ROM Hack Translation Dragon Quest IV English Party Chat Patch

[AustNerevar]

EDIT: I totally meant to flag the title with [RELEASE]. Can a mod do that if they happen by this post?

For those not aware, the English DS version of Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of Chosen excluded the Party chat dialogue when it was translated. This is a lot of flavor text that really helps build out the characters and I've always felt the characterization of the Party members suffered because of it. Fortunately, when Square Enix ported these games to Android, they finished the translation and gave us the Party chat dialogue in English.

About a year ago, a user by the name of concreted created a patching tool that would let you hack your own rom dump of the JP version of DQ4 and insert the text files from the Android rom, but you had to extract the files yourself and run it through python. This would take the JP text and replace it all with English text, including the party chat (English versions of DQ4 had party chat disabled in code so simply patching in the translated text wouldn't work). There are caveats with tbis method as somethings won't change (the name selection screen remains in Japanese, for example). See concreted's GitHub here for a list of known issues. He did a really huge thing here but wasn't familiar with romhacking in general so he left the patch at that.

So I took my finished product and made some xdelta patches for the game. One patch is for the Japanese rom and the other is for the English. There will be absolutely no difference between the end results of the two. I only included the English version patch in case you don't have access to the JP version to dump the rom for whatever reason.

Big thank you to concreted for doing this! It isn't perfect, but it is perfectly playable and a gift to those of us who want to play this game but don't really care for playing games on mobile.

Spoiler: Screenshots

English Version: Patch Download
Initial Release Post
Dragon Quest IV - Chapters of the Chosen (USA) (En,Fr,Es)
Database: No-Intro DS (all) (20210221-111036
File/ROM SHA-1: B9132B77597BFEB8F4162B4EE51D87B4F92EDC
File/ROM CRC32: C433DB29

Japanese Version: Patch Download
Initial Release Post
Dragon Quest IV - Michibikareshi Mono-tachi (Japan)
Database: No-Intro: DS (all) (v. 20210227-111036)
File/ROM SHA-1: 84BAF75D79B842FA5ECFDC66C112F1D19BF228AE
File/ROM CRC32: 3257B207

 

[ZipMartin]

I didn't know DQ4 had party chat and that it was cut. I feel betrayed, having played it twice. Thank you for this hack. It's really appreciated

 

[AustNerevar]

I didn't know DQ4 had party chat and that it was cut. I feel betrayed, having played it twice. Thank you for this hack. It's really appreciated

It's a huge part of the game for them to just cut out! But it likely saved them a ton in costs. I've never gotten around to playing the mobile version much, myself, because I don't like playing games on my phone.

 

[totakeke95]

And as always in the topic mods the EU version excluded

 

[AmandaRose]

Pretty cool but I hate you have to name your character in Japanese as there is no English keyboard.

 

[AustNerevar]

And as always in the topic mods the EU version excluded

I could technically make an EU version next. I want to reiterate though, that would be for accessibility (you want to dump the cartridge you have and all you have is that version). By using this patch you're actually turning the game into the the JP version with English dialogue text. So the end result between using the EU version and the US would be the same.

I could do that, but I was focusing on researching if the mobile app was ever released in other European languages and attempting concrete_ds patcher to see if it worked with non-english language files. But I'm beginning to suspect that English is the only western language that got the mobile release.

Pretty cool but I hate you have to name your character in Japanese as there is no English keyboard.

It's the biggest downside for me, but it isn't a deal breaker considering the extra dialogue you get. I've seen people using Japanese characters that look sort of like English to spell out their name. And you can always use an English to Katakana parser to translate the name you want to use into Japanese.

 

[N7Kopper]

I thought for a second that this actually added the chat to the international versions of DS DQIV. Ah well. Guess it's like Xenoblade X: nobody's added the bust sliders and original outfits to the English version yet.

 

[Kwyjor]

He did a really huge thing here but wasn't familiar with romhacking in general so he left the patch at that.

While this is inarguably much more convenient, I thought there were concerned about distributing copyrighted material as part of the patch?

 

[Kaisaan]

I saw that there was a release of a similar patch on RHDN by spiderfreak1101 but that one is listed as a translation of the English release. Do you know if there's any differences between that patch and yours?

 

[AustNerevar]

I saw that there was a release of a similar patch on RHDN by spiderfreak1101 but that one is listed as a translation of the English release. Do you know if there's any differences between that patch and yours?

Yes, that one does not work. It does not actually contain the translated party chat files.

 

[GGMsMDMA]

Thanks for the easy patch! Couldn't get that manual process working and I'd given up on it until I found your blog.

Wanted to mention I was having an issue that I didn't see in the known issues list. The text will often spill past the 3 line limit per text box and the last word will advance the text automatically, with no way to go back. Between my dyslexia and the accents, I can't read fast enough to keep up with the fast text.

It seemed like this was most often caused by the character names displaying inside the text box in jp mode, so I used the old AR code to force english mode on the jp rom. Now character names display above the text box and most lines aren't too long. I'm aware I'm a kinda slow reader so this might not be an issue for everyone, but there are still dialogues that spill into the 4th line. Keeps me on my toes.

 

[reds11]

so I used the old AR code to force english mode on the jp rom. Now character names display above the text box and most lines aren't too long

If you can share the action replay code it would be much appreciated.

 

[-Light-]

Hi! First of all, thank you very much for the patch!

I have a question. I didn't know that the party chat feature was removed and now I'm 19 hours in... I'm playing it on my New 3DS using TWiLight Menu++. I couldn't get it to work on my 3DS because I got a white screen when launching the game. Then I decided to try using desmune on my laptop and it works, but now the problem is that I can't import my save file. The save file has the same name as the ROM and I don't know what to do to import the save file. Is it even possible?

 

[AustNerevar]

Hi! First of all, thank you very much for the patch!

I have a question. I didn't know that the party chat feature was removed and now I'm 19 hours in... I'm playing it on my New 3DS using TWiLight Menu++. I couldn't get it to work on my 3DS because I got a white screen when launching the game. Then I decided to try using desmune on my laptop and it works, but now the problem is that I can't import my save file. The save file has the same name as the ROM and I don't know what to do to import the save file. Is it even possible?

DesMuMe used the .dsv file extension for saves I believe. You're going to need to convert that to a format the the DS would naturally recognize. Use this site to convert saves between .DSV and .SAV.

https://www.save-editor.com/tools/wse_ds_save_converter_for_emulator_desmume_dsv.html

 

[-Light-]

DesMuMe used the .dsv file extension for saves I believe. You're going to need to convert that to a format the the DS would naturally recognize. Use this site to convert saves between .DSV and .SAV.

Thanks for the fast reply, but I had already tried that (I even used the same website) and it doesn't recognize the .DSV file either... I tried it again, but the result was the same. I noticed that since the name of the file is the same, when I open the game it doesn't create a new .DSV file, but it won't load my save file anyway.

I'll attach my DS .SAV file here so that you can also check it out if you want.

 

[AustNerevar]

Thanks for the fast reply, but I had already tried that (I even used the same website) and it doesn't recognize the .DSV file either... I tried it again, but the result was the same. I noticed that since the name of the file is the same, when I open the game it doesn't create a new .DSV file, but it won't load my save file anyway.

I'll attach my DS .SAV file here so that you can also check it out if you want.

Oh, I wasn't thinking...

I'm sorry, but since this patch uses the JP rom as its base, save files that are made with the English rom won't work. Draagon Quest IV English and Dragon Quest IV JP are just too different for the saves to be compatible with each other.

 

[-Light-]

Oh, I wasn't thinking...

I'm sorry, but since this patch uses the JP rom as its base, save files that are made with the English rom won't work. Draagon Quest IV English and Dragon Quest IV JP are just too different for the saves to be compatible with each other.

Ohh I see. I thought about that too, but I also thought that there might be a small possibility because I read that the DS save files are region free. Thank you anyway

 

[AustNerevar]

It depends on the game. Dragon Quest V DS does have compatible save files. So does Dragon Quest IX (although the name will be corrupted as there aren't any kana fonts in the English version). But DQIV is so different (likely due to the party chat missing) that it just won't work, sadly.

 

[GGMsMDMA]

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/942422-dragon-quest-iv-chapters-of-the-chosen/40663403

If you can share the action replay code it would be much appreciated.

 

[Xdqwerty]

is it posible to make an (american) spanish version?