Hello,

I am working on a translation of a Japanese GBA game and have come across something I need some assistance with (but since this really isn't a translation problem, I figured this should go in this section.)

There is a screen where the graphics read:

"(No.)__#__(Battle)"

The words in parentheses are each single kanji, the underscores represent "blank" space and where the number sign is will be a number (1-5).  In translating to English, I feel the number would work better at the end (i.e. "Battle 1").  I can easily change and replace the graphics, make tile maps, etc., but when checking the map out in VBA, I found that the numbers aren't actually part of the background, so that part of the map is:

"(No.)_____(Battle)"

The number is instead an object which is placed at the proper point on top of that BG and I have no idea how to (permanently) change the placement of those.

I located the sprite in the OAM and changed it's x-offset value via the memory viewer to see it move to the proper position for an instant, but of course that's very temporary.

So, how exactly would one find where/how a game sets the attributes for a particular OBJ and then go about changing them in the ROM?

Using the logging feature in GBA (dev version), I know where the gfx are read from and loaded to, and I can see where in the "IRAM" the OAM gets its updated values from, but nothing that would lead me directly to where it would initially be getting the OBJ attributes from, so I'm guessing this something done via ASM?

I know it'd be beneficial to actually learn ASM, but the ONLY thing I really need to know for the foreseeable future is changing the x-offset of a static sprite, and at least this would be a decent starting point...

Any help would be appreciated.

Well, using the tracing feature in VBA-SDL-H, I managed to find what I was looking for, and I did it without learning very much about ASM.  :laugh:

I simply searched the log for the X value I wanted to change (0x70) and the first match came here:


Seeing as the next line contained a value of 5, which just happens to be the Y-offset of the object, I figured this had a decent chance of being the data in question.  An edit of the ROM that was loaded into memory in the standard VBA quickly verified that it was.

Of course, this was after I had spent a good amount of time experimenting with different breakpoints and stepping through instructions to see what was going on manually, so I didn't just luck into the answer right away.

My foray into ASM wasn't that painful after all.

Thanks for the response.