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- Seen May 21, 2021
Greetings, fellow hackers!
I am doing a Translate Rom of Pokémon Fire Red. My main tool for doing this is Advance Text, although I am also using many other programs. So far, I've translated the game up until Pewter City, as well as some stuff like the start menu, the move names, the type images or the title screen.
Currently, I'm translating the Battle Dialogs, but I have encountered a repointing bug which only happens once in a blue moon, but I'm worried there are other bugs like this. This fear intensified after reading on the Internet that the A-Text eventually breaks your ROM (despite most of these posts were made before the last version of the tool in 2018)
THE REPOINT BUG
This bug is quite rare, since I've translated hundreds of strings with A-Text, but it has only happened thrice.
Apparently, the program "links" couples of strings, so that when one of them is repointed, the other one gets the same address as well. This results in both events showing the same text.
So far, the three instances of the error are the following:
A- The CLEFAIRY picture on the RIVAL's house (18DC47) and the RIVAL text when you go to the lab before encountering OAK (18DC67).
B- The battle texts "[POKéMON] made a WISH!" (3FC88A) and "[POKéMON]'s WISH came true!" (3FC89A)
C- The battle texts "The battlers shared their pain!" (3FD048) and "A bell chimed!" (3FD068)
As you may have noticed, these cases share two things:
A- Both strings are located next to each other in the HEX file.
B- Both addresses share the same last digit.
These condition appear to be necessary, but not enough, since the battle texts for PERISH SONG (3FD077) and No PP Left (3FD0A7) also fulfill them, but they seem to be unaffected by the bug.
SO... WHAT I'M EXACTLY WORRIED ABOUT?
This error itself is not enough to stop using A-Text IMO, since when it happens, the repoint can be done manually. This applies even after the error happened a while ago without going unnoticed, since I can just look up the location of the original pointer in an uncorrupted English ROM.
So... what I'm exactly worried about?
- Does this error get more frequent the more you use A-Text?
- Are there other grave bugs like this? So far, the only other error I have found is that the tool isn't able to write the "í" character, but that can easily be fixed with the HEX editor.
ALTERNATIVES
Researching the Internet, I've came across three alternatives for general text editing:
- XSE. This seems quite time consuming, as strings are harder to locate and you have to repoint manually. Remember, I need to translate every single string in the game, so this can up the project from 1 year to 2 or 3, which is something I'm not sure I'm willing to spend.
- HEX editing. Same problem as above, probably even worse.
- HopelessFrench's Pokemon Text Editor, which is published in this very forum. However, this tool doesn't seem to work on Windows 10. I get the error "ROM already in use" when I start it, which apparently happens in Windows 8 and onwards. Plus, the tool is older than the last version of A-Text, according to the website RomHacking dot net.
Thanks for reading this lengthy post!
Cheers!
I am doing a Translate Rom of Pokémon Fire Red. My main tool for doing this is Advance Text, although I am also using many other programs. So far, I've translated the game up until Pewter City, as well as some stuff like the start menu, the move names, the type images or the title screen.
Currently, I'm translating the Battle Dialogs, but I have encountered a repointing bug which only happens once in a blue moon, but I'm worried there are other bugs like this. This fear intensified after reading on the Internet that the A-Text eventually breaks your ROM (despite most of these posts were made before the last version of the tool in 2018)
THE REPOINT BUG
This bug is quite rare, since I've translated hundreds of strings with A-Text, but it has only happened thrice.
Apparently, the program "links" couples of strings, so that when one of them is repointed, the other one gets the same address as well. This results in both events showing the same text.
So far, the three instances of the error are the following:
A- The CLEFAIRY picture on the RIVAL's house (18DC47) and the RIVAL text when you go to the lab before encountering OAK (18DC67).
B- The battle texts "[POKéMON] made a WISH!" (3FC88A) and "[POKéMON]'s WISH came true!" (3FC89A)
C- The battle texts "The battlers shared their pain!" (3FD048) and "A bell chimed!" (3FD068)
As you may have noticed, these cases share two things:
A- Both strings are located next to each other in the HEX file.
B- Both addresses share the same last digit.
These condition appear to be necessary, but not enough, since the battle texts for PERISH SONG (3FD077) and No PP Left (3FD0A7) also fulfill them, but they seem to be unaffected by the bug.
SO... WHAT I'M EXACTLY WORRIED ABOUT?
This error itself is not enough to stop using A-Text IMO, since when it happens, the repoint can be done manually. This applies even after the error happened a while ago without going unnoticed, since I can just look up the location of the original pointer in an uncorrupted English ROM.
So... what I'm exactly worried about?
- Does this error get more frequent the more you use A-Text?
- Are there other grave bugs like this? So far, the only other error I have found is that the tool isn't able to write the "í" character, but that can easily be fixed with the HEX editor.
ALTERNATIVES
Researching the Internet, I've came across three alternatives for general text editing:
- XSE. This seems quite time consuming, as strings are harder to locate and you have to repoint manually. Remember, I need to translate every single string in the game, so this can up the project from 1 year to 2 or 3, which is something I'm not sure I'm willing to spend.
- HEX editing. Same problem as above, probably even worse.
- HopelessFrench's Pokemon Text Editor, which is published in this very forum. However, this tool doesn't seem to work on Windows 10. I get the error "ROM already in use" when I start it, which apparently happens in Windows 8 and onwards. Plus, the tool is older than the last version of A-Text, according to the website RomHacking dot net.
Thanks for reading this lengthy post!
Cheers!
