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Author Topic: Help finding text in GB game.  (Read 406 times)
Malias
Guest
« on: March 29, 2007, 01:44:48 pm »
I really need some assistance in finding the text Picross 2 for SGB.  I would use the normal method of checking the tile values in the tile viewer (I'm using BGB), but there's two problems with that.  The first is that the text is loaded into VRAM the moment that it prints (hope I said that correctly) and the second is that the font characters are not standard 8x8 tiles.

I've tried relative searching using the existing font, which isn't compressed, but I'm getting nothing.  I can't seem to find the text at all.  I even tried looking through the original Mario's Picross which uses the same text engine to try and find the type of compression and I can't even find the text there. Sad

This leads me to believe that the text is compressed somehow and I'm at a loss as to figuring out how it's compressed and where it is.  Anyone here have any ideas?  Although I was completely baffled by trying to trace the debugger, I'm willing to give it another shot if that's what it will take.

Thanks a bunch.
Knux14
Guest
« Reply #1 on: March 30, 2007, 04:04:16 am »
I'm pretty newb here, and you should probably wait for someone else to answer who can help ya more, but...

I can almost be 100% sure you're gonna have to look up some Assembley(Whichever specific one SGB uses) in order to trace it correctly.

See now, you most likely will have to figure out how the compression works step by step, and then decompress it almost manually yourself. That sounds annoying as hell.
I was lucky enough with GameBoy Advance that the game I was hacking used a compression scheme built into the system + there are programs already made to decompress as such.

One thing you can do though, to get a starting point is do a RAM dump, (or would a save state be the same thing?) at the point you think the text is loaded in and ready for viewing. Then relative-search the RAM dump or Savestate (whichever it was). That should get you the hex values needed for that font youre talking about.

Other than that I can't tell you much more.
I'm sure someone will be able to lead you better though.

Don't give up yet :p
creaothceann
Guest
« Reply #2 on: March 30, 2007, 06:13:06 am »
Savestates include a RAM dump.
Malias
Guest
« Reply #3 on: March 31, 2007, 01:33:31 pm »
Hey, thanks for responding.

Yeah, I completely forgot about save state hacking.  It might be awhile, but I'll try it and see what happens. 'Til then, see ya.
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