Editing text on FFTA

[Victotem]

This post is a recopilation of how far i did editing text of FFTA, so anyone interested on editing text can drink from my knowledge.

Introduction:
First of all, the tiles which represent a word in the game are represented by hexadecimal values in a Hex pool which has everything about the game. It can be opened with a lot of programs like WinHex or Hexecute. and it looks like this: https://gyazo.com/8481ddcfa273fdaf4cdbc2119e8ca962?token=5ca1a747e29997fecd8629a4fb669e46

The objetive is to find which values are representing words in the game (tiles which represent words actually)
So a table which covers all the values are highly recomended because make the job quite easier.
A table looks like this: https://gyazo.com/d623104de19b8952e597e221c7403376
You can guess the values by Relative searching. Although i couldn't guess the table with >1 byte characters it is a wonderfull tool for ROMS with 1 bytes. You can learn about relative searching for guessing the values in this tutorial: https://www.romhacking.net/documents/53/

Step 1: Make a table with the values and save it with the extension .tbl. Its name has to be the same than your FFTA ROM
Step 2: Download Cygnus and HxD/WildHex and open the ROM with HxD or WildHex. Open the ROM and Open the table, it will be applied automatically.
Step 3: Find the hex values of the word you want to see represented in the Hex pool by using Hex searcher or Relative searcher. Now the tricky part. In despite other games FFTA has values represented by 1 byte and others represented by 2 bytes. That means if you dont find a 1 byte value it could be existing in the 2byte values. 2 byte values has a "80" before EACH of them(so you can't use relative searching, at least on HxD/WildHex) instead a effective way of finding them is using Hex searcher and put the words like: 80B180D880D8 (word Boo)

When you are finding 1byte words you can use relative searching.

Step 4: When you spotted where the word is, now is the step of editing the value. So for making that you have to memorize the Offset where the word is https://gyazo.com/f3d368c717a49041a7d236ab24279e4c and open Cygnus. Now in cygnus go to "go to offset" and wirte the memorized number. It will carry you to the Offset number where you can edit the values. Save.




Where i am right now:

I am trying to find values that can't be found whith the modus operandi which was using until now. I am expecting they are made by new 2byte values or a bigger chain of values. i can't spot them and the main page of Hex editing in FFTAS doesn't say anything about them.https://datacrystal.romhacking.net/wiki/Final_Fantasy_Tactics_Advance:Strings
Those text that doesn't ever appear in the pool are this ones: https://gyazo.com/2ef8c8a555b788a4a3109d437ddc5bae

So there is more about to discover. I don't know if right now if i am going too far where noone has tried but, anyways i think this is getting interesting. For now i will keep scrolling down the Hex pool below Offset 0x55187c hoping to find something. I have a feeling that is near there after opened this: https://gyazo.com/7913a25c5187ebc2874ade2d2096cb42

[nitwit]

Here are some of the results of a search for the text "text" limited to the FFTA & FFTA2 Hacking Board.

https://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=12036.0

https://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=6334

https://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=10660

https://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=10867

https://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=10613

https://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=10758

https://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=11996

I haven't looked into this at all besides a simple search of the relevant board, but if you don't want to waste your time figuring things out yourself you should learn how to search the forums.

[Victotem]

More interesting links:

https://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=6336.0