Specific tools needed for WSC type games?

[Kallisto]

EDIT:
This topic was meant to dive into WSC Translation, but I've failed at miserably, but if anyone reading this topic is interested in WSC then this topic would be a good read for you.

[Azkadellia]

For debuggers, look into Mednafen.
Since the WS/C uses an x86 CPU equivalent, look into x86 assembly.
Grab Crystal Tile 2 or YY-CHR for tile editing.
I'm sure someone will come along with recommendations for other tools, but this is a start.

[Kallisto]

-

[BlackDog61]

Which game will you be looking at? You got me curious. 

[Kallisto]

Edit:

-Project Cancelled-

[John Enigma]

I know that you're a new guy and all, but do you think it's possible for you to build a WonderSwan(Color) emulator/debugger?

Assuming that you know how to build programs in either C, C++, or C#, and use Windows. Idk.

If you want here's byuu's Higan page which also has the source version of Higan, there's Mednafen, or you can settle for the originals which are Cygne and Oswan (in which the source versions are also here).

[Kallisto]

Well I hate to say it, but I've canceled what I had in mind. Now I know why translators have a hard time with this stuff. This is way beyond me, and if I had went to college for this then I've probably could have handled it better.

Sorry guys, I hate to let everyone down. :/

[John Enigma]

^Was it because of what I said above your comment?

Because if so, I'm sorry.

[Kallisto]

No you're fine. My mind is not built for this type of thing sadly after diving into the code, but it is a big eye opener what people go through now.

My goodness my head could not wrap it around it all.

[MathUser2929]

The important thing is you stuck with it for a couple hours.

[STARWIN]

I find it hilarious how quickly you changed your mind and what your reaction was. To some extent it is an unavoidable reaction for anyone trying something new. Your conclusion may of course be correct.

[Kallisto]

Yup lol. I won't deny that was a eye-opener, I learned my lesson.

[VicVergil]

By any chance, did you look at the Mednafen debugger and called it quits?

I can definitely see why But there are lots of WS/WSC projects you can undertake without dealing with the debugger. No assembly hacking required and just text/graphical edition.

[Kallisto]

No it was not that. What got me is what all these Letter/Number Tables were when I opened it up in one of the programs listed above in this topic. I could not make heads or tails of what did what.

I tried opening it up on Notepad++, but what I saw just confused the heck out of me.

[VicVergil]

It's a straightforward process, somewhat.
Notepad assumes text is written using ASCII, which means characters with hex values 00-1F get interpreted as garbage or stuff like line breaks / tabulations / etc.. if not outright omitted. Space is 20, 1=31, A=41 and a=61.

By necessity, Japanese games (either translated or not) usually don't follow that pattern, so these hex values mean something else entirely.
For example, in one game, 00 might be a space. In another, it might be the first hiragana Japanese character "a". In yet another one, it could be the digit zero. In one, it might be not even a real character but a control code to tell it to stop reading text, or do a line break... And so on...
So you need a file with what hex value gives what character.
That file is called the table.

Assuming we made a table for a game using ASCII (which would be stupid, since it's supported by default on any hex editor that didn't load a table yet), that table would look like this when opened in notepad (because it's a txt file disguised with a tbl file extension):

20=
21=!
(..)
30=0
31=1
(..)
3F=?
40=@
41=A
42=B
43=C
(...)
5A=Z
(...)
61=a
62=b
63=c
(...)

With hex editors like WindHex, you can open the ROM and then open its table file, and in some part of the rom you'll make out the text clearly because you have the table loaded and telling you the right values for text characters.

There are tools to make such table files.
Like monkeymoore.
You search for a word you know it to exist in the ROM. It usually works only with A-Z / a-z characters.
It expects for example if you search for ALPHA that the first and fifth character (A) have the same value, and that the second (L) and third (P) have a difference of 4 between their hex values (because alphabetical order).

Latin alphabetical order is expected.
Try monkeymoore a bit with games with some English text (check the font is complete and in alphabetic order first! if possible) to get familiar with it.

Japanese kana order is unexpected.
An order exists indeed.
However there are "variants" of some letters, and those don't have a fixed order so they either are all lumped in the end, or only some, or mixed with their original letters.
monkeymoore is dumb. So in cases you want Japanese text, you can tell him the order used in that particular game.

I recommend you hack stuff already in a latin language first.