Text Editing? Missing something obvious?

[chase]

I'm just getting started with text editing using FEditor Adv... and I must be missing something painfully obvious.

How exactly is one supposed to go about creating custom conversations?

I've just tried simply changing a word or two in already existing text, applying, and saving, but this ALWAYS produces a crash.

Every tutorial I've found for FEditor just trivially asserts that it's simple.

What am I missing here?

[Crimson Red]

Xeld coded the program to not like certain people, you're just one of the unlucky ones. Redownloading it doesn't work, don't even try. >_>

[chase]

I was... being serious. How exactly do you go about editing a conversation? I went to entry 0x7EF, which happens to be a conversation between Pent and Louise, and changed a few words. When I tried loading the conversation in game it crashed with the familiar screeching sound.

I understand that just changing conversations in the middle of already existing ROM data would change offsets and whatnot, so the crash makes sense. I would THINK that you'd make conversations and insert them in free space, like maps and events, but there appears to be no way to do this.

So... how do I edit or make a custom conversation using FEditor Adv?

[Crimson Red]

The program relocated and repoints text for you.

As I said, Xeld is just an ass and his program doesn't work for some people. Not even if you make your changes, press "apply", quit the text editor, and save in the main FEditor Adv menu.

[chase]

The program relocated and repoints text for you.

As I said, Xeld is just an ass and his program doesn't work for some people. Not even if you make your changes, press "apply", quit the text editor, and save in the main FEditor Adv menu.

Can you explain to me just how the text editor works? The way I'm understanding it, the index is the index in some "text pointer table", which points to encrypted/compressed data. The program then uncompresses it, lets you edit it, and recompresses it. Is this the gist of it?

Why exactly and how would I "relocate and repoint text"? Sorry if I sound like a n00b.... it's because I am.

[Aleph]

Have you actually edited the ROM? 100% (serious figure here) of the time people have problems with the text editor they are using a hacked ROM and need to fix whatever they broke. If you're using a clean ROM then I don't know what to tell you.

Blazer your site was shut down legally, quit being so fucking butthurt and get that shit out of here.

For the record, the tutorials and accounts of others, not just the documentation that comes with the application, "assert that text editing is trivial" because it literally is. The entire point of this application was to trivialize the work my fellow hackers (specifically Blazer, ungrateful as he is) had to do. So if it's not doing that there is either a bug (which there isn't; we've proven this) or you've brought about a situation in which the simplified text editing system you're trying to use has to deal with a less than simple scenario. In other words, you should probably tell me what the heck you changed before you even opened FEditor.

I am finding it really hard to appear serious with this username. I love it.

Edited November 23, 2010 by XxXevisceratedgoddessxXx

[chase]

Have you actually edited the ROM? 100% (serious figure here) of the time people have problems with the text editor they are using a hacked ROM and need to fix whatever they broke. If you're using a clean ROM then I don't know what to tell you.

Blazer your site was shut down legally, quit being so fucking butthurt and get that shit out of here.

For the record, the tutorials and accounts of others, not just the documentation that comes with the application, "assert that text editing is trivial" because it literally is. The entire point of this application was to trivialize the work my fellow hackers (specifically Blazer, ungrateful as he is) had to do. So if it's not doing that there is either a bug (which there isn't; we've proven this) or you've brought about a situation in which the simplified text editing system you're trying to use has to deal with a less than simple scenario. In other words, you should probably tell me what the heck you changed before you even opened FEditor.

I am finding it really hard to appear serious with this username. I love it.

Oh! I totally just made the connection that the program adds data at 01000000! This would explain the crashes... I was inserting events at 01000000, so it tried to load event data for text.

So let me get this straight... when you edit text for a particular entry, it simply writes the new entry at the end of the ROM, and repoints the pointer to there? I guess I'll have to put events elsewhere. Is there a convention to follow when both using FEditor and editing the ROM yourself? Where am I supposed to put events so that they won't conflict with whatever FEditor's doing?

Edited November 23, 2010 by chase

[chase]

OK I'm really confused now! After I've read up in the doc folder... I'm left with the question...

Can I edit the rom with external tools (IE Event Assembler... Nightmare...) and still use FEditor? If not, then what's the point??

I tried text editing using a fresh clean ROM and it all worked as expected... I attempted to insert and repoint some custom events for the prologue, I even attempted to make sure it didn't overwrite FEditor's "metadata", but then any text editing crashed the game...

How can I edit the rom and edit text with FEditor in peace and harmony?

[Aleph]

No? FEditor puts text where there's free space. Your ROM is hacked so FEditor thinks it doesn't have any.

[Flying Shogi]

So the ROM won't crash if text editing is the first thing you do.

Does the ROM still crash if you've edited the text first, then others like events, stats, and then going back to edit the text?

[Aleph]

If you edit events that would be about the only thing that could cause the issue as it would be the only way that you could put data where it doesn't go.

[Flying Shogi]

So editing things in Nightmare such as Stat Caps and Support Growth would also count as "data where it shouldn't go," right?

[chase]

Here was my solution:

Start with a fresh clean rom.

Open in FEditor, save without doing anything.

Go into Hexedit, and you'll see the metadata added to the end of the rom. At 01000000 (the former end) click edit -> insert bytes and insert 100000 bytes of 00.

NOW, go to the metadata at the new end of the rom, erase the last four bytes, and replace them with the correct checksum as reported by Analyze->Checksums->CRC32 (write the number in little endian)

now, open the rom again in FEditor. If you look at debug output you'll see that FEditor THINKS the free space is D00000 to E00000. NOW, use "Deallocate" mode, starting index D00000, length 100000, to and click manage memory to tell FEditor that this space is "used."

NOW, using "Delete" mode, starting index 01000000, length 100000, click manage memory to tell FEditor that THIS space is free.

Now, whenever you do anything with FEditor, it will use and manage THAT space to do it's thing. You can insert whatever you want in D00000 to E00000 and hack whatever in Nightmare, but REMEMBER each time before you use FEditor to fix the checksum at the end of the file.

Hope that helped.

[Flying Shogi]

Thank you for the solution. Too bad I can't try it out. My cousin updated my computer and it cleaned everything off.

[Aleph]

That is hacky as hell and not a good way to do it at all.

A better solution would be to just use the memory manager for anything you add. It does not just mark bytes as free or used. It also lets you edit the ROM and mark things as free or used based on your edits.

If you have to copy a bunch of binary data to a place in the ROM, don't do it with a hex editor. Open FEditor and give the file to the memory manager. Read how to actually use the memory manager instead of just doing whatever. If you have to, hack a clean ROM with whatever other tool you're using and then copy the resulting changes into its own file and give that to FEditor. There will never be a time when you need to do something FEditor's memory manager doesn't support.

If you absolutely have to expand the ROM manually, the correct way to do this (although you actually should never do this) would be to dump the free space, mark all the space as free, then load a file into the memory manager the size of the amount of space you need. Then load the free space you dumped and do a delete on the bytes you added. You won't have to copy the footer or anything like that, which is not something you should even be aware of the existence of.