i've read some of the guides in the Getting Started section of the site, but i'm wondering whether those methods or tools apply to DS roms (they were usually talking about NES or SNES roms).  i already have NDS Top System, but i'm a complete beginner to this stuff.  are there any guides made specifically for doing a translation hack of a DS game? am i attempting to do something that is well beyond a novice's level? any help would be appreciated.  thanks.

Well, it'd help if you had prior romhacking experience, but yeah, it's nothing terribly difficult. In fact, if you're lucky, it might even be easier than some potential projects.

Right now I've been working on "Death Note: The Kira Game". The only two stumbling blocks I've run into thus far are the font storage format (which you'll need FEIDIAN to view/extract) and the centering routine: the game already has the mechanisms in place for a proportional font, but the centering mechanism was written to assume fixed-width all the way. The neat thing in my case is that since the script files are all stored individually, I effectively have unlimited storage space to work with (well, not really, but close enough for my purposes ^_^); that, and since all the graphics files include their respective palettes, I can use Tile Molester's built-in "Import Palette/From This File" function to help me import/export graphics.

If you have the disk space and know how to make a batch file, it might be easier to simply use NDSTool to unpack/repack your DS ROMs. Rather than having to reinsert files individually, you could have NDSTool rip the entire ROM file structure to a directory, edit the files, then repack those directories back into a ROM with a simple double-click on your batch file.

I recommend WindHex. You'll also need this:

http://www.romhacking.net/docs/179/

Anyways, look for a directory labeled "scenario" or something similar. In Death Note's case, "scenario" contains the dialogue files.

And yes, FEIDIAN is complicated, but if you can't view the font (which should be easy enough to find) using Tile Molestor no matter which codec mode you try using, you'll need it.

Okay, you've managed to miss some important things here.

1. WindHex does not display Unicode characters by default. There's a menu toggle that you have to switch on; pressing CTRL+D on the keyboard has the same effect.

That said, I'm looking at the codes, and you've struck paydirt. That's S-JIS-encoded text...as if the "$page$" codes weren't clue enough. ^_^

2. No, no, no, no. You do not open the whole freakin' ROM in Tile Molester. That's why you smashed it into pieces with NDSTool or NDSTS or whichever app you used to dismantle it. There should be a file, likely in a subfolder titled "font", that should have an extension of ".nftr". This is what you should try opening in Tile Molester. If you can't get it to display properly, no matter which codec mode you choose, odds are it's an oddball storage scheme like the one Death Note uses. Mind you, if you can insert ASCII characters into the script and have the game print them properly, then you don't have much need to do this, but it's nice being able to edit the font just in case.

Other magic extensions include "*_g.xap", which are graphics files in GBA format, and ".nsbmd", which are the 3D model files. Interestingly, Death Note uses these to display some 2D graphics: you can view and edit the textures using Tile Molester. Set it to 8bpp linear, 2-Dimensional. The nice thing about both is that the palette data is also stored in the file.

If I were to guess, ".pkg" is "package", probably some manner of archive file. Hopefully it's not compressed or anything.

Open it in WindHex or Tile Molester (make sure you use the proper codec: "4bpp, reverse-order") and see if there's anything recognizable inside. It might be a proprietary format, but if you can find text or graphics uncompressed inside, you should still be able to hack them (unless the .pkg files have some kind of checksum).

try those codecs:

4bpp linear, reversed-order
8bpp linear

and, try searching in 1-Dimensional or 2-Dimensional, in both codecs.

if you don't find anything, there's probably compression inside.

btw, what's the rom size? 16mb?

nope. I think DS ROMs can have sizes towards 16mb. Tetris DS and Orcs & Elves are examples I have in mind. of course, few ones has these low sizes. lately, most roms have 32 / 64 / 128mb.

maybe 16mb is the minimum size of DS roms. then, I suspect that those smaller roms can have more compression than bigger ones. Tetris DS has all data compressed in LZ77, that can be decompressed easily using GBAmdc, GBADecomp, GByeBye, etc. you can see all compressed files dismantling it with NDS Top System, DSLazy or any other unpacker program.

If the rom he's working has little size, probably there's compression around. that's why I asked.