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Programming / Re: [GB] Need help with debugger and ASM hacking

« on: February 10, 2021, 02:12:37 am »

There is sadly no way to know. Most translators don't really talk much about these, so you have to ask around. Depends on the system, too. Most interesting 8-bit/16-bit games are arguably done, but not that many for CD-based systems (longer games/scripts, tougher technical challenges etc.) On the other hand, newer systems like NDS/3DS/Wii are actually covered very well.

Well that's a bit problematic but still it is interesting to know that CD-based still have some games untranslated. Maybe I'll try messing with them someday.

You're still welcome to continuing working on the game, but I thought I'd let you know I was working on it and have it in an almost complete state. The game really is a pain to work on, but it'll probably be finished this year.

Btw, I solved all the space issues in the game by expanding the ROM and relocating all the text between different banks. That's generally the easiest/best approach to take when translating these old ROMs.

Well I was just starting anyway. xD Maybe it is better to wait for your translation and learn from it. Anyway I searched around and saw no info about translation of another game I am interested, Atelier Marie gbc version. Last post of someone asking about it was in 2019 so I decided to try it. Looks like it have a lot of space to work. Btw, do you have any more guides or know of some interesting ones that I can look into?

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Programming / Re: [GB] Need help with debugger and ASM hacking

« on: February 07, 2021, 11:02:54 pm »

I have a mostly complete translation of this game. It's mostly a matter of hacking all the misc text and menus before I could consider it finished.

Oh, I didn't know there was someone working on it already. By the way, I found some info that I need on your nes rom expansion document. Do you know where I can keep track of what people are translating?

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Programming / Re: [GB] Need help with debugger and ASM hacking

« on: February 06, 2021, 05:26:24 pm »

Well first of all thanks for the help and for the info on MBCs and BGB. It will be useful.

The code handling the text pointers will generally want to read said pointers and the GB/GBC does not have enough RAM to be stashing a pointer list in RAM and leaving it there (though it is a possibility).

This made me unsure if it is the best approach now. The other option I was thinking of was to try and expand the rom though I still not sure if there is any problems related to it. What would be your recommendation in this case?

To that end if you know where the pointers are then it should be a matter of setting a break on read to that location (as in the where the pointer is at, not where it is pointing to) and going back before that text is ever likely to have been loaded/generated. It will then pop up saying something read this and you should then
If it is one of the strange for GB/GBC games that grabs the pointer table to languish in RAM then you do the same but set your break on read to that RAM location (if it is not a copy of the pointer table as it was in the ROM then you can work backwards from it grabbing the text data from ROM) and then watching it do its maths and thinking through how you might subvert it to read another bank or something.

That is really useful info. It is a strange rom in the way of formatting text (half of bytes used to form a new one or to act as specific characters) but i'm not sure if it is the same with the pointer table. Anyway if you want to check the dialogue pointer table starts at 0x30000 and text follows up after it.

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Programming / [GB] Need help with debugger and ASM hacking

« on: February 06, 2021, 02:38:32 am »

Well I've been trying my hand at translating Oni 2 Innin Densetsu and eventually found out the dialogue text and it's pointers. The problem is that the bank barely have any unused space and the pointers are 2-byte. Although I recently learned the basics on debuggers with Pennywise guide, I still feel lost when trying to find the pointer and code that point to these text pointers. As I have found some unused space in other banks I think it's better to try and repoint the text pointers to 3 byte, but I still don't know how to do that. Is there any documentation on that for the game boy or can someone point me to an example I can follow up? By the way I experimented with BGB.

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Newcomer's Board / Re: Can't find font in Albert Odyssey

« on: October 09, 2019, 03:12:23 pm »

It is nice if you mention what system it is (Sega Saturn in this case), if for no other reason than some systems have fonts built into the BIOS/firmware/some other system level affair and other things have shortcuts that might work for that system. I don't think the Saturn had much here by way of hardware pulled stuff but it is not my main system so I could be wrong (it tending to be very old consoles and early CD consoles that saw this).

What did you try to locate the font?
If leaping immediately to compression I am likely to assume you tried looking at file names and then opening the ROM/ISO up and pressing page down a lot in a tile editor of some form (not sure what we have for the Saturn these days but tileggd and such should still be able to make a version happen).
Such things can work but are far from the whole story, and also tricky for a whole bunch of reasons (custom font size, individual custom character size, various colour depths for characters....).

Yeah mb for not mentioning the platform and thanks for the reply. It is Albert Odyssey for the SNES/Super Famicom.  For locating the font I tried the normal method with tile editors on different formats and also tried the same formats with interleaving in Tile Molester. That was what made me think it is compressed, since the guides I read said it probably was the case. Also I didn't found any tool for it on utilities.

After this then yeah time to start looking at assembly -- it will eventually land in video RAM so you get to follow it back up the chain. This is for the GBA and for a command line driven emulator but still the sort of workflow that people will use https://www.romhacking.net/documents/361/ . Afraid I have no clue what debuggers are like for the saturn right now.

I guess this may be the case... Thanks for the GBA link. Is there any good debugger and assembly guides for SNES/Super Famicom? Or at least something that can put me on the right track. Thanks in advance. 

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Newcomer's Board / Can't find font in Albert Odyssey (SNES)

« on: October 09, 2019, 03:31:10 am »

I found text and pointers on both of the games and the font on the second game but can't locate the font on first game no matter what I do.  Is it compressed? And if it is how exactly can I locate and decompress it? Is there any tutorial easy to understand about it anywhere?

EDIT: Added SNES to the title to avoid confusion.

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Newcomer's Board / Re: Introduction Topic

« on: October 08, 2019, 05:40:05 pm »

Greetings everyone! I've coming around a lot during the years in search of translation patches and finally decided to try my luck in rom hacking.