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Author Topic: My document on finding fonts using ASM  (Read 2 times)
Spikeman
Guest
« on: January 07, 2008, 04:53:33 am »

http://normmatt.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=font_techs

This will probably be part of a larger case study on translating the entire game (hopefully eventually). Let me know what you think of the writing.
tomaitheous
Guest
« Reply #1 on: January 07, 2008, 06:18:23 am »

Quote
I note that the font appears to be an 8×16 FWF (fixed width font). This means we will eventually need a VWF (variable width font).

 I don't understand why it would need a VWF. 8x16 FWF routine is fairly reasonable for a hack/translation, especially for someones first hack or such.

KaioShin
Guest
« Reply #2 on: January 07, 2008, 11:31:18 am »

No offense, but personally I find such step by step case examples rather useless. A typical noob will have no idea how to apply this to other games and other, normally only slightly different situations. If you don't already know GBA hacking than most of the information there will make no sense to a first time reader. Not to mention it's totally no$GBA specific, people with other debuggers won't be able to follow you at all, since you even included most button presses people need to make. Considering that no$GBA costs a bit of money it's highly unlikely that many people will have it. Also, about a breakpoint snapping at a Bios call, as far as I know those only work if you use a bios image. If you use the integrated emulated bios (and again, most users will unless they know better) it won't snap. Then suddenly you make a jump and you already have found an address. Where do you got it from and why do you know it's the one you are looking for?

I don't want to discourage you, I'd just recommend you think about what you want to do with this document and for whom it should be. Then you may want to think about how to achieve that. On one hand you have it completely noob oriented by even writing every single button press, on the other hand one can't make sense of the information without experience.

Well, of course this is heavily subjective and my own style of learning and writing such documents (although none are released I've plans), but I think a new direction to think about won't hurt you Wink

Btw: I know the irony that my VWF document if basically also a case example. I really only released it since people asked for it specifically. I've meant to write a "proper" (in my eyes) document about it for quite some time now, but I don't feel like one VWF experience isn't enough for such a document yet.

Just think about it  Smiley
DaMarsMan
Guest
« Reply #3 on: January 07, 2008, 11:37:33 am »

Good stuff man.
tomaitheous
Guest
« Reply #4 on: January 07, 2008, 04:17:17 pm »

Quote from: KaioShin on January 07, 2008, 11:31:18 am
No offense, but personally I find such step by step case examples rather useless. A typical noob will have no idea how to apply this to other games and other, normally only slightly different situations. If you don't already know GBA hacking than most of the information there will make no sense to a first time reader. Not to mention it's totally no$GBA specific, people with other debuggers won't be able to follow you at all, since you even included most button presses people need to make. Considering that no$GBA costs a bit of money it's highly unlikely that many people will have it. Also, about a breakpoint snapping at a Bios call, as far as I know those only work if you use a bios image. If you use the integrated emulated bios (and again, most users will unless they know better) it won't snap. Then suddenly you make a jump and you already have found an address. Where do you got it from and why do you know it's the one you are looking for?

 I dunno. I think this idea could work. I imagine if there were quite a few of these(and for multiple systems), in a start to finish fashion, it could help someone get familiar with the process. I know someone else who's writing a document detailing there trek through the hack and translation process on a specific game. Everybody learns in different ways and having more information to draw from always help in my opinion.

Spikeman
Guest
« Reply #5 on: January 07, 2008, 05:38:12 pm »

Thanks for the critique KaioShin. Actually I am planning to do a series of these all utilizing different techniques. Thanks for pointing out the BIOS thing; I'll add a note about that somewhere. Also I guess I will write some steps for using VBA-SDL-H although it's a lot harder in my experience.

I always thought a "case study" (like tomaitheous was talking about) would benefit a beginner fairly well. Since I know someone who is writing one using beginning techniques and I haven't seen many documents walking through the debugging process I thought I would write a few of them as this is how I find most stuff.
Spikeman
Guest
« Reply #6 on: January 10, 2008, 04:17:37 am »

Two more chapters:

Step 2 - Finding Text Data - http://normmatt.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=text_techs
Step 3 - Making a Table File - http://normmatt.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=table_techs
Neil
Guest
« Reply #7 on: January 02, 2009, 09:09:38 am »

-necrobump to save a thread from the great board prune of 2009-
notetoself:contact spikeman, make zip, upload doc. yay
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