I posted this in the IRC Telefang chat already, but I will mention this here for all to see. I was using bgb to look at some assembly code, and I found some code that reads Denjuu names from the ROM and writes them to RAM.
Use bgb and set a breakpoint at 0:3A01, then go to the Picture Book and scroll through various Denjuu. This is the code that does this. Most notably, at 0:3A14, the code
ld bc,0008 is what determines the array size (i.e. the maximum number of letters in the Denjuu name). You can change the array size and this will affect how many bytes will be written to RAM. Also, the code before it (from 0:3A01 to 0:3A11) also determines the size of the array, in that the game needs to figure out where to start looking for the Denjuu name. Here, it takes the Denjuu's index number (at RAM address 0xD435) and multiplies it by 8, to get the proper address.
If you look at the code after that, you'll see that the game starts reading from 1D4000 (plus the offset determined by the aforementioned code), and starts writing the characters to RAM, which starts at D440. It does this one character at a time, until 8 letters are reached. As I said, changing the code at 0:3A14 causes more or less letters to show up in RAM.
However, this isn't as easy as it seems. It seems that there is separate code to
print the text on the screen once the characters are written to RAM, which I haven't found yet. While decreasing the array size will make fewer letters show up, increasing it will still only cause 8 letters at most to show up, even if you hack the names to get rid of the null E0's. It seems that this code is separate and only lets 8 letters show up at most at the moment.
But at least this is a start.
Also, as a random and unrelated point, I think we can improvise a little on move names, etc. Retail games rarely translate everything
exactly, like Pokémon. For example, the move
Fire Blast was originally Daimonji in Japanese, but from translating the name, it lost its meaning. (Hey, look at
this -- doesn't that look a bit familiar?)
Sunny Day was originally Clear Sky in Japanese, which is why Moonlight gets boosted by it. And so on. (Also, a funny one, which occurred from English to Spanish, was Overheat, which was translated as
Sofoco, which means suffocation. Yes, really.) The list goes on, but I think I made my point clear.
Point is: We shouldn't worry if we don't translate everything 100% perfectly. So if we translate Invigorate as Enliven, it won't be the end of the world. Don't stress out over it too much. Just as long as it still makes sense, we should be OK. And believe me, anything will be better than the bootlegs, which were translated horribly, as everyone knows.
Also:
Wario Bros. wrote:1) Are there scripts/lines that are exclusive between the Power & Speed?
2) Will I be able to patch this translation and the Super GameBoy patch on the same ROM without any problems?
3) Are you gonna make any localization changes? (as in there's content in the game that non-Japanese people would not understand). I don't care if you're not doing this part but I'm just curious.
1. Offhand, I know there's at least one: When Crypto/Fungus greets you, the dialog is different (since they say their names). But both of these lines are coded in both versions, just one of them is never used. And both have already been translated.
2. Probably, I don't see why not.
3. We will probably keep everything the same, just to keep the spirit of the game.
