Took me a while but eventually I got to play it and it was actually a hell of a lot of fun. However;
The game, at first, is unplayable. It never got ported to America so all the menus and such are all in Japanese. This means you have no idea what the stats for the weapons are and what most of the items in the game do. Eventually after a couple days of play, I got the hang of it but I kinda figured, why not fix this? I mean the plot is all in english already in the Voice work (baring a hand full of text screens). all that needs changing is weapon stats and item descs to make the game playable.
So I gave it a go, and I'm still working now. Just thought I'd make a blog to showcase it and detail the process, for when/if I get bored and give up, so someone else can take up the project or just mod their own game.
So, to do this you need the following:
- A modded xbox
- Considering you would need a modded xbox to even play the game, this is obvious
- a copy of MWC
- Again. Duh
- MadEdit
- A hex editor we'll use to add text
- Either some translation skills or intuition and Google Translate.
- Most of the text is kinda obvious, so you dont need to be fluent in japanese.
Step 1
Rip your disc. Send all the files over to your PC. I won't detail this step as if you have a modded box, I assume you know how to back up your discs.
Step 2
Locate the various .MSG files in /Menu/Message. These are where the game stores its text. These are also the files we will be editing
Step 3
Back up all your files first. Its very easy to accidentally fuck up and ruin your shit. Try to keep a Clean copy of every file you edit.
Step 4
Open your hex editor and click View. Go down to encoding and change it to Japanese. This is vital unless you love incomprehensible goop
Step 5
Open whatever file you want to translate. All items, weapons and so on are located in /name, all menu stuff is in /menu. The story stuff and subtitles are all in /Char. /game is a bunch of stuff I havnt worked out yet.
Step 6
Work slowly here. Scroll down and find the text then check the hex values on the left. All text is contained within two 00 values on either side of it. Do not delete these values, do not over ride these values, do not move these values at all. These are like the markers the game looks for. If you move one of them even a single inch, you will screw up all your text.
This obviously will cause some issues. Japanese language is a bit "smaller" than English, they have single letters for words and in some cases sentences. But hey, use your initiative. It won;t be a perfect translation but it will work, so long as you make sure you work within those 00 values.
Step 7
Now, just copy over the new saved file you just made with all of your fantastic edits, then copy it over the original on the xbox or in your ripped disc folder. Load up the game. Should have worked.
Step 7
Be careful, test often. Its very easy to break something. text will run out of boxes, fotes will mess up, you'll put something where it shouldn't be. Just keep your xbox on, and test it every time you finish a "section"
Notes:
Japanese characters use about 2 Hex values each. This means for every one letter, you have 2. This does not make things easier as you must also watch out how much text you put on one line. Its kinda difficult to describe but if you write too much without putting in a break, shit will fly all over the place
Some things are werid. The Blast Range and ROF for instance, require you to buffer them with a couple spaces. why? Who knows. They're like birds. What are birds? We just don't know. They arnt the only things so keep an eye out.
To make a break, add the hex value 0A where you want the break. This will move the next bit of text onto another line so you can actually read it.
And that's about it. Follow these steps and you should have only minimal problems really. The hard part is working out what goes where and how to write things like Explosive Blast Radius in 4 characters. Good luck!
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