[indecks]

Hi there, I hope this question isn't too dimwitted.

I am trying to see if I can find the actual French script for the game Samurai Shodown RPG.  I was able to find the translation patch here http://traf.romhack.org/index.php?p=patchs&pid=941 .

I was able to find a .pack file that is basically a renamed .zip file, and inside that zip, lies a document titled file_name_here.ssr.  It's about 306kb, and Im assuming that might be the script, or the text Im looking for. I could be 100% wrong here, but Im looking for a way to open the .ssr file.  Ive tried renaming to .txt to see if it will open in note/word pad. It does, but it's all gibberish.

Does anyone have any experience with opening this type of file?

[Jorpho]

If you look at the .bat file in the archive, you will find that this ".ssr" file is an xdelta patch.

And no, there is no way to somehow open an xdelta patch and get a readable script.  Unless there's documentation, or someone has released some usable tools, your only option would be to apply the patch and start hacking the patched .iso from scratch.

[indecks]

Dang, that's what I was afraid of.  I was hoping to find the text in the patch, translate it, reinsert it translated, and then apply the patch that way. Thanks so much for the insight!

[FAST6191]

If it is a file system based device then surely the applied patch being compared to the original is practically a Rosetta stone -- most translations don't touch levels, game mechanics, music, video, stat tables... and just constrain themselves to the font, text handling (optional for a lot of things) and text. Explode both versions into their constituent files, check hashes of both, whatever is changed is probably what you want to be looking at.

As for patches. Even ignoring the nature of binary code then consider the following

character one: [愚かなことを言う]
character two: ...

translated
character one: [says something stupid]
character two: ...

The ... from the translated part is quite probably the same in both. A translation patch would then not need to touch it and have nothing of it within the script.

[indecks]

If it is a file system based device then surely the applied patch being compared to the original is practically a Rosetta stone -- most translations don't touch levels, game mechanics, music, video, stat tables... and just constrain themselves to the font, text handling (optional for a lot of things) and text. Explode both versions into their constituent files, check hashes of both, whatever is changed is probably what you want to be looking at.

As for patches. Even ignoring the nature of binary code then consider the following

character one: [愚かなことを言う]
character two: ...

translated
character one: [says something stupid]
character two: ...

The ... from the translated part is quite probably the same in both. A translation patch would then not need to touch it and have nothing of it within the script.

My head just exploded. I truly have no idea what I'm doing.  Dude, thanks for the input, it is definitely appreciated, even if it does just push the me about 200 miles further out to sea. :/

[FAST6191]

The translation stuff was mainly supposed to be an example, a not uncommon one at that, where simply looking at the patch would see holes appearing in the script you might theoretically create from said patch.

Anyway it need not make it harder.
Extract all the files from the basic unpatched game into a folder

Patch the game, extract all its files into another folder.

Find a program that compares files between directories (or make a zip if you want to go manual -- the crc32 value it will show will be different if said files have changed). Whatever has not changed will likely be of limited interest. Whatever is new or different from the basic game is what you want to start looking at. Any work you would have had to have done for the hypothetical extract from the patch in the event it was just a nice "insert this script" type thing you still have to do -- still have to figure out encoding, markup (if any), pointers and all that jazz.

[Jorpho]

Anyway it need not make it harder.
Extract all the files from the basic unpatched game into a folder

Patch the game, extract all its files into another folder.

Find a program that compares files between directories (or make a zip if you want to go manual -- the crc32 value it will show will be different if said files have changed).

But this assumes that the Neo Geo CD actually uses the CD file system.  (I tried searching to find out if that is the case, and didn't get anywhere.)

[FAST6191]

But this assumes that the Neo Geo CD actually uses the CD file system.  (I tried searching to find out if that is the case, and didn't get anywhere.)

As in ISO 9660 or something akin to it? As far as I was aware every optical device used a file system or something functionally akin to it (even raw addressing based things are files in the end for purposes here), most floppy disc based things too and then we are mainly with the older consoles (commercial GBA and older) that bundle things into the binary. If you can explode the game into its constituent files then you can do a compare and contrast for this sort of exercise.

[Jorpho]

As far as I was aware every optical device used a file system or something functionally akin to it (even raw addressing based things are files in the end for purposes here)

Well, we did just have this post over here about the TG16-CD.
http://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php?topic=28194.msg373226#msg373226

I understood that raw addressing on the PSX meant that there could easily be all sorts of data completely inaccessible by the ISO9660 filenames, if any were present.