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Well after days of cursing at the VNR text hooker i finally have something working.

It's far from perfect and stable, but it's a start.
First character is clipped due to it being processed in another place due to single character bytes.
And unfortunatly the hook adress tends to shift from time to time.

I do have a fairly stable write adress, but i can't get it to feed the whole thing into the text hook of VNR
I'm not sure if it chokes on the single byte characters at the beginning or if i'm being stupid making the hook code.
If i can make that work i just have to filter out the control characters and its done.

Anyway with VNR somewhat working it is now possible to make a translation script.

What character set is the original in? Are you trying to change the character set used, or just change the text to Romanji?
I can't help with actual translations, but many years ago I worked a lot with localization tools. If I can be of any assistance with any tooling to make the process easier, I'd be happy to help.

Thanks for the offer, however...

The PSX game uses single byte control characters and 2 byte Shift-JIS text.
The text cannot be transformed into regular text due to the way the game reads/decodes/filters control characters and text.
It would require reprogramming the game, and i'm not that handy.

I wrote a PHP script that could decode everything and i could replace the text and rebuild the header, but there isn't enough room.
The game only displays 2 byte S-JIS characters, so english sentences would be very limited in size if not impossible.
I only have 2048 bytes or a multiple of that, minus the header of room in each scene.
And well some scene's are packed with 1600+ bytes of text or more reaching the frame limit.
I can't enlarge the files since psx games don't use the TOC but a LBA adressing.
So changing any file so it gets bigger then the alloted space breaks the game.

Thus VNR is the only way to go.
Hook the text, and have a bar with the translation under the game window.
This make translations easyer, since its just a replace hooked text XXXX with text YYYY

The only thing is to find a stable hook adress that works.
I found another address yesterday that merged the 2 functions, so i have the first character back.

Yeah PSX games are a real dissaster to translate.
Google results are more like: You can change stuff if it fits the same file size, but otherwise you are screwed.

The game only displays 2 byte S-JIS characters

Tch. I hate lazy programmers. I know S-JIS supports a 1-byte with romanji, but, yeah, if you've got a length max that's only going to buy you so much. (Fitting German into English-width spaces was always our problem when I was doing localization).

I can't enlarge the files since psx games don't use the TOC but a LBA adressing.

God. Brings back memories of hacking Assembly language. I've not messed with PSX, but it sounds like the same sort of things.

Will Banpresto give you the time of day? Do they still even own the IP for the game?

I ask because your work has inspired a project of mine. I'm setting up an e-commerce marketplace focusing on Irish language works. It's a pathetically small market, and there's no real money to be made there, so there is very little published in Irish. The main ideas is to set it up more like self-publishing rather than print-publishing. High royalties, but you only get paid as there are sales. Might work, might not.

The question is what would inspire people to buy something and read it in Irish. (Since there's no one who reads Irish who can't read English!) But your fan translations inspired me. Graphic novels are pretty accessible to people who are learning a language. And as other threads have shown, often hard to get. I've started writing to a few publishers and asking if (1) they own the Irish language rights to their catalog and (2) if they were willing to sell me a license to translate and sell them where I could pay royalties per sale.

The software I'll be using for the marketplace is SendOwl, which will sell any electronic goods. So there is no reason it couldn't be used for computer games. It's probably a long shot that Banpresto even still has the rights, or has foreign language rights (or interest) in doing a formal deal. And I guess any specs they have would be in technical Japanese. But I thought I'd throw it out there in case it kicked off any ideas.

Would be a tricky market indeed.
I mean if there is only a handful of people willing to buy a product its economically not viable.
It would be more of a fan based market if anything else.
Maybe ask around, poll on certain Irish websites on interest on certain products?

But still if you manage to get a popular novel/game that is not translated in Irish published, then its possible it will catch on.
That would be your best bet to start with.
Popular stuff with no translation.
Obscure stuff won't sell well i'm afraid.

As for the PSX game, obscurity itself.
I don't think they will make a fuss over it being translated.

BTW i have dug up some documents on PSX ISO hacking, and there is a way to add (append) files to the iso and manipulate the TOC by adding dummy files with a certain length and then modifying the LBA location.
It requires several tools, and HEX editing the main executable, but there is a chance it will work.
Some PSX games have an internal table with filenames / LBA location and filesize.
I found such a table and i'm working on the decoding.
32 bit little endian is what is used probably on lba and filesize
If that is the only internal table, then actual editing the ISO has potential.
But i have to test this before i attempt to do the whole thing.
Wrong...
Anyway i've managed to get a file added to the iso and changed the old filename.
It seems to accept it
So....if this works, then VNR is not needed and i can directly modify the files.
Already figured out the structure of the text, so it should not be much of a problem.

Wow. You're pretty dedicated to this. My hat's off to you. Once you solve the technical issues, if you want to automate any of it, let me know!

The thing with Irish is there is almost nothing available. What is there is usually excessively boring. So even something obscure has a chance of selling. 500,000 people in Ireland are forced to learn Irish every year. Most of the resentfully. If you have the choice of reading the obscure story of a woman growing up in the most boring part of Ireland, or a graphic novel, *any* graphic novel... I think I know what teenagers will choose. But we'll have to see if I can pull it off. I ran aground with SendOwl, they do the sales, but don't provide a storefront. So I'm seeing if what SmashWords has will work.

Just a quick screenshot of the tool i made for easy translation.
It emulates the PSX game window and how the text is shown. It's almost done to the point i feel comfortable to work with.
Took its time due to debugging, debugging and more debugging.
The fun part of it having to use multiple charsets in 1 string.
- 1 byte ascii for control characters shown with the -{ ... }- tags
- 2 byte SJIS (ascii equivalent of the English text and symbols)
This was a big problem as ASCII doesnt perfectly translate to the 2 byte variants.
I had to make a conversion table and then modify the problematic characters.
- 2 byte SJIS the Japanese text.
Again SJIS doesn't translate back to ASCII perfectly.
And all in 1 hex encoded string for "easy" editing, otherwise everything would go to shit.

Anyway I can start putting the translation of youngred into the database soon.
After that, parts can easely be put back to the ISO.

Anyway, youngred please contact me when you can, or log in the website, you've missed a few msg'es already.
Also i might open up the script to a select group of people who are willing to aid in the translation.
If you are interested in this project then contact me.

^Ripper