A thread for the anon who asked for The Legend of Heroes IV script and a possible translation.Here are the scripts I've extracted so far.https://files.catbox.moe/du6bjn.zip
The first bad Legend of Heroes
>>12343838Would you consider making a little blog or something documenting how you work?Like what tools you use, which parts have been complicated and how you solved it, etc.
>>12343838TL Anon from the previous threads here. This is looking really promising!Comparing the game's script to the original game manuscript's book, I’m seeing a lot of exact text matches. I think we can reuse large amounts of what I translated from there. Is editing the TXT files directly fine for now, or are you planning to set up a more convenient way to edit the scripts? Maybe something like Google Sheets for easier collaboration and data pulling?GT40000.TXT, GT09000.TXT, and GT40010.TXT cover the Ending 1 sequence. The "EN" files contain the rest of the ending, but the final epilogue text and staff credits seem to be missing from your current script dump.
Looks neat
>>12344330>This is looking really promising!Thanks. The script files for now are only for reading purpose, as they don't include critical information to be reinserted, and I was thinking of using CSV files, like the test one included. I'll have to see if it's practical with Google Sheets. I'm not really good with online stuff, so I'm open to suggestions. I still have to make my tools more practical to be really usable.About the epilogue, it's not there yet as it's played by a separate executable that I haven't checked yet. Seems to be similar to the way the opening prologue works.
>>12344091Sure. My main tool is the free version of IDA 5.0 (it's old but it's the last free one that handles 16-bit x86). Then a hex editor is a must to check file content.My first goal was to disassemble ED4.EXE, understand how the archive/compression works in order to analyze the script files. But given how tiny it is (532 bytes!) it doesn't do much. It only loads and run the first file inside DATA10.DAT. So I copied the corresponding bytes in a new file and opened it in IDA, and turns out it's a module that provides all kind of services with a custom interrupt : load a file from any archive, decompress data, update the palette, draw a glyph from the system font or the custom one... It also loads the custom font and segues into the second file of DATA10, which is packed, so that's when I had to write a program to read the archives and unpack the included files.
Now at DATA10, second file, another executable : it's the main menu. I haven't looked much into it, just that it's followed by DATA_H 1st file if you pick New Adventure (the opening text and logo) or DATA11's only file if you pick Continue. At last, this one seems to hold the main gameplay code.A side note on how text is handled. While the PC-98 system uses JIS encoding, it's common for most developers to use Shift-JIS, which was the standard for most text editors and software. In fact the only games I've seen that don't use Shift-JIS are the Viper series.With Shift-JIS, a character can be two bytes, in red, or single byte, other colors.Here, the devs chose to use the top green line (00 to 0F) for control codes like new line, new paragraph or location name. The lower green line (10 to 1F) changes text color : 10, color 0, 11 color 1...Values in yellow are ASCII and use the font >>12345709.Red starts a two bytes, full-width Japanese characters.Now, here's the trick. In blue, we have half-width katakana which isn't directly used by the game but as a small compression method. The idea is substituting any of these codes with the corresponding hiragana or katakana.For example :どのような､ご用ですか? (12 characters so 24 bytes) is stored asどﾉﾖｳﾅ､ご用でｽｶ?(6 full-width and 6 half-wdith so 6*2 + 6 = 18 bytes)｢ and ｣ aren't shown so their codes, A2 and A3, are used respectively to change between "replace with katakana" or the default "replace with hiragana". Like アヴィン is stored as ｢ｱヴｨﾝ, 6 bytes instead of 8.
>>12343838>poisonous monstersjust don't eat them, then. no worries. if they were venomous, that would be scarier.
>>12343838so is geofront officially dead?
>>12345609Fair enough. For now, this is sufficient to check for missing parts in the game manuscript and identify any differences between the two. I'm also currently working on the partial Story Draft that they released in 1999, which will keep me busy for the time being.>I'm not really good with online stuff, so I'm open to suggestions.Anything is fine by me. I only suggested Google Sheets out of convenience, as it allows us to work on the same files and see updates in real-time, making collaboration much easier.>>12346225They are still working on White Witch (Windows version) and Dinosaur Resurrection. I imagine they'll likely release them this year, but they probably have other unannounced projects in the works as well. Last I heard, they offered to help translate the Sega Saturn port by Hudson/RayForce, since a large portion of the script is apparently the same.They initially committed to translating the entire Gagharv trilogy back when they announced WW, but they are only interested in the final "canon" versions, aka the Windows releases. LoH4 on PC-98, however, is a drastically different game, which is why I personally want to see it translated. While the Windows version for it reuses many of its assets, it was entirely retooled to "align more" with the other two games, but it also completely overthrew and rewrote the original script via a different writer. In fact, the original scenario writer of the trilogy, Hayakawa, pretty much trashed the new version on his personal website at the time, going out of his way to state he had nothing to do with it.
>>12343838god damn it i love pc-98 art so much, the combination of high resolution and limited color pallet does things to my pee pee.
>>12343838Just use AI direct translation idiot?
>>12347335i'm going to stick a pencil in your pee hole
>>12346829There's also the PS1 version which is true to the PC-98 original, only with a slightly different look. Plenty of more emulation options though.
>>12346829>Anything is fine by me. I only suggested Google Sheets out of convenienceIt seems to work fine. I'm trying to import CSVs and use cURL to be able to download back the data and I'll keep you updated.>>12346075This was a Google translation test and I should have checked before posting this specific pic. My bad.
>>12347296That's what got me into PC-98 games. People like to post some full-screen anime pictures to showcase the system, but imho, the artists' talent really shine when they have to do UI, sprites and background with the same palette.In our case, among the available 16 colors, the whole game uses the same 12 colors shared by everything. Then stage's tilesets can define another 2. The 15th color is reserved for spell effects, and the 16th is just the transparent color.Pic related is a basic raw tile set (I used grey as the transparent color).
>>12349309Then another file combines these raw tiles with different layers. I assume it was generated by the map editor.
>>12349320Finally, the map uses a combination of raw and layered tiles.
>>12344330Imagine doing a translation project over 4chan threads. Make a shared Google sheets, retards. Then you can both translate
>>12349428Imagine a plum floating in perfume served in a man's hat
>>12349080GMF also published a straightforward port of White Witch to PS1. The screen crunch in these ports is hilarious; they didn't do anything to accommodate the 240p resolution.Still though, I wonder if the PS1 port might be easier to hack. That version has a save-anywhere feature (in the original, you can only save at inns (pay up), with tents, or do a temporary save), and you can even use cheat codes and a loan from the Phildin Royal Bank to save your imouto, cutting out most of the early grinding.>>12349279Sounds good. Looking forward to it.I started working on the "LISTS" contents last night. Most of the terms seem to be a mix of Spanish, Latin, Greek, French, Italian, and German, with the summons taking from classical mythology (Greek, Norse, Egyptian, Zoroastrian). A decent amount of items/locations from LISTS will need to be shortened due to the 16-character limit (e.g. Tibri Mountain Path -> Tibri Mtn Path), but I'm determined to get it done.>>12349309Is it just me, or does the PC-98 version actually look prettier than the Windows one? Even though they updated the color palette to 65,535 colors, the "remake" looks weirdly cheap and isn't as well-composed as the original. The environments just feel flat to me compared to the meticulous dithering and carefully shaded PC-98 sprites.And I say "remake" in quotes because despite everything they changed/altered, over 95% of the town and scene maps were simply touched up. Not a single map was significantly redrawn for the Windows version; it was all a result of standing on the shoulders of the PC-98 original. Even so, it looks far worse than Falcom's other 2000 contemporary (Ys II Eternal)...>>12349428I agree that 4chan sucks for any actual discussion; most people just act like smug douchebags and nothing productive rarely happens here. Still, it'll be weirdly ironic if something actually comes out of these threads. But yeah, that's (should be) the plan.
>>12351213> Most of the terms seem to be a mix of Spanish, Latin, Greek, French, Italian, and German, with the summons taking from classical mythology (Greek, Norse, Egyptian, Zoroastrian).This seems pretty tough. While some names were familiar from playing SMT games, I had no idea who some of the summons were.> A decent amount of items/locations from LISTS will need to be shortened due to the 16-character limitThe limit on item names is non-negotiable as too many UI windows rely on 16 characters. When it comes to location names, we could try expanding this limit. They're used on signs, the pop-up when you enter an area, the world map and save names. The only case where it would be a problem is the save name (that's truncated to 12 characters anyway)And yeah, I agree the PC-98 looks more carefully crafted. The Windows sprites still look cute but the backgrounds do look blander, a bit like RPGMaker games.Now, if there is a way to reach out to you on a Falcom or PC-98 forum/discord we could continue there. Or just share the tentative Google sheet link have you join.
>>12343838"Legend of Heroes 4" is such a rizzless title, at that point you should be using subtitles if your title is that weak
>>12345709>>12345913That sounds very interesting but, sadly, I have absolutely no idea of what you mean. My max tech level is understanding the hexadecimal system.Do you know any newbie-friendly ressources to slowly understand your posts?
>>12352957Knowing hexadecimal is a good starting point, then a simple programming language. find C easy for basic file reading and writing, but you may prefer Python. Then I find image files to be a good starting point for hacking. Read about a simple image format like how BMP is structured and open an image in a hex editor so you really see how it's done. Then try writing a program that generates a BMP image and when done you can try hacking a game's image format. Variable Geo Max's background images is a good exercise, no disassembly needed!Knowing a bit of programming is essential, then you'll have to read about ASM. I used this https://www.plantation-productions.com/Webster/www.artofasm.com/DOS/index.html as it covers 16-bit x86, a must for PC-98.I realize I didn't even explain archives. It's just taking a bunch of files and lumping them in a single file. It's common for computer games to use them as an archive of 50 files will be smaller than 50 separate files on disks, and it's harder for people who want to tinker with your files.Here I'll show a friendlier example : the script archive ZSD00 in Lightning Warrior Raidy.The first 2 bytes give the size of the header. Be careful that on Intel cpus, multi-byte numbers are stored with the least significant byte first, aka little-endian. C0 00 is actually 00C0h=192. So the next 192 highlighted bytes are the info about the archive content.For each file, the info is 16 bytes : 12 for the filename and 4 for where the file starts in the archive. But how do we know the file size? Well, a file ends when the next one starts, so we don't need to store its size.Here, the first file is BATTLE.ZSD, it starts at offset 000000C2h and ends at 0006A20h not included, so its size is 6A20h-C2h=695Eh=26974 bytes.When hacking a game using this system, the first step is being able to extract the files in order to inspect them individually, then when a file is modified, being able to rebuild the archive from them.
>>12353339A common way to refer to 2-byte values is the term word. Usually 2-bytes/16 bits = word, and 4-bytes/32 bits = double word or dword.Now, here's how the archives work in TLoH4, for DATA10.DAT. The first bytes are the signature "AFLB DAT\x1A" for the program to recognize its a valid archive. Then a word value at offset 0Ah that gives the number of files in this archive, 0Bh = 11.Then I highlighted the 11 word values that seem to be the start offset of each file. We notice that they are in ascending order but seem pretty small compared to the archive size.That's where reading the disassembly of ED4.EXE helped and show the first trick. What it does is open DATA10.DAT, read the offsets at 10h and 12h, resp. 0002h and 0050h and multiply them by 20h. Then proceeds to load the data from 2h*20h = 40h to 50h*20h = A00h and executes the code, so I know the content between these offsets is some valid x86 code.While most games only store data in their archives, here we have some executable binary. So I enter the cycle of get new file => disassemble it.Also you'll notice that contrary to Raidy's, here there are no names, the game only references them a word value made of their archive ID and their index. First archive is DATA_A (ID = 0), DATA_B (ID = 1) ... DATA10 (ID =A)... DATA15 (ID = F)For example : A005h is file at index 5 in archive DATA10. 0037h (the sepia cutscene script) is file 55 in DATA_A.It's a good way to save space : only two bytes instead of names make file references very compact. But it's a pain for reverse-engineering as you have no clue what a file's function is from its identifier.
>>12353339>>12353669Thanks a lot for the in-depth post, anon.Sadly, it's overwhelming for someone with no computer knowledge.>how BMP is structuredAlright. It's still damn nebulous because I don't understand any of the parts which compose a bitmap. Maybe it'll get eas->Then try writing a program ;_;I failed you.
>>12345913That's fascinating, what tools would you recommend to extract files from pc98 images or even view their graphics? (unless tile editors are enough?)I'm sort of interested in Tokyo Twilight Busters but the original version is daunting and impenetrable (just a dsk file I have no idea what to do with)The DS remake has scripts in SJIS in raw order that can be edited in normal text editors but there's some stuff like the staff roll and vertical text in the ending that became images. At least that might make it easier to modify (if the monospaced font is ever resolved since it ignores the DS font metadata, see image) but well the original has its charm. Here's the extracted text (DS version) in case it's useful:files.catbox.moe/0rjq69.7z>>12352938Good thing that Falcom did just that. It's "Tears of Vermillion".
>>12354202>I'm sort of interested in Tokyo Twilight Busters[good news]>the original version is daunting and impenetrable [sad news]The original version looks so nice and intriguing.
>>12351213>>12352935>I wonder if the PS1 port might be easier to hack.You probably won't have the one-byte text encoding and would need to rework the font routine to at least be smaller width, compared to the PC98 version displaying your English text properly from the get-go.>Spanish, Latin, Greek, French, Italian, and German>need to be shortened due to the 16-character limitI think you should maintain separate columns for your full translation and abridged version, because the technical solution can evolve later. I would isolate the text with strict length limits first, use all accents I think are suitable for the loan words (avoid uppercase accents though), think of ligatures to keep length short (maybe "Ti"/"ri"/"ll"/"il" as single characters), and probably get creative (Tibri Mountain Path can be "Mt. Tibri Pass", "Tibri Hike") then keep a list of those in the font and use them as replacements. You have a budget of 50 ligatures/accents and they would remove the ability to use hiragana in the game so choose wisely.The rest of the game can be translated normally, you could make npcs talk about the location names with their longer versions, which would not be consistent but would at least give a full experience
>>12352935>Now, if there is a way to reach out to you on a Falcom or PC-98 forum/discord we could continue there. Or just share the tentative Google sheet link have you join.I'm in both the PC-9800 Series Central and the main Falcom servers. Post in whichever one you prefer and I'll see it (though the former might be more useful for technical support and gauging interest).>>12354202>It's "Tears of Vermillion".That is the English subtitle given to the Windows version, and unfortunately, I realized it misses the mark after becoming familiar with the original. While Shizuku (雫) translates literally to "droplet", in the original game, it refers to the "dazzling droplet of sweat, blood, and tears" shed by those "living life to the fullest". The Windows version reduced these three layers of meaning to just "tear", narrowing this multifaceted concept down to a single element and losing the symbolism of effort (sweat) and life/sacrifice (blood).Personally, I want to use the original English subtitle featured in the CD case of the PC-98 game: The Bead of Scarlet. It's more faithful to the original intent, while also not a bad way to set it apart from the Windows version.>The bead of scarlet, liquid ruby... it is the sweat of these laiden heavy in the struggle of life, the proof of teeming life, a gorgeous tear, this single bead of scarlet, the proof of ocean of passions residing in the human heart, from one drop of blood...>>12354251>I think you should maintain separate columns for your full translation and abridged version, because the technical solution can evolve later. Yeah, I agree; that's exactly what I've been doing so far. It's mostly various items and location names that need attention; summons, ranks, skills, and character names should be fine for now. We can nail down the final terms for these in a later, move advanced phase of the translation project.
>>12344042I still don't get the appeal.
>>12354202>what tools would you recommend to extract files from pc98 imagesMost studios have their own image formats, so you usually need to reverse-engineer. Old image viewers like Susie and Grapholic had plug-ins that could read most VN pictures, but I don't know if there was one for Wolf Team games and TTB. I don't know much about DS hacking though, but I can have a quick look at the PC-98 version.>>12354251For location names, the storage isn't much of a problem, it's mostly the cramped display. Still, I was planning on breaking the hiragana replacement anyway to allow display of pairs of ASCII characters. Here I have changed some values of the hiragana table to "ta" "ck" "ag" and "us" in order to keep the action menu labels 4 bytes, as it would require a lot of hacking to make it accept more than 4. It also will help with keeping the translated scripts' size below the limit.When I explained the substitution, I forgot to mention there was another mode, enabled with byte 7C '|', that ignores Shift-JIS and only uses the custom font, kinda like extended ASCII, that's how the icons are shown. e.g. 7C 80 81 A3 will display the 2 parts of the right-pointing arrow and go back to hiragana substitution.So yeah, that's a great idea to add characters here and the original font file is 4K so there's plenty of room.>>12354343Okay, I'm going to the PC-9800 Series Central then.
