Finding kanji hex values for psx games

[bunalz3]

I started this hacking stuff about a week ago (when I realised that it's possible to translate games as if it's a DIY, well a little).

Anyways, I've done quite a reading and experimented the table thing (did it referring to satsu's & InVerse's guides).
Oh, the game I'm working on is Black/Matrix Cross (Disc 1).
For the table, I'm manually creating them as I can't get the tabular tool to display the kana (inputted あ but got , instead).

After ensuring that I got the Kana Order System (gojuon) right and checked with the game, I proceeded next with finding the hex values for the kanji. I know there are a lot of them, but I just want to know how exactly do I do that? I can't be possibly using tile editor (since it won't allow me to mess with psx games). Did numerous searches and 90% of them said, "go to romhacking.net"...so here I am asking this question (which I assumes has not been asked since I couldn't find any in the search).

[Romsstar]

Give Windhex the Shift Jis Table we have in the Database, a lot of PSX games  use a similar system,
then let everything display as unicode there you go.

In case the Shift Jis table don't work take a dump of the memory,
and try to look for kana values in the windhex kana searcher.

Try that

[bunalz3]

In case the Shift Jis table don't work

Not sure if this http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/580/tableeditorwindhex.jpg/is what you meant by "not working" but I couldn't manage to view the kana/kanji in the sidebar in the HexWind's table editor (even though I already set the application to "View Text Data as Unicode", and even though I was able to view the Shift-JIS table properly in MsWord).

One more question: How do I take a dump of the memory? (I do know the concept of script dumping, though).

[CUE]

Tha game uses Shift-JIS codes? Are you sure?
Find the font to know what characters are used.

[Romsstar]

Not sure if this http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/580/tableeditorwindhex.jpg/is what you meant by "not working" but I couldn't manage to view the kana/kanji in the sidebar in the HexWind's table editor (even though I already set the application to "View Text Data as Unicode", and even though I was able to view the Shift-JIS table properly in MsWord).

One more question: How do I take a dump of the memory? (I do know the concept of script dumping, though).

Screw the table editor, check for the text in the main editor with unicode support enabled and make a screenshot what you can see there.

[bunalz3]

http://img204.imageshack.us/i/binfilewindhex.jpg/
WindHex: Set to Unicode view, MS Gothic Japanese script. Still none.


http://img854.imageshack.us/i/binfilehexedit.jpg/
Hex Edit: At least some names shown up as they should in the game.

*Note: Both used the bin file of the game. Regarding the table that I tried to make (referring to HexWorkshop), I got ぁ=9F, and　あ=A0...which were of single byte type instead of the double byte type (shift-JIS table).

[CUE]

Please show your table. And post an offset with japanese texts.

ぁ=9F ---> or 829F?
あ=A0 ---> or 82A0?

Try with "cp932-ascii.tbl" from this package: http://www.fileden.com/files/2010/5/7/2851431/CUE.rar

The game font:

Code: [Select]

file .......... SYSTEM.DAT
offset ........ 0x00083C
tile width .... 8 (found in 0x000834, 2 bytes low endian)
tile heigth ... 14 (found in 0x000836, 2 bytes low endian)
bpp ........... 2
tiles ......... 1872
size .......... 0xCCC0 (found in 0x000838, 4 bytes low endian)
                (tiles * width * heigth * 8 / bpp)

[bunalz3]

Concerning the table, I couldn't turn it into a real .tbl file (and as a result WindHex gave out lots of dots after loading the .bin file). But after comparing the three different tables mentioned above, mine matched perfectly--although, I only managed to get the numbers, alphabet letters and some hiragana (using satsu's gamesave method)-->http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/576/tablemakinghexworkshop.png/

As for loading the table into WindHex, both the Shift-JIS and your UTF-8 tables gave almost the same result (very slight change). What was supposed to be an ぁ, was being replaced by 縺. And not only that; every hiragana were replaced by numerous kanji with the radical 糸... -->http://img843.imageshack.us/img843/2889/windhexunicodetableutf8.png

And just when I was about to lose my patience (I even tried modifying the tables), out of sudden I finally picked the table ASCII, and WHAM! All the kanas were sitting there, displaying nicely (I actually tried the ASCII table last night, but the thing is, I scrolled down to see the texts (and I was equally disappointed). But, I didn't thought of searching the hex value of a font, and change the table from there since I already pinpointed the hex values of certain fonts. -->http://img819.imageshack.us/img819/5822/windhexunicodetableasci.png

One headache's solved (that's great ). However, I didn't find any dialogue script at all, and the stupid kanji still showing at random and bizzare places...I did tried to use the savestate method as shown  here (http://slowbeef.com/romhack/pnhack1.html), but I don't know if I'm doing it right since I could not view the .pic file for goodNESS sake (tried psxmem and executor but to no avail).

[CUE]

Using my ASCII table, NOT THE UTF8 TABLE, 99% similar as other sjis tables, and using the same offset in the ISO (*) ---> no problems found:


(*) Bad idea. It's better to work with the extracted files.

[bunalz3]

Thanks for your replies. By the way, did you find any readable texts in the editor? 'Cause I didn't see any in-game dialogues; only rubbish (could it be that the fonts are compressed???).

On the other hand, I've said that I didn't find the あいうえお before (and no it's not because I overlooked it--it's a different PC). I used Win7 at home, and WinXP at our Engineering lab (...). Everything's the same for both cases, except I can't view what I could in the WinXP PC.

So, at home I had to use a different editor (MadEdit--is there a way to make it use a specific table instead of just changing the encoding?) and it worked out okay, except that I still couldn't find any dialogues (I tested Black/Matrix 00 and at least I found the data for the items, skills, accessories etc as well as the game's option menu. But no dialogues--wait, there's one (a prologue): 翼はおどる...裏切りの刃...blabla.

What crucial thing I've missed out? Maybe I should try translating the ones that have been translated to understand further...

[Gemini]

Well, wow, another Black Matrix Cross project. IIRC, this makes three projects created just for this game.

[bunalz3]

It's better to work with the extracted files.

Well, I did that and finally found the damn dialogues (which were in the SCENARIO.DAT file). But problems still persist--the fonts weren't displayed correctly (I used WindHex on my Win7 PC).

Fonts not properly displayed http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/441/windhexbmcdialogues.png/
Dialogues (the first one) as seen in the game http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/855/bmcdialogue1.png/

[CUE]

The text starts at an odd offset and Windhex needs an even offset to display correctly all. I think that's the problem.

[Auryn]

Well, wow, another Black Matrix Cross project. IIRC, this makes three projects created just for this game.

Well, let's hope somebody finish any of the project in any game of the serie for any system because if I am not wrong, there is not 1 game in english and I want to try that serie some day :p