Serious WOTL text hack

[denym]

Hello there,

I'm new here and after searching through the board, I didn't find what I need so I start the topic here. Let me ask for somethings:

1. FFTactext can find and let me edit some tutorial text/Item, name text. But it can't find the main dialogue text. Manually, I can find the dialogue text in fftpack.bin, but strangely, when I extracted this file with FFTPatcher, there're many folders appear like MENU, unknown, BATTLE,... but I can't find any dialogue text in these folders. So where can it be?

2. The font width file, where to find it?

3. The font file, where to find it?
I tried to open with Paint after extracting with Resource.zip by FFTPatcher but it can't. So how to edit the font?

4. The dialogue text in fftpack.bin does it have pointer? It seems that pointers for these text don't exist in this file.

5. FFTPatcher and FFTactext seems to not open the J version. Hope someday it will support this version.

Thank you for reading 

[Angel]

1. Those are in the event data, which is not handled by Tactext.

2. This?

If you're messing with text, I strongly advise against using WotL as a base, as Tactext is far and away the most volatile tool for WotL users. Things will go wrong, you will lose data, and your sanity will slip away.

[denym]

Thank you Angel.

1.// I searched through the EVENT folder, which was decrypted from fftpack.bin. In this EVENT folder, //there're many files and I don't see any dialogue text in it.
Now I found the dialogue text in Test.evt. Thank you Toshiko.

2. The link you gave doesn't mention anything about the font width. It's aso called variable width table.

3. Still can't find the dialogue font.

4. Now I understand that WOTL doesn't use pointer for text. It's uncommon in games.

[Xifanie]

2. That's what the "Character Length" is.

3. That's what the "Charater Graphic" is. http://ffhacktics.com/font.png

4. FFT Uses pointers for sections of text, but no, not for individual strings.

5. It seems you're going to translate the game anyway. Why would you care about the Japanese version? Do you know Japanese better than you do English?

[denym]

Thank you very much, ladies of the Lions.

2. Which version of the game does the link mention?
FFTPatcher created a resource folder, the fontwidth.bin is in this one. I opened and see the font width of the USA version is 06 06 06 06.... for the first characters.

• But, I opened BATTLE.BIN, jumped to address 0x000FF0FC and there're values like this
  14 00 20 00 DE FF FF FF BC 00 58 00 10 00 18 00 F0 FF 00 00 ....
  So I think this is not the right address.

• Also, I opened WORLD.BIN, jumped to 0x000733E0 and there're values like this
  D5 44 D5 73 D1 33 FE D4 BD D5 73 D3 22 FE FE FE...
  So I think this is not the right address, too.

However, I can found 06 06 06 06 06 06 06 06 06 06 06... at 0x00293F4 in BOOT.BIN and at 0x0030FAC0 at the same file.
These address also appeared in EBOOT.BIN at the same addresses.

3. I mean how to convert the font to bmp, png or somethings that I can edit it, then convert back to the format that the console can read.

4. So it has pointers points to blocks. These blocks contain event script and a bunch of text?

5. No I don't speak Japanese, but I have friend who is Japanese interpreter/translator and he's helping me to translate this game. He says it's better to translate directly from Japanese. I don't know the Japanese version has the font width table or not, because Japanese games tend to have not.

[Xifanie]

2. US PSX

3. There is no way to do that right now (and probably ever). I made an excel sheet that generates bytes for a single character, but that's all it does so I haven't release it to the public. You can use stuff like Tile Molester I guess, but personally I hate that program and can't really help on that because I'm not all that familiar with it... I THINK it has export/import functions though.

4. Event Script? If you mean changing the font colour, or changing the printing speed, or adding selectable options, then yes, otherwise I don't know what you mean.

5. I've googled before and there are websites with a ton of the game's text in Japanese. Even if you can't get the Japanese text through tactext, it would be a good start. And yes, there is a font width table for the Japanese version; even if there's only 2 out of 2200 characters that have a width different than 10px (0x0A). If you hex search for a lot of 0x0A in a row, you should find it easily enough.

You might cry and abandon your project because of Tactext. I'm not sure if the best version for it works that flawlessly, but I've heard plenty of horror stories... Spending hours and hours trying to make it work, and still no go.

If you're going to use Tactext, you should really use my FFTText Editor as well: http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=11204
...if that would even work with a .ffttext generated from the WotL version; I don't know.

Either way, you'll have to figure a lot of things on your own. That's what we have. Just about no one here hacks WotL because we just think it's an inferior version. If you insist on using it, well, good luck to you.

[Nyzer]

If you're going to use Tactext, you should really use my FFTText Editor as well: http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=11204
...if that would even work with a .ffttext generated from the WotL version; I don't know.

It doesn't.

And Denym, she's right - for modding purposes, WotL is an inferior version. You can make a decent amount of shallow, relatively easy changes, but nothing complex. If you want the multiplayer portion that badly and don't intend to make big, sweeping changes, you can work with it well enough, but for any other purpose, you should be using the PSX version.

[3lric]

[denym]

Thank you for your replies.
I want to make a Portugees translation base on Japanese version of WOTL. Here are why I prefer it than the PSX version reasons:

• Better resolution


• Screen ratio 16:9 is better than 4:3

I prefer the O button to accept than the X botton.
This is the first time for me with the PSP. I used to assembly hack the NES and SNES.

@Elric: I think I can cut the square block to round shape to fit the hole.

[Xifanie]

Better resolution? No. It's stretched more and you lose more details.
16:9 is better than 4:3 I'll give you that (even if they destroyed graphics in the process)
O is confirm and X is cancel on the PSX too... is there any version that it's not?
ASM hacking is the least of your concerns for a project like this. I don't see how it would be needed at any point... ever.

If you want to cut the block, you're going to need tools for that. You need to make those tools first.

EDIT: Oh, btw, of the ~12 people who wanted to translated the game we've had here on FFH, one was German, one for another language (can't remember), and all the others wanted to translated WotL to Portuguese. It still hasn't happened.

[Angel]

@Elric: I think I can cut the square block to round shape to fit the hole.

You could, at best, nick a little bit of one corner off before you've exhausted the tools' effectiveness.

O is confirm and X is cancel on the PSX too... is there any version that it's not?

US/Euro version of WotL.*

* Kind of a misnomer, because PSP games don't care about the region of the game you're playing in, but what region your PSP is set to. An American PSP will play Japanese WotL with X = confirm, for example.

[Nyzer]

A complete translation? You would DEFINITELY be better off with the PSX version. The excel Tactext Editor makes Tactext hundreds if not thousands of times more efficient - that alone makes the PSX version better for a base.

The visual differences are so minor they can't be worth the difference. You're talking about extending the mod time by many weeks if not months.

[denym]

Thank you for your advices. I'm used to the Nes and Snes assembly, but not PS1 or PSP. I think I have to learn some basic Risc Mips asm.

[Xifanie]

what for?

[denym]

Well, with assembly, it's easier to do everything than knowing nothing.
I oftend use my asm knowledge when translating Snes and Nes games.