with Zero 4.

 

[iamatmylimit]

no progress on the repacking....Linkzeror2 may be right about the script.pkb having the story/cutscene....i also saw the vso etc numbers.....i played one of the sfd movie files and noticed there was no sound....so the text missing from the video may have the same number but theres so many script.txt files....

@Seam - i saw your video.thanks...ya i think i know what you mean...you can advance in the game and keep playing but that text box doesnt dissappear in that one area and its obviously not supposed to do that.others may get it and think thier game got messed up..for now its a beta and we will fix that..im sure the other guys havent seen that yet...hopefully it doesnt show up again in another dialogue...

it happens during your second visit to the Tephra caves....i know its not related to the story/dialogue since we havent translated any of that(we havent found them yet)..so its something with the quest(one thing we translated) or its a quest you cant pick/are not supposed to yet....ill wait till Sephy and HisshouBuraiKen do thier next batch of work which actually has some quest related items/descriptions....and ask Linkzeror2 to help us repack so we can test em....thanks for pointing this out...

 

[Sephy]

I don't think you need a gmail account per se but you DO need a google account, if you're not logged in to google you won't be able to edit. If it's not working try making a gmail account and we'll take another stab at it.

I just sent you a PM concerning this problem.

 

[HisshouBuraiKen]

@Seam - i saw your video.thanks...ya i think i know what you mean...you can advance in the game and keep playing but that text box doesnt dissappear in that one area and its obviously not supposed to do that.others may get it and think thier game got messed up..for now its a beta and we will fix that..im sure the other guys havent seen that yet...hopefully it doesnt show up again in another dialogue...

it happens during your second visit to the Tephra caves....i know its not related to the story/dialogue since we havent translated any of that(we havent found them yet)..so its something with the quest(one thing we translated) or its a quest you cant pick/are not supposed to yet....ill wait till Sephy and HisshouBuraiKen do thier next batch of work which actually has some quest related items/descriptions....and ask Linkzeror2 to help us repack so we can test em....thanks for pointing this out...

What probably happened is that the commands embedded in the text were deleted/stripped out if you used google or whatever, like the is pretty self-explanatory, it removes the text box on a key press. I see which file you're talking about, I fucked that one up. Get the new copy off google docs and it should work now

I'm experimenting with and have found you get 30 chars/line and 4 lines per text bubble, which should be plenty for all the bubbled dialogue. So at least there's one part we don't need to worry about space limits! It was possible to go overboard and crash dolphin but if we're careful it shouldn't be an issue.