Findings regarding descriptions

[sniper_zero]

I'm not sure how far you guys have gone into hacking but I've been trying to edit some of the text in this game. And one thing that I've noticed is that regardless of the number of characters present in the help box, in the ROM they always have the same number of bytes.

It seems that the game compresses these texts such that they'll never exceed a certain size. So editing the description boxes is proving to be a challenge on my part, considering I have no idea how the compression works.

Also, in the description box, it seems that you have to start a line once you hit a maximum of 25 characters including spaces. Below are some of the description data that I've copied. Hopefully, someone here will be able to figure out how the compression works because I really, really want to make a Rune Knight job complete with legit descriptions. 

Anyway, you might see some letters below some of the bytes. That's what those bytes translate into alphabetically. As you can see, not all the letters are there. It's because of the compression, I think. The time mage part can't be seen completely but I assure you, it has more characters than the gladiator and fighter description yet it still occupies the same number of bytes.

Anyway, that's what I've found. Oh yeah, monster races from goblin to lamia can use the secret characters' after mission dialogue, provided they have a special sprite. While I haven't tested it out for generic monster sprites yet, I do know this means that you can make an additional playable expert job. Provided of course, that you're willing to sacrifice a monster job.

spoiler

[Darthatron]

http://datacrystal.romhacking.net/wiki/Final_Fantasy_Tactics_Advance:Strings
http://datacrystal.romhacking.net/wiki/Final_Fantasy_Tactics_Advance:Compression_Formats

[Ethereal Embrace]

   So confused...