MP2E Posted April 2, 2014 Share Posted April 2, 2014 (edited) According to the bits of documentation I've collected, FE5's text format and FE4's are pretty similar. I don't think it would be difficult to write a tool that covers both use cases, if you're interested in collaborating. All I need is a text file with a set of pointer tables to the dialogue, and then I can probably figure the rest out through trial and error and tinkering with my tools. Edit: I should probably note what qualifications I have. This is my first ROM hacking project, so I'm not particularly familiar with hex editors or the tools around here.. I *have* worked on various Doom ports, video game console emulators, and helped write Doom64 EX which is a recreation of Doom64 for PC. C, C++, and Haskell(last one I'm still learning) are my tools of choice, but I also know bash, python, 6502 ASM and I'm picking up 65c816 asm decently quick. Any help on the actual hacking side of things is greatly appreciated! Particularly, documentation or snippets of code, which work as better documentation oftentimes. I need information D: Edited April 2, 2014 by MP2E Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Siuloir Posted April 2, 2014 Share Posted April 2, 2014 (edited) at the risk of getting snippy and control freaky, use of official names in this patch is non-negotiable. joesteve wants to use them, gringe wants to use them, i want to use them. complaints will fall on deaf ears on this one. seriously, focus your efforts on something actually important and worth complaining about you're drastically overstating how "bad" they are anyway; the majority of them barely differ at all from what we've been calling the characters for years! I'm not sure if this was directed at me, but never was I really decrying the usage of the official names, and I'm sorry if you mistook that for criticism? I merely find the linguistic foibles interesting. Rendering Gaelic in Japanese is even more hilarious than trying to pronounce it from a native English speaker standpoint. For funsies, Noish's name origin (Naoise) is pronounced Knee-sha, or close thereabouts. And somehow Leif is called Leif despite him stating his full name as Lugh. In the end, everyone should just be named Vergil. Edited April 2, 2014 by Siuloir Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bookofholsety Posted April 2, 2014 Share Posted April 2, 2014 (edited) I'm not sure if this was directed at me, but never was I really decrying the usage of the official names, and I'm sorry if you mistook that for criticism? I merely find the linguistic foibles interesting. Rendering Gaelic in Japanese is even more hilarious than trying to pronounce it from a native English speaker standpoint. oh sorry it wasn't meant specifically for you, more at the others with the active complaining. i just kinda skimmed over yours, interesting as it was :P Edited April 2, 2014 by bookofholsety Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Siuloir Posted April 2, 2014 Share Posted April 2, 2014 oh sorry it wasn't meant specifically for you, more at the others with the active complaining. i just kinda skimmed over yours, interesting as it was :P I AM HEREBY HEARTILY OFFENDED. WE MUST NOW KUNG-FU FIGHT. :P In all seriousness, I enthusiastically support you guys in this, and look forward to seeing the results down the line. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
js394 Posted April 2, 2014 Author Share Posted April 2, 2014 According to the bits of documentation I've collected, FE5's text format and FE4's are pretty similar. I don't think it would be difficult to write a tool that covers both use cases, if you're interested in collaborating. All I need is a text file with a set of pointer tables to the dialogue, and then I can probably figure the rest out through trial and error and tinkering with my tools. Edit: I should probably note what qualifications I have. This is my first ROM hacking project, so I'm not particularly familiar with hex editors or the tools around here.. I *have* worked on various Doom ports, video game console emulators, and helped write Doom64 EX which is a recreation of Doom64 for PC. C, C++, and Haskell(last one I'm still learning) are my tools of choice, but I also know bash, python, 6502 ASM and I'm picking up 65c816 asm decently quick. Heh, well this is my second romhacking project but my first for the SNES, so I guess we're in the same boat here :). As for writing a tool, that'd be great! I'm still figuring out the pointers tables and whatnot but as soon as I have it I'll send it to you (my first project was for the DS so...yeah quite a difference in difficulty). As for the official names, yes I agree with bookofholsety- they are the official names whether we like it or not. Even I don't agree with all of them, but these are what we are using. It is possible that I might create a patch after this one (that's a long way off so don't get excited :P) that uses the most common fan names, but right now the priority is official names. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sikker Posted April 4, 2014 Share Posted April 4, 2014 Just a question, will the combat screen be fixed in this patch? Gibberish like Swa, danc, ena etc. kinda makes it confusing. And what about item descriptions? Right now they are either japanese or gibberish. For me these are the two main reasons why this game is unplayable, which is really sad cus it seems like an awesome game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bookofholsety Posted April 4, 2014 Share Posted April 4, 2014 backtracking a bit because i just made an amusing discovery I get that in Japanese, L and R are the same, but who in there right mind thinks Arvis is better than Alvis? well... for one, a little nintendo subsidiary called intelligent systems this is a screencap of a raw, unmodified script dump from fe4's prologue and as you can see it pretty clearly says "arvis" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Siuloir Posted April 4, 2014 Share Posted April 4, 2014 backtracking a bit because i just made an amusing discovery well... for one, a little nintendo subsidiary called intelligent systems this is a screencap of a raw, unmodified script dump from fe4's prologue and as you can see it pretty clearly says "arvis" Arvis sounds a bit more linguistically adjacent to the names of other members of the Jugdral cast, as well, for what it's worth. Now my (idle) curiosity is piqued, though. Also I cannot read Arvis' dialogue in anything but that very low baritone 90s anime villian voice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VincentASM Posted April 4, 2014 Share Posted April 4, 2014 Hmm... are those English names actually in the game or as a result of the script dump? I vaguely recall seeing some really odd/funny/placeholder English names, which I always thought were from the dumper, although maybe not in this game. Like (making this up) "Bald Old Geezer". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gringe Posted April 4, 2014 Share Posted April 4, 2014 Yeah, I'm helping gringe with some graphics for FE6 (oops I mean 7 :D ). We have discussed either you or him providing a new translation (I actually have a pm from him now I have to read). Sorry it wasn't that interesting. :P Haven't been around lately due to a lack of Internet access at home and the general business of moving and starting a new job. I have Internet at home now though finally so hopefully I can contribute something here and there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bookofholsety Posted April 5, 2014 Share Posted April 5, 2014 Hmm... are those English names actually in the game or as a result of the script dump? I vaguely recall seeing some really odd/funny/placeholder English names, which I always thought were from the dumper, although maybe not in this game. Like (making this up) "Bald Old Geezer". i can't be 100% certain, but imo circumstances point to all of them legitimately being part of the game. the script dumps i'm going off were freshly done by MP2E, rather than being taken from the j2e or Twilkitri days. while in theory the english names in there could still have been put in by him, a lot of them are unusual and don't match NoJ, FE13, fan names or any version of the patch so far*, so i somehow doubt it of course, i'm not saying that these are meant to be a 100000% AUTHORITY on the matter, which is exactly what i'd say about NoJ's name offerings as well. i just thought it was funny that the cries about "arvis" being incorrect are met with, surprise surprise, the devs calling him that internally :P *though i've seen one which coincidentally matches what i was planning to do for the project naga revision (janne -> jeanne) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Celice Posted April 5, 2014 Share Posted April 5, 2014 Hmm... are those English names actually in the game or as a result of the script dump? I vaguely recall seeing some really odd/funny/placeholder English names, which I always thought were from the dumper, although maybe not in this game. Like (making this up) "Bald Old Geezer". I don't recall them being internal here. Those remarks look to be added by an outside program which is transcribing some formatting code. Someone likely put in their own definitions for these opcodes when creating such a program. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MP2E Posted April 5, 2014 Share Posted April 5, 2014 Sorry to say holsety, but the others are right. Those are simply the names as-is from the j2e tool that takes the ROM and spits out the dialogue. For instance, if you notice next to Arvis is '00B1', that is how the game knows Arvis. His name is associated to him only by game code and chrnam.txt. The names are put into the script for readability reasons, who the hell wants to memorize that Arvis is character 0x00B1? :P All the same, it's Arvis in Awakening and that's IS, so your original point stands. (subjectively, I like Arvis better. Alvis sounds ridiculous... Alvis and the Chipmunks, anyone?) I recently found Twilkitri's dumper and it's pretty awesome. I'm going through the source and updating the documentation now, and afterwards I'll write another dumper. My dumper is going to be interesting in that, I think I have found a way to autodetect the pointer to pointer tables, via tracing through the ROM and recognizing combinations of bits as valid Japanese text patterns(whether EUC or Shift-JIS). This could help a lot with FE5. Also, j2e and Twilkitri's dumpers seem to make a ton of duplicate dialogue... To avoid driving translators to insanity, I'm going to remove repeat dialogue sequences by appending any unique addresses on to the original dialogue so that the injector knows to inject into more than one place. Really, it might not even need to be reinjected. It seems a bit silly that text occurs in more than one place(and boy does it ever.. according to j2e's util anyway) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bookofholsety Posted April 5, 2014 Share Posted April 5, 2014 oh whoops sorry about that, guys. this is kinda embarrassing. :P in hindsight, the tipoff should've been how relatively inconsistently they're applied across the thing, especially for npcs, but i guess i figured it would've made just as much sense for intsys to not feel like bothering there? idk. i'm really sorry about all this (i also suppose i looked at some of the funkier translations used there ("shagobn"?) and instantly assumed "mmyep that sure is intsys-level romanising right there" :P) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cryogeist Posted April 6, 2014 Share Posted April 6, 2014 Honestly I don't understand why people WOULDN'T want the official names Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shadowofchaos Posted April 6, 2014 Share Posted April 6, 2014 (edited) Honestly I don't understand why people WOULDN'T want the official names The significance of the crusaders and being named after them in addition to the associated weapons to mention one. The localizers in the DLC of Awakening weren't exactly doing what they would normally do for a full blown game localization of FE4 and FE5. That much was obvious from people who've played the game(s) in Japanese. Edited April 6, 2014 by shadowofchaos Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MP2E Posted April 6, 2014 Share Posted April 6, 2014 (edited) The points are moot, because when my toolset is complete, you will be able to change the names by changing one reference and rerunning the tool on a Japanese ROM. Everyone can have their own FE4 translation, if they want, it doesn't matter to me. The only translation recommended by bookofholsety and I will use the NoA localization, but I do not mind if others release alterations. I also plan on releasing a Japanese ROM that only has the original bugs fixed, and nothing more. The toolset will go beyond that, hopefully allowing for complete ROM hacks of FE4 without too much hex editing. Btw, progress report: I've been documenting the JTEC tool and it's pretty great. It has code that detects multiple occurrences of the same text and marks it as such! Also, tons and tons of control codes have been found and documented. I'm above 60% through with the documentation, and I expect to be done with the script docs by the end of the weekend. Initial tests of my heuristics algorithm that detects text has shown that it definitely seems possible, though there are a few red flags right now that I need to touch up. Keep looking for those pointer tables guys! Edited April 6, 2014 by MP2E Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cryogeist Posted April 6, 2014 Share Posted April 6, 2014 The significance of the crusaders and being named after them in addition to the associated weapons to mention one. The localizers in the DLC of Awakening weren't exactly doing what they would normally do for a full blown game localization of FE4 and FE5. That much was obvious from people who've played the game(s) in Japanese. Ehh.. I'm not about to go learn a whole new language just to play a few games also (no offense) but I honestly trust IS a lot more then some random person on the internet Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bookofholsety Posted April 6, 2014 Share Posted April 6, 2014 (edited) The significance of the crusaders and being named after them in addition to the associated weapons to mention one. The localizers in the DLC of Awakening weren't exactly doing what they would normally do for a full blown game localization of FE4 and FE5. That much was obvious from people who've played the game(s) in Japanese. this really isn't as big a deal as far as these things go. just turn fala into "vala" to match valflame (which i'm doing), sort of nod and move along at the whole "ced" thing, and boom you're done (say what you will about most localised names but i will defend "valflame" to the death it's the same thing except it doesn't suck) Edited April 6, 2014 by bookofholsety Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Celice Posted April 6, 2014 Share Posted April 6, 2014 this really isn't as big a deal as far as these things go. just turn fala into "vala" to match valflame (which i'm doing), sort of nod and move along at the whole "ced" thing, and boom you're done (say what you will about most localised names but i will defend "valflame" to the death it's the same thing except it doesn't suck) I'm glad you like the taste of Bolganone over Volcannon :( Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RJWalker Posted April 6, 2014 Share Posted April 6, 2014 Falaflame reminds me falafels. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shadowofchaos Posted April 6, 2014 Share Posted April 6, 2014 (edited) also (no offense) but I honestly trust IS a lot more then some random person on the internet Fair enough point. But also keep in mind that IS themselves are humans. And while hopefully all "bugs" are ironed out... they are also influenced by corporate decisions on localization and more prone to time constraints. Fan translations have more freedom. ...that also is a double edged sword, as you can see with the stupid meme references in FE5. Edited April 6, 2014 by shadowofchaos Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alertcircuit Posted April 6, 2014 Share Posted April 6, 2014 ...that also is a double edged sword, as you can see with the stupid meme references in FE5. There were meme references in the FE5 patch? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bookofholsety Posted April 6, 2014 Share Posted April 6, 2014 (edited) There were meme references in the FE5 patch? the biggest example is Kempf declaring "IN AMERICA!" when springing his trap in chapter 11 nope, it makes no sense whatsoever in context. it's just there. devs and translators for official releases of games sprinkle memes into things all the time, sure, but with the possible exception of Pokémon gen4 it's usually vaguely passable in the context and not entirely out of place. this? ...yeah, not so much Edited April 6, 2014 by bookofholsety Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PuffPuff Posted April 6, 2014 Share Posted April 6, 2014 (edited) this really isn't as big a deal as far as these things go. just turn fala into "vala" to match valflame (which i'm doing), sort of nod and move along at the whole "ced" thing, and boom you're done (say what you will about most localised names but i will defend "valflame" to the death it's the same thing except it doesn't suck) Ced should have been Seti as in the end of Forseti. Oh, well. But...Valflame is a hell of alot better than Vala/Falaflame. the biggest example is Kempf declaring "IN AMERICA!" when springing his trap in chapter 11 nope, it makes no sense whatsoever in context. it's just there. devs and translators for official releases of games sprinkle memes into things all the time, sure, but with the possible exception of Pokémon gen4 it's usually vaguely passable in the context and not entirely out of place. this? ...yeah, not so much Shaya did that for a kick of comical relief even though that wasn't the actual translation of Kempf saying that. xD Edited April 6, 2014 by Dark_Huntress Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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