ROM Hack .z files from my coach games

[omarrrio]

Greetings, I've been struggling with the translation of my Japanese coach to french, and there are some little images i need to translate aswell, so i've been messing with the compressed .z images, and i couldn't find a single solution to unlock it's content to be readable, so can any of you guys help me ?
here is a sample : http://www.mediafire.com/?rv2g67cb6j7iazd
the image in there is supposed to be this:

i couldn't find anything, Tinke decompresses the .z files to a similar compressed file (the file in the link is uncompressed by tinke),and in windows only winzip is able to open and extract .z files, but obviously it only reads the file extension, so error when trying to read content.

Thank you, Omar.

 

[jjjewel]

First off, open the decompressed .z in CrystalTile2.
In Hex Editor view, move your mouse (or cursor) 4 bytes from the start. (That's at 0x04 position) And right-click, Data->Palette.

(For some reason I can't upload picture. If it doesn't work, let me know. I can upload picture in MediaFire or something.)
Big image under spoiler tag.

Spoiler

Change to Tile view and change these values on Properties tab.
Offset: A0C
Scale: 200
MAP/OAM address: 248
width: 256
height: 192
Tile form: GBA 8bpp
image pattern: Map

And you should be able to view the image.
Then export image to edit and import it back.

*Note: I'm not sure how CrystalTile2 handles Map. You might have to try to avoid adding text to the solid background.
(Ex. On the SPACE tab. There are tiles around it with blue backgroud. Try to stay away from adding text to that blue area otherwise the imported image might mess up.)

If you can request Tinke plug-in from pleonex, it might work better than CrystalTile2. The images in this game have image/palette/tile like NCGR/NCLR/NSCR but without any headers.

 

[Auryn]

Another person that rely too much on programs instead of look at the file itself.
My tip for you, open some NCLR, NCGR and NSCR in hex editors, see how they look like and then look at your decompressed file.

By the way, they are normally compressed ID10 so any program can decomnpress them that can handle ID10.
It's very rare that a program like winzip / winrar / winace can help you in a nds game.

 

[omarrrio]

thank you both for your reply, and Auryn,i did look at the hex of each file and saw taht some how it looks like a pallet and it is actually without headers, but i just couldn't view it, thank you guys

 

[Auryn]

Yes, first you have the palette, then the map file and then the graphic data.
For palettes you can mark the hex values in CT2 and right click them > "data to palette" and it will convert the hex values in the actual palette,

 

[omarrrio]

so far the game text is really easy to edit, but the graphs, maybe compressed under one compression, but the data isn't the same for every .z file sadly

 

[Auryn]

example??

 

[omarrrio]

the font files, they are literally a normal pointer file, points to every image, but i can't get it to show the image of every character clearly, it seems that the idiot my japanese coach game makers did add ç é è à and other special chars, but they forgot ê, which is really important in french.

 

[Sliter]

hey sorry for dig up this thread but I want to mess with this "seris" as well, to be honestly mostly with the Japanese and english coach to make them in portuguese, butI have no idea where are the text / graphics and how to convert to edit them x3x I'm tring with Tinke and I have no idea how to do stuff :v

 

[sandwichwater]

First off, open the decompressed .z in CrystalTile2.
In Hex Editor view, move your mouse (or cursor) 4 bytes from the start. (That's at 0x04 position) And right-click, Data->Palette.

(For some reason I can't upload picture. If it doesn't work, let me know. I can upload picture in MediaFire or something.)
Big image under spoiler tag.

Spoiler

Change to Tile view and change these values on Properties tab.
Offset: A0C
Scale: 200
MAP/OAM address: 248
width: 256
height: 192
Tile form: GBA 8bpp
image pattern: Map

And you should be able to view the image.
Then export image to edit and import it back.

*Note: I'm not sure how CrystalTile2 handles Map. You might have to try to avoid adding text to the solid background.
(Ex. On the SPACE tab. There are tiles around it with blue backgroud. Try to stay away from adding text to that blue area otherwise the imported image might mess up.)

If you can request Tinke plug-in from pleonex, it might work better than CrystalTile2. The images in this game have image/palette/tile like NCGR/NCLR/NSCR but without any headers.

hey , im having an issue with this , the game im trying to edit is kingdom hearts 358/2 days . i followed all the steps you gave , went to the 4th line over in the hex editor , right clicked and chose DATA->Palette conversion , then changed to tile view and changed all the values you said but all that shows up is a solid colour , no texture at all , am i missing something or does this game just not work with this ¿

edit : now any value i put in where you said simply wont save and resets back to 0 or whatever it used to be , what causes this ¿

 

[jonko_]

hey , im having an issue with this , the game im trying to edit is kingdom hearts 358/2 days . i followed all the steps you gave , went to the 4th line over in the hex editor , right clicked and chose DATA->Palette conversion , then changed to tile view and changed all the values you said but all that shows up is a solid colour , no texture at all , am i missing something or does this game just not work with this ¿

edit : now any value i put in where you said simply wont save and resets back to 0 or whatever it used to be , what causes this ¿

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 is a totally different game and thus has a totally different system. Because it's so massive, most likely most things are compressed. There's also more likely to be a lot of 3D models rather than sprites that you can view as tiles. I'd recommend reading through the pinned starter thread for rom hacking to get a good idea of where to start, and I also would recommend not starting with a game as massive as KH.

 

[sandwichwater]

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 is a totally different game and thus has a totally different system. Because it's so massive, most likely most things are compressed. There's also more likely to be a lot of 3D models rather than sprites that you can view as tiles. I'd recommend reading through the pinned starter thread for rom hacking to get a good idea of where to start, and I also would recommend not starting with a game as massive as KH.

ah dang alright , had a feeling it was something like that with the graphics , thank you for the response