[Rew]

Hey gang!

So I am a newcomer both to these boards and to the Mario RPGs. (Even though I've played the Mario main platforming series since I was a child.)

I discovered Super Mario RPG as well as the four Paper Mario titles after it fairly recently. After playing all of those thoroughly, I decided I wanted to further explore these games--see the wealth of enemy/boss names, item arrangement, menu text, and of course all the various dialogue and storylines that I may have missed while hurriedly playing through the games themselves. As a veteran of the Zelda series, I've become accustomed to checking text dumps to see all that info (see the examples here). I just figured I would do the same for the Paper Mario series.

But alas, when I went online to look for SMRPG and PM text dumps... I found nothing. No text dumps for the SNES or N64 originals, nor for the more recent games. I tried every Google search I could, and it just seemingly hadn't been done.

The solution? I myself will set about this task to make these text dumps! (If you want something done right, you've got to do it yourself, right?)

The catch? As is evidenced by this thread's placement in this section, I've never so much as hacked a game before. I am a complete, nearly blank slate newb at this. But I am also determined to see this done. So I request the community's aid as I attempt to do this.

So there are nine games out right now that fall under the category of a Mario RPG. The four M&L games I'll get to later as I haven't even played those yet. So my focus for now will be the other five. After some preliminary poking around, here are my prospects on those:

Super Mario RPG - I've already downloaded the Lazy Shell editor, and it looks like a real godsend. I've already located most of the text, so it should be a simple matter of copy/pasting. There are still parts of the text I haven't located yet.

Paper Mario - Ugh. I've already been warned about this one--the text is compressed and encrypted. It may be, for all intents and purposes, impossible to crack. And yet a Google search reveals that someone somewhere consulted a text dump for this game, so someone did it somehow. But yeah, my prospects are not very hopeful for this one.

The Thousand-Year Door and Super Paper Mario - From what I'm told, the text in both of these games (as they're built on the same or a similar engine) is readily accessible, in ASCII format and comes complete with HTML-style text tags, alerting me to things like text color, size, effects, etc. (These are things I want to capture in my text dumps, similar to this Ocarina of Time dump.) I just have to figure out how to open the ISO.

Sticker Star - I honestly have no idea. I know 3DS hacking is in its infancy stages, and I don't know if anyone's even been able to peer inside this particular game yet. Any thoughts or suggestions on this one will be most welcome.

So there we are. I acknowledge that I'm new to this and that merely looking up the text for a game is not necessarily a simple or easy task. I'm prepared to do all the hard work I need to do in order to make this happen. Hopefully you all will be along for the ride to help, guide, and support me along the way?

---

Anyway, I have run into my first little snag, and it involves PM:TTYD. I have the ROM downloaded, and I believe I've isolated the ISO file. How do I open that? (I know it's the disc image file, similar to popping a CD-ROM into one's laptop.) I've googled, but run into loads of different and contradictory answers. I suspect I'll need a third-party program to accomplish it. So if anyone can supply a reliable one for GameCube (and Wii) ISOs, that would be wonderful!

[Scio]

What format did the image come in? If it's an .ISO, you can open it up with the newest versions of WinZIP, WinRAR or 7zip.
You could always install DaemonTools (uncheck the adware) and create a virtual drive from that image file.

[Rew]

Both TTYD and SPM images came as .iso files:

s3-pmario.iso (for TTYD)
&
hz-spm02.iso (for SPM)

I tried using 7-Zip (a Windows 8 compatible version I just downloaded today) to open them, but got nothing but error messages.

I suppose I could try DaemonTools.

[danke]

The Thousand-Year Door game script.

The Super Paper Mario game script.

[Rew]

A game script =/= text dump. I'm only interested in doing the latter, not the former (there is a difference).
(EDIT: Thanks for the suggestion, though. Didn't mean for my post to come across snippy.)


Anyway, a note on my progress: I've opened the ISOs of both TTYD and SPM. I've also found just about all the text in SMRPG thanks to the Lazy Shell editor.

So, there's good news on SMRPG and TTYD at least: It looks like a text dump should be possible for both!

Much to my surprise and dismay, however, the same is not true for Super Paper Mario. Even though I'd heard nothing but how easy it would be to find the text, I can only find readable text in one folder, "global" (i.e. menu text and everything relating to Pixls, particularly Tippi's tattles).

There are 9 other folders in the text (or "msg") directory: "machi" and "stg1" through "stg8". But... they're all in Japanese. Even though I confirmed I definitely have the US ROM (in fact, the only directory under "msg" is "US", which leads to these files, even though all but one are in Japanese). How do I find the English text for all those areas? I've searched everywhere else on the ISO, but there is no text anywhere else. Are the Japanese characters the system's way of indicating those files are encrypted/compressed? Do I have a faulty ROM? What should I do?

[Jorpho]

Did you see the bit at http://tcrf.net/Super_Paper_Mario#Unused_Capture_Cards about the text for unused capture cards?

[Rew]

Much happier update this time: As it turns out, it's not the ROM or the text that's faulty, it's my own tool. I was using Notepad to look at these text files, hence why sometimes they would crap out and show weird text. I have now changed to Notepad++, and all text files are showing up very nicely!

So this means I should be able to pull full text dumps for all three: SMRPG, TTYD, and SPM. (I'll leave PM64 for a different time.)

Did you see the bit at http://tcrf.net/Super_Paper_Mario#Unused_Capture_Cards about the text for unused capture cards?

Yes indeed! I've been very aware of TCRF and have been consulting it on missing text. I was actually looking at the unused Catch Card text just a moment ago, in fact.

[Rew]

Update:

So I have all the text isolated and collated into one place for SMRPG, TTYD, and SPM. At this point it's just a matter of going line by line to remove all the tags associated with the text for those games (no small task). I can do that later, though. In fact, I'll probably upload a document on this site for each game of a text dump with tags included, in addition to dumps without tags later.

As for Paper Mario 64, I've located the text for that game with a hex editor I have. It's a bit wonky, but readable. Every letter in lowercase is represented with capital letters, and all capital letters are rendered with symbols. It's possible that I could go through and figure out what's supposed to be what using context clues (e.g. "-ARIO" is obviously "Mario", and thus I could change all instances of "-" to a capital M).

But I'm wondering, is there a faster/more efficient way to get the text properly formatted? Is there a certain program that can do this so I don't have to sift through a bunch of lines of code? Thanks.

[Scio]

You can make a table file (.tbl) and load it into a hex editor that can use them (WinHex can use them).

A table is a single file formatted like this:
00 = A
01 = B
02 = C
..
FF = <break>

And so on. There are a few documents on this site about Table Creation.

[kogami]

Script for Super Mario RPG dumper by myself

http://kogami.free.fr/Divers/Mario_RPG_Full_Script.zip

[Jorpho]

But I'm wondering, is there a faster/more efficient way to get the text properly formatted? Is there a certain program that can do this so I don't have to sift through a bunch of lines of code? Thanks.

Why not learn a little Python?  It will probably be a bit of a challenge, but the skills may prove useful further down the line.

(Something like Awk might actually be more appropriate for manipulating text, but probably wouldn't be as user friendly.)

[Rew]

You can make a table file (.tbl) and load it into a hex editor that can use them (WinHex can use them).

A table is a single file formatted like this:
00 = A
01 = B
02 = C
..
FF = <break>

And so on. There are a few documents on this site about Table Creation.

Thanks for the help!

So basically it looks like I need to build a table. Seems simple enough for those who know what they're doing. The trouble is, how do I do that? I downloaded Windhex (I had previously been using HxD), and it has a table builder feature. But I have no idea how to use it. I tried playing around with it for a few minutes, but don't know what to actually do with it.

Also, I read some of the documents on this website about building tables, but unfortunately I didn't understand them. I'm very confused as to what tools I need. One of the docs linked to a page that's been redone and effectively doesn't have the program I was suggested to obtain. It also recommended Thingy. Should I use the original Thingy or the more updated Thingy32? I tried Thingy32, but it won't let me open the application because it gives me an error message about things that are not already on my computer. But is Thingy (the first version) too out of date? And then the other document I consulted was mainly about translation and Japanese characters, which aren't relevant to what I'm doing. (It doesn't help that both of these documents I consulted are about 10 years old.)

So yeah, I'm really lost and confused and my attempts to educate myself only resulted in me being even more confused.

I guess I just need a simple how-to on how to create a .tbl file so I can convert the text--I have figured out that I need to add 32 to each byte of text data, so it's just a matter of how to implement that knowledge and what tools I need.

Why not learn a little Python?  It will probably be a bit of a challenge, but the skills may prove useful further down the line.

(Something like Awk might actually be more appropriate for manipulating text, but probably wouldn't be as user friendly.)

Thanks, but if I'm having this much trouble with just extremely basic table building, I think the last thing I need is something more challenging or less user-friendly. 

Script for Super Mario RPG dumper by myself

http://kogami.free.fr/Divers/Mario_RPG_Full_Script.zip

I already got all the text from SMRPG squared away a week or so ago, but thanks though!
May 01, 2014, 10:02:30 pm - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)UPDATE: Disregard the above post.

Go figure, no sooner do I make the above post then I peek back into it and figure it out.

So I've got my table made and I've converted the text. There are a couple issues that remain, however. The first is byte reference 29. This one is annoying in that it seems to serve as *both* a tag and the capital letter I, at the same time. This leads to such awkwardness as the following, near the beginning of the text (all instances of "I" bolded by me for emphasis):

($FF)I($9F)Oh dear... What the...?($FD) ($FF)I($9F)Who stuck that weird thing($F0)into this story?($FD) ($FF)I($9F)Ha ha ha! Yeah! I did!($FD) 

I can't change "I" to whatever else it's supposed to signify without eliminating the first-person singular (as well as every instance of a sentence beginning with I).

The second issue should make itself known in the quoted example above. There remain quite a few unconverted bytes, which I'm relatively certain are tags (for things like line breaks, end of dialogue boxes, etc.). Is there a quick or easy way to figure out what's what? My current plan is just to go on YouTube and look up a Paper Mario LP and see how things line up--I was wondering if you hacking experts have a better idea, though.

EDIT: Another question--does anyone know how to assign a line break in a .tbl file?

[henke37]

Are you sure it really is a tag? I think that it is something different: an argument for a control code.

[BlackDog61]

I agree with Henke.
So if you ant to stick to "just" tables, you simply convert a more than 1 digit, like so:
FF49F9=<Mario>
(assuming "I" was coded as 49, like in ASCII)
This way, the normal "I" and FF49F9 are processed differently.

But that works only if this is not something that varies a lot - otherwise you have a real parameter to an escape code and you have to handle all possible combinations... or write a program.

[Rew]

Ah, that makes sense. Yeah, I notice now that letter-characters like that only show up in certain places in the text. (The above example is from the pre-title screen prologue. I think there's an instance with the letter "u" in Peach's letter.) And the letter is always surrounded by other bytes (like F9 and so on). Good to know.

Thanks, you two!

[Rew]

Good news: I am effectively finished with text dumps for Super Mario RPG and the first three Paper Mario games! (You can find them right here at ROMhacking.net here, for those who have any interest in such things.) They're currently in their "raw" form, with all coding and such still intact. I am planning to clean them up in the near future, though.

I just wanted to thank everyone in this thread for all your help! I couldn't have accomplished my task without y'all.

At any rate, this does still leave Paper Mario: Sticker Star. I know I shouldn't expect to get into 3DS titles for a while. But is there anything I can do to try to access the text? Has anyone ever attempted this with a 3DS game before? There's no 3DS emulator out that I'm aware of, so I can't extract files that way. I attempted to load the PM:SS ROM into WindHex, but any attempt to search for text was futile. (This approach worked quite well for PM64 but alas not SS.) If I could just find out what values represented text characters and could build a table accordingly, that would be something.

Anyone have any ideas? I know it's a long shot, but I figured I'd at least try.