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| Acmlm's Board - I3 Archive - ROM Hacking - Questions about hex editors, compare functions in them and kana/kanji in hex |
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Surlent Koopa Back to the roots                   Since: 11-18-05 From: Berlin, Germany Last post: 6289 days Last view: 6289 days |
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Edit: Wrong forum - I shouldn't post if I come home tired 
Sorry for the confusing title and the length of this post, but I couldn't find a better one and need some explanation. I am interested in ROM hacking, especially translations. So I discovered some nice documents ("Tables for dummies" from Zophar.net for instance), got some knowledge about hex editing years ago - usage of those hex editors is usually very trivial; even for me who has no clue about editing a ROM apart from changing (non-compressed) graphics in ROMs and/or changing text in games with direct ASCII-characters in ROMs. An example is the english version of FF3j, it is very easy to find text like the battle commands and change them. Enough for the introduction. I am studying "Japanese Studies"; although I may not be that fit yet, I can translate some texts easily. Especially I might be interested in games like Sutte Hakkun (I found the proper thread in this forum and it is really a very neat little game); the tutorial is text-intensive - and since we anyway get parts from literature for translating, it could even fit in my study and be fun. The text doesn't seem too difficult; since the target group also was Japanese children usually - so I don't expect extreme complex sentences like in a novel from the Heian or Meiji era and such 
Now to the problems and questions: I cannot get Hex Workshop to install; the installer stops (running Windows XP which is perfectly stable else and runs every desired program properly); but this hex editor is known for its comparison function for easily finding tables. 1.) Is there any recommended hex editor, which has a similar comparison function (and supports tables), apart from Hex Workshop ? It also should display Japanese characters; or is there another way to get all kanji out of the game's text ? Hexecute doesn't seem to do that - and I don't know how to get a table out of games like Rudra no Hihou (the tutorial implies entering names in kanji in normal and backwards way; later comparing both save files and isolating the first kana) without this comparison method. 2.) How is the deal with kanji in hex editors ? I mean, is something like 先生 simply substituted by せんせい in a hex editors or does it even show kanji in the right/text area (but ... how to display more complex kanji with a small fixed font) inside the editor ? 3.) If there is no way to find the text, using methods to create tables, the ROM probably is compressed; then I an still out of luck - I have no time to learn assembly language or even dare try to crack compressions (this is no request that someone should do this for me - since it even isn't sure I might be able to do this). If all fails, how about simply writing down all the Japanese text while playing - and translating it; is there a way to get this into a ROM, replacing the original text (of course, I won't be able to do this, since I doubt you can easily copy ANSI type text into a hex editor  ) ?
Thanks for reading - and hoping to find answers to this; if it requires way too much work to get to the precious text data (I don'T want to waste too much energy on finding the text, since the translating part might be a extremely long process), please tell me. Then I won't try and will rather invest more time for studying. Thanks in advance, Surlent (edited by Surlent on 10-25-06 12:24 PM) (edited by Surlent on 10-25-06 12:27 PM) |
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Gideon Zhi Keese    Since: 12-05-05 From: ...behind you! Boo! Last post: 6280 days Last view: 6277 days |
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| Would you be interested in translating if I were to just give you text dumps of the game? I've already done quite a lot of work on it (as can be seen here.) A *lot* of the game's text is simply pictures in the rom; changing these around necessitates the remapping of the game's tilemaps, some of which I've done.
Also, I don't want to be seen as playing mod or anything, but I think this thread belongs in the actual romhacking forum, not in the releases forum. Just a thought! |
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Surlent Koopa Back to the roots Since: 11-18-05 From: Berlin, Germany Last post: 6289 days Last view: 6289 days |
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| Our course began with translation two weeks ago, and in the current state I never would intend to translate something what might be released to the public ... at least not yet. I just want to test myself - and for that I need the basics how to display kana and kanji in hex.
If you want, I can send you the text we are currently working on (in rômaji/kana/kanji and my version/translation) - to judge the skills; it is not too much - but I need more practice ... then I'll gladly grab your script and work out the translation. Or give one short excerpt from any other RPG (in kanji); just to prove I'm not kidding. It sounds very challenging but interesting; although Sutte Hakkun's sentences are easier than Rudora no Hihou's. There are no extremely complicated relative clauses, but more short, clear phrases in ST. So, rather than promising something I cannot finish due to lack of skill/time/interst, I have to deny ... yet  (edited by Surlent on 10-25-06 06:36 PM) |
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Xkeeper Took the board down in a blaze of glory, only to reveal how truly moronical ||bass is. Since: 11-17-05 From: Henderson, Nevada Last post: 6277 days Last view: 6277 days |
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| And so we move it!
*Xkeeper punts it into ROM Hacking |
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Kailieann Since: 11-18-05 Last post: 6277 days Last view: 6277 days |
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| Kanji in a ROM probably won't show up at all in a hex editor, seeing as most games don't even use standard ASCII, let alone JIS/Unicode.
Your best bet, especially if it's an RPG, is to find some place that will let you input text (such as a character's name) and keep putting in different characters, using your emulator's cheat search to monitor changes in the RAM. Once you figure out where in the RAM the name/whatever is stored, you can use the cheat function to put in different values, and figure out which values correspond to which characters. Once you've figured that out, you'll be able to use those values to search for text in the ROM. However, you're probably still going to need to learn at least a little bit of ASM in order to put the translated text in. If you're not willing to learn the ASM, I'd reccomend finding an existing translation team and offering to work with their scripts and leave the coding to people who already know what they're doing. |
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Gideon Zhi Keese Since: 12-05-05 From: ...behind you! Boo! Last post: 6280 days Last view: 6277 days |
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| The name entry method is certainly an option sometimes, but not necessarily always; it was quite useful for Gun Hazard, but I think it's the only game I've worked on that I've actually employed that particular strategy. Normal relative searches generally work fine; you'll want a romaji relative searcher, which can be found on romhacking.net.
Sutte Hakkun's text, if I remember correctly, is encoded in 16 bits, meaning each character takes up two bytes. A lot of it's a weird hybrid of terminated and fixed length too, which makes it a bit of pain in the arse to dump :/ Generally what we do is get the kanji snapshotted from a tile editor, then write them up in a Japanese-enabled text editor for eventual insertion into a table file. From there we can dump the text using the table just as if the game had English text. |
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