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Author Topic: A new way to translate?  (Read 1 times)
yugisokubodai
Guest
« on: October 29, 2010, 07:46:33 am »

I'm pretty new to Rom hacking so I don't know whethere this idea is ground breaking or not, also I'm not a programmer so I don't know is this idea executable or not.

In traditional way of translation hacking, you must find the font and dialogue data then replace them with the new ones as you wish. This way makes the rom change forever and can not be redone. But what if you have a program that translates the dialogue when the game is running?
Well, play the game in your emu, then run the program, it'll read in Ram or some kind of memory of the emu when the text is in, then translate the text to the destinated language with the preset text.
Is it possible to code such a program?
KaioShin
Guest
« Reply #1 on: October 29, 2010, 08:17:44 am »

This or slight variants of it is brought up every few months. Search the forum for the long answer, the short answer is: Possible sure, makes no sense though.
BRPXQZME
Guest
« Reply #2 on: October 29, 2010, 10:42:53 am »

It’s game-specific when it’s done this way. You’d generally only do it if you were targeting a language where the script is a bit too much for the target system to handle.
Nightcrawler
Guest
« Reply #3 on: October 29, 2010, 12:38:35 pm »

Quote from: yugisokubodai on October 29, 2010, 07:46:33 am
Well, play the game in your emu, then run the program, it'll read in Ram or some kind of memory of the emu when the text is in, then translate the text to the destinated language with the preset text.

HOW would that be accomplished? The answer is why this hasn't been done. Where to read in RAM or VRAM (when text is present) is, for the most part, game specific. What works on one game will likely not work on another. Also, there's countless ways to put the text together and get it on the screen. The same game could even use several different methods to create text, at the same time, on the same screen. The text may be sprites, the text may be tiles on one layer, the text may be spread across several layers. On some consoles, such as the SNES, Per scan-line effects may be applied that you can't duplicate externally. There always needs to be that manual involvement to figure out how game x does it's text and where to look for it.

With that said, you can code a custom emulator that would be set up to use information supplied about each game to do what you desire. You have the limitation that the end result only works on your special emulator, is limited to using information your emulator can interpret (which may not work for all games), and limited to only those games people have reverse engineered enough to support.

Lastly, the time it would take someone to reverse engineer the game enough to make it fully translated with your special emulator is likely to be not too far away from doing a 'traditional' translation. A 'traditional' translation would work on all emulators (and never become outdated or permanently broken) and allow for much more flexibility. So, this is the basic idea why it's a bit impractical and no one has done it despite many people asking about this idea over the years.
Rolen47
Guest
« Reply #4 on: October 29, 2010, 01:09:31 pm »

There's an NES emulator that kinda has it.

http://www.ximwix.net/boneyard/design19/xb/texthooker.htm



But it looks like it uses an online translator, which is going to result really bad translations.
yugisokubodai
Guest
« Reply #5 on: October 29, 2010, 06:36:25 pm »

Quote
Where to read in RAM or VRAM (when text is present) is, for the most part, game specific. What works on one game will likely not work on another.

Yes, that's the point. I think the only way to solve this is to publish the specific softs for the specific games.

But now I understand why this kind of soft isn't the main stream in Rom hacking.
reyvgm
Guest
« Reply #6 on: October 30, 2010, 02:32:36 pm »

If all games used the same kind of method to store text, then yes, something like this would be a godsend. But they don't, so you would pretty much have to manually fiddle with each game, which is not so different from what everyone has been doing all along.
Gil Galad
Guest
« Reply #7 on: October 30, 2010, 04:23:09 pm »

Personally, I prefer a translated game that has the possibility to work on the original hardware. I also have seen this idea brought up so many times.
Starscream
Guest
« Reply #8 on: October 31, 2010, 06:56:56 am »

Quote from: Rolen47 on October 29, 2010, 01:09:31 pm


http://www.ximwix.net/boneyard/design19/xb/texthooker.htm


But it looks like it uses an online translator, which is going to result really bad translations.

That's just the natural limit of machine translations. I like them for for figuring out menus and such, some games can actually become playable that way. I see on the page that Monster Maker works with it, great, I always wanted to take a longer look at that.
Auryn
Guest
« Reply #9 on: November 04, 2010, 09:31:58 pm »

And anyway if your worry is to not "ruin" the original rom, the most emu have function that patch the rom on fly but not modify the original :p
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