Tulunk Village

swampert22 wrote: Incidentally, how does one go about decompressing tiles in the first place? :huh:

Traditionally with some form of assembly knowledge.

I bet if one of use new ASM we would have most of our problems solved in a couple of minutes

I really don't have the time to learn though...

EDIT: I just thought. Seeing as we are translating the game and will likely be repointing most of the data, we should change the game code.

Eg. Power's Internal Code is TELEFANG PWBXTJ

Now, I don't know about other programmers, but I use this 4 letter code to distinguish between games, so the program knows which offsets to use for different versions etc.

May I suggest it be TELEFANG PWBXTE

The last 'E' denoting English Language. Just a thought.

swampert22 wrote: EDIT: I just thought. Seeing as we are translating the game and will likely be repointing most of the data, we should change the game code.

Really? I would think the only data being repointed would be text and tiles; nothing would be gained by repointing stats and such, and in fact would defeat the purpose of IPS/UPS patching—that the traded patches consist only of user‐owned data, not anything from the original ROM, in order to avoid legal trouble.

Also, I would speak against using the four‐character code for identification in tools. It is frequently changed in hacks, and not all Game Boy games have it (although certainly everything post‐Pokémon does). A better option would be to have the user select which game he is editing after the ROM is loaded.

IIMarckus wrote:

swampert22 wrote: EDIT: I just thought. Seeing as we are translating the game and will likely be repointing most of the data, we should change the game code.

Really? I would think the only data being repointed would be text and tiles; nothing would be gained by repointing stats and such, and in fact would defeat the purpose of IPS/UPS patching—that the traded patches consist only of user‐owned data, not anything from the original ROM, in order to avoid legal trouble.

Also, I would speak against using the four‐character code for identification in tools. It is frequently changed in hacks, and not all Game Boy games have it (although certainly everything post‐Pokémon does). A better option would be to have the user select which game he is editing after the ROM is loaded.

I think you misunderstand something. We hack the rom itself, then create an ips patch from the differences between the edited rom and the original. The only thing you will find of that four‐character code in the ips will be the "E" at the end. The "E", I might add, that we would have put there.

I haven't ever heard of the four‐character code ever being changed in hacks. I would think that most people just leave it as is (take the bootleg for example). The reason for the change in this four‐character code is that the character codes (hex values representing each character) were completely altered for this patch. So it would be advantageous for use in editors to alter the four‐character code so that the editor can detect whether the rom is the translation or not.

I think you misunderstand. When I talked about patching and copyrighted content, I was referring to the “repointing most of the data” statement—repointing stats data would cause it to appear in the patch, thus an end result of copyrighted data included in the patch. I don’t see any reason for stats data to be repointed, only things such as text and redrawn tiles. Are you really planning on moving any other data elsewhere in the ROM?

andwhyisit wrote:The reason for the change in this four‐character code is that the character codes (hex values representing each character) were completely altered for this patch. So it would be advantageous for use in editors to alter the four‐character code so that the editor can detect whether the rom is the translation or not.

Surely only text editing would be affected? Again, unless you move stats etc to different parts of the ROM, other tools should be able to work correctly with no change.

I’m not saying to not change the code in the translation patch. I’m saying don’t make tools use the four‐character code to identify games—that’s completely the wrong way to do it. People do change the codes in hacks (how often I can’t say, only that they do).

DON'T change PWBXTJ.
Just don't, please: it'll make a lot of emulators to block loading saves from the original and people don't like to fix it, even if they know how to. That's what I hate on the bootleg, for example.

Plus E stands for Europe.

IIMarckus wrote:I think you misunderstand. When I talked about patching and copyrighted content, I was referring to the “repointing most of the data” statement—repointing stats data would cause it to appear in the patch, thus an end result of copyrighted data included in the patch. I don’t see any reason for stats data to be repointed, only things such as text and redrawn tiles. Are you really planning on moving any other data elsewhere in the ROM?

We do not have the skills to move any of the data to anywhere else within the rom, even if we wanted to. Also if we did move the data (again, impossible right now) we would edit all of that data anyway.

Why are you talking about stat data though? We are not editing stat data in this patch. We are planning to edit the text that appears next to the stats.

As for repointing data, the pointers for dialogue are always changed when the dialogue is edited. Plus he was also pointing out the fact that anything that identifies the patch could be edited down the track. We need a constant.

IIMarckus wrote:Surely only text editing would be affected?

And how do you consider scrambled text to not be a problem?

IIMarckus wrote:I’m not saying to not change the code in the translation patch. I’m saying don’t make tools use the four‐character code to identify games—that’s completely the wrong way to do it. People do change the codes in hacks (how often I can’t say, only that they do).

I'll find something else to use as a constant then.

Sanky wrote:DON'T change PWBXTJ.
Just don't, please: it'll make a lot of emulators to block loading saves from the original and people don't like to fix it, even if they know how to. That's what I hate on the bootleg, for example.

Plus E stands for Europe.

The bootleg uses the exact same code as the Japanese Power version if I recall.

The scrambled text is a good point: whenever text is added or removed, it pushes (or pulls) all text after it farther into the ROM, causing it to appear in the patch. (Incidentally, this is also why pointer editing is a pain in the neck: because text has to be pushed farther into the ROM, you have to keep editing all the pointers with it.) Though, as of now, only about two or three ROM banks have been modified as far as pointer based text is concerned.

Blaziken257 wrote: The scrambled text is a good point: whenever text is added or removed, it pushes (or pulls) all text after it farther into the ROM, causing it to appear in the patch. (Incidentally, this is also why pointer editing is a pain in the neck: because text has to be pushed farther into the ROM, you have to keep editing all the pointers with it.) Though, as of now, only about two or three ROM banks have been modified as far as pointer based text is concerned.

I meant scrambled due to the altered character codes that are used in the patch. But you do have a point there.

andwhyisit wrote: The bootleg uses the exact same code as the Japanese Power version if I recall.

Actually, it's quite odd. The bootleggers did have some knowledge of ROM headers as they changed it from Power's BXTJ to BTXJ simply switching the middle two letters. The reason is beyond me.

Well, perhaps if we ever crack using more characters for Denjuu, Attacks, Items etc it would be appropriate to alter the code by a simple letter. It is just a simple change and simple check for my programs, it may not be how everybody does it, but it works OK for me.

Also, for text editing features in the program, distinguishing between Japanese, Bootleg and English is useful for knowing which Table file to use.

Anyway, if people can't transfer their original save, is that really a massive problem? We should all start again so we enjoy every last bit of the translation

That's just my view anyway