In with the new!

[BRPXQZME]

Hmm...

I did my monthly ( ) e-mail check, to find the 'EHPC' E-mail, and I must admit:  This Rob, he never ceases to amaze me.  If he needs a translator or MIDI artist, I'm sure s/he'll come (well, I'm both, but I'm lazy and unreliable)

As a sad side-note, [Rob: Don't mention E****.  That's buried past.  I knew they'd never finish it ANYway, I just did that to keep some people quiet.  Few people here even know what that is, so, no reason to be bringing it up.  It's El-Hazard all the way now.]

Well, that's pretty impressive work.  All I can suggest is that for optimal translation, it is most likely possible to hack the script and bust that Jappy text wide open.  (And it prolly wouldn't even be that hard, considering it's as recent as the Saturn it might just be standard Shift-JIS or EUC text, uncompressed!)  Keep it up!

[Captain Southbird (EHOL Creator)]

it is most likely possible to hack the script and bust that Jappy text wide open.  (And it prolly wouldn't even be that hard, considering it's as recent as the Saturn it might just be standard Shift-JIS or EUC text, uncompressed!)  

It's possible, however I wouldn't know what files would have it, and then even if I opened one, I couldn't tell if I was decoding Japanese characters or just random bytes.  Plus you never know what encoding is thrown in on game strings... maybe not necessarily compression, but keycodes, namecodes, etc.  (I don't really know how the internal game operates, I only emulate it, but I think they did have some text-string keycodes)

Keep it up!

That's what I do.  :p

[BRPXQZME]

Hm, actually if you ever on a graphics hack find a suspicious-looking table of Japanese characters, you can be 96% sure that THAT is not only the font set, but ALSO that the encoding is most likely IN THAT EXACT ORDER.  Obviously this is because it makes the programmers' (and the hackers') jobs reasonable.

Other than name keycodes, and possibly 'social markers'... (for example, your younger brother would definitely call you something different than your older brother.  In Oriental society, the older you get, the more you get respected...
"An' the less you gotta respect!")

Trust me, there are already plenty of relative search tools, even for dual byte encoding and stuff.  If you wanted to extract a script, BY GOLLY YOU CAN GET IT.  Seriously, hacking is so advanced these days it's too scary.

[Captain Southbird (EHOL Creator)]

I am also aware of the respect terminology (vaguely from what anime teaches me, at least).

The question isn't wether or not it's possible, it's wether or not it's possible for me.  The key thing that I would really need to work on that properly is a functional Saturn emulator so I can immediately see if a tweak somewhere alters a text string, and then I can work from there.  Unfortunately not one emulator in existance is even barely functional for Saturn.


For the sake of it, the directory listing from the disc itself, and the best guess / knowledge I have:


The AN2 files

The AN2 files match names of sprite graphics used in the game (the GEKI*'s, for example, are the saveslot animations, and the SD*'s are "Super Deformed" player images used in the not-yet-implemented by me Option screen)
I'm going to assume that these are ANimation code files.  It'd be nice to be able to decode them for accurate animation emulation.  Currently I just count video capture frames and do a hardwired tick-based implement.

GEKI04.AN2
SDSHERA.AN2
GEKI03.AN2
SDNON.AN2
SDNAMI.AN2
GEKI07.AN2
SDAFU.AN2
GEKI06.AN2
GEKI01.AN2
SDMIUSE.AN2
SDMAKOTO.AN2
SDLUNE.AN2
SDISHI.AN2
GEKI05.AN2
SDFUJI.AN2
GEKI02.AN2
SDARERE.AN2


The B16 files

The B16's are the main graphics format used for almost all of the graphics.  They are actually 15-bit graphics (no combined pixel value ever exceeds 32767, which makes white), 5 bits red/green/blue.  Only catch is that green appears to have completely jumbled, illogical color values (as if when loaded it had a look-up table).  I suspect this was a simple encryption, something to keep people like me out.

EL0_06.B16
... many files ...
FMM04.B16


A.BIN


CPK, cinepak movie files

MOVIE00.CPK
... more ...
MOVIE17.CPK
MOVIE99.CPK


The DAT files

SOUNDS.DAT
BIND.DAT


The FON files

actually if you ever on a graphics hack find a suspicious-looking table of Japanese characters

Hmm, I WONDER what THESE could be?  Now if only I could interpret their format... well, actually I haven't tried much yet.

ASCII.FON
KANJI.FON
KANA.FON


The MES files

Well up until recently I thought maybe these were music files ... but now I realize they probably are MESsage files (gee, what just a little bit of examination will realize)

ELMUSIC.MES
ELMOVIE.MES
ENDNANAM.MES
FIRST.MES
ENDRUNE.MES
ELHAN5.MES
ELHAN4.MES
... many more ...
ELHAN8.MES
STAFF.MES
START.MES


The Q0 files

24-bit? graphics files used for special, "Extra-pretty" graphics.  These have even more illogical color pools then the 5-bit green from the B16's.  I have yet to figure it out.

STAFF.Q0
IDOBG.Q0
WORLDBG9.Q0
ITEMBG3.Q0


Other data files

BIND.TBL
ABSTRACT.TXT
BIBLIO.TXT
CPYRIGHT.TXT

[BRPXQZME]

Try a 32x32 font with 1bpp setting in YY-CHR (That's what it looks like, judging from the screenies so far.  YY-CHR is a useful VG graphics tool, available ).  If that shows something really clear, send the 'kana' font to me, and then I could probably deduce what you're trying to look for.

Better yet, have you found any ... erm... MES files that seem to correspond to something you could access easily?  That is a definite method for finding a point to start hacking.

A.BIN... sounds like the executable.  Just seems logical to me, considering how many calculator programs I've written called 'A'...  It always shows up first on the list!

These 'BIND.DAT' and 'BIND.TBL'  might mean something.  Could be the script's in the dat file, and tbl sounds... like... well... table.  Might wanna analyze that, could actually be the key to something.

And as a random post-ending message...
http://www.el-hazardonline.net/cgi-bin/register/eholmemberfile.cgi?getfile=tvart/tvartthingy1.jpg;type=jpeg
Bookmark?    That's just like the slip you might find in books you order.  It merely identifies the book, genre, price, etc.  If I get time to scan one, I'll show you an example of an English equivalent... except that one is more of a receipt.

[Captain Southbird (EHOL Creator)]

Try a 32x32 font with 1bpp setting

I figured it probably is something of that sort, based on ROM hacking I used to do in the old days.  I'll have to check that when I get some time, maybe I'll even use said utility.  :p

Better yet, have you found any ... erm... MES files that seem to correspond to something you could access easily?  That is a definite method for finding a point to start hacking.

They're all unknown binary data, save for random strings that appear within that apparently link to other files (although strangely sometimes some of those files don't exist?)

Generally, this is a MES file:


And this is the equivalent (I'm supposing) to my PC imitation version:


There's a large amount of redundancy in the MES file, you'll notice.  Also it has references to many B16's, which suggests it loads graphics dynamically, while mine loads all at startup, except background images, which ARE handled dynamically; note where my file occasionally points to something like EL2_01.  The redundancy, unfortunately, either says that this ISN'T the message system, or its encrypted in some method.  (Either byte-for-word or something more complex; I was hoping just dumping it into IE with Encoding on a Japanese mode would render characters, but this didn't work out)

A.BIN... sounds like the executable.  

Very likely.  The BIN extension is one of the oldest I know of.  But I have no idea for sure what it does... unless its perchance the core of the game?

Bookmark?  ...

Well, sorry, I have near-zero knowledge of Japanese ... things.    I was waiting for somebody to tell me.

[BRPXQZME]

Eh, it's just bookstores these days don't consider those sort of thingies important anymore (I blame computers for that).  Just another sign of how Japanese companies appreciate efficiency.

*eyes MES file*

Interesante..........

We get blah, filename, blah, filename, blah, filename, blah, filename, blah, filename, blah, filename, etc.  This could possibly be the sequences, but there doesn't seem to be enough room for the Japanese text.  Which means... P0||\|7><0rz!!!  Now how that works... heh... hah... hoo...

Well, at least we know that the filenames are surrounded by ASCII #6.  Lessee... 0x01041D06[filename]06[00 or 20, can't tell]020F would be the general pattern.   And now I'm tired.  More analysis later *snore*

[Captain Southbird (EHOL Creator)]

Yeah, I'm thinking there's no text strings to be found there.  It's possible they're all grouped into one particular area and that these only access them via a numerical ID.

Interestingly, my EPC files are comparable in size to the MES files (so if the function's the same, me and the original programs seem to share ideas)

Also, A.BIN is all binary stuff save for these text strings:

GFS_SBL Version 2.10 1996-02-01

CD001  STM_SBL Version 2.10 1996-02-01

.   ..  [DOS directory current/parent?]

CPK Version 1.20 1995-10-05 PCM Version 1.16 1995-03-31

FORM    FORM    AIFF    COMM    SSND    APCM    AIFC    NONE    ima4



Looks like a control library, at least for the Cinepak movies.

[BRPXQZME]

For hacking these sort of things, I have found no one tool that worked for even MOST functions, but I highly recommend Translhextion for what is pretty much an advanced Windows version of them ole DOS thingies where it showed hex data on the left, and ANSI equivalents on the right.  Just a consideration, but it IS the only tool I used when hacking Pokemon Ruby!  

*room is very quiet*

What?


Yeah, anyways that makes it way easier to search for patterns.  And if you ever found a unified script, you can create a table file to edit manually (sorta, it's one of the features of the program that still has to be worked out, but prolly never will).

(Translhextion available http://vice.parodius.com/win_prg.html ) [/plug]

Alright, on second look I must tell you that dynamic loading is somewhat necessary for a console.  Just a waste of RAM if you don't...

Must...find...pointer...table....

[Captain Southbird (EHOL Creator)]

Yeah, I've done by-table ROM "translation" before.  But I don't think the desired result is going to come from this, at the very least not without an emulator or something else to allow full analysis of RAM and VRAM (which would probably be the ultimate device for this scenario)

[BRPXQZME]

Yeh, somewhat of a pity that nobody really wants to take time out for the poor old Saturn.

Although emulators are often built around simple 'display text, show picture' games, because it's just simple compared to other games.