[Blank_User]

hi everyone,

can i ask anyone to give me  tutorial on translating ps1 game and i would also want to ask if you can give some translating tools that is not too complicated. thanks

[FAST6191]

At its heart translation is much the same for all consoles and devices.
You find the data that houses the text
You figure out what parts of the data do what and mean what
You alter this, and possibly the way the game decodes data, to represent your chosen text
If not part of the above then you put it back in as well.

The only real difference is the PS1 has a filesystem and files are (usually) loaded using that. This makes pulling the game apart and injecting data back in considerably easier, though it comes at a cost to certain other techniques. You pull them apart with standard iso editors and use the same to reassemble them, sadly I have not got any really good free ones so people still tend to use ultraiso/poweriso/magiciso.

The PS1 is kind of hacked. The tools are not as well developed as some of the earlier Nintendo home consoles and handhelds but there are systems which are far far harder to pull apart. Afraid aside from a few games, and even those tend to come with a long list of issues, there is not really such as  thing as a simple translation tool.

I would not really suggest it for learning how to hack though. We can go a bit more in depth if you like but I will leave it there for the time being, there have been some recent discussions on what PS1 emulator is best for hacking if you want to go looking and that is where I would head next.

[Blank_User]

hello,

thanks for the reply. i'm fan of a game series that is why i want to translate ps1 games. i am also willing to learn even how long it takes so i could play it english. i hope you could teach me. 

[FAST6191]

Afraid my PS1 hacking is not at the level where I would be comfortable teaching someone else. Also most of ROM hacking learning tends to be self directed, whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is a discussion for a different day but the fact remains that is the case.

The getting started section of this site and some hardware docs ( http://nocash.emubase.de/psx-spx.htm are getting good these days) should do most things for you. If you are having trouble with a select aspect of hacking then you might find someone is able to guide you through it but generally learning hacking is learning computing and that is a long process these days.

[MarkGrass]

The PSone can be considerably easier to hack, specifically because you can simply rebuild the ISO with each major hack. For example, if one wants to replace a file with another of larger size, the task can be accomplished within a matter of moments. That said, CDmage, etc., is only useful for replacing files of the same size.

Things get hairy with PSone translation, however. You must either know or learn r3000a dis/assembly. In most cases, there's simply no way around it. However, once you've located the function that parses and displays the text, it becomes a breeze.

I say that dis/assembly is required, because the spacing between font characters - typically, Japanese characters are spaced further apart, as opposed to English. Of course, this isn't always the issue with every game in existence. You might get lucky, where only a simple texture hack is required.

I should also note that most developers used their own custom CD File loading methods. For example, most CAPCOM games use an internal structure (located in the executable) that details LBA and file size, which works especially well and more reliable than standard SDK functionality.

The best emulator for hacking is most likely pSX, as it includes a memory/RAM viewer/dumper, asm view, register viewer, VRAM viewer, etc.

All said, I do not suggest translation hacking, if you've never hacked on the PSone before. Start with simple texture hacks, and work your way up from there.