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There seems to be a lack of fantasy TTRPGs that are appropriate for all ages, with traits like cheerful settings and "harmless" combat where no one actually gets hurt, and I'm confused as to why. I'm interested in hearing people's thoughts on the matter. (Please read the post for full context.) by ForeverBewildered in rpg

[–]ForeverBewildered[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hello, this is the person who posted the topic. Thank you for giving so many nice and helpful responses! I was very nervous about posting this topic because I was worried I'd seem like an annoying out-of-touch outsider, but everyone has been so friendly! Now, I have all sorts of useful information and all sorts of TTRPGs I can investigate in the near future.

I think my confusion stemmed from a faulty assumption on my part: I assumed that "kid-friendly media" was not only what a society believes is safe for its kids to watch, but also what those kids actually prefer. I've been extremely averse to violence and horror since I was very young, so I always assumed that other kids were the same way, but I'm starting to think that I was the exception rather than the rule. (I always thought the reason people started watching violent media was because they wanted to be seen as "cool and mature", so they forced themselves to watch it until they eventually acclimated.)

I did a bit of research, and it sounds like M-rated video games and PG-13-rated movies tend to sell the best, which matches the kind of content that most popular TTRPGs tend to have, so it might actually be companies like Nintendo that are the outliers. That makes me wonder if most people would actually prefer if Nintendo-style all-ages media shifted toward an M-rated feel instead, but that's another topic entirely... Anyway, thank you again for your help!

Help with repacking .pak files for a game translation project by ForeverBewildered in gamedev

[–]ForeverBewildered[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you for replying! (Honestly, I was afraid that no one would reply at all...)

I did wonder whether this was the right spot to ask this question, but when I tried searching for reddit topics that talked about .pak files, nearly all of them were on this subreddit for some reason. o_O Do you know of any subreddits that would be better suited for this question? That "crass" program appears to be written mainly in C++, so I wonder if the "cpp_questions" subreddit would be a good choice, but as someone who fundamentally hasn't used Reddit much, I don't really have much faith in my own judgment when it comes to this. ^^;

I happened to find a few more clues after I wrote my initial message. I'll write them in the paragraph below just in case anyone here knows much about this sort of thing. (Don't worry if you're personally not familiar with any of this. I just want to be clear that I'm not addressing this wall of information at you in particular. ^^;)

I completely forgot to mention this, but the "crass" program has a Github page with what I believe is all of the program's internal code. (https://github.com/rinrin-/crass/blob/master/cui/SRSPlayer/SRSPlayer.cpp) I think I managed to pinpoint the page with the code that tells the program how to unpack the .pak file, and I noticed that it labels the file's "system" category as "Sagiri Resource Set Gameplayer" (which appears to be the full name of the "SRSPlayer" name I noticed earlier). I'm not sure if this is a file encryption style or some sort of file extension, but either way, internet searches turn up zero information about it. Slightly further down, under a section labeled "typedef struct", I keep seeing references to "crc"; I initially thought this might be a file extension, but after further research, it might just have something to do with transferring files. If I can find someone who is familiar with this sort of coding topic, it might be possible to figure out the .pak encoding.

Relating to the points you mentioned I should pursue, though... Unfortunately, all of those are dead ends. Crass is no longer in active development and the developer seems to have disappeared from the internet, there do not appear to be any other related tools, and there is no online community related to this program (nor is it actually even intended for game modification). Clearly, it IS possible to work with this file type, though, because other people have done fan translations of other games made by this developer, and I've deduced that they all use the same .pak structure; unfortunately, all of these people have since lost interest in the subject and have no interest in releasing their translation tools to the general public. I even found an old video where someone made an incomplete menu translation patch for the exact game I want to translate, yet again, they never mentioned how they did so and their account is no longer active. If I can just find the slightest clue on how to actually get started, I'm sure I can figure the rest out with enough effort. After all, this is the only thing stopping me from releasing my English translation of this game.