ROM Hack Daikoukai Jidai 4 - Rota Nova

[rockyspirit]

First of all, hello. This is my first time posting here and I'm already giving a try at some serious hacking.
I'm a programmer, know some Japanese and like hacking stuff when I have the free time, so I decided to try something for the DS.

I've been trying to hack Daikoukai Jidai 4 - Rota Nova for the DS and had some success. To summarize what I have:

• I can change most text in the game. However the strings are confined to the same size as the original Japanese one.
• I've found the character texts. Apparently, menu and some other text are images.
• I've figured out some of the format in the character text files.

And this is an image, where I changed the original "???"(Clau, shorthand for Claudio) to Claudi(so as to maintain string size):

Now for the technical stuff. This is a .zip file with some information I've gathered and an application which I've written in Python and PyGTK.

If you try importing the file SC0.DK4(available after unpacking in data/data), you'll notice that a python exception is thrown. An SJIS to UTF-8 conversion wasn't possible. If a certain byte is equal to 00h, I suppose the following data is an SJIS text. Doesn't work everytime.

And, finally, this is my request for hackers alike. What am I missing about this file? Or, what is the best approach to figure out this stuff?

 

[rockyspirit]

Noone answered my request but no reason to fret. I've found (part of) the answer myself.
I can now read and rebuild the text files. I don't expect any text to be missing, but who knows?

First, the updated informational file is this. I wonder if anyone cares to read that?
Next, the tool for translating and an initial translation. (Edit: the tool had a missing file and bug. Fixed that.)

Steps to test:

• Install Python, GTK+, PyGTK and LXML. If you use Linux(like myself), you won't have much trouble. Sorry, I haven't tested on Windows or MacOSX but do tell me if you do.
• Unzip the tool and translation. Unpack the rom somewhere.
• Run the tool(the main.py file). In the tool, load the translation file(sc0.uc4).
• Export the file(File->Export File) to //data/SC0.DK4 and Repack
• Run wherever you like. Tested on both Desmume and real hardware with M3DS Real flashcart.
• Start the game as Rafael Castrol. You should be fine if you don't touch the D-Pad.

The game will skip the text after 2 English sentences and that is what I need to investigate. The game loads the modified file fine but there seems to be something else to guarantee the text has the same size.

Edit: Scratch that. It seems it was an issue with alignment in the file.

And as for some images(The names are not in the same file):

 

[DarkDante]

can anyone help? is a good game.

 

[metastase]

OMG this is the only DS game I wish was translated. If this was a new release on another console I would buy whatever that is just for this game alone without thinking twice.

Sorry I can't offer any help but I wish you all the luck in world because games like this really deserve it.

 

[DarkDante]

OMG this is the only DS game I wish was translated. If this was a new release on another console I would buy whatever that is just for this game alone without thinking twice.

Sorry I can't offer any help but I wish you all the luck in world because games like this really deserve it.

Really difficult to get it right? I hope something can be done. I really want to try it.

 

[samcambolt270]

sigh, i wish people would post if they quit translating something. dont just stop posting altogether and let people wonder in vain.

 

[DarkDante]

sigh, i wish people would post if they quit translating something. dont just stop posting altogether and let people wonder in vain.

 

[DarkDante]

@jjjewel is there any Hope you can Help us on this?