FF1 NES Text questions

[TeacherGus]

Hello, y'all!

So I have recently started translating stuff - FF3j is 100% done, and I used a tool that ChaosRush developed in order to see and translate all the text in the game in a pretty straightforward way.

Now I've been trying my hand on FF1. I was able to use the FF1Hackster tool for like 90% of the text, but there are still parts left to translate which the app doesn't have access to. So I have tried Hex-editing with a .tbl I made, but whenever I load it up in hex, this is how it is shown:



Words appear to be missing letters - and in the space where letters should be, hex shows random stuff on the PPU viewer.

What am I doing wrong?

Sorry if this is not the right place to post about this, it's just that you guys seem to be very knowledgeable about FF1.

[abw]

This is probably because your table file is missing all of the DTE entries. https://datacrystal.romhacking.net/wiki/Final_Fantasy:TBL#North_American has a more complete list you can use.

[Vanya]

Might be easier to edit with the disassembly.

[TeacherGus]

This is probably because your table file is missing all of the DTE entries. https://datacrystal.romhacking.net/wiki/Final_Fantasy:TBL#North_American has a more complete list you can use.

Thanks! I got the TBL from there and this is what it looks like now:

Might be easier to edit with the disassembly.

Would that need extensive programming knowledge? I'm just a translator, so that might be beyond my skills.

[abw]

Might be easier to edit with the disassembly.

Was there a disassembly of the base game that made this easy? Disch's just has all the text and pointers together as a binary blob that's directly pasted into the build process, so editing that is essentially the same difficulty as editing the final ROM.

Thanks! I got the TBL from there and this is what it looks like now:

It's hard to tell sure with your hex editor only showing 1 letter from the DTE entries, but that's probably right. Is that good enough for you to work with? If not, there are other options for extracting and inserting the game's text.

[TeacherGus]

It's hard to tell sure with your hex editor only showing 1 letter from the DTE entries, but that's probably right. Is that good enough for you to work with? If not, there are other options for extracting and inserting the game's text.

Yeah, that's not enough because several letters are missing. Any hex-editors or other ideas on extracting and inserting the game's text? Thanks for your time and help, btw!

[Vanya]

Would that need extensive programming knowledge? I'm just a translator, so that might be beyond my skills.

The short answer is no. No Programming skill needed.
You just locate the text you want to change in the correct file, make your changes, and then use the batch file to compile the ROM.
The only thing to watch out for is that you don't add too much data to the file. That is a bit of a pain to keep track of unfortunately.
I'd say it's at least worth a try.

[TeacherGus]

The short answer is no. No Programming skill needed.
You just locate the text you want to change in the correct file, make your changes, and then use the batch file to compile the ROM.
The only thing to watch out for is that you don't add too much data to the file. That is a bit of a pain to keep track of unfortunately.
I'd say it's at least worth a try.

Sounds feasible! Thanks!

[abw]

Was there a disassembly of the base game that made this easy? Disch's just has all the text and pointers together as a binary blob that's directly pasted into the build process, so editing that is essentially the same difficulty as editing the final ROM.

After spending a little more time with Disch's disassembly, I see that it does make editing some of the miscellaneous text hard-coded into the ASM easier, just not the large blocks of text such as the main script.

Yeah, that's not enough because several letters are missing. Any hex-editors or other ideas on extracting and inserting the game's text? Thanks for your time and help, btw!

You're welcome! If you have your heart set on hex editing, WindHex will display DTE table entries just fine. Another approach to text editing is to use some generic text extraction/insertion tools such as Cartographer and Atlas or abcde. Cartographer actually comes with an example specifically for Final Fantasy 1, though it only covers the main script; you can find a more extensive command file and table files here.