Final Fantasy Hacktics

If it's made with Unity again, there will be plenty of modding potential. No IL2CPP would be nice as well. ^^

Well, I still have all the files I made and used back then. But it would take some time to get into it again. As far as I remember, I could use all German umlauts and at the naming screen, but I'm not quite sure. The translation is not dead, but I think I can't motivate myself to fully finish it any time soon. Still thanks for your offer! And if those bitmaps are now editable with Shishi, I would translate those bitmaps myself, most likely with another font to fit into the available space, as I did with the main menu. Yeah I also had problems with the given space length of names, but I think Xifanie already helped me on that problem years ago and I have noted it somewhere. ^^

@Celdia
I can't believe it, but your big bitmap has exactly all the stuff I was searching for years ago. I was trying to translate FFT to German.
Does some tool support those small bitmaps now, are they basically editable? I couldn't find them back then with Shishi Sprite Editor or other tools.

I make it short, all further infos can be found at Nexusmods. After some fiddling I managed to replace all 26 in-game music tracks from Fell Seal (v1.0.4) with a personal selection of FFT OST music (from the original OST) as WAV or OGG. The modification can be found here: https://www.nexusmods.com/fellsealarbitersmark/mods/9

I have remembered FFHacktics (tried to make a German translation some years ago), cause Fell Seal might be the best paid FFT clone we have today on PC (spoiler: not as good as FFT), besides all the great FFT hacks from here and a few console/PC port/emulated games. The attached picture shows all of all replaced tracks.

My hope is, that someone finds this useful as well. I desperately wanted the great FFT music in Fell Seal after short time of playing and it took several attempts to do it. On Nexusmods you also find a short tutorial on how I did it (Fell Seal is made with Unity). I get goosebumps from those tracks and they remind me of the great time I had so far with the original FFT. I hope you too! =)

Also thanks for this spreadsheet. Just to let you know, I had to add "PtrSafe" to "Private Declare Function ShellExecute" (before: Lib "shell32.dll" Alias "ShellExecuteA"). Now it looks like this "Private Declare PtrSafe Function ShellExecute" and no more compiling errors. It seems Declare functions need to be allowed by "PtrSafe" on 64-bit OS. I found the solution here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee691831.aspx

Just to clear the problem, it seems to be a problem for Excel if the sheet is placed deep on a HDD. Just moving the folder with the sheet at the HDD root solved the VBA problem. I can now load my *.ffttext without any problem as it seems. Also there where a problem with the "ChDir FolderFromPath" value, it couldn't find the last path from "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\FFHacktics\Last Tactext FilePath", just deleting those entry at the registry fixed it. Somehow it created registry values without any real path and errors as soon as it tried to open the file path window. But now it works, even with Excel 2016.

Thanks for your quick answer! So it might actually be a problem with Excel 2016 itself in combination with a Excel 2007 created file. Okay. I have the chance to use Excel 2007 on work (also 2010). I will try it there Monday. The VBA stuff should be installed by default at the Office setup, or? Means they should be there on work. I'm expecting some kind of pop window to let me choose the *.ffttext file etc. and the last time I at least tried to use some Excel spreadsheet, was here from FFHacktics and it's long ago (~2013). I was sure that's not a problem with the spreadsheet itself, but on my side. So after searching the whole forum/Google for spreadsheet + vba problems like mine, without any luck, I posted here and digged up your thread. In 2013 my main goal was to translate FFT to German and I got stuck at the hardcoded menu bitmaps, too long location names on map etc. I think I want to revive my project in the near future and was in search for new tools etc. and stumbled upon your FFTText Editor, which sounded to good to be true.

Hello Xifanie,

I run into a problem to actually use the spreadsheet. All macros and VBA is allowed, but whenever I press any of the Add-Ins buttons on the FFTText sheet, Excel gives me an error. The macro can't be executed etc. I totally allowed them at the Trust Center and pressing ALT+F11 shows the VBA stuff. But I'm a bit lost on how to fix that at all. Do I need some missing runtime or could there be some setting? I installed the "Altima_8" font, have a clean .ffttext and also the resources.zip in the same folder. Hoped it would help, but no, not at all. I'm using Excel 2016. Maybe I forgot to install some module for Excel at the Office setup?

The image with all location names can be seen with the Shishi Sprite Editor from FFTPatcher v0.466 >  (Other Images > 3rd image), no other version support it.

But as Xifanie said, somewhere is a fixed width defined, so even if you rewrite them (I had to for my German translation), they will eventually get cropped in-game, if the new location name is longer than the old one. Additionally those unknown values seem to define the centred state of each location as well, because after editing, the position on the world map still behave as vanilla (best seen on locations which name got shorten, like "Gariland Magic City" to " just "Gariland", they look like left aligned). Another problem is, that the most minimized font is used for those locations, so it's hard to add any other, even smaller font to fit longer names.

Here is a comparison of my current translation of those location names, using the vanilla font 1:1, some get cropped in-game (see 3rd picture):




I think the "easiest" way to solve the width problem is, if anybody would know where the values are. Just like the values for the main font width of a single letter, Xifanie mention here. But it's not necessary to change those main font width values manually, FFTPatcher v0.352 can change the width. Only v0.352 supports direct editing of the main font.

The location names you can edit with FFTacText, are only for the savegames and some brave story text, I think. Those on the worldmap are all in this single image. Those location names that come up before a battle, can be seen with with Shishi Sprite Editor from FFTPatcher v0.482v2, every location has his own image.

I was able to solve 4.), the main start menu text. It's found in the "OPNTEX.BIN" as a TIM file with 16 palettes (the last two are just black).

Some tools I used so far:
- FFTPatcher (THE package for editing, but can't translate everything, some parts are not supported)
--v0.352 (FFTPatcher.exe, still has the "Font" tab to edit any available letter/symbol of the main font directly, makes it possible to add German umlauts or any other special letter - will change the FONT.BIN, you have to manually copy the FONT.BIN content into BATTLE.BIN & WORLD.BIN)
--v0.466 (ShishiSpriteEditor.exe, for some specific graphics, which only this version can edit)
--v0.482 (FFTactext.exe [Text], FFTorgASM.exe [ASM-Hacks] & ShishiSpriteEditor.exe [Bitmaps])
- CDmage v1.02.1 B5 (to export and import any file error free from the ISO)
- EasyVent Editor Super Perfect v1.91 (Event Text, just had a look into it)
- TimView+ v0.62 RC5 or since 2013 Tim2View v2.0 r33 (to Export and Import embedded TIM files, like the start menu text [New Game, Continue etc.])
- GIMP v2.8.4 (incl. Plugin for my direct TIM editing, you just edit the first palette and save as TIM again, it will have the exact same size etc.)

My beta start menu:



I had to use the letters from the worldmap locations font, because the German words are longer. The screenshot is made with a couple of filters (ePSXe), so don't worry. ^^

All letters and symbols from the main font:



I use the red framed symbols for my translation so far. I might need to use other symbols to translate the not supported text, because you can fit 2 latin letters in one Kanji symbol (a cheap DTE^^ ... but the hex length of those symbols is 4, not 2 like all the other latin letters). FFTactext doesn't support the missing text (see 1st post).

The German umlauts and the ß:
Kanji / DE / FFTPatcher ID / Hexcode / old width / new width
用 / ö / 1B2 / D212 / 10 / 4
田 / Ö / 1B3 / D213 / 10 / 6
甲 / ä / 1B4 / D214 / 10 / 4
申 / Ä / 1B5 / D215 / 10 / 6
由 / ü / 1B6 / D216 / 10 / 4
白 / Ü / 1B7 / D217 / 10 / 6
皮 / ß / 1B8 / D218 / 10 / 4

To use any custom special letter, just use FFTactext (get your copy of the hacked Kanji symbol from "Help > Allowed symbols") and paste the it directly while writing/translating. Or the same via HexEdit and the right Hexcode.

Some other comparisons (clean):



The 2nd comparison is the start menu, but palette 5&6, because it is more readable. If you edit this TIM in GIMP, you edit palette 1. Was some work to get those German words into it correctly. You have to stay strictly at the given palette colors or as an example, an "S" will look like garbage etc. I made me some "this color 2 that color" charts after some trouble to finally fix it. I wrote/build the new text in CorelPaint (my collection of single letters used in FFT) and inserted it into GIMP. I had to change the color pixel by pixel, because the 1st palette use some golden hue. For the warning text I just used a matching font and wrote it with CorelPaint (it will become transparent bitmap text after editing) and used a color replacing filter to match the golden palette. After that just copy and paste to GIMP.

The 1st comparison shows my German location names. Some are too long and get cropped in-game, but I don't want to shorten them for now.

So my new 4.) would be:

4.) Where are the width values located for the vanilla English worldmap location names? Like the width for a single letter from the main font, Xifanie mentioned those offsets. So my hope is, that there are some offsets for the worldmap location names aswell? =)

Have you tried the "JPCSP Launcher v1.8.0.4" with higher settings (Xmx, Xms & Xss + SSE etc.)? As far as I can see, your CPU and Ram seem to be a bit low for emulation anyway. I would not use JPCSP without this launcher, try it, maybe you're lucky.

Normally, you won't have to delete ANY Kanji. Not in OPEN.LZW or anywhere else. Only if you have added really much more text (much more than vanilla), it could be a problem.

OPEN.LZW has "Unit names" and "Birthday entry" (plus 2x sound stuff with Japanese text, which are not used at all), even if you want, I think you can't add too much text here. As an example, I translated the "Unit names" and "Birthday entry" to German. The names stay at vanilla most of the time (just have used the PSP version names), because they are names. ^^ But in German, the birthday stuff is longer (most sentences are longer in German) than in English. Basically all text is longer in my translation and I never had to delete ANY Japanese text or anything else, thanks to DTE. I think you won't have to delete the Japanese text. And btw, at the end, maybe that is your problem, you have deleted the Japanese stuff. ^^

If you want to save some space, delete ALL "No messages." lines from "Ability quotes" (also known as "Spell quotes"). You save about ~6000 Bytes.

Yeah I thought that as well. Tactext is just for text editing, bitmaps with Shishi (which have text as well). I think both would need a bit more development to complement the missing stuff. Especially for translations. Problem for me would be to decompress and recompress bitmaps just by my bare hands. ^^ Even if there are informations on where to find them, I'm not such ASM geek or something.

I miss tutorials about text editing. I'm talking about Non-Event text. FFTactext can do the most, but not all are recognized, even if FFTactext could technically edit them (shop, memory card, naming screen > all in WOLRD.BIN) and all text which is a bitmap. Some can be found with ShishiSpriteEditor (just those, that will displayed inside a battle), but it's by far not all (starting screen [New game, Continue etc.], the name of places directly on the worldmap, all menu text bitmaps like "Exp", "Lv", "Menu" etc. and some more I think.

Is there any guide and I just missed it? Or is there any thread where I can ask for, as an example, further FFTactext development (I would post offsets etc.) or the same for ShishiSpriteEditor?

For the missing text in FFTactext, I would translate them just with an HexEditor and a table file, but my head explode as soon as I think about DTE. It's a great thing that FFTactext just generate it and you don't have to mess with it. Without DTE a translation it not really great, because I'm limited to the length of the original English text. I'm translating it to German and FFTactext was a great help so far, but has some missing editable text.

Hello again,

after the help from Xifanie I managed to insert the special German letters and could start translating. So far I have translated all "names" files, the battle menu (which is a bit bugged inside FFTactext, you have to copy out the text for editing), unexplored land & treasures, tutorial menus and almost! all other menus (bar etc.). Inside the WORLD.LZW > "24: Tavern text" is more than just the tavern text (menu for Brave story, map menu names for shop, bar etc.). All good by now, I can patch the ISO and it works in-game. Really great! ^^ I'm using the FFTPatcher_0.482v2 version and patch the PSX version.

But I stumbled on four translations problems. I have searched the forums and read a couple of threads, but no luck.

1.) I can't find the following soldier office & shop text with FFTactext:

...
000B-5002 Try it on Best fit Quit fitting Sell Fitting over
000B-5034 Sell equip Stock
000B-5045 Yes No
000B-504C O K N O
000B-5054 Buy Sell Leave store
000B-5069 Male fighter Female fighter Change name Leave store
000B-509D Hire Quit Check status
000B-50B4 Yes No Ask name again
000B-50CA Num
000B-50CE Quit No
...

This part can be found at the end of this list here.

2.) Directly after that, the letters for the naming screen can be found!

...
000B-5AD9 ABCDEFGHIJK
000B-5AE5 LMNOPQRSTUV
000B-5AF1 WXYZ
000B-5AF6 abcdefghijk
000B-5B02 lmnopqrstuv
000B-5B0E wxyz
000B-5B13 0123456789
000B-5B1E !?+/:!()"'
...

I can't seem to find those as well, but they would be very useful! I could add the special German umlauts at those spaces or rearrange the letters.

3.) The text for the Memory card screen won't change at all after editing. It stays at vanilla at the opening or after loading on the worldmap. I have edited the "CARD.OUT 1" and "Save Screen Text" via Quickedit.

4.) The main start menu text "New Game", "Continue", "Tutorial" & "Sound". They look like bitmap text, but the Shishi Editor and FFTactext doesn't show them. See 2nd post.

I know that there is many text left for translation, not to mention the Events and the bitmap texts. But first I want to translate all selectable menu options and on screen gui stuff.

Maybe someone knows where I have to look and can help me out here again. Any help is welcome! =)

BTW, is there any file which is used as a base by FFTactext, where I can add missing stuff or something like that? All those XML and INI files seem to be for FFTPatcher and FFTorgASM.

If that what Elric said, doesn't work, than you have to go to the text stuff from "BOOT.BIN 5" and reduce some sentences. Change/Try/Delete one symbol by one and you should quickly find the one which is/was too long. After each delete, try to patch the ISO and see if it works now.

He can't save because of that, something is just too long.

I want to join this thread, maybe it's unnecessary to open another one.

As seen in the pictures above, where in FFTactext I can find the words like Buy, Sell, Fitting, Exit, Rumor, Proposition, Male soldier, Female soldier etc. or other menu words like "Hire" and so on. I can't seem to find them with FFTactext or I missed them somewhere.

Cool that was quick! I'm at work right now, but I looked into a WORLD.BIN and the offset from you and yes, it could be easy. I mean I see those "04"s, "06"s and "0A"s. I don't know which are the right ones, but I think it's just a matter of counting. It have to be in the section with all those "0A"s  I give it a try later at home. Thanks again!

EDIT: Oh damnit, you don't believe what I have found in the FFTPatcher... in the "Patch PSX ISO" window, I have missed the "Font Widths" checkbox... I think, I won't have to manually edit anything now in BATTLE.BIN, but in WORLD.BIN. ^^ Anyway, you was a great help!

Thanks for the reply and I appreciate you're offer to help. =)

I just use the FONT.BIN for comparison in tiny hexer, but I'm not good enough to understand this ASM stuff or more than just the basics. But I can copy & paste hex stuff and I understand enough to get a bit of a clue. ^^ The thread mentioned above helped a lot, especially melonhead's post. I also got those Italian "WORLD.BIN" and "SCUS_942.21" and looked at those offsets and yes there are some changes, but they don't seem to be necessary right now (asm DTE routine to solve problems with displaying replaced symbols in some places).

Anyway, so far everything seem to be good, just the width is wrong. I used CDMage to handle the files with the right mode etc. I can type the special letters via copy & paste (Japanese symbol, which is the special German letter in-game etc.) in FFTactext. But just because I found this list in the help menu, was a big help. And I see them in-game as they should be, with wrong width.

I try to post the small list I made, I hope I can safely use them:

Original symbol / FFPatcher / German letter (which could be displayed wrong at your side) / old width / new width
用 / 1B2 / ö / 10 / 4
田 / 1B3 / Ö / 10 / 6
甲 / 1B4 / ä / 10 / 4
申 / 1B5 / Ä / 10 / 6
由 / 1B6 / ü / 10 / 4
白 / 1B7 / Ü / 10 / 6
皮 / 1B8 / ß / 10 / 4

I marked them here in the picture I found, if that helps more:
http://www.pixhost.org/show/4281/16861747_font_ger.png

The FFPatcher column, is the number which will be displayed inside FFPatcher > Font menu. I tried FFTPatcher 0.352, 0.466, 0.478 and 0.482, but just 0.352 seem to offer the Font edit option or have I missed anything important? The tool seem to be very self explaining. ^^

I could upload my German modified BATTLE.BIN, FONT.BIN and WORLD.BIN if that helps, but I'm not sure if this is legal. The only changes are those 7 symbols.

BTW, what is IIRC, not IRC as we all know, or? ^^

Okay I managed to insert all my wanted German special letters. And I can use them in FFTacText (with "Help > Allowed Symbols" I could manage that). I just use a Kanji symbol, replaced it and in-game I can see my edited letters. Perfect! But... even though I changed the width with FFTPatcher (old version) in the process to edit 7 Kanji symbols, the width stays at the original value (10, I need 6 and 4) and there is a big space after those letters.

I made some comparisons, but I have no clue which value has to be changed manually. Because it seems FFTPatcher doesn't change that value in the patching process. When I just change the width (no graphical edit) and patch a ISO, take out the FONT.BIN and compare them, there is no difference.

So I hope somebody could give me a hint. As it seems there is a way to change the width, because FFTPatcher has the editable value for that. I'm managed to get the special letters in and now that. ^^ I could start translating, but with those wrong widths it looks worse.