Dino Device 1 - Technical Findings

Discuss anything related to hacking ROMs of other Smilesoft/Rocket games here.
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Normmatt(imported)
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Re: Dino Device 1 - Technical Findings

Post by Normmatt(imported) »

I've taken an initial look into this game and noticed a few things. The game itself uses SJIS unlike the second game which uses a custom table file. This also means that this game is alot bigger than the second. The initial Planet OS screen only allows the years between 2000 to 2010 to be selected, I can hack it to allow to the year 2020 or even to 2255 but that's definitely not required. If you guys want me to post the full details I can.

Is there an official irc channel for this forum? if not why not its annoying having to exchange messages through a message board :P
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andwhyisit
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Re: Dino Device 1 - Technical Findings

Post by andwhyisit »

I checked the fonts, holy crap that's alot of font tiles. :blink:
Normmatt wrote: Is there an official irc channel for this forum? if not why not its annoying having to exchange messages through a message board :P
Well I find it useful since you have all the time in the world to write out your post. Plus IM encourages chatspeak, and chatspeak is evil. But that's just my opinion.

I suppose something could be set up, but I probably won't use it.
RacieB
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Re: Dino Device 1 - Technical Findings

Post by RacieB »

Fixing the year thing would be nice, I don't want to have to stop playing after next year XP I still need to upload the patch I made, it's not very complete but eh...
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andwhyisit
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Re: Dino Device 1 - Technical Findings

Post by andwhyisit »

Normmatt wrote:I've taken an initial look into this game and noticed a few things. The game itself uses SJIS unlike the second game which uses a custom table file. This also means that this game is alot bigger than the second.
Is it shift_jis codes or just the characters? If so then we could write English letters into the hex editor and use half the space of the Japanese script. We will never run into space constraints if that is the case. :D

Also it would mean that we wouldn't need a table.

Single byte (bottom of the page):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shift-JIS

Double byte:
http://www.rikai.com/library/kanjitables/k...odes.sjis.shtml
Normmatt wrote:The initial Planet OS screen only allows the years between 2000 to 2010 to be selected, I can hack it to allow to the year 2020 or even to 2255 but that's definitely not required. If you guys want me to post the full details I can.
Yes, give out details please.
Normmatt(imported)
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Re: Dino Device 1 - Technical Findings

Post by Normmatt(imported) »

It does not support single byte ascii characters only sjis characters. You wouldn't run out of space anyway maximum size of gba game is 32MB.

Heres what I've found so far. I haven't actually made any hacks yet.

Starting dates are read from 080D1EE4 (Year, Month, Day) this routine will need to be hacked to allow years beyound 2010 as that is current limit.
Year limit is checked at the opcode at 08040D50 (cmp r0, 0Ah)
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andwhyisit
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Re: Dino Device 1 - Technical Findings

Post by andwhyisit »

Normmatt wrote: It does not support single byte ascii characters only sjis characters. You wouldn't run out of space anyway maximum size of gba game is 32MB.
Well at least we don't need to make a table. Though the lack of single-byte Shift_JIS characters is annoying.

Have you tested this though? Alot (if not all) of single-byte SJIS characters have a double-byte character code as well. Try replacing a double-byte character with 4849h and see what happens. I'll probably test this when I get home anyway.
Normmatt(imported)
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Re: Dino Device 1 - Technical Findings

Post by Normmatt(imported) »

I tested ASCII english letters and they didn't work. I wasn't expecting to them work anyway. Its not as though we're going to run out of space to store a translated script anyway.
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Sanqui
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Re: Dino Device 1 - Technical Findings

Post by Sanqui »

Yeah. Is the same amount of space in Telefang 2, too?
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andwhyisit
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Re: Dino Device 1 - Technical Findings

Post by andwhyisit »

Found some shift-jis text starting at $AFCA0 and some ascii text before it.

Less than impressive text dump ahoy!

http://www.mediafire.com/?tny5olk03nn
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