FF12 International: Zodiac Job System English Conversion

**ffgriever** · 08-26-2012,09:31 AM

The files are not encrypted in any way. Most are compressed (most with lzss variation, very few with rle), but that's all.

**diegsmoran** · 08-28-2012,09:01 PM

so any programs you use then to edit them? LZSS variation? Sorry I am kinda new to this, but using MadEdit, on every single different type of Editing, ex. Shift-JIS, there is always characters unrecognized and nothing in JP! Still pretty new but if unencrypted, a way to edit would be nice

, and thanks for the help, I think your translation has actually been the best, You even translated VIDEO SUBTITLES!!!

**ffgriever** · 08-31-2012,09:02 AM

Nope. I always write my own tools to unpack/repack/decompress/recompress/etc. If you don't know what LZSS is, then maybe it's not a hobby for you

? Hexeditor won't do you any good in case of FF12. You have to first uncompress the files. The text is not in any known encoding. They've used their own (which is quite common in case of PS2 games).

**diegsmoran** · 08-31-2012,05:31 PM

oh boy, maybe I have to learn lzss but I would hardly say it's not for me just because I haven't had any base footing yet! Yeah i know ps2 games have their own kinda encoding, but then again, we can go through the actual SLUS File with PS2Dis and the writing does turn out in English even with JP games. Is it possible that my game may not have been compressed if they used a Dummy file to take up space, and you said you made your own tools, wanna include them somewhere for me

**Joseph Korso** · 09-10-2012,12:43 PM

Originally Posted by ffgriever

Nope. I always write my own tools to unpack/repack/decompress/recompress/etc. If you don't know what LZSS is, then maybe it's not a hobby for you

? Hexeditor won't do you any good in case of FF12. You have to first uncompress the files. The text is not in any known encoding. They've used their own (which is quite common in case of PS2 games).

So, I've heard that PS2 games have kinda freelancer encoding mostly.
But, coming from you, the one who did the great job, what tips/hints could you do to a very-green guy who literally NEED that version in another language?
I mean, could you point some directions to a person that really want to make the thing?

**yoshi314** · 09-11-2012,04:01 AM

i'd suggest taking a look at cue's tools that unpack and extract data from ps2 tri-ace games, and his unslz tool (which is a variant of lzss/rle, and might be very similar).

this could give you some inspiration on the compression method.

hint, hint : you can find them somewhere on romhacking forums or xentax forums.

**ffgriever** · 09-11-2012,07:17 AM

Originally Posted by Joseph Korso

So, I've heard that PS2 games have kinda freelancer encoding mostly.
But, coming from you, the one who did the great job, what tips/hints could you do to a very-green guy who literally NEED that version in another language?
I mean, could you point some directions to a person that really want to make the thing?

What game are you trying to translate? What language are you trying to translate to? I mean, if it's about FF12, I can share my tools, no prob (I've done it few times already), but I'd rather hand them over to someone serious, not a person that will drop the project after few weeks (and by serious I mean both persistent and knowledgeable - if someone needs some help, that's fine - if someone doesn't have a clue where to start, there are no tools that would help; it's quite rare to see noob friendly "hacking" tools).

**Joseph Korso** · 09-11-2012,06:11 PM

Originally Posted by ffgriever

What game are you trying to translate? What language are you trying to translate to? I mean, if it's about FF12, I can share my tools, no prob (I've done it few times already), but I'd rather hand them over to someone serious, not a person that will drop the project after few weeks (and by serious I mean both persistent and knowledgeable - if someone needs some help, that's fine - if someone doesn't have a clue where to start, there are no tools that would help; it's quite rare to see noob friendly "hacking" tools).

I'm replaying FFXII because of your fine job.
I'm VERY interested in put the game to Brazilian Portuguese and would like to know if all the job done here is your own or, very possible, a work of a group.
You see, that patch 0.22 till mostly 50 hours of gameplay (I'm at Ridorana now) just got one little menu yet on kanji, the rest is 100% or more, I'm just upset about the subtitles font being the same as the info from menu (retard pack version was a bigger one).

I understand your plight and your're right about the seriousness of the person who would ask you that sharing tools of yours, but I was honest: I'm green on it, but trust me: I'm seriously on translating that game 'cause the original FFXII are already being done in Brazil, but IMHO the translation is not going too well. The english from the game is quite unique, not a common one and the thing is lower than expected.

**ffgriever** · 09-12-2012,04:42 AM

There is no group as such. Some people helped me along the process, though. All are mentioned in readme. DarknessSavior and Tauwasser corrected or translated some untranslated items. Morningstar helped with hunt description text wrapping. Berion helped with some gfx templates (he created the template for "Stage XX" and "Begins" images in trial mode - actually, he created the template for Polish translation of the game, but I reused it here). Thousands of people helped with testing

. But I have to point out, that I didn't do the translation (just a tiny bit of untranslated stuff) of the game. That's why the text donor game is needed. English text is being copied from the us/uk release of the game. I did a Polish translation, though (www.ff12.pl). It's 100% complete. Actually, the FF12IZJS English patch is just a side project (I started working on the Polish translation first, but then I said - why not do the English patch for IZJS

).

As for the font. The Japanese game uses one font both in menus and in dialogs. There is no easy way around that. One would have to completely rewrite the game's print routines (asm hack, as there is no src, obviously). I don't say it's impossible, but simply impractical (just way too much hassle). I've just had a nice idea, though. I think it might be possible to incorporate the US field font into the Japanese menu font, then use some high character values to access them. Some files could be rebuilt automatically, but some would have to be edited manually (quite a lot of them contain both text for menu and dialogs, while not giving any clues about which is which - it's obvious for a man, but extremely hard for cpu). I'm just not sure how the VRAM manager would react to much larger font texture...

**Joseph Korso** · 09-12-2012,09:50 AM

Hm, the polish translation was the actual project then?
So you did the whole job of translating the thing by yourself.
Based on LZSS compression, knowing that polish language has different types of words and their appearance on the dialogues, the total size, even if compressed was different too, doesn't it?
Thinking about accentuated characters and all that stuff.

Simply wonderful job! Website too.
If you could give me some hints about it, I appreciate, like the yoshi314 said.

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