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Newcomer's Board / Re: proposed project, looking for help

« on: January 29, 2011, 07:15:17 am »

If you are interested in NES homebrew development, check out the nesdev forums: http://nesdev.parodius.com/bbs/index.php

You can find some good beginner tutorials for NES programming here: http://nintendoage.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=22&threadid=7155

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Personal Projects / Re: nonme345's Translation Projects

« on: January 17, 2011, 07:22:08 am »

If you are referring to me, I'm not gone.  I am waiting for word on the hacking side of the project.  Have you guys had any luck getting DTE into FDC?

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ROM Hacking Discussion / Re: Editing the font and text in Phantasy Star II and IV.

« on: June 15, 2010, 09:19:54 am »

Not hard, but it's time consuming and there's a learning curve.  That curve is easier to manage if you already know binary/hex or have some programming experience though.

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ROM Hacking Discussion / Re: Editing the font and text in Phantasy Star II and IV.

« on: June 15, 2010, 12:20:04 am »

Can you read ASM code?

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ROM Hacking Discussion / Re: Editing the font and text in Phantasy Star II and IV.

« on: June 14, 2010, 10:07:17 am »

Are you looking for the font in the Japanese or US version of PS2?

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Newcomer's Board / Re: (Genesis) Find the compressed data and figure out the compression scheme

« on: June 02, 2010, 10:38:15 pm »

Reverse the values and find the palette in the ROM like before.   You can use trial and error to figure out which colors make up the hair.  If I were to guess I'd say that the hair is probably the 4th color from the left, plus the two yellows on the right side of the palette. 

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Newcomer's Board / Re: (Genesis) Find the compressed data and figure out the compression scheme

« on: June 02, 2010, 09:11:13 pm »

I type "00AA 00CC 0000 00EE" or even "00AA 00CC 0000", in my ROM, and I get "String not found".

Turning the colors to 0000 will make the hair solid black with no shading/highlighting.  It might be better to change them to dark shades of gray.

Yes, I thought about that, but after have checked the Vegeta hair (Vegeta appear on the screen with black hair, and transform in Super Saiyan at the beggining of the battle), and they have no shades, it's just regular black.  I'll try first with a pure black, and if it's ugly, I'll put shades.

OK, question.  When you open the ROM in your hex editor, do you see the words "SEGA GENESIS" or "SEGA MEGA DRIVE" at the 00000100 offset?

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Newcomer's Board / Re: (Genesis) Find the compressed data and figure out the compression scheme

« on: June 02, 2010, 07:45:48 pm »

OK, so I changed the:

0000 000C 0CEE 04AE 006E 002C 0EE0 0EE0
0000 0222 0444 0666 00AA 00CC 0000 00EE

In this:

0000 000C 0CEE 04AE 006E 002C 0EE0 0EE0
0000 0222 0444 0666 0000 0000 0000 0000

Now I need to "import" it in the ROM with a certain way?

After you do your hex search and find it in the game ROM, just manually write the new values over the old values and save (backup your file first).

Turning the colors to 0000 will make the hair solid black with no shading/highlighting.  It might be better to change them to dark shades of gray.

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Newcomer's Board / Re: (Genesis) Find the compressed data and figure out the compression scheme

« on: June 02, 2010, 06:05:14 pm »

Yes, I have one. 
At the third line which is the second palette.  It's logical because it's probably the one of Goku.

How did you found that 00AA00CC000000EE is yellow?

whoops.. Sorry, I skipped a step. If you look at palette #2 in the picture I posted, the yellows are the last four colors in the palette (actually 2 yellows, a black and another yellow).  So I picked the corresponding color values:

0000 000C 0CEE 04AE 006E 002C 0EE0 0EE0
0000 0222 0444 0666 00AA 00CC 0000 00EE

Notice the black in the middle of the yellows is 0000, which is what you'd expect for black,

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Newcomer's Board / Re: (Genesis) Find the compressed data and figure out the compression scheme

« on: June 02, 2010, 08:21:16 am »

Thank you.

It's the same thing with the French ROM?
Because like I said, I prefer this one.  This wont affect the data?  Will I be able to do this way with the French ROM?  It's a SMD file, the BIN is corrupted.

I don't have a copy of the French ROM, but I imagine it would be the same for both versions (if this doesn't work, shoot me a PM and we can discuss me getting a hold of the French ROM).

Ok.  The Genesis allows four 16-color palettes loaded at one time.  Each color is represented by 2 bytes.  2*16 = 32.  Each palette is 32 bytes.  Here is how they are laid out:



Notice I numbered the palettes 1-4, and indicated the corresponding bytes in the hex editor.

1P Goku is probably palette #2, as it has orange and yellow.  Let's try to find palette #2 in the ROM.  First we need to translate those 32 bytes into Genesis color values.  We do this by swapping the bytes in each byte-pair:

Code: [Select]

00 00 0C 00 EE 0C AE 04 6E 00 2C 00 E0 0E E0 0E
00 00 22 02 44 04 66 06 AA 00 CC 00 00 00 EE 00
becomes:

Code: [Select]

0000 000C 0CEE 04AE 006E 002C 0EE0 0EE0
0000 0222 0444 0666 00AA 00CC 0000 00EE
Now we want to find those yellows, because those are the colors used for his hair.  So we open the ROM in our hex editor and hex search for the following string: 00AA00CC000000EE

I get a match.  Do you?

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Newcomer's Board / Re: (Genesis) Find the compressed data and figure out the compression scheme

« on: June 01, 2010, 09:56:38 am »

Don't give up.  You're almost there. 

Delete all your CRAM and palette files and then dump the CRAM again.  Then you'll just have one file which is easier to work with.  Load it up in your hex editor and post a screenshot.  I'll walk you through it from there.

Check the hair on the left Goku:

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Newcomer's Board / Re: (Genesis) Find the compressed data and figure out the compression scheme

« on: May 31, 2010, 10:52:33 am »

The CRAM dump is just a snapshot of what the palettes look like inside the VDP at a given moment in the game.  To change the actual colors in game, we will need to find the palettes in the original ROM and change them there.  The CRAM dump is just a way to help us find the palettes by giving us a hint on what to search for.

Take a peek at the CRAM file in a hex editor.  Each color is represented by 2 bytes.  Each palette is 16 colors (32 bytes).  The CRAM dump will actually have each color stored backwards, so if the hex editor says this:

Code: [Select]

00 00 EE 01 00 00 AE 0A 8E 08 AA 0A 88 08 8E 00
0E 00 0A 00 00 0C 00 08 EE 02 AA 02 88 0E 66 0E
Then your actual colors will be:

Code: [Select]

0000 01EE 0000 0AAE 088E 0AAA 0888 008E
000E 000A 000C 0008 02EE 02AA 0E88 0E66
Notice for each pair of bytes, we just swapped them.

So pick the palette you want to change, swap the bytes to convert to color values and then do a hex search in the original ROM file.  If the palettes are stored in the ROM uncompressed, then you're set.  If not, then on to plan B.

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Newcomer's Board / Re: (Genesis) Find the compressed data and figure out the compression scheme

« on: May 30, 2010, 08:32:02 pm »

There are some numbers right at the top. Go fetch your glasses my son. It starts with Black followed by 88% gray and so on. Presumably those bytes are in the following order: B G R A where A is Transparency.

cYa,

Tauwasser

Yes, I saw those numbers.   
But there's only transparency?  No colors?

I can try changing theses values?

There are colors.  The first three bytes (54 50 4C) are the header.  See how they spell out "TPL"?  After that there are color definitions.  Each color is 4 bytes, in the order BGRA (if Tauwasser is right about TPL color order).

Assuming he's right, the first color is B=0, G=0, R=0, A=0, which is black.  The second color is B=E0, G=E0, R=E0, A=0 which is gray.  The third color is B=0, G=60, R=0, A=0, which is green, etc.

This palette probably won't help you search for the palette in the ROM though, since the TPL palette format is different from the Genesis's palette format.  You should try to get a CRAM dump in raw Genesis palette format using Regen(D).

14

Script Help and Language Discussion / Re: Deep Dungeon IV

« on: May 30, 2010, 08:16:42 pm »

Here's the intro:

20 years ago, the kingdom of Loram was thrown into war.  A Demon King and his army of monsters invaded Loram's towns and villages, killing many.

The kingdom's armies fought valiantly but were unable to slow the monsters' advance.

Then three unknown adventurers, a soldier, a mage and a priest infiltrated the Demon King's stronghold and slayed him.  Since that day, they have been known as the "Three Heroes".

Now one of the Three Heroes, Fred the Soldier, has been brutally murdered.  His death was horrible, clearly an act of intense hatred.

But the people paid it no mind.  It had nothing to do with them, they thought.  They didn't realize the true meaning behind the murder...

But one man did set forth, a knight.  He vowed to hunt down the killer, and avenge the death of his father.

No joke, it says "Fred the Soldier" .

I translated 魔王 as "Demon King" and 魔物 as "monsters", but you could replace those words if you want.  snark's "Great Devil" and "goblins" would be just fine too.


Edit:  +1 for Flyclops.  That's hilarious

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Script Help and Language Discussion / Re: Deep Dungeon IV

« on: May 30, 2010, 08:25:54 am »

If it's an eye monster, ひとだま is probably literally "single eye" (一玉: from 一つ　and 目玉), rather than 人魂.  You could give it an "eye" name.

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Newcomer's Board / Re: (Genesis) Find the compressed data and figure out the compression scheme

« on: May 29, 2010, 07:44:20 pm »

How do I dump the palette?  I tried using CPU-Dumping-Genesis-Graphics-Dump TLP format Palletes and I get a TLP file, I open it with Cygnus, and I get a very small Hexadecimal part (Like 15-20 lines).

That sounds about right.  At any one time, the Genesis VDP can have 4 16-color palettes loaded and ready to use.  That's 64 colors which would result in a small dump file.

I don't know what TLP palette format is, but when a game writes palettes to CRAM (Color RAM - the area in VDP memory that holds the palette information) each color gets written as a word in this format: 0000 BBB0 GGG0 RRR0.  (B=Blue, G=Green, R=Red).  So colors look like $EEE, $246, $80A.  In a hex editor they'd be split up into bytes: 0E EE 02 46 08 0A.  Does your TLP-format palette dump look like that?

If not, is there an option in your emulator to do a straight dump of the palettes?  If not, you might want to try another emulator.  Regen (debugger version) makes it really easy.  Just open the VDP debugger and click "Dump CRAM".  You can get Regen here: Regen (get the latest version with D at the end).

I tried opening the TLP file, then the French ROM, but I can't open 2 at the same time.  In this case, the ROM is opened and the TLP file  is closed.

Try this: Open the palette file and write down a row of 8 or so colors on paper.  Then load the ROM and type them manually in the hex search box.

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Personal Projects / Re: Fire Emblem (NES) Translation

« on: May 19, 2010, 04:12:24 am »

Is DTE + shortened translations good for you dude? I really just don't have time to figure out how to successfully implement an MTE.

Could take weeks before I do it successfully.

So if DTE is okay for you, especially since you want to start inserting stuff now, tell me.

I mean I understand MTE is possible, but at the same time, hacking isn't my whole life. Thus it would probably be a very long time before I successfully implemented anything.

I doubt MTE would that much anyway.

Don't give up.  You can do it.  You've got help

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Personal Projects / Re: Fire Emblem (NES) Translation

« on: May 09, 2010, 12:40:03 am »

I agree with DarknessSavior, please do not change the item names.  Personally, my own preference, I would prefer this:

...
りゅうのたて = [Dragon Icon]Shield.
...

Wouldn't that be [Shield Icon]Dragon ?

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Personal Projects / Re: Project: FF7 NES Upgrade

« on: February 07, 2010, 08:49:37 am »

About 50% now. Stops right before it gets to the part of the song I actually like

Very cool.  Sounds good.  The only thing I'd change would be to un-staccato the little fill part at 0:20, 0:33.  Looking forward to the 100% version

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Personal Projects / Re: Project: FF7 NES Upgrade

« on: January 26, 2010, 05:40:58 am »

(so have 25% of the battle theme instead)

Great start!  Thanks!