Dackr
07-14-2002, 02:57 AM
<font color='#000000'>I decided that, just for the sake of all those prospective ROM hackers out there, I would elaborate on how I came to be involved with ROM hacking.
It all started about 1 1/2 years ago when I really wanted a cool game called Rudora's Secret Treasure(Rudora No Hihou), made by Squaresoft, to be translated. I couldn't find it anywhere- so, I decided that I would look into ROM hacking as a solution. http://www.emuxhaven.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif I started off getting a few of the more popular tools to do the job, like thingy, hexecute, etc. It took over 3 months and a whole lot of staring at the computer monitor with a blank look on my face.. hehe.. I acctually was thinking and staring at the screen- It had to be some of the stranger times in my life. After extensive thought, and much research, I was finally able to insert and change text within the ROM. By the time I was really getting into translating Rudora, I realized that the job was already taken by another translation group. It wasnt a complete waste of time- after all I then knew the basis of ROM hacking. My next try was Doraemon 4: Nobita To Tuki No Okoku. This game was waaay cool. I figured it out in less than a week. My only problem was- I didn't know Japanese very well. I mean, I could read some of the easier stuff, but even that I had to look up.. So the project just sat there and I made several BS translations which were never released. If I still had them- I might release, yet all that is left is the few screenshots on the website. About this time one of my long time friends named Josh(Bobby) became interested in what I was doing with these games- so I shared all my knowledge about RHacking with him and we did a bit more on the translation of doraemon. This was mostly because he had taken a Japanese class in school and I had not- so he could read a lot more than I could, what with my self taught japanese. Next we employed the help of a japanese foreign exchange student at my high school to help us translate. He helped quite a bit, but then one night- my HD crashed and I lost everything!! Dammit!! Yeah.. anyway.. It took me a while to get everything together again and I was really reluctant to start again. While I was procrastinating the restarting of the translation- someone else released their patch for the game. Although I had the mini game finished (before hell killed my HD) and they did not.. I decided to look for something new to Hack. I found Little Master 3. I liked this game from the start, yet everything was new and confusing. Like, the fact that it uses 2 fonts. 1 for the black screen text and another for the white screen text. The other was the trouble I had locating the text banks where the whole sentence was in Kanji. The kanji in LM3 is stored in what I think is called DTE(I think thats the name for it)- in other words, it is called with 2 hex addresses first is the bank 01-08 and the second is the actual kanji 00-FF. In order to simplify location of kanji- I actually drew in 0100 0101 0102..etc. in the place of the characters. It worked.
Um.. geez.. It feels like I'm rambling.. Here's the deal- If someone who wants to help me translate/hack this game and doesn't know how, + has lots of spare time to learn, just ask me. I'll try to help you learn in whatever way I can. http://www.emuxhaven.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif
Sounds good.. If anyone wants to hear the rest of my story- Too bad for tonight. I'm too tired and need to sleep.
Bye.</font>
It all started about 1 1/2 years ago when I really wanted a cool game called Rudora's Secret Treasure(Rudora No Hihou), made by Squaresoft, to be translated. I couldn't find it anywhere- so, I decided that I would look into ROM hacking as a solution. http://www.emuxhaven.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif I started off getting a few of the more popular tools to do the job, like thingy, hexecute, etc. It took over 3 months and a whole lot of staring at the computer monitor with a blank look on my face.. hehe.. I acctually was thinking and staring at the screen- It had to be some of the stranger times in my life. After extensive thought, and much research, I was finally able to insert and change text within the ROM. By the time I was really getting into translating Rudora, I realized that the job was already taken by another translation group. It wasnt a complete waste of time- after all I then knew the basis of ROM hacking. My next try was Doraemon 4: Nobita To Tuki No Okoku. This game was waaay cool. I figured it out in less than a week. My only problem was- I didn't know Japanese very well. I mean, I could read some of the easier stuff, but even that I had to look up.. So the project just sat there and I made several BS translations which were never released. If I still had them- I might release, yet all that is left is the few screenshots on the website. About this time one of my long time friends named Josh(Bobby) became interested in what I was doing with these games- so I shared all my knowledge about RHacking with him and we did a bit more on the translation of doraemon. This was mostly because he had taken a Japanese class in school and I had not- so he could read a lot more than I could, what with my self taught japanese. Next we employed the help of a japanese foreign exchange student at my high school to help us translate. He helped quite a bit, but then one night- my HD crashed and I lost everything!! Dammit!! Yeah.. anyway.. It took me a while to get everything together again and I was really reluctant to start again. While I was procrastinating the restarting of the translation- someone else released their patch for the game. Although I had the mini game finished (before hell killed my HD) and they did not.. I decided to look for something new to Hack. I found Little Master 3. I liked this game from the start, yet everything was new and confusing. Like, the fact that it uses 2 fonts. 1 for the black screen text and another for the white screen text. The other was the trouble I had locating the text banks where the whole sentence was in Kanji. The kanji in LM3 is stored in what I think is called DTE(I think thats the name for it)- in other words, it is called with 2 hex addresses first is the bank 01-08 and the second is the actual kanji 00-FF. In order to simplify location of kanji- I actually drew in 0100 0101 0102..etc. in the place of the characters. It worked.
Um.. geez.. It feels like I'm rambling.. Here's the deal- If someone who wants to help me translate/hack this game and doesn't know how, + has lots of spare time to learn, just ask me. I'll try to help you learn in whatever way I can. http://www.emuxhaven.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif
Sounds good.. If anyone wants to hear the rest of my story- Too bad for tonight. I'm too tired and need to sleep.
Bye.</font>