GS3 Translation as of September 11th: http://PW.scorpei.com/ips/GS3_English00h3.ips Translated all of case 2, needs to be tested for bugs, freezes, and other overflow errors.
Also, this project now has a wiki that can be found here: http://PW.scorpei.com

This project aims to take the script from the English Phoenix Wright games 1-3 for NDS and put them into the Japanese Gyakuten Saiban games 1-3 for GBA, creating an English translation for three GBA games.


If anyone has any familiarity with hacking roms and is interested in this project, please consider helping, as my knowledge in this area is minimal so far.

Tools needed:
Comeback Courtroom tools (http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=109053&package_id=136688&release_id=500989)
Phoenix Wright Script Editor (http://www.romhacking.net/utils/419/)

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To start off, I have extracted the English scripts from PW3 and the Japanese script from GS3. Since the CC3 tool already includes VWF, it should be the quickest and easiest way to start testing this project.

Since two different tools were used, the scripts are not formatted the same. For example, the file containing the English trans uses <bgcolor:256,0,31> and <wait:10> while the Japanese script shows <bgcolor 256 0 31> and <wait_noanim 10>. I could just replace : and , with spaces, but doing so would effect normal spoken text as well. An alternative would be to modify the Phoenix Wright Script Editor to format output so that such commands as <wait:10> would instead be output as <wait_noanim 10> so it would be in the correct format for the Comeback Court 3 editor. PWSE is written in Python and includes the source, so it should be easy enough for someone who knows python, hopefully.
Edit: Or, a text editor that can do renames such as [ ] to @PTR or <fademusic:*,*> to <fademusic * *>.

Scripts of case 1 (items ending in translated are the English, the others are the Japanese version as formatted for CC3, which will be used to put the text into the gba version):
http://www.4shared.com/file/38659382/abbabd6b/gs3-1.html

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Edit 2: I've created a small program that does the conversion of the control codes in the scripts created by PWSE to the formatting of the control codes used in the comebackcourt tool. It can output script, convert to similar codes as used with comebackcourt, and change replace Japanese text with a file with an English file created after using the output script function. You can get it here: http://pw.scorpei.com/aascriptreader.zip

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Edit 3: After modifying aascriptreader a few times to reduce the errors and testing the rom, I have found that simply substituting the cc files will NOT work since the DS and GBA games use different argument values. However, it would still be possible to use aascriptreader's "script output" function to remove control codes only leaving in dialogue separated by line, which could then be substituted to replace the Japanese text by adding a new function that checks for where '<' does not occur after '>'. That would work assuming that the Japanese and English use the same amount of dialogue separations (hopefully), but it would still require modification of the speed arguments which are not the same for Japanese and English versions because of the differing length between number of characters of each.

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Edit 4: I attempted to substitute English directly into the Japanese. Unfortunately, the English and Japanese text does not line up properly, so it will be a bit more complicated than I had hoped. I'll try to go back to changing PWSE scripts to cc scripts, but it will be difficult as the control codes of cc use hexadecimal and values may not line up correctly.

Don't double-post. There's an Edit button. :police:

Why?

I'm a Phoenix Wright maniac myself, but I still don't get the point.

Don't let this distract you from your project, I'm just curious.

Just remember, the DS version of the first game has an extra case, and it ties into the fourth game.

You have two options.

1. Reformat the page breaks in the English script. You might also want to add the DS version's font to the GBA game, for consistency's sake, since horizontal screen space doesn't seem to be an issue.

2. Reformat the entire script so that the same amount of text fits in each text box. You may want to use a narrower font for this purpose.

As for "use a shorter font so you can fit three lines of text in a single textbox"...basically, you can't. Technically you can, but this is on the "metric buttload" end of the "time, effort and cursing" scale. The textbox appears to have four tiles, or 32 pixels, worth of vertical space: changing the code to use, say, an 8x10 VWF instead of an 8x16 would take an inordinate amount of time, knowhow and bugtesting (since you'd be splitting characters across tiles vertically as well as horizontally). Even an 8x8 VWF would take some effort, and in either case you'd be dealing with some very, very tiny print.

That is exactly my reason as well.

cocomonk22-- Your my god. Finally someone that does it, even Broco(ComebackCourt) stop his translation.I will be glad to try it out.

Also the link is miswritten so here:

www.4shared.com/file/39485854/a2db5844/GS3_English00a.html%22

Check the first post for the newest translation patch.


I did think about the court cases, actually, but I haven't tested how the testimony works yet. What I could do is have the testimony use a <nextpage_nobutton> at the part where it goes to the third line, or someone could change the font. I could also try removing all the <b>, but that may present formatting problems elsewhere.

Edit:
It actually seems to work well.
Here's an example of a regular two line testimony:


Here's a three line testimony divided into two pages.
The first two lines (Notice the down arrow to show that it continues; also you cannot navigate testimonies, press, or present):


The last line (Now you can press or present. You can also navigate testimony now):


An attempt to put all three lines on two lines (The last line does not fit completely on the screen):


I think I'll keep it the way it is for now rather than try to compress it to two lines.