PM: TTYD Demo of Text Hacking

[Yushee52]

I just wanted to see if I had the ability to do such a feat. Turns out, I do, but a full scale text hack would take a lot of work. Mainly due to making sure it shows up correctly in game... And I need to use a hex editor to make sure it's right.




I don't plan on continuing it for awhile. Maybe when I get nothing to do?

[Wishengrad]

Lol! It is going of screen.

@iwasa@noob@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@


xD Nice.

[Yushee52]

Nov 17, 2010 23:49:22 GMT -5 Wishengrad said:

Lol! It is going of screen.

@iwasa@noob@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@


xD Nice.

That line was a reference to an old Paper Mario 64 video I saw which claimed a string of @'s was a beta Peach text string. He added "noobs" to show breaks in the long line...

[Deleted]

Interesting.
I just have a few questions:
1. Were the text files compressed or uncompressed in the ROM?
2. Does it use standard ASCII or not?
3. Are the messages arranged in any kind of order or are they in a random order?
4. If you're using an NTSC/US version of the game (assuming there's no language selection), is it possible to use accented characters used in European languages (ex. é)?

[Yushee52]

Nov 18, 2010 17:08:31 GMT -5 @deathbasket said:

Interesting.
I just have a few questions:
1. Were the text files compressed or uncompressed in the ROM?
2. Does it use standard ASCII or not?
3. Are the messages arranged in any kind of order or are they in a random order?
4. If you're using an NTSC/US version of the game (assuming there's no language selection), is it possible to use accented characters used in European languages (ex. é)?

1. They were just plain old .txt files. Super Paper Mario does the same thing too!
2. "English and other Latin languages are stored in raw ASCII format. Japanese and other non-Latin languages are stored in 2Byte unicode format, with a few modifications to save space." - MarioWiki
www.mariowiki.com/Paper_Mario:_The_Thousand-Year_Door/Beta_elements
3. It seems to be in order of when they're seen in game, almost. Mm, yeah, it's definitely in chronological order... Except Goombella's tattles, they seem to be at the very end.
4. Yes, it must be possible to use fancy accented e's and stuff. I mean, you can do it in the name entry screens. I know that for sure because I named my Yoshi partner "Yostéck" once.

[Yushee52]

Double post because I found new and better answers to DeathBasket's questions!

Nov 18, 2010 17:08:31 GMT -5 @deathbasket said:

3. Are the messages arranged in any kind of order or are they in a random order?
4. If you're using an NTSC/US version of the game (assuming there's no language selection), is it possible to use accented characters used in European languages (ex. é)?

3. The messages' order is easy to figure out... It starts with text strings that can be seen when playing as Mario, first are cutscenes in game order and then wandering NPC's and sign boards grouped per NPC. The things in any and all NPC Groups are in game order. It then repeats that same order, but with Peach. Next, it does the same, but with Bowser. Finally, it has Goombella's tattles on the NPC's of the area, and ends with the tattle of the area itself.
That made sense, right?

4. I took a snapshot of a font test I made...


You can see that you can type the foreign, accented letters and have it represent fully in game. The game's font is functional with all of the basic keyboard characters, but has a hard to see underscore. The < and >'s aren't shown because those are used for font effects and "debug" comments.