The lost Sunheart translation project (Trans. beta downloadable)

[toktogul]

EDIT : Allright, I worked a little more on it, let me know what you think. I am still working on how to translate the pause menu and the ingame UI, but all the cinematics are now translated. its not the final version of the translation, I want you guys to help me to test it and if you find bugs or mistakes, let me know. Oh and yes, the story/writing isnt that fantastic. Very Japanese cliché kinda thing.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xx9ehiwu5r3o9g7/Bouken%20Danshaku%20Don%20-%20The%20Lost%20Sunheart%20%28stest%29.pce?dl=0


i changed the title of the post since the conversation switched from basic questions to an actual first translation /hack project. Cabbage suggested me to work on this game, and so far its been a blast. I have translater the first three chapters and the intro. I will keep you updated on the project. (Starting around the end of page 2)

Thank you for your support, especially Elmer, Cabbage and Ccovell

[cabbage]

YY-CHR has support for PCE, as well as other useful formats like 1bpp 8x8 and 16x16..

[toktogul]

YY-CHR has support for PCE, as well as other useful formats like 1bpp 8x8 and 16x16..

Thank you sir! I want to tackle the translation of Download, so far i have been successfull in changing the English text (the table is ASCII, and is visible through hex workshop). I can't find the Japanese script though. maybe if I can see the tiles with that you have provided me with today i might be able to make progress. Thank you.

[ccovell]

A lot of PCE games have their tiles compressed, which will hinder you quite a lot.  It might be better to dump 8k pages of CHR-RAM from an emulator like Mednafen to get the uncompressed tile data.  You can temporarily append the tiles to the PCE ROM and use it in the following program:

http://www.romhacking.net/utilities/349/

Djinn Tile Mapper is useful for viewing the whole ROM using tile data as a font.  (8K only at a time in SNES tile mode).

[toktogul]

A lot of PCE games have their tiles compressed, which will hinder you quite a lot.  It might be better to dump 8k pages of CHR-RAM from an emulator like Mednafen to get the uncompressed tile data.  You can temporarily append the tiles to the PCE ROM and use it in the following program:

http://www.romhacking.net/utilities/349/

Djinn Tile Mapper is useful for viewing the whole ROM using tile data as a font.  (8K only at a time in SNES tile mode).

Thank you for your help. Sorry for the upcoming question, it might sound dumb. So what you are saying is that I should use the emulator, run the game, and wait until there is text on the screen to pause and have the emulator show the info in the RAM running at that precise moment? So I am pretty much taking a RAM snapshot of whats going on at that moment in the game correct? That way I can find the tiles used at that moment and start building a table. Once I have the table figured out, since I already have the ASCII table, I should be able to find in the ROM the dialogues sections, and simply modify it with the English script. Correct?

[elmer]

The best thing to do is to run Mednafen's debugger and look at what it is doing in VRAM and on the screen.

If you do that, then you'll see that it's loading up a bunch of 12x12 black-and-white kanji/English glyphs into 16x16 sprites and then printing out many lines of text.

Then it updates some of those sprites with new glyphs and prints a bunch more lines of of text.

The text isn't stored as shift-jis, and doesn't seem to get decompressed into RAM as shift-jis.

My first guess is that it's probably stored as indexes into the current set of glyphs that have been uploaded into VRAM.

So ... with a bit of investigation (looking at which zero-page locations change as text is displayed) ...

Zero-page ptr @ $0e is used for 8x8 ascii background characters

Zero-page ptr @ $8e is used for 16x16 kanji sprites (the story script)

The script is stored in bank $09.

This is the call to the function that reads the script ...

$00:$eda5 jsr $00:$ee62

This is the function that reads the script ...

$00:$ee62 function starts
$00:$ee75 actually reads script ptr at $8e

This is the code that sets the very first script ...

$09:805c table access with x set to 0 ...

$8e (script ptr lo byte) = $807c,x (index into table of pointers) = $75
$8f (script ptr hi byte) = $8091,x (index into table of pointers) = $8a

First 2 characters in the script are "22".

"2" is uploaded into in sprite number $144.

$09:$8a75 = $14 = "2"
$09:$8a76 = $14 = "2"

Once you understand the mapping from $14 to sprite $144, then you can see that

"DOWN LOAD" = $16 $19 $1a $18 $10 $17 $19 $15 $16

Which you can find stored @ $09:$8b2e, $09:$8b93, $09:$8bce, etc

So ... does that make any sense to you?

If not, then as much as I'd personally love to see a translation of Download ... you might want to consider an easier game as your first translation!

[elmer]

Once I have the table figured out, since I already have the ASCII table, I should be able to find in the ROM the dialogues sections, and simply modify it with the English script. Correct?

No, because the 8x8 ASCII font isn't used for the story script, it's used for things that are already in English.

The story script is displayed as sprites, and the contents of those sprites change at different times during the script. At no time is there a complete set of ASCII glyphs uploaded into those sprites.

You're going to need a major programming hack to find out when/how those sprite are uploaded, and how to change them into English glyphs.

After which you've got huge 16x16 English characters.

Switching to something like 8x16 is going to require a much more sophisticated hack.

To be honest ... this isn't a particularly "friendly" translation for a 1st-time guy to tackle.

[toktogul]

Once I have the table figured out, since I already have the ASCII table, I should be able to find in the ROM the dialogues sections, and simply modify it with the English script. Correct?

No, because the 8x8 ASCII font isn't used for the story script, it's used for things that are already in English.

The story script is displayed as sprites, and the contents of those sprites change at different times during the script. At no time is there a complete set of ASCII glyphs uploaded into those sprites.

You're going to need a major programming hack to find out when/how those sprite are uploaded, and how to change them into English glyphs.

After which you've got huge 16x16 English characters.

Switching to something like 8x16 is going to require a much more sophisticated hack.

To be honest ... this isn't a particularly "friendly" translation for a 1st-time guy to tackle.

thank you for your help. Well looks like I will have to pass on this one, too difficult for now, but ill come back later once I get better at it. this isnt over yet download, I will crack you one day (Its ironic since the plot is all about hacking and computer stuff hahah). Its a little bit bitter sweet since I was able to modify the English text,  see on screen my progress and I thought I made a major breakthrough hahaha.

At least I learned a couple of things with Download. What game would be more begginer friendly? Even if there is a translation already available, I would like to train to get better at understanding how those things work. Maybe a game without their font compressed or something.

[cabbage]

elmer is right, download is a tricky one.
I got as far as building a table for the loaded glyphs, dumping the script for that cutscene, replacing the loaded glyphs with the set of English characters, and inserting some test text (with a new table)... ie, the easy part.
But, it was quite ugly and the translation would have to be very heavily edited. the game really needs more extensive hacking to do it justice.
If none of this has discouraged you and you really want to try a bare-bones translation for it, I can dig out my notes and help you get started.

Really, there are plenty of other games that would be much easier, especially for a first project.
If you want to translate a shooter, how about The Lost Sunheart? If I remember correctly, it looked fairly straightforward to hack and would certainly benefit from a translation (in my opinion).

[elmer]

Well looks like I will have to pass on this one, too difficult for now, but ill come back later once I get better at it. this isnt over yet download, I will crack you one day (Its ironic since the plot is all about hacking and computer stuff hahah).

That's the spirit ... don't let it beat you ... just put it on the back-burner until you've got more experience, and have the necessary confidence with the programming side (or find a programmer to partner with). 

It can be done ... you'll just need to expand to a 768KB or 1MB cartridge size for the extra storage and re-write the display code to print into the sprites as a bitmap rather than use pre-loaded glyphs.

Far from trivial ... but definitely possible.

It's just a matter of experience and will. Good luck! 

At least I learned a couple of things with Download. What game would be more begginer friendly?

Someone else will have to answer this one ... I'm sorry, but I just don't know.

I got as far as building a table for the loaded glyphs, dumping the script for that cutscene, replacing the loaded glyphs with the set of English characters, and inserting some test text (with a new table)... ie, the easy part.

On the contrary ... what you did is excellent work, don't sell it short. Congratulations, you solved some of the most challenging parts! 

It's hard for most folks to understand the abstractions and schemes that were part of a programmer's arsenal back-in-the-day ... and you cracked that ... you did really, really well.

The next step is also a tough one, and I can easily understand why you decided to drop things ... it's not that it's incredibly difficult ... but it is time-consuming, and it needs a familiarity with programming techniques that nobody uses anymore, and really aren't well known or documented.

If it's something that really, really interests you, then there are folks at places like "romhacking.net" where you can probably learn the skills that you'll need.

If none of this has discouraged you and you really want to try a bare-bones translation for it, I can dig out my notes and help you get started.

I think that this goes back to a post that Bonknuts made in a different thread ... it would be great if there were a place that people could share their notes if/when they decide to abandon a translation. It would make things much easier for someone else when they come along months/years later and want to "have-a-go" at a translation.

[toktogul]

elmer is right, download is a tricky one.
I got as far as building a table for the loaded glyphs, dumping the script for that cutscene, replacing the loaded glyphs with the set of English characters, and inserting some test text (with a new table)... ie, the easy part.
But, it was quite ugly and the translation would have to be very heavily edited. the game really needs more extensive hacking to do it justice.
If none of this has discouraged you and you really want to try a bare-bones translation for it, I can dig out my notes and help you get started.

Really, there are plenty of other games that would be much easier, especially for a first project.
If you want to translate a shooter, how about The Lost Sunheart? If I remember correctly, it looked fairly straightforward to hack and would certainly benefit from a translation (in my opinion).

Thank you for your help, you 2 are the best! Ill give that game a look, and I will for sure come back with some questions haha. Its seriously been interesting soo far to look at how the games work. I hope I can contribute more in the future to the rom hacking scene. it looks like one of the most interesting hobby ever. so far its been fascinating.

[toktogul]

Allright, looks like a game I can do. I wasnt even aware of this game haha. I managed to find the japanese and alphabet font. Even in game, the characters do not look amazing, but using yy-chr its even worst. It seems like its missing letters, or rather skipping every 2 letters. Upon looking a little closer, it even seems like there are 2 letters per square (J and K are 2 layers of the same square)

Anyway, I started using this tool today, what is the Hexadecimal adress? is it what is written under <<Pattern>> A being A4  and C A5?

[ccovell]

A little reminder that PCE tiles (when they're not compressed) are usually 4BPP, SNES format.  (2BPP NES format is rarely the case...)

You're in luck, since Don Sunheart uses 1BPP tiles for its font.  Just change YY-Chr's view to 1BPP and shift the tiles around till a blank space then exclamation mark are the first tiles in the window.  That may be the mapping.

[toktogul]

A little reminder that PCE tiles (when they're not compressed) are usually 4BPP, SNES format.  (2BPP NES format is rarely the case...)

You're in luck, since Don Sunheart uses 1BPP tiles for its font.  Just change YY-Chr's view to 1BPP and shift the tiles around till a blank space then exclamation mark are the first tiles in the window.  That may be the mapping.

Great thank you for the heads up. By switching to 1bpp tiles it should be 1 per square right? Is it the reason why the quality of the characters in game are so... Low quality?

[cabbage]

toktogul- good, you found the font!
Sunheart indeed uses a 1bpp font. I'm not sure what you mean by "low quality," but the font is just 8x8 tiles with 2 colors (one color for the letter, one color for the background--hence 1bpp). A lot of games use a 1bpp font.
Luckily this game already includes the full uppercase and lowercase English alphabet, so you don't really have to edit the font at all. You can eventually overwrite some of the Japanese font to add extra characters if you need them.

To make your table file(s), you'll need to look into the game to find out which byte(s) map to which letter/character. There's not necessarily a standard method that applies to all games...
one easy way to brute-force it is to find a string of English text in the game and do a Relative Search (e.g. with the WindHex hex editor) to find that string, and build your table from that information. You can always edit that string in the hex editor to test other values as you fill in the gaps of your table(s).

Make sure you keep a clean copy of the ROM around while you work so you can easily restore it after something gets broken

[toktogul]

toktogul- good, you found the font!
Sunheart indeed uses a 1bpp font. I'm not sure what you mean by "low quality," but the font is just 8x8 tiles with 2 colors (one color for the letter, one color for the background--hence 1bpp). A lot of games use a 1bpp font.
Luckily this game already includes the full uppercase and lowercase English alphabet, so you don't really have to edit the font at all. You can eventually overwrite some of the Japanese font to add extra characters if you need them.

To make your table file(s), you'll need to look into the game to find out which byte(s) map to which letter/character. There's not necessarily a standard method that applies to all games...
one easy way to brute-force it is to find a string of English text in the game and do a Relative Search (e.g. with the WindHex hex editor) to find that string, and build your table from that information. You can always edit that string in the hex editor to test other values as you fill in the gaps of your table(s).

Make sure you keep a clean copy of the ROM around while you work so you can easily restore it after something gets broken

Yay! Great! Allright, off to Nagoya for the weekend, ill come back to it on Sunday. This is soo exciting. Ill search for the string, the title screen, and file naming screen should be easy to find, from there i should be able to easily build the table. Maybe search with relative search, enter the interval between the letters seen on title screen, and then from there find the name making screen section.

Seriously, thank you guys for taking the time to answer my questions. I know its super basic what i amasking, but it helps soo much that you are being patient. You guysare awesome

[toktogul]

Back to town, I found the credits of the game, they are all in capital letters. Looks like the alphabet letters use the ASCII hex adress. So now that I have my alphabet table, how can i build my Japanese one?

[toktogul]

I found a way for now to build it. I found the title screen menu, so now i am remplacing the start with hex and it shows kanjis. I am slowly writing them down and building a table. Might not be the most efficient but its a start hahah.

[toktogul]

I am at FF hex value, and i am far from finished with my table for japanese characters... FF is the maximum value correct? How can I find the remaining hex adresses for the remaining characters?
Up to 7F its ASCII values, then it switch to Japanese characters. i am confused. how can I find the remaining characters to complete my table?

[elmer]

I am at FF hex value, and i am far from finished with my table for japanese characters... FF is the maximum value correct?

$FF is the maximum value for a single byte, but you could easily be dealing with double-byte shift-JIS encoding.

In the meantime, what you've got looks some variant of an ANK font.

Here's the ANK font from the PC-FX ROM ...

[cabbage]

0x01 is a control code to switch between hiragana and katakana. So:

(some japanese text) 0x01 (some more japanese text) 0x01 (even more)

the first text will be in hiragana (or perhaps katakana, I forget which this game defaults to), the second japanese text will be in katakana, and the third will be back in hiragana again
at least, this should be the case according to my memory and notes... perhaps there are some other characters on each table, like switching out some kanji etc. i don't recall if english is present in both or not, but that's easy enough to check

[toktogul]

0x01 is a control code to switch between hiragana and katakana. So:

(some japanese text) 0x01 (some more japanese text) 0x01 (even more)

the first text will be in hiragana (or perhaps katakana, I forget which this game defaults to), the second japanese text will be in katakana, and the third will be back in hiragana again
at least, this should be the case according to my memory and notes... perhaps there are some other characters on each table, like switching out some kanji etc. i don't recall if english is present in both or not, but that's easy enough to check

You are correct. I found some text searching with the table i have, the hiragana and katakana share the same hex value, the only thing that changes is the 00 or 01 before the katakana word/sentence. Thats a relief! I am not dealing with 16 bits hahah thank you soo much guys!

How can/should i make my table readable in hex workshop now? I wrote it on a piece of paper, now i simply need to enter it on my computer. How should i make it so its easily importable on hexworkshop?


Edit: i am able to write down hex values for the intro text and then I check the actual value in hex work. So far my table works well. To input kanjis i have to input 02 before and after the kanji. So is it ok to see it as a "press 02(like shift click) type stuff, then release 02" it goes back to normal, and continue?"

[cabbage]

How can/should i make my table readable in hex workshop now? I wrote it on a piece of paper, now i simply need to enter it on my computer. How should i make it so its easily importable on hexworkshop?

make a .tbl file (just a regular .txt file, you can rename to .tbl extension if you prefer) with each line containing one entry:
hex=text

so, for example:
(...)
30=0
31=1
32=2
(...)
41=A
42=B
43=C
(...)
B1=あ
B2=い
B3=う
etc.

then you can load the .tbl into your hex editor to look around in the rom, use it to make a script dump and/or insert a new script, and so on.

[elmer]

0x01 is a control code to switch between hiragana and katakana.

Nice find! 

It's very interesting (for me, as a programmer) to see how you guys go about hacking a ROM without any major programming help.

[toktogul]

How can/should i make my table readable in hex workshop now? I wrote it on a piece of paper, now i simply need to enter it on my computer. How should i make it so its easily importable on hexworkshop?

make a .tbl file (just a regular .txt file, you can rename to .tbl extension if you prefer) with each line containing one entry:
hex=text

so, for example:
(...)
30=0
31=1
32=2
(...)
41=A
42=B
43=C
(...)
B1=あ
B2=い
B3=う
etc.

then you can load the .tbl into your hex editor to look around in the rom, use it to make a script dump and/or insert a new script, and so on.

Great, i made the text file already, do i need to put spaces or press enter after each entries? Do you happen to know where i can load the tbl file in hexworshop? Thank you soo much! I can finally start translating today.

[toktogul]

Update : Worked hard today, I managed to translate and insert sucessfully 5 more chapters. I think I have 3-4 to go. I am inserting as I translate, I am not sure if it's the best way of doing things, but it feels good to see the progress in game right away.

I was thinking about it, how can I make the game available to the community once I am done? I am modifying directly the rom. I think that would be against the rules of the forum to post them here right?

[Bernie]

Update : Worked hard today, I managed to translate and insert sucessfully 5 more chapters. I think I have 3-4 to go. I am inserting as I translate, I am not sure if it's the best way of doing things, but it feels good to see the progress in game right away.

I was thinking about it, how can I make the game available to the community once I am done? I am modifying directly the rom. I think that would be against the rules of the forum to post them here right?

You could upload it to DropBox, and people could PM you for the download.  If you don't use DropBox, someone....like ME...    could take care of that for you. 

Awesome work guys!  It is really cool to see so much effort going into the PCE these days.

[ginoscope]

Agree with Bernie just dropbox the rom or PM members directly.  I have an everdrive so be glad to test for you if you needed that as you get to the end of the project.

Great job on the translation it seems a lot of activity lately with people translating pc engine games which is great.  Almost makes me as a programmer of modern language interested in going low level to assembly.  Been ages since I messed with assembly.

[cabbage]

I was thinking about it, how can I make the game available to the community once I am done? I am modifying directly the rom. I think that would be against the rules of the forum to post them here right?

you can easily make a patch and just distribute that. i've only ever used lunar ips...it's extremely simple. just give it the original un-edited rom and your new, translated rom, and it will create the .ips patch for you. then you can share that anywhere without having to distribute any rom files.

[elmer]

There's usually no real problem with sharing a ROM image with collaborators/testers in order to get it all done, but for general distribution, you really should just distribute a patch ... that keeps the whole translation scene "legal".

There are various utilities to create a patch in different formats xdelta, UPS, IPS.

IMHO, IPS is a grossly outdated format and needs to die, so I'd recommend xdelta or UPS.


You can get easy-to-use utilities for all 3 on RomHacking ...

Delta Patcher (xdelta)
http://www.romhacking.net/utilities/704/

Tsukuyomi UPS
http://www.romhacking.net/utilities/519/

Lunar IPS
http://www.romhacking.net/utilities/240/


You might even think about releasing you translation on their site.

It's a lot easier than maintaining your own website for it, and then it'll be available to anyone, and easily searchable.

You'll find a bunch of PCE translations there done by folks that hang out here.

[Dicer]

Can't wait to see another finished translation

Idc if it's a hacked rom or have to manually patch, the more the merrier....

Ty for your work.

[toktogul]

Great thank you guys for your replies. I'll send it by drop box at first for testing and once I feel like the game is 100% ready, i'll make a patch for it for public release. I have 1 chapter left, which i should manage to complete today.

Then i have will onlyhave the ui translation left.

[Vimtoman]

Great effort.

You should do a write up on the method used to translate.

[toktogul]

Allright, I worked a little more on it, let me know what you think. I am still working on how to translate the pause menu and the ingame UI, but all the cinematics are now translated. its not the final version of the translation, I want you guys to help me to test it and if you find bugs or mistakes, let me know.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xx9ehiwu5r3o9g7/Bouken%20Danshaku%20Don%20-%20The%20Lost%20Sunheart%20%28stest%29.pce?dl=0

[Vimtoman]

Just tried it and there is a section of text on the intro cinematic thats not cleared as its on the third line.
The text sunheart crystals stays in view.

Never played this game before.

[toktogul]

Just tried it and there is a section of text on the intro cinematic thats not cleared as its on the third line.
The text sunheart crystals stays in view.

Never played this game before.

Thank you, i am looking into it, seems like i cant write more than 2 lines. There is an invisible border and it wont remove the line of text automaticaly. Ill need to find a shorter sentence.

Thank you for playing the game. Let me know if you can find more bugs

[ginoscope]

Great work toktogul I tested out the game and here is what I found.

Tested on a pc-engine duo using Turbo Everdrive v1.

I saw the same text being displayed that Vimtoman mentioned during the intro cinema which was not being cleared. 

Other than that I did not notice any bugs I played into the second stage before my rusty shumup skills showed up.  It's a great game and I look forward to playing it more.  Maybe if possible if you could edit the game so you can't die just for testing purpose.  Just an idea but not necessary.

I really liked how you added the names of the fellow guys from this development forum to the high scores screen.

Looking forward to helping you test some more and the translation is much appreciated.

[toktogul]

Great work toktogul I tested out the game and here is what I found.

Tested on a pc-engine duo using Turbo Everdrive v1.

I saw the same text being displayed that Vimtoman mentioned during the intro cinema which was not being cleared. 

Other than that I did not notice any bugs I played into the second stage before my rusty shumup skills showed up.  It's a great game and I look forward to playing it more.  Maybe if possible if you could edit the game so you can't die just for testing purpose.  Just an idea but not necessary.

I really liked how you added the names of the fellow guys from this development forum to the high scores screen.

Looking forward to helping you test some more and the translation is much appreciated.

Thank you for your help testing it on an everdrive. I used an emulator, so i wasnt sure it was gonna work on the actual console. I was able to complete the game this morning using save state (i know i am lame) and all seems ok. I might do a video with all the cinematic to make sure that the story line is understandable. The story is soo thin that its easy to loose details in the translation.

Hahaha you found my easter eggs. I was wondering how long it would take for someone to notice

[Vimtoman]

Maybe if possible if you could edit the game so you can't die just for testing purpose.  Just an idea but not necessary.

Theres a sticky on krikzz's forum that has patches for games .
It also has an explanation on how to do it.
http://krikzz.com/forum/index.php?topic=1004.0

Good idea for the easter egg toktogul. hey where my name on the list:)

[ginoscope]

Maybe if possible if you could edit the game so you can't die just for testing purpose.  Just an idea but not necessary.

Theres a sticky on krikzz's forum that has patches for games .
It also has an explanation on how to do it.
http://krikzz.com/forum/index.php?topic=1004.0

Good idea for the easter egg toktogul. hey where my name on the list:)

Thanks for the tip I will definitely check that out next time I test the game.  I have also never played this game and was surprised how good it is.