ROM Hack [Translation] Puzzle Series Vol. 5 - Slitherlink

[Alchemilla]

I don't get this game but good on you for trying to translate it. The translated images look great so far. May try it when it's done.

 

[T-Tudor]

Spoiler: Puzzle Series Vol. 12 - Akari

So far, I've checked all .arc files related to AKARI game, and translated all, except mistake.arc (which contains a sentence that I haven't encountered in game yet, so I'll leave it for later) and obj_gamemenu_bij.arc (which contains 3 skins and I'm almost done with the first one).

.bga files are quite different than .arc files; when I look for lz77 compressions, it only finds tiles, and for some .bga files I need maps.

Here are some screenshots that cover almost all my progress so far:

Spoiler: Screenshots comparison

Can somebody help me out by translating these:

Spoiler: Some buttons

 

[Auryn]

If the map isn't too complex, you can build it by yourself with tile tool in CT2.
else, check the bottom of the extracted bga, i think i saw something there but it's a NCSR without header.
tell me what file you need that.

 

[Auryn]

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Not translated by me but i hope they are correct.

 

[T-Tudor]

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Not translated by me but i hope they are correct.

Thanks.

I've been working on Akari these days and here's what's left:

• game title(there are tiles that are used more than once so I won't be able to translate it);
• 2nd and 3rd skin(I'll translate them later);
• tutorial, help, option's top screen messages. Their graphics should be located in bij_tutorial.bga, bij_help.bga and bij_option_up.bga respectively. The problem is that I can't get them. They have a 10 at the address x00000020 like other .bga files, but when I look for compression it gives me no results.
• bij_selectgame.bga- I can't find any compression but when I open it in tile editor I can see some messed up graphics which can't be edited.
• some messages and graphics that might be unused.

Auryn can you take a look at .bga files from above, please.

 

[Auryn]

I will take a look tomorrow if i have time

 

[Auryn]

I see your problem with the title image, I believe i already identified where the tile map is (it's inside the same file with the palette as well) but it's broken up in pieces (3 or 4 pieces) and like you said it reuse the same tile sometimes (nothing special there, it's standart things). I will try to create an NSCR or NCER for you so you can edit that.

 

[Auryn]

And here already the update...you like what you see??

 

[Auryn]

Time to learn

At the bottom you see some "garbage"

That garbage is actually the rest of the data that you need.
In the white part 1 you have your palette and in the black part 2, you have the tilemap (both without header).

If we take a look in hex mode:

We have the same here, 1 palette and 2 tile map.

Now to your question...why didn't CT2 extract the file?? Very simple if you know a bit of hex counting, the compression header (the thing i explained when i told you about the x10 and x30) and if you take a look at the "compression search window".
In clear, the "search compression" of CT2 is capable only to extract till FFFF but this file it's bigger than that.
How to extract it anyway?? Easy: take an hex editor and CUT (so you have them for later) all the bytes till the x10 (not included) that you find at offset x20.
Save the compressed part as xxx.bin. Open it with ct2 and go to tool > LZ77 extract and name it example xxx.dec. Now open that file again and you should have the file in my images when you alineated the graphic and choosed the right format.
You probably ask me how to use the palette if it's in the same file, nothing more easy than that. Go to the 1F and mark the white area i marked in the ex editor (in the bottom right part of CT2 you should see a counter while you mark that if made correctly should be at x200). Then right click with the mouse and choose "data to palette", change CT2 to graphic mode and you have the right colors.
To rebuild the file make the process in the opposite way:
With xxx.dec loaded choose tool> Lz77 compress, save it as xxx.bin, open the bin with the hex editor and paste the bytes you cut out before. Save it and replace the one in the rom split you have.

Have fun

 

[T-Tudor]

Well thank you once again, Auryn.
I thought about doing all this once, but didn't. I guess I should have, before asking for help. Anyway thanks to you I can continue working on this project.

This even worked on a .bga that was x30 compressed. However it must be edited, before importing back, to make it smaller in size, as a x10 compression makes file bigger in size. Luckily there is what to edit, so I don't have to worry.

I'm happy to see that tutorial messages don't need tile maps to be edited. That'll make job a lot easier.

 

[Auryn]

I will teach you another trick later with CT2 but now i am at work.
Well, it's looking you are doing a good job yourself so it's nice to help out when i can.
So, the tip with recompress the x30 with the x10 compression was a lazy thing from my part.
It's looking you don't have a problem splitting a file so take a look at this tool from my friend CUE:
http://www.romhacking.net/utilities/826/

It allow you to recompress RLE and a bunch of other formats.
Maybe then the recompressed file will fit the space.

 

[Auryn]

Yeap, the tile map was there where i was thinking
I rip the graphics so you can reuse them and i make you a full screen nscr.
It is actually not broken into pieces but there is half of the tiles that are unused anyway and they "mixed" the graphics in the NCGR and on screen so that it look like the tile map is broken in pieces.

 

[Auryn]

That's the first byte of the tile map

 

[T-Tudor]

I will teach you another trick later with CT2 but now i am at work.
Well, it's looking you are doing a good job yourself so it's nice to help out when i can.
So, the tip with recompress the x30 with the x10 compression was a lazy thing from my part.
It's looking you don't have a problem splitting a file so take a look at this tool from my friend CUE:
http://www.romhacking.net/utilities/826/

It allow you to recompress RLE and a bunch of other formats.
Maybe then the recompressed file will fit the space.

Thanks for the tool. With CT's x10 LZ compression the file was 0.1 Kb bigger than original uncut file, but with RLE x30 compression the file was 1Kb smaller.

I already finished help and tutorial, and also some other graphics.

So i decided to take look again, myself at bij_gametitle.bga. I exported palettes as binary file, then I exported the rest of "garbage", that is supposedly the tile map, from 0x00006240 to 0x000067FF, also as a binary file.
Then I opened bij_gametitle.bga with palette and tile map in Tike and, I've got this:

Who would have thought.
I tried this once, but didn't succeeded just because I didn't know which was the palette and which the tile map.

 

[T-Tudor]

It seem that game title tile map is composed by 11 smaller tile maps. Each one displays a row of tiles from game title with a different palette. So if I edited image from above and imported it with Tinke, it'll give a error like "The image has more colors than permitted. 97 unique colors!". So to edit game title I must export all it's rows as different files, edit them and import them back.

 

[Normmatt]

It seem that game title tile map is composed by 11 smaller tile maps. Each one displays a row of tiles from game title with a different palette. So if I edited image from above and imported it with Tinke, it'll give a error like "The image has more colors than permitted. 97 unique colors!". So to edit game title I must export all it's rows as different files, edit them and import them back.

No that's just a palette change... just stick to one palette and let the game handle the rest

 

[T-Tudor]

I decided to do as I said. I extracted all game title's rows with their own palette, then I joined them into one image, edited it and split the image back. THen I tried to import edited rows with Tinke, but they were all imported to the same address, then I realized that I need to import the whole image. To bypass tinke's error, I imported all rows to CrystalTile and changed their palette, so they would have a common palette. I joined the rows again and imported them with Tinke. Then I imported the new tile map to the original file and this was the result:

I realized that info about palettes was stored in tile maps which I replaced with the ones made by Tinke.
So I opened tile maps in hex editor, and little by little, started figuring out the palettes:

Spoiler

And after some editing:

It looks better with all palettes than with one. Besides a single palette doesn't have all necessary colours.

Game title is also present on option menu, and it uses a different file, but it was a matter of copy & paste to edit that file.

It took me a whole day to finish game title and just 2 day to finish help+tutorial.
Now I need to fix some graphics, and also find graphics for 2nd skin(I still haven't found them), then I'll release the patch.

 

[Auryn]

WOW!
Good work
I would had changed the tilemap by hand and told you what tiles you can change
The tilemap is not splitted, it's just that there are many x00 that refer to the first empty/transparent tile and always line by line.
You have example the upper tiles of puzzle serie Vol.12 and then all the empty tiles till the right border of the screen, then the middle part of the puzzle series Vol12 and again empty tiles till the right border of the screen.
Adding to that, what you see on screen and what you see on the tiles, is not in the same order.
If you take a look at x63C0, you will see something like 0000 01xx 02xx 03xx etc..
That is actually the part where you have the kanjis.
Because the xx isn't always the same, i didn't make it directly on friday.
Those xx are usually a rotation of a tile and the palette index.
If you want to know exactly how it works, you can check this:
http://llref.emutalk.net/docs/

 

[T-Tudor]

WOW!
Good work
I would had changed the tilemap by hand and told you what tiles you can change
The tilemap is not splitted, it's just that there are many x00 that refer to the first empty/transparent tile and always line by line.
You have example the upper tiles of puzzle serie Vol.12 and then all the empty tiles till the right border of the screen, then the middle part of the puzzle series Vol12 and again empty tiles till the right border of the screen.
Adding to that, what you see on screen and what you see on the tiles, is not in the same order.
If you take a look at x63C0, you will see something like 0000 01xx 02xx 03xx etc..
That is actually the part where you have the kanjis.
Because the xx isn't always the same, i didn't make it directly on friday.
Those xx are usually a rotation of a tile and the palette index.
If you want to know exactly how it works, you can check this:
http://llref.emutalk.net/docs/

I see...
I thought the game title had several tile maps, before importing the edited image with Tinke. I realized I was wrong when I edited tile map, and then I moved the game title down 2 tiles.

I just couldn't find second skin's bottom screen's graphics. I'll just release the patch as is, besides 2 skins should be enough.

 

[Auryn]

What you mean for "skin"??