Re: Pokémon Diamond Font Patch

Discuss anything related to hacking ROMs of the Telefang games here.
Blaziken257
Posts: 983
Joined: Fri Dec 22, 2006 11:52 am

Re: Pokémon Diamond Font Patch

Post by Blaziken257 »

A while ago, I spent about four hours using a tile editor to change the bootleg Power version's font. Why? Because I really hate the old font; it's simply the worst video game font I've ever seen. So I changed it. It's based off of the SNES version of Donkey Kong Country. This is not a ROM; it's a patch. It won't run without the ROM. Do not ask for the ROM. You need to apply the patch to the ROM for it to take effect. If you use VisualBoyAdvance, you can rename the file so that it's the same name as the ROM name (except with the extension ips).

The link is now on bottom; for some stupid reason, RapidShare removed it, and won't even let me reupload it.

Now, screenshots comparing the new font to the old font:

Image Image
Image Image
Image Image
Image Image
Image Image
Image Image

Note: One interesting thing in the last pair of screenshots is that the digits are unchanged. This is because the same font shows up multiple times in the game (which is one reason why this took me 4 hours, as I had to change the font multiple times). However, I combed the ROM and couldn't find the tiles for the digits in the phone menu screen. Could anyone help me out here? That would be nice...

(Note: Merged two posts into one due to the lack of an image limit now.)
RacieB
Posts: 871
Joined: Thu Dec 28, 2006 4:27 am

Re: Pokémon Diamond Font Patch

Post by RacieB »

I think some of the graphics are compressed in the rom.. I'm not sure, but I think the intro ones were originally, I couldn't find them when I wanted to try editing them to english versions. As for the bootleg ones, I don't know if it was the hack job or what, but a lot of that rom is a mess XP The multiple alphabets thing is annoying as hell when you're text-searching.
Blaziken257
Posts: 983
Joined: Fri Dec 22, 2006 11:52 am

Re: Pokémon Diamond Font Patch

Post by Blaziken257 »

Yeah, that ROM is sure a mess... it freezes up a lot and it's annoying. What do you mean by the intro, though? The scene when you start up the game right if you don't press anything on the title screen? (Wait a second... that might be why the colors are glitched in the bootleg intro, now that I think of it).

And do you know how it's compressed, and how to decompress it? Editing the numbers would be nice, though the numbers aren't as bad as the letters anyway...

EDIT: By the way, the large digits (such as the 3:28 in the bottom pair of screenshots) are also compressed too (only in the phone menu screen, though). I was going to edit those but couldn't find them for the phone menu screen.
RacieB
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Joined: Thu Dec 28, 2006 4:27 am

Re: Pokémon Diamond Font Patch

Post by RacieB »

I've got no clue how to decompress the stuff, I think I've seen a tool before that does it but I can't recall where. When I was trying to come up with a good, un-bugged translation, I wanted to replace the start screens like so:

Image

But that'd also require a bit of palette tweaking, which for the life of me I cannot figure out how to do. I wanted to fix a few of the sprites that have mind-bending color combinations like Gigagigas (black, dark brown, and BRIGHT RED), and do stuff like give Netaro an orange palette like Salal, make Teletel pink like the Punica line, and Dendel green/yellow like Gypsophi, the way they look in their official art.
Blaziken257
Posts: 983
Joined: Fri Dec 22, 2006 11:52 am

Re: Pokémon Diamond Font Patch

Post by Blaziken257 »

Did you use a ROM editor to edit that logo, or is it Photoshopped?

And yes, I think some of the colors are weird. Gigagigas looks weird, and I always thought Domesday was weird (IMO, the outline should be black instead of brown). And Kuribute should be brown, not red. He'd look a lot better that way:

Image
RacieB
Posts: 871
Joined: Thu Dec 28, 2006 4:27 am

Re: Pokémon Diamond Font Patch

Post by RacieB »

I just did it up in MS Paint to see how it'd look.. I'm no good at spriting in Photoshop actually x__x

And yeah, that does look a lot better.
Blaziken257
Posts: 983
Joined: Fri Dec 22, 2006 11:52 am

Re: Pokémon Diamond Font Patch

Post by Blaziken257 »

Oh... I see... IMO the Telefang logo should be left alone... I think it looks fine the way it is and for some reason it look really cool in Japanese <__< but I like the Power Version/Speed Version logos. If only it was possible for a glitch-free translation... but that would be hard to do. I tried editing text once, and it screwed EVERYTHING up. There is a page here about editing the bootleg ROM, but it doesn't really say how to edit the text when you have to make it longer or shorter... for example, "It's super effective!" has a lot less letters then "For the clever opponent, Injure increase!!". Oh well.
RacieB
Posts: 871
Joined: Thu Dec 28, 2006 4:27 am

Re: Pokémon Diamond Font Patch

Post by RacieB »

I actually did do some text editing on the bootlegs, I didn't have any problems with it but I wanted to try to make brand-new bug-free translations but I dunno how to get the alphabet in right so I haven't done any more x_x
Blaziken257
Posts: 983
Joined: Fri Dec 22, 2006 11:52 am

Re: Pokémon Diamond Font Patch

Post by Blaziken257 »

Guess what... I figured out how to change a Denjuu's colors! It took me a long time, but I know how to do it now! Here's how to do it. You have to use a hex editor and look at the hex values from $00034800-$00034D6F. Every eight bytes represents one Denjuu's colors. It uses the order in the E-Index (or whatever it's called). For example, it lists Zinunas's colors first, then Kokia's, then all the way to Tlaitlu's.

Every two bytes represents one color. There are four colors per Denjuu, and one of these is always white. Here's the confusing part. In order to change the color, you have to have a 15-bit color value, where there are five bits for red, five for green, and five for blue. Basically, red, green, and blue can be any value from 0 to 31. The higher the value, the more intense the color. Let's say that we want to change Kuribute's orange to brown. A good approximation for the brown in the image above would be Red: 14, Green: 6, Blue: 6. Then you would convert this to binary:

Red: 01110
Green: 00110
Blue: 00110

Next, you have to take these values and combine them together. Blue goes first, then green, then red. So it will end up like this:

001100011001110

Next, you have to take this and convert it to hex. The Calculator in Windows does this nicely (you must have it in scientific mode, though). It turns out to be 18CE.

Now here's the tricky part. When editing the ROM data, you have to use the last two digits first. So in this case, you would use the CE part first, then the 18. Stupid, I know, but that's how it works.

Here's the other difficult part. How do you know what bytes to modify? Well, if you have VisualBoyAdvance, you can use the Palette Viewer to find out. Depending on the version of VBA that you have, you can do this by going to Tools -> Palette Viewer, or Tools -> Debug -> Palette Viewer... (most people have the former version, but I happen to have the latter). You also have to have the Denjuu that you are modifying on the screen for this to work. If you aren't already doing this, make it appear on the screen somehow (by battling it, viewing its stats, or whatever). Click Refresh, and you will see a row of boxes with its colors. Click on the one that you are modifying, and you will be given a hex value. In this case, the color we are trying to change has hex value 197E. (screenshot: http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/375/vba...eviewerpm5.png) Like before, you have to look at the last two digits first, so when editing it in the hex editor, you will see 7E 19.

Now when going to the hex editor, you have to go to the value you have to modify (in this case, 7E 19) and change it to the new color (as explained above). In this case, you would change the 7E 19 to CE 18. If your hex editor has a search feature, try searching for the "7E 19" string and look for results in the $00034800-$00034D6F range. Then change it to CE 18 and see how it turns out!

If you did it right, it should look something like this:

Image

(I know it's not the best looking thing, but it's just an example)

(By the way, the font was like that before I changed the color, because I normally play with that font)

EDIT: If this is too confusing for you, and you can't get it to work, just post some edited pictures of Denjuu that you want changed, and I'll try to change them the best I can!
RacieB
Posts: 871
Joined: Thu Dec 28, 2006 4:27 am

Re: Pokémon Diamond Font Patch

Post by RacieB »

Oh that is too awesome, I have GOT to play with that later when I'm done with the attack list x__o
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