I wanted to ask if instead of making a game use a VWF (that normally doesn't have one), would it be easier to change the fixed width of font characters to a smaller size (for example, from a width of 16 to a width of 8 )?

Or would that be as much work as implementing a VWF in the first place? (Does it also depend on how the game was coded, meaning there is no general answer?)


On a side note: I now see why some games are never translated officially, or why some fan translations are abandoned. It's quite a bit of work. I've read so many documents here that it feels like school all over again. I feel like I've been working on my translation project for a much longer time than I've actually spent on it. Some of it has been fun, interesting, annoying and frustrating (what a combo!). :laugh:

In my experience, you can usually take the easy way out and alter the tilemap loading routine to shrink a 16 width font down to 8. VWF's have always required a lot more work.

It's reasons like that, that I have stayed away from older consoles. I started messing around with disc based system. Call me crazy, but I find it easier to modify stuff around.


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I see. After reading the documents on VWFs I was hoping you guys said what you stated. So implementing a VWF does indeed involve much more work.




So, that is possible. I'm not sure if I'm that lucky though.  \ I'll have to dig deeper.



I hope that not the case with the game I'm working on. I don't see it worth it and might as well go with a VWF.


Thank you all for your responses. 

I think the game I'm looking into does not have any routines anywhere for a proportional font. The Japanese characters are all 16x16 even if they don't need to be (but I'm sure it was done that way to make the programmer's work easier). Of course for Japanese characters I find this much easier to read, but with English text I'm adding in, it doesn't look all that hot, especially with the lower case letters.


Well, ideally you'd want a VWF because it would look better and display words properly, yes I agree. But are you saying that it not always desirable to change the existing fixed width to a smaller size because the 16x16 mono spaced characters would look worse as 8x16 (even if they were redone to fit that size)?

I was even thinking of doing a DTE for the font, but I only have space for 254 combinations and I need a bit over 300. Although I'd like a VWF, if I could double my space by going from 16x16 to 8x16, that would give me enough room to fit properly translated text on the screen in 99% of the game (with much less work hopefully). With the way it is now, I can't even try to shorten sentences or their wordings because the game has a fixed line length of 8 characters (and in this instance expanding the text box won't help unless you changed the width of the characters anyway). For for places that I need to put a word that is longer than 8 letters it carries over to the next line, which looks awkward because English is obviously not read like that.

Alright so I did understand, so we're on the same page.



Maybe I should have given an example. In all text boxes in the game (except one) there are no more than 8 characters per line. On screen it looks like this:


The text in the ROM looks like this (where 00 ends the string.)



Even if the text box was expanded and I got the game to use more than 8 per line, the most I'd have room for is 10 characters per line if the font width remains mono spaced (which would not work for a lot of instances).

That sentence translate to: "It might easier if you just use the Magnet Beam..."

In the game, all I have room for is this:



But, if the width of the font was cut in half, I'd have space for the following ( and this would be the case for 99% of the game text, only a couple of instances where I'd have to make the string shorter for it to fit.)



That's why I asked which method requires more work. I'm still a newcomer to romhacking on this level. And based on what I've read the documents section, my current skills are not enough to implement a VWF (which is what I'd prefer). So I was hoping changing the existing fixed width of font characters to a different size would not be as complex (which would be just as good as a VWF in my case since it will allow the needed translation to be inserted.)

The documents also told me to stay away from compressed graphics if I came across any but, several weeks later, I figure out the compression it used without even knowing it's name until afterward (so now I know where they are and how to change them). I'm hoping to at least change the mono spaced font from 16x16 to 8x16. With the exception of some compressed graphics that I'm still changing, the font width would be the only thing stopping me from inserting a legible script, and then releasing a patch. Could I post in the Help Wanted section for such a thing? I've done everything else I could handle at this point.