For the past few days I spent (partially frustrating) hours and hours in rom hacking research and now I'm at the point where I need help.
I want to translate an english game to german. The game in question is 9 hours, 9 persons, 9 doors. It's a pretty good game, so there is a chance that some of you already know what this game is all about.

Almost 100% of the text in the game can be directly edited by just opening the rom with a hex-editor. So I assume that the text is not compressed, which is awesome.



I easily figured the hex values of letters and made a table file: http://npshare.de/files/d397846d/999TABLE.txt


I use Crystal Tile 2 and my prefered hex-editor NEXT-Soft for rom hacking. My first problem is editing the font file to allow special characters (umlauts = ä, ü, ö). I managed to track down the font file and opened it with a hex-editor:



My first question is, how do I edit this file to allow the umlauts?


As I said I can translate almost the complete text with opening the rom file with a hex-editor. I can also translate the appropriate text files by extracting the rom archive with Crystal Tile 2. There the text is divided in two folders,

1) etc
2) scr

In the etc folder I have these files:



It contains all the text files of the menus and credits and the font file (strangely there are also some japanese files in there)

In the scr folder I have the in-game text of the novel, packed into many fsb files:



The problem here is the space. German is a horribly complicated language, that does need a lot more space than english in order to make a decent  translation. To allow more space I have to deal with annoying pointers. I do not exactly know where these pointers are located in this game and how I can figure them out.

In this picture you can see before and after text chunks something like START_CREATE_NEW and START_WRITE_1. What are these for? Do they happen to be the pointers? If yes, how can I correctly edit them?

Since I can translate the game with opening the rom with a hex-editor, are there perhaps any advantages in comparison with extracting the rom and editing single text files? What do you recommend me to do?


My next problem is locating some words on the menu screen of the game.



I haven't been able to locate and edit the words "Continue", "Start", "Erase Data", "prologue", "Yes" and "No". What could be the reason for this? Perhaps these words are actually burned into graphics and I have to edit them with a tile editor? Perhaps these words are compressed somewhere in a file of the rom?

Thanks to anyone in advance who is willing to help. If you need some more information, please ask.

Hi,
this topic would be better in the newbie forum because u clearly lack the basic knowledge on how to translate.
Anyway i will try to point u in the right way:
Yes, u are right and the text seems be stored in ASCII so u can see it from the hex editor and u are very lucky because it's not so common that this happen.
Your table look ok even if it's useless because u see the the text already in your hex editor.
About the font; u can't edit it binary (actually u could but it's madness). U have to decompress the rom into the single files and edit the font file with a tile editor. When u put the first letter of the font in the top left corner of CT2 (crystal tile 2) in tile view, check the bottom, it's tell u in what file u are in that part of the rom. Find 3 unused tiles and copy paste the a/e/u on it + add the points. Again with luck, if your 3 tiles are after the "/" (based on your table), the ä ö ü will have them with the value 80 81 82.

The decompress/compress process in the NDS rom with DSlazy (or similar) are a lossless process so why u want to carry all the rom around?? About the pointers: if the text is split in so many files, u have a good chance that each of those files has a structure like:

Pointer table
text

or

text
pointer table

In how to figure them out, please read one of the many guides in the net about this topic.
There is nothing strange about left over of pieces of games from another region or another version.

What those different "start" are used for, nobody can tell u like that. By reading the hex editor, it's clear what they are for but i don't know if they are used and/or need/can be translated. I would not touch them if they not appear on screeen.

U got the answer already about de-/compressing the rom.

There are actually 3 possibilities because u can't find them and u got 2 already. The last one is that those words are in the game with another table than the one u found out. Yes, it's possible that a game uses 2-3 different tables and different font in the same game.

The base is the same just the calculations are different.
NES is hacked to the end, NDS is relatively new as system so there are not new docs or specific values for it.
But like i said, the function is the same as in the NES.
Normal font dimentions are 8x8, 12x12, 16x16 or 8x12, 8x16 (sure even numbers and not odds).
And probably need some allignement

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March 04, 2011, 03:15:04 am - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)

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I took a look at your game, first of all it's always dangerous to work with games that are so "new" but if u are sure there will not be a euro version, go on.

About the pointers: it took me about 5 min to figure this out but it's ok... u are learning:p
The black arrows are the important things, the pink are the next that u will need.
What u are looking for is just stored in "little endian" or mirrored (gespiegelt) if u like it more in this game:

I will not tell u because u need to figure it out by yourself for the future.
I didn't try it out but I am 99% sure I am right.

For the font, u have to find out wich one is the right one the game uses.
There are fonts in each kanji file

I suggest you try using Feidian.
Although it is kinda like last resort it is pretty easy to work with as soon as you find out how actually.xD
Would make it easier to extract and reinsert the edited font file since it can work with BMPs.

You can use Tile Molester.
Open the fonts with it and use mode 2 codec 1 bpp linear-reverse mode

You can see four buttons with arrows and lines, right?
Well, you have to push the button which has an arrow pointing to the left until you see
the letters.

He has to use 1 bpp linear reverse-order, because, using 1 bpp linear, the font looks reversed. It's like see it in a mirror.

Ok, try this: Go to "View", select "Block Size" and click on "Custom".  Columns=2 ; Rows=16