What's new
By:
Filters

Making an English version of Typing of the Dead Arcade

Okay so I found a program which can extract the BIN files from WORD.AFS.

http://shenmuesubs.sourceforge.net/download/#afs

It looks like the BIN files are named according to stage? So that should somewhat help with figuring out what goes where. Some of the file names don't match up between the two dictionaries though.

There's also the problem of reinserting the modified BIN files back into the Naomi binary.
 
Some of the dictionary BIN files are the same size and can be found directly in the Naomi BIN and easily replaced.
 

Attachments

  • english.png
    english.png
    47.3 KB · Views: 299
  • japanese.png
    japanese.png
    47.7 KB · Views: 293
Also, it looks like there is plenty of FF padding around the BIN files in the Naomi binary so we may be able to just drop in the larger files like so.
 

Attachments

  • english.png
    english.png
    101.1 KB · Views: 287
Nice, Kuze! This is looking very promising!!
 
Thanks guys. I wrote a Perl script to automate replacing the BIN files that could be easily done. This works for BIN files of the same size in both English and Japanese WORD.AFS files, as well as cases where the English BIN dictionary is smaller than the original JP one. In that scenario, I pad the English BIN with FFs at the end of the file to make it match the Japanese BIN in the Naomi ROM. Unfortunately some of the Japanese BIN files in the Naomi ROM are different than in the Dreamcast JP release, though they seem to have some of the same words and/or phrases (though I can't decipher them). In those cases I have to manually locate the BIN file in the Naomi ROM, shrink down the English BIN if necessary, then paste write that into place.

Right now I have a beta image with 55 of the 379 BIN files replaced. So it's incomplete, but if anyone wants to test out the patch let me know. I'd just ask that you don't spread it around until its been completed.
 
kuze said:
Thanks guys. I wrote a Perl script to automate replacing the BIN files that could be easily done. This works for BIN files of the same size in both English and Japanese WORD.AFS files, as well as cases where the English BIN dictionary is smaller than the original JP one. In that scenario, I pad the English BIN with FFs at the end of the file to make it match the Japanese BIN in the Naomi ROM. Unfortunately some of the Japanese BIN files in the Naomi ROM are different than in the Dreamcast JP release, though they seem to have some of the same words and/or phrases (though I can't decipher them). In those cases I have to manually locate the BIN file in the Naomi ROM, shrink down the English BIN if necessary, then paste write that into place.

Right now I have a beta image with 55 of the 379 BIN files replaced. So it's incomplete, but if anyone wants to test out the patch let me know. I'd just ask that you don't spread it around until its been completed.
Click to expand...
How are you going about shrinking down the English bin files to fit; is there just padding that you're trimming off? Any reason this couldn't also be automated?

Another thing I noticed in your image is that the upper text comes through blank. In the Japanese version the upper text is Kanji/Katakana/Hiragana with the lower text in Romanji, but in the English versions the English word is just repeated. I'm wondering if the NAOMI game code is looking at a different location within the bin for the different versions of the same word while the English version only lists the word once. I'm wondering if this difference can be identified maybe we could script the word duplication to get it to display properly.
 
twistedsymphony said:
kuze said:
Thanks guys. I wrote a Perl script to automate replacing the BIN files that could be easily done. This works for BIN files of the same size in both English and Japanese WORD.AFS files, as well as cases where the English BIN dictionary is smaller than the original JP one. In that scenario, I pad the English BIN with FFs at the end of the file to make it match the Japanese BIN in the Naomi ROM. Unfortunately some of the Japanese BIN files in the Naomi ROM are different than in the Dreamcast JP release, though they seem to have some of the same words and/or phrases (though I can't decipher them). In those cases I have to manually locate the BIN file in the Naomi ROM, shrink down the English BIN if necessary, then paste write that into place.

Right now I have a beta image with 55 of the 379 BIN files replaced. So it's incomplete, but if anyone wants to test out the patch let me know. I'd just ask that you don't spread it around until its been completed.
Click to expand...
How are you going about shrinking down the English bin files to fit; is there just padding that you're trimming off? Any reason this couldn't also be automated?
Another thing I noticed in your image is that the upper text comes through blank. In the Japanese version the upper text is Kanji/Katakana/Hiragana with the lower text in Romanji, but in the English versions the English word is just repeated. I'm wondering if the NAOMI game code is looking at a different location within the bin for the different versions of the same word while the English version only lists the word once. I'm wondering if this difference can be identified maybe we could script the word duplication to get it to display properly.
Click to expand...
I'm shrinking down the English bins to fit by removing some of the word bank. I'm kind of doing it by eye and wouldn't be able to code something to do this automatically without entirely understanding the format of the BIN files.

The top line seems to only be missing on some stuff, not exactly sure why. The more advanced lines are showing both the upper and lower text in the demo mode.

It seems like the game would still be playable without the top line, since it's the same as what you're typing in the lower line.

Does anyone know how to get Makaron to emulate a DC keyboard? Or have a JVS.ini already configured for it?
 
If you want to send me a link I would love to do some testing for you. Got my keyboard and adapters ready to go. Great work btw!
 
So my Bench Test Naomi decided it wanted to stop working but I was really keen on trying this tonight so I pulled the Net dim and the bios chip and threw them in the Typing cab out in my garage.

I learned that PiForce tools doesn't like the file unless it's named exactly right but it BOOTS!

Here's a video:

so it seems each little section is a separate bin file as it clearly switches between Japanese and English. Maybe it was the mode I picked but the Arcade Game doesn't start in the same place that Dreamcast version does, I never noticed that before. I don't know if the Japanese Dreamcast version is like the English Dreamcast version or the Arcade version but the order of the bin files might not map exactly
 
Last edited:
Nice video, cool to see it running on your cab. I think you started at stage 2 or 3 if I remember correctly. You should be able to select stage 1 from the menu and it's the same as the Dreamcast version.

That's interesting to see it switch between JP and US word banks like that. At least it's not crashing (so far) and now an English arcade version is certainly viable.
 
This is definitely looking really good!!
 
For reference here is the same section of the game in the English Dreamcast version.
(where I started was around the 37 second mark)
 
Some awesome work here- great to see it in action!
Can't wait to see the final result.
twistedsymphony said:
I learned that PiForce tools doesn't like the file unless it's named exactly right but it BOOTS!
Click to expand...
There should be a text file on the PiForce install that maps the game entries to ROMS- I was able to add a few games to mine by simply editing this. You might want to put one in for testing such that you don't have to match the naming, etc.
 
defor said:
Some awesome work here- great to see it in action!
Can't wait to see the final result.
twistedsymphony said:
I learned that PiForce tools doesn't like the file unless it's named exactly right but it BOOTS!
Click to expand...
There should be a text file on the PiForce install that maps the game entries to ROMS- I was able to add a few games to mine by simply editing this. You might want to put one in for testing such that you don't have to match the naming, etc.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the info, I wasn't aware of that.
 
So it turns out that there are less BIN files to edit than I thought. Instead of 379 total (the count in the Dreamcast versions), there is actually a total of 304 BIN files in the Naomi ROM.

I put some more time into this and have now edited in 154 of 308 BIN files to the Naomi ROM. Halfway there!
 
Awesome work!!! I still haven't had time to try the first version. I need to do it!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top