[USC]

Hello all! I've been playing around with translating Soul Getter for the GBC:


I've got the texting encoding and control characters figured out, found the dialogue blocks, and coded a script extractor. But I haven't been able to find the pointer tables with my usual methods. I was hoping someone could check my work and see what I'm missing.

The first two lines of dialogue in the game start at 0x121AFE and 0x121B11 (there are other lines before it in the ROM file, but these are the first you see in the game). That would make the pointer values FE 5A and 11 5B, correct? There's only two places in the ROM with 11 5B next to each other (0x10EC70 and 0x1098E), and neither have FE 5A anywhere near it.
Further more, the next line of dialogue 0x121B23's pointer value (23 5B) doesn't seem to exist at all in the ROM.

I then checked to see if it was more of a block-based pointer (so it links to the first line of dialogue and then just reads forward). I moved the second sentence's starting point earlier, but the game still read from 0x121B11. I suppose the pointer

Any thoughts? I'm probably missing something really obvious.

[Gideon Zhi]

Did you look immediately before the text block? Sometimes pointers are relative to the start of the block (i.e. the pointer to 121AFE might be 0, while the pointer to 121B11 would be 0x13. The trick is finding the offset value for that first pointer. You could do a relative search for 0, 0x13, etc.

[Cyneprepou4uk]

Try searching only low or high bytes in case they are located in separate tables. Like FE 11 23 or 5A 5B 5B.

Anyway pointers are usually hanging right before the text like Gideon said, try to corrupt some bytes upstairs if nothing else works. Or how about using a debugger maybe?

[USC]

Gideon Zhi and Cyneprepou4uk: Those are all great ideas - thanks! I guess I just got tunnel vision with assuming GBC pointers are always the same (though they usually are). I'll see if I can figure this out.

[danke]

I might be able to help. Been working on the game for a while.

[USC]

Danke: Ah, I see! Well, I don't mean to snipe it if you're already working on Soul Getter. I'm still interested in figuring out the pointer system though, just in case I run across it on another GBC ROM.

[danke]

So the pointer to the first line ($121AFE) is at $120F27. Basically, the pointers are essentially scripted in in a custom event system, preceded by 0xC7s.

[USC]

Hmm. The pointer value is EE 1A - so instead of adding 0x40 to the middle byte, they subtracted 0x10 from the last byte. That's strange - I wonder what the rationale was?
Thanks for sharing, and good luck on the translation!

[danke]

They choose 0x10 because, for whatever reason, they choose to dedicate the first 0x10 bytes of each bank as a label/header. This is not a common practice.