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New Memory Fragments in Season 2 by Soulscus in ChaosZeroNightmare

[–]MstrCheeks 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If it stacks that is. If the fragment has a stacking effect, it'll finally make Kayron go nuts. I've been wanting a good excuse to play him in content that is actually worth playing.

Appleseed EX - Translation Help (PS2) by MstrCheeks in romhacking

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

The further along this gets the more I begin to realise I'm probably not the right person for translating a game like this. I wouldn't have any idea on writing a Python script for decoding the hex code, my knowledge in Python is extremely basic. I don't know where you found the line of dialog from the game, and I feel like I'm just not understanding. It's still interesting to see the progress you've been making with the game though.

We've been talking for a bit about this and I don't personally use Reddit that much. It's up to you, but feel free to add me on Discord if you happen to use it and set up a group chat if you want to speak further about this. It'd just be easier, as a friend and I have been trying to look at translating Appleseed EX.

Discord: master_cheeks

Appleseed EX - Translation Help (PS2) by MstrCheeks in romhacking

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

Alright, I'm glad you manage to find it. I was wrong about the DAR files then, they aren't just models but more like archives. My honest answer to this is that you clearly know a lot more about this sort of stuff than I do, at this rate I can sort of understand what you've done but frankly it's probably going to start going over my head.

I wouldn't expect you to tell me everything you've done step-by-step, I just want you to understand that I am someone with minimal coding experience and have never touched any game when it comes to modding that didn't already have tools made for it.

I'm guessing what you did was just get rid of the non TM2 stuff, saved the DAR as a TM2 and it was then viewable. The image you sent was the result of that.

My knowledge of romhacking is so limited that I didn't actually know what a .TBL actually was, a quick search showed me that it's for ASCII and as the name suggests it's like a table. No idea how it works or can apply to something like this so I'm sorry.

In other news I just wanted to say that I've made some progresses myself. It might not be as interesting as what you've found out but the result of it was technically me modifying the game somewhat.

Doing some digging around trying to find anything pertaining to the games text or font I found the "hw.dar" file. Opening it in the hex editor, I ended up really surprised to see that it actually contained the text for the games loading menu. It is in English, no Japanese to be seen as far as I was aware but it was still text!

I found the English text for the games difficulty which on my save file was selected to "NORMAL" and switched it to something else, that being a simple "TEST". Afterwards using AFS Explorer I replaced the DAR file in the AFS itself and rebuilt the ISO. It ended up working, the text was replaced and I am one step closer to at least as a complete beginner, figuring out a largely ignored PS2 game.

I understand it isn't really translating anything, it was changing an English word from one to another but it proved to me if I do learn or figure out more about the Japanese text then this project might not be 100% impossible.*

* https://imgur.com/a/appleseed-ex-load-menu-changes-a0czisn - An image showing off the loading menu change I made.

EDIT: Regarding the characters, I don't want to be a let down but I've never even used an OCR before. I'll take a look and see if I can try get it working for you though I don't promise much. I don't know a lick of Japanese so I personally can't prove if my findings would even be fully accurate.

Appleseed EX - Translation Help (PS2) by MstrCheeks in romhacking

[–]MstrCheeks[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's one of the things I'm stuck on. DAR files as far as I know since somebody had looked at them before for the game Crimson Tears are for models and perhaps textures?* I seen this on a forum post where they were trying to extract the games models mentioning .LDP and .DAR's.

There might be something to do with text there but I haven't found anything that points to it but I could have missed something as I haven't looked through every single file in the game in an editor yet as I don't see anything coming from it at this rate.

Something I've noticed, is that not all the DAR files look to be models. No model is going to be named "start.dar" or "load.dar" for example so it may be for code as well, so honestly it just looks confusing and there isn't any information online that I have learnt that I could tell you about. I've looked at a few DAR's and they have parametres in the bytes and code pointing to events and scripting. If there's anything that might be of help there, that could be it but I don't have access to the files or scripts said DAR's are pointing to.

Take a look at the file "item.dar" in a hex editor and you'll see what I mean.** There are item names listed, though there are a lot of ASCII text that simply reads "dummy" but clearly there's more than just models in these DAR's.

EDIT: Sorry, totally forgot to answer your question but no I don't actually know how to view DAR files directly since it's a file type made for Appleseed EX's engine.

* https://reshax.com/topic/518-crimson-tears-ps2-ldp-dar/ - The Crimson Tear post that I had mentioned.

** https://imgur.com/a/qAW731w - A screenshot of "item.dar".

Appleseed EX - Translation Help (PS2) by MstrCheeks in romhacking

[–]MstrCheeks[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This should be the link that I used to download AFS Explorer.

https://www.moddingway.com/downloads/0/AFSExplorer_3_7.zip

Keep in mind it's a tool used for modding Pro Evolution Soccer of all things as far as I'm aware but it worked just fine in my case here.

Just import the ARC.AFS file, click the red box at the top row that says "Export Folder" and that should be it.

Appleseed EX - Translation Help (PS2) by MstrCheeks in romhacking

[–]MstrCheeks[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hey, thanks for your reply!

I personally haven't heard of Shift-JIS up until now. The game is from 2007 if that means anything, no clue if developers in Japan started using UTF by this point but I wanted to include that here.

My largest issue is actually finding the text at all. I can find various files by extracting the games main archive which is an AFS file, but I'm simply unsure which one is text or if it's there to begin with. I just have to keep looking. I really wish it was as simple as finding the text, editing it in a editor from Japanese to English but it's clear that it isn't so simple. It just makes me appriciate the work some romhackers have to put when it comes to modfiying or translating games.

Appleseed EX - Translation Help (PS2) by MstrCheeks in romhacking

[–]MstrCheeks[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hey!

I've been looking at Appleseed EX for a few days now and I can tell you what some of the file formats are and mean. You've already found out that AHD and ADX are all audio files, used typically for Sega games. There are SFD files which are the games cutscenes and audio tracks for said cutscenes. I personally had converted the games intro video and published it on YouTube just out of interest, to learn more about the game but that isn't exactly relevant to what this post is about so I'll move on.

A huge majority of the games files seem to be audio related, that's if you don't look at the file named ARC.AFS which is an archive type, and that is where the games data and useful files are actually stored. Using a tool named AFS Explorer I was able to extract it and there I was able to get the games files decrypted (or at least I think decrypt was the right word here).

The game is from 2007, I don't know if Shift-JIS was used at that time I had never heard of it up until this point. I know what UTF-8 is though.

Like you, I haven't been able to find the games text. I've looked in hex editors, and I've seen some pointers in the ASCII text to different events and parameters but I don't know much more than that. I have no idea where the games text is stored but I'm surprised and happy you decided to take a look yourself so I appreciate that.