Re: (Finally Complete) Telefang English Translation

[andwhyisit]

Hey, I saw your post for help at romhacking.net and thought I could lend a hand. I've looked at the game and have figured out the compression routine for the compressed graphics and the nametables. Because I have too much free time, I went ahead and coded a utility that will decompress both the graphics and the nametables. That can be found here. If anyone is interested in how the compression works, I've also posted my notes.

I'm also working on a complementary compression program. It's halfway finished. Anyway, enjoy.

...

..you are f**king awesome.

*reads readme*

Correction: You are beyond awesome. Thanks for coming to our rescue. ^_^

[Sanqui]

... ... @__@' *twitch*

...

One word.
AWESOME.

[Blaziken257]

I knew that the help wanted ad would help!

I don't know how you had the patience to figure this out, but that's awesome! I'll definitely try that decompression tool when I get the chance to later today. And I really don't understand how that all works (it looks really complicated), but as long as you understand it...

One thing though, is it possible for the compressed tiles to exceed 4000₁₆ bytes? If so, then that could be problematic... Also, since the size of the compressed tiles change when the raw tiles are edited, wouldn't that shift everything in the same bank after it? Would that require pointer adjustments?

Also, what do you mean by nametables?

Finally, you should submit this tool (along with the decompression tool when it's finished) to romhacking.net so that people who don't know about this forum can use it.

[Malias(imported)]

One thing though, is it possible for the compressed tiles to exceed 4000₁₆ bytes? If so, then that could be problematic... Also, since the size of the compressed tiles change when the raw tiles are edited, wouldn't that shift everything in the same bank after it? Would that require pointer adjustments?

No, it's not possible for compressed tiles to exceed a rom bank. However, I don't foresee that being a problem. I've looked through the rom and most of the rom banks aren't even close to being filled. As to the pointers shifting, unless the compressed data is the same size (or perhaps smaller), the pointers would probably need to be recalculated. I would need to research the rom some more and find out how that works.

Also, what do you mean by nametables?

A nametable is a set of data that tells the game how the tiles are arranged. It holds the tile numbers in the order the tiles appear on the screen, left to right and top to bottom. They are very handy to have when making big graphical changes.

Finally, you should submit this tool (along with the decompression tool when it's finished) to romhacking.net so that people who don't know about this forum can use it.

Eventually...

[Sanqui]

A nametable is a set of data that tells the game how the tiles are arranged. It holds the tile numbers in the order the tiles appear on the screen, left to right and top to bottom. They are very handy to have when making big graphical changes.

Ah, so if we ever extend the characters in a Denjuu name, changing a nametable would enable us to make use of the extra characters (I'm talking about menus, not dialogue)?

[Blaziken257]

Uh, I tried using the tool, but it always closes as soon as it opens. What's up with that? I was looking forward to using it but I can't because of this bug.

And at least the compressed tiles won't exceed the ROM bank.

[andwhyisit]

Uh, I tried using the tool, but it always closes as soon as it opens. What's up with that? I was looking forward to using it but I can't because of this bug.

And at least the compressed tiles won't exceed the ROM bank.

Open it using dos rather than by double-clicking on it.

Basically you navigate to the folder it is in in the command prompt/dos (use "cd [dirname]" to open a folder in dos) and type in
TelefangD.exe [graphics address] [No. of sequences] [nametable address] [filename]

Alternatively you could create and run the below batch (.bat) file as it saves time.

TelefangD.exe [graphics address] [No. of sequences] [nametable address] [filename]
PAUSE

[Blaziken257]

Thanks, I got it to work. I don't understand what a batch file is but I just typed everything in using Command Prompt. And I got this!



Sweet, it's actually possible to edit the title screen now. At the very least it should say "Power Version" or "Speed Version" in English.

And the nametable lines up perfectly with the map viewer:




Awesome. Now I shall find the address for the phone menu screen, because that's especially important. The readme file tells you how to do that.

Now I'm curious, how does the color of every individual tile get stored in Telefang? I once hacked another GBC game (Donkey Kong Land III) where every 8x8 tile on the screen has a value from 00 to 07, which corresponds with one of the eight background color palettes in RAM (which you can see with VBA's palette viewer). 00 is first, 01 is second, and so on... Telefang probably compresses this, though (I tried this with the glitched intro in Diamond to no avail). This isn't a big deal but I'm just curious about it...

Now back on topic, shall we use the same font as the rest of the game (where it's copied from Pokémon)? And IIRC, the stat names seem to have their own character set as well, where each individual letter shows up once in RAM...

[andwhyisit]

Thanks, I got it to work. I don't understand what a batch file is but I just typed everything in using Command Prompt.

It is just a text file containing DOS commands. Running it executes those commands.

This one would probably be more useful though:

@ECHO OFF
SET /P GRPHAD=Type in the graphics address, then press ENTER:
CLS
SET /P SEQNCE=Type in the number of sequences, then press ENTER:
CLS
SET /P NMETBL=Type in the nametable address, then press ENTER:
CLS
SET /P FILENM=Type in the filename, then press ENTER:
CLS
TELEFA~1.EXE %GRPHAD% %SEQNCE% %NMETBL% %FILENM%
ECHO.
PAUSE

http://www.mediafire.com/?n4dtztnjmzq

Save it in the same folder as TelefangD.exe and double-click on it.

[andwhyisit]

Sweet, it's actually possible to edit the title screen now. At the very least it should say "Power Version" or "Speed Version" in English.

Like this:
http://racieb.ggmedia.us/telefang/english_title.gif
(RacieB posted this image almost 2 years ago btw)

Now back on topic, shall we use the same font as the rest of the game (where it's copied from Pokémon)? And IIRC, the stat names seem to have their own character set as well, where each individual letter shows up once in RAM...

I think we really need to create out own font one day. Using the Pokemon font just seems like a makeshift solution that we have stuck with for too long.

I'll start work on a new font.

EDIT: Can someone merge my posts? I was going to copy and paste but hit the Submit Post button without thinking.