So recently I started messing with editing dialogue for Playstation 1 games, and I ran into an interesting problem I can't seem to really understand. I've tried quite a few games, and the problem is pretty much always there, so I assume it has to do with how the Playstation stores its data.
Basically, whenever I find some dialogue or text meant to be loaded in a file, there is always, ALWAYS, some totally unrelated set of bytes every few entries within the file. Sometimes predictable, sometimes not.
Here's an example of an English game, with the dialogue in ASCII.
Dymÿlos "Youÿ're not ÿusing yoÿur brainý,
It seems to be putting FF every 8 bytes or so within the dialogue, in this particular scenario, but then most of the dialogue I can even recognize as dialogue looks like this:
There a9・too many members in the party. Who will マleav>・
This is obviously a message indicating that there are too many members in the party, and asking you who will leave. Then you get things that seem like dialogue, and are garbled beyond legibility.
"I'm going home. If you need my help・ c」・fiウPyrigl."汝gtS挺約ee hangin';ouニqujメ・ィⅵh橇,゚ justセn?d
I have a similar problem with FF7 in Japanese. I've already mapped out all the kana characters, so I can grab bits of a conversation, but it seems to kind of switch modes to print kanji. So if a kanji is near, I stop being able to read the dialogue. It also is injecting those random bytes around it, as well.
ビッグス.「さ[FF]すが、ソルジャー[kanji coming up...]ミB)[kanji passed]でもよ、[kanji coming up].M.ゅ[FF][kanji passed](しんら)ゲルー[FF]プ 【アバランチ】[the rest of the dialogue is cut short, or just not in a readable form]
I really am not sure of where to go from here. I tried reading directly from the data files in the disks, and the results are the same. The text seems to be compressed or something. I've tried doing searches for related stuff, but I can't seem to find the right way to phrase it.