English Patch Brought Me Back

[NerroEx]

Hello, I am new. I would like to learn how to English Patch old XBOX games and SMT Nine is one that I would like to do. I believe someone was doing it in HEX editing or something like that and the font kept coming out way too big and would not shorten. Is the only way to use the XBOX SDK (XDK)? I know some C++ coding so I'm super ready to dive headfirst into this. Please help any tutorials and all help would be much appreciated. I Want to get this on the road and in english. If there is any other way to do English patching please let me know.

[corona2222]

A whole game language conversion can include text, speech audio, graphics in GUI & HUD. I assume you only want text?

First lazy question is do you have the game source code? It helps but I expect 'no'  

I've only recently got back to XBox original so not sure whats possible with tools now and I've not touched software again yet but I assume disc and binary security checks have been circumvented and files can be browsed. There may be data integrity checks to please/circumvent after data modification. 

Skip the following if you know this stuff 

Text string data could be held in the .xbe file but majority of games want to avoid bloating the xbe because it takes longer to load, so text is usually stored in an external text string data file, possibly multiple string files (for efficiency or separation of areas i.e. UI, speech, in game items, other text like credits and licences etc, and anything accidentally left in). And then there maybe duplicates of these files in different languages (I assume SMT Nine is Japanese only). This is the sensible way....but theres no standards - its entirely up to the games programmers how text was implemented, how and when its loaded and how its rendered. Text files may be combined in single file or left as multiple, which may be located directly on disk or inside an archive file format with all the other game data files (which may be common format or proprietary)

Its easy to browse files and throw suspects in a hex editor to see if theres any english text, however for Japanese its probably best/easier to use Notepad++ search in files using some in game text. (search the whole game data and go make a cuppa).

The format of the text file could be in XML or similar open common format, raw text files are rare, otherwise it will be a proprietary format which should be easy to reverse engineer.

Let me know what you find or not  I use to code xbox 20 years ago, and hoping to get around to playing with the XDK again, I'll try to find a bit of time to look in to this stuff with you.

A lot of this will depend how disciplined the programmers were at the time, if they left bits of text in the .xbe or did something weird then it could get messy to figure out and edit. 

Edited July 29, 2020 by corona2222

[corona2222]

I notice there are bits of English text in SMT Nine, this makes the search for text data files easier.

[corona2222]

I've had a quick look ... the text is embedded a bit in the .xbe but mostly in scripting files (it occurred to me after my post they probably have a script engine and left the text in scripts as its a single lang game).

Text strings in scripts are null terminated so if lucky, they are indexed and no offsets or sizes to worry about.

 

Edited August 1, 2020 by corona2222