NGE: Shito Ikusei Remake Project

Oh God, pointers!

taarna23 — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 18:34:49 +0000

Yup, found the damned things. The upshot is they shouldn’t be too much trouble, they just can’t be handled the same way normal ones are. They’re actually IN the text, and they point to a block of text. I tested this, going back to where I had translated a screen (thanks to some of your awesome comments!) and changing what looked likely to be the pointer for the next block. You see, the line after the translated one didn’t crash, nor than the one after it, but when the scene changed and the text box popped up, the screen went nuts and then reset. So, it was fine within its own block because the pointer for that never changed, but the pointer for the next one (and all after it, of course, but this was just testing) was incorrect. I adjusted what appeared to be the pointer after some comparing to an unaltered rom and poof! No more crash at that scene change. So now, along with finding the various commands in the text, I also get the dubious joy of making sure I know where the pointers are so when it’s translated, I can find them easily for alteration.

Fun. x_x

Image display info

taarna23 — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 19:45:08 +0000

Mostly for my benefit, you know, in case my computer explodes or something dumb like that. This case is a scene switch that causes an image to be displayed, I’m starting to break down what those rather large tags are made of…

This one: 120E141801009600

displays an image of Adam in an embryo state, essentially what you start with at the beginning of the game and then raise up. I assume it’s frozen or otherwise suspended. We probably raise a clone of it. Anyway…

120E makes a common appearance, probably a general change scene tag…

14 seems to be telling it to display an image as the scene switch, rather than, say, changing the map or something…

1801 is what image to display, changing it to F801 showed me an image of Rei in a kimono with a fan. 1800 showed me a sketch of Miasto, Kaji and Ritsuko.

96 appears to control the delay before text is displayed, but I’m not 100% sure about that.

More table file progress

taarna23 — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 06:30:29 +0000

It’s taking forever, but I’m starting to understand more of the stuff that’s in the game text. Lots of control codes and the like, with text in between. Without determining what these codes do, or at least giving them a tag (even if unknown), the script could be really messy. A lot of lines are simpler now, anyway. Many look like: [character portrait][text start code][text][line end code]. So, now some of them are noticeably different. There’s parts in the game where you choose one of three characters, and when one of the things they’d say is called on, I’ve noticed they’re all in the same location. I’m assuming based on portrait, anyway, I can’t read most of the actual text. =P

Anyway, that’s my progress update for now!

Yay, hard stuff…

taarna23 — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 17:47:32 +0000

So, the next part is going to be pretty tough, and take probably a lot of time. Throughout the text there are codes that cause something to happen (when experimenting, I changed one and instead of bringing up a portrait and the next line of text, it switched out to a completely different section of the game and then restarted), and to keep them from messing with the actual script text, I need to isolate them so they get dumped along with the script text. This is actually pretty important, and definitely tedious.

The first thing I successfully isolated are codes that call a portrait, so you know who in the game is speaking (at least when it’s a main character) and what kind of mood they’re in. But, like with everything else in this game, nothing is simple. It’s a set of 4 bytes; the first says “display a portrait,” the seconds says “display THIS one,” the third says “at this X location,” and the fourth says “at this Y location.” That layout is simple enough, but I need to have added to my table (the thing that has a listing of what bytes mean what letters/other stuff) each combination of character portraits and locations they can appear. Fun times. Sheesh.

Progress! Real, actual progress! WHEE!

taarna23 — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 17:13:30 +0000

The title says it all, everyone! There’s been some actual progress made! I don’t know what made me realise, but I had this sudden suspicion that this game doesn’t use pointers, so I added some text to one of the intro lines, and so as to not mess up other stuff, removed an equivalent number of bytes from the blank space at the end of the rom bank. The new text showed up, and the game proceeded just fine, no errors, glitches, crashes or whatever else.

So, I took it a step further. I looked at the font text and found there were 12 tiles ready for use, yet unused at the end. Perfect! I picked one of the scenes here that had been translated (thanks nice people that have been helping out! =3 ), made some font tiles needed for the English words, putting 2 8×16 letters in one 16×16 tile, then hex edited the script for that screen to use the new tiles. I also changed the location of the line break, and shortened the line in general. Excess bytes were fed into the blank space at the end of the rom bank to balance out size.

The result:

Hmm, the font is a little squished together in places. Back to the tiles!

Some changes turned out this way:

Much nicer! Now, not wanting to, just yet, overwrite existing font characters, I had a limit of what I could work with, so the “!” at the end, and the little square Japanese quotation mark (which I like and may leave) are original font, and so is the name I have the thing, just a romanization of the original default name, SHITO.

So, now I just need to get in touch with my translator friend and determine how to proceed. But at long last, years after wishing to do this, progress is made, and will now continue to be!

Map – Tokyo 3

taarna23 — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 22:55:39 +0000

Here’s the map for the Tokyo 3 area. It is access through the Gate on B Floor.

So… Rom translation’s probably toast.

taarna23 — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 20:38:55 +0000

It looks very likely that there’s not enough info on pointers in general for Wonderswan to make this happen. It doesn’t stop the remake project, but it does put a damper on it, for sure. So unless someone out there’s stashing info on pointers and could get a pointer table made for this thing and suddenly wants to help, the only English this will see is the remake project.

Map – Terminal Dogma

taarna23 — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 20:32:25 +0000

Here’s the map for Terminal Dogma.

Area 3:

E3 Hall
Heaven’s Door (yes, I’m aware the map graphics say “Heaven’s Gate”)
CL3

Map – A Floor

taarna23 — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 20:23:57 +0000

Here’s the map for A Floor.

Area 1:

E1 Hall
?

Map – B Floor

taarna23 — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 20:22:28 +0000

Here’s the map for B Floor.

Area 1:

E1 Hall
Cafeteria

Area 2:

Pool
? (Infirmary? Just a guess)

Area 3:

Gate
?