making tables

[janitor]

when making a table, how do I find japanese text in the rom to experiment with, and what program should I use to find it?

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[Ugly Joe]

> when making a table, how do I find japanese text in the rom
> to experiment with, and what program should I use to find
> it?

For what system is the game (nes, snes, etc)?

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[Turtle]

> when making a table, how do I find japanese text in the rom
> to experiment with, and what program should I use to find
> it?

Check out http://www.romhacking.com/docs/general/tables/tabdef.txtThe Definitive Guide to ROM Hacking Tables</a>. It explains how to make Japanese tables as well as provides a lot of other intricacies regarding table files. It talks about a couple of different table making programs as well. If you have any questions about it, the author of that tutorial posts on the messageboard on that site.

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[Turtle]

> For what system is the game (nes, snes, etc)?

It shouldn't matter. The techniques for finding font values and building tables are pretty much identical regardless of platform.


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[Ugly Joe]

> It shouldn't matter. The techniques for finding font values
> and building tables are pretty much identical regardless of
> platform.

I was thinking of compressed text like in snes roms. It's my understanding that a relative search won't work unless you manage to deocompress it. Feel free to correct me since I've never actually dealt with it.

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[Turtle]

> I was thinking of compressed text like in snes roms. It's
> my understanding that a relative search won't work unless
> you manage to deocompress it. Feel free to correct me since
> I've never actually dealt with it.

It would depend on the type of compression. If it's just something simple like DTE or dictionary compression, a relative search would still work. If it's a more complex compression scheme like LZW-varients then it would be necessary to decompress the ROM in order to find the text. (At which point you wouldn't need to relative search because you'd already know where the text was if you're able to decompress it.)

But, judging from the original question, I'm presuming the issue has nothing to do with compression and is simply a matter of not knowing how to relative search for Japanese text, since most relative search tools aren't equiped to handle doing such.


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[janitor]

> But, judging from the original question, I'm presuming the
> issue has nothing to do with compression and is simply a
> matter of not knowing how to relative search for Japanese
> text, since most relative search tools aren't equiped to
> handle doing such.

It is a SNES ROM. I've dealt with dictionary compression before, but in English ROMs, so the only problem I foresee with that is not knowing where a word begins or ends. So yeah, the main problem is not knowing how to relative search for Japanese text, but I'm looking over that document now, so hopefully this will clear it up.

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[janitor]

Ok, I understand relative searching now, but I ran into another problem: my font is all sliced up. Took me about eight hours to find it, but I finally did, and only by random experimentation. It looks nothing at all like the Kana, nor can I seem to make it. But when I replace it with something else, I can see that in the game rather than the text.
I replace it with a big plus sign, with the dimensions of the tile, two pixels thick, and when I play the game, it's in the places of the letters, but it's cut in half. The bottom half is on the right, and the top half is right next to it on the left, and both of them are higher than they should be.
Perhaps the picture will explain it better.

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C:Serverxampphtdocszopharoldwwwthreadsattachmentsu ntitled.bmp

[MooglyGuy]

Use 1bpp graphics instead of whatever mode you're currently trying to view the graphics in.

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[Ugly Joe]

I'm no expert, so this might be entirely wrong. I'm guessing your viewing the rom in some 4bpp mode. Try a 2bpp and look at the same area. Or try this if you'd rather experiment: instead of making the crosses white, pick a different color from the pallete and see what effect that has.

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[Gideon Zhi]

That's gonna drive me nuts.
I know I've seen that name entry screen before, but I can't place it. The gradient in the background coupled with the text just looks so familiar...

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[Gil-Galad]

> when making a table, how do I find japanese text in the rom
> to experiment with, and what program should I use to find
> it?
>
I usually just get a emulator with a pattern table viewer and make a table file from that. This usually works with NES games mostly.

For others I change the font and load the game and look for the cave speak words, use relative search.

For compressed text on NES games you can make a break to a certain PPU address wile the text is being displayed and the code transfering the data to the PPU will be displayed. If not then you can look at the stack and trace the code.

I've also done this for compressed text. You can make a table file from the pattern tables. And then while the text is being displayed you can step the code and then dump the entire 64K of memory. What you would do is look at the lower 32K and that's $0 - $7FFF. You will probally see your text displayed in the $0 - $7FF area. You can work from there where the data is going to be picked up and the compressed data will be in the PRG section. That's for NES hacking.

Others I couldnt say but might be the same in some situations.



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