Author Topic: Translation help: Ninja Burai Densetsu (sega gen) ! (Read 20586 times)

bLind · « **on:** March 30, 2012, 01:47:48 pm »

Ok... so I read some of the newbie stuff, and this is what sticked in my head: "it's hard work" (no problem... I can do that... can't I ?)...
Aaaagrrrr... let's get straight to the "newbie's point" (questions/requests): I would like to play the SEGA Genesis/MegaDrive Ninja Burai Densetsu in English, soo... by searching I couldn't find a translated rom and I thought "why shouldn't I translate it ?" (right ?) !
If anyone who translated a .smd rom has a tutorial, some steps and the best programs to use, please tell me !
Would it be easier if I convert the .smd to .bin ? .... Let me stop here and I'll continue after I see some responses... ow... I couldn't find any work started on translating this rom [maybe I missed it, and hope you could point me to the right direction (not the exit please !) ]

Auryn · « **Reply #1 on:** March 30, 2012, 08:12:05 pm »

bLind · « **Reply #2 on:** March 31, 2012, 03:59:46 am »

^That's giving me bible stuff !

LostTemplar · « **Reply #3 on:** March 31, 2012, 06:01:48 am »

Well, I don't get any bible stuff, but the first results aren't very informative either. But I think he wanted to hint at something different: Google is your friend, you can find most things you would want to know there. You could also look into the Documents section here at RHDN, there are some documents on the Genesis to get you started.

bLind · « **Reply #4 on:** March 31, 2012, 09:42:34 am »

For starter, I changed (with MadEdit hex editor the .smd) 国　with KN just to see if it works, and I changed all found 国 with KN and saved it ! But no changes in the game !!!

What should I do ?

Gideon Zhi · « **Reply #5 on:** March 31, 2012, 09:46:01 am »

Well, the very first thing you should do is not hack an SMD file. SMDs are interleaved in funky ways; you'll want to convert it to a BIN before even attempting to hack it.

bLind · « **Reply #6 on:** March 31, 2012, 12:03:11 pm »

The converters I found 'till now didn't work, but I found the rom as .bin, is there any need to convert the .smd one to .bin, or it's ok to use the one I found as .bin ?
Edit: Did the same thing with the .bin... but no change ! Shouldn't the rom be decomplied somehow ? I read something about scripts !?

LostTemplar · « **Reply #7 on:** March 31, 2012, 03:37:29 pm »

I figure you're using Shift-JIS in MadEdit? It's very uncommon for a game of that era to use Shift-JIS. You have to create a table yourself that says what byte values are mapped to what characters. How this is done is explained in many a document here. I always start with finding the font graphics in the ROM (at least if they're not compressed).

Auryn · « **Reply #8 on:** March 31, 2012, 04:38:03 pm »

My hint was the very first result in google.
You think that a site with this introduction:

Quote

Welcome to the Genesis development section of Eidolon's Inn! You will find useful tools and documents on this page which will help you understand the inner workings of the Genesis. If you have further questions, you should ask them in The Tavern - there's some folk around which can help you. At the bottom of the page, you will find some links to homepages of people who are currently developing software for the Genesis.

,
a site full of documents and tools (sprite/tile editors/converters, sound tools, checksum generator) and an address to a forum with people working on Genesis to ask question, isn't helping you?? Then I have nothing more to say to you.
Just in case your google give you a different sequenze of answer as mine, try to take another look at http://www.eidolons-inn.net/old/sega/gen_dev.html

Anyway, if your main problem is to view Sjis enconding, then I don't expect you to understand anything in that site.

bLind · « **Reply #9 on:** April 01, 2012, 01:55:23 am »

April 01, 2012, 05:49:11 am - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)

^ That's how I'm feeling right now (too much reading, not much assimilation)
@LostTemplar
I'm using MadEdit 'cuz it's the only prog. in which I can see the kanji (and kana) ?
When I use a tbl nothing changes (I found this sjis.tbl and it looks like the hex matches with the japanese characters in the rom)
I had just installed the japanese language support on my PC and I'm not that great with handling it !
The bin rom I found is exactly like the smd one except for the file extension (smd/bin) !
How do I extract the data from the rom ? I have a feeling the data is compressed • • • ! I Think (noob thought) the texts in the game are... images (?) !
I want someone to guide me to the step in which I modify a single kanji (there are more kanjis in the game than kana), in anything else (a number, 2 letters... anything) and see that it changed in the game ! <- Probably a long way 'till that (?) !
*damn it ! damn it !* *shnit ! shnit !*

goldenband · « **Reply #10 on:** April 01, 2012, 05:55:48 pm »

I sympathize, bLind. I have no experience with 16-bit hacking, but when I was first trying to figure out how to crack open an 8-bit ROM, it was very frustrating and bewildering at first. Getting pointed to a bunch of random tools isn't necessarily helpful, especially if (like me) you're not a Windows user.

Besides, some of us learn best by taking an action that has a concrete, visible effect, and then reasoning backwards to figure out how it worked and what else we might do. Otherwise it can feel like you're in a sea of futility and nothing is making any sense. And to Google something, you need to have some idea of what you're looking for in the first place, and sometimes that's not clear! One person who's willing to offer specific, concrete help (instead of rolling their eyes or speaking in generalities) can save you hours of needless, misdirected effort.

Anyway, I'm interested in this game since I recently bought an original copy of it, so I tried nosing around in the ROM with TileMolester (4bpp linear, 2-dimensional mode) but wasn't able to make sense of what I found. I also played for a bit, went into the game's side-scrolling mode, and went into a building where a fellow had something to say to me in (mostly) hiragana:

The text display routine comes up one character at a time, so it's not just an image. I transcribed this as:

いらっしゃいませ. 何か買いますか?

I then tried using a relative search program (OpenSearch) to find the text, but no luck. Perhaps I'm not using my program correctly -- I can't make sense of its wildcard function, so when I tried to use a search pattern that would allow for 2-byte encoding, it threw up nonsensical results. Or perhaps the text, too, is compressed.

If someone with better skills than mine can identify where the above text is located, then you'll be doing bLind a big kindness. Believe me, I know the feeling he's having!

KingMike · « **Reply #11 on:** April 01, 2012, 10:06:57 pm »

Well, I know Gens uses uncompressed savestates, so you could start by looking through that (I think in a Gens savestate, RAM starts at $478 and VRAM at $10478, you could find where the tiles and tilemap data are in there. Plus there's a program to view Gens savestates. (it can tell you where the tiles and tilemap is in VRAM, so you can try to view the raw tilemap data and see if you can find the format)
You can try to see if you can find data in RAM.
Though I suppose you might need some 68000 knowledge to work backward, but Gens Tracer can help in trying to locate data, in how it got from ROM to RAM.

Auryn · « **Reply #12 on:** April 01, 2012, 11:03:24 pm »

Well I am sure that the game is compressed (text and graphics) and with probably a custom table.
Here you can see the beginning of your text:

They used little tricks like mirroring tiles to save some space as well (see number 8 ):

But even without looking at the save state, they should have seen this (the only graphic that isn't compressed in the rom):

I think it's not bad to have all this finding in about 2 hours counting finding info, tools, emu and examine the game for somebody that never touched a Genesis/MD rom (me).

goldenband · « **Reply #13 on:** April 01, 2012, 11:53:25 pm »

Hey, thanks for that, Auryn -- nice work! Would you mind posting the ROM locations where you're finding those? I must have Tile Molester set up incorrectly -- I've never used it on a 16-bit ROM -- but surely I would've seen the SEGA logo, since I paged through the whole ROM repeatedly.

So wait, does that mean that the dialogue box of which I posted a screenshot is an image? That's surprising if so. Or is it just that the table order happens to be set up to match that particular dialogue box?

Also, are those screenshots you're posting directly from the ROM, or after running a decompression routine (and if so, what's the compressor)?

bLind · « **Reply #14 on:** April 02, 2012, 04:50:08 am »

Quote from: goldenband on April 01, 2012, 05:55:48 pm

I sympathize, bLind. I have no experience with 16-bit hacking

I have NO experience at all related to hacking, as I said, I only want to play this game in English, that's why I'm trying this !
Wooow,@Auryn sensei, what did you used to do what you just did ?

LostTemplar · « **Reply #15 on:** April 02, 2012, 05:23:33 am »

I'd say he just used what KingMike was saying (viewing the savestate). If the Sega logo is uncompressed in the ROM you should be able to see it with any tile editor.

Auryn · « **Reply #16 on:** April 02, 2012, 05:27:09 am »

Sega logo > tile molester 4bpp linear in 1 dimentional mode. First 1/4 of the rom with some shift scroll (byte scroll in TM) and another palette, I choosed this one because it's more easy to see.

The other 2 images are from TM as well but opening the savegame (I have done what KingMike said before I see his post

).
Because you can see the graphics in the save game but not in the rom, it means that they are compressed.
Looking online, it seems that MD used SJIS encoding but parsing the rom, there is nothing similar to SJIS encoding and because it's looking like there is nothing like SJIS in the savegame either, it's probably a custom table.
Considering the images I saw in the emu, the fact that it uses a resolution of 320x224 @4bpp (every map is bigger than that) and the size of the rom, I would say the text is compressed as well.

Is the text in you image actually an image?? Yes and no. I didn't check it well.
The "normal" way it should be is that the font tiles are decompressed somewhere in the ram (the part with the numbers probably). Each letter in the text, call the respective tile from the font tiles and a word/ is composed graphically in another place in the ram (the pic with the beginning of your phrase). Finally this word/frase is copied to the VRAM/screen.

What this means for your project?? You need to trace where the data comes from in the rom and how it's decompressed (need to learn ASM). You will need to program (in visual basic, C, C++, C# or else) a de-/compressor to extract the data (image or text) and recompress it into the rom after you edited/translated it. Finally, but this is the smalles problem, fix the checksum you have in any MD game rom.
Sure not really a job for a newbie but nothing is impossible so feel free to try.

PS: if it wasn't clear, it was the first rom for MD that i ever touched.

Pennywise · « **Reply #17 on:** April 02, 2012, 06:06:33 pm »

There's a chance the game might use the Nemesis compression, in which case these is a tool to extract the compressed data.

RedComet · « **Reply #18 on:** April 03, 2012, 12:00:04 am »

The preliminary notes I made a few years ago say that the compression scheme looked like an LZ variant, so yeah. Definitely not a newbie project.

Auryn · « **Reply #19 on:** April 03, 2012, 01:07:56 am »

Got something with Nemesis but it's really only this at the moment.

This wasn't visible in the savestate so or it's directly decompressed to VRAM or it's used in a special place in the game.