Cyber Knight translation

[NightWolve]

I would suggest the use of a simple emulator like YAME for what you seem to be describing, wanting to load a state file and get to test new changes within the ROM. It's simple, has a full GUI and is compatible with the game having just checked it.

http://www.ysutopia.net/software/yame038e.rar

Setup Instructions:

1) Launch it.
2) Goto -> "Settings" -> "Advance Settings" -> click "Input Tab".
3) Under "Save" press F1, Under Load, press F5 : Now F1 is a quick key to save a state file, F5 to load it.
4) Configure the rest of the buttons to the keyboard as you prefer.
5) Load the ROM under the File menu "Open" command OR drag'n'drop the ROM file on its window, simple as you'd expect.

Now, here's the thing, when you change the ROM file, but you use the state file to resume the game exactly where you were, you have to go somewhere in the game to force the loading of new ROM data otherwise you may not see your changes. The other way is to load the state file, save your game (if possible) via the game's menu, reset the game, and load it again the same way. That'll force a new loading of ROM data into the system RAM, etc. But, I guess you already knew that and want to avoid it. So yeah, the only other way would be to move around in the game to where a new event is loaded or a new level is, etc.

EDIT: This emulator does not use a checksum system for dealing with state files. The state file will simply be named the same as the ROM but with a ".sta" extension, e.g. "Cyber Knight (J).sta". YAME is perfect for this job, for you, etc. It was very handy when it came to hacking Xak III/Ys IV ages ago for its simplicity and quickness when it comes to insert/test-in-game/insert/test-in-game/etc. You're going through some unneeded headaches/tediousness using a command-line Mednafen, and unless it's time to use its debugger for something advanced, you can do better in the meantime, so I'd stick with YAME for most things (once you get the hang of it, which you should no problem).

[megatron-uk]

That's great - I managed to find a binary of yame that works on Linux (no recent versions unfortunately - so no sound support, but that's not important). I'll give that a go this evening.

Cheers,
John

[NightWolve]

Oh, you're a Linux guy, huh ? Hmmmm. Well, I have no idea what the interface is like on a Linux build for it, didn't even know the developer made one. Would've been really convenient for hacking to work on a Windows box for you, but oh well. You've managed fine so far anyhow.

[cabbage]

Anyway, what I was wondering is there any way Mednafen can be used to load a state file if the underlying rom file has changed? It's a pain adjusting the rom, reinjecting modified text and then playing right through about 10 or 20 battles to get to the point where Vynd says his text again. I believe the states saved by Mednafen only load when the rom has the same checksum, which it obviously doesn't when I change the data....

Go into the save-state directory (mcs) and remove the trailing checksum from the save filename.
e.g. something like CyberKnight.214a55e19aed90a0095ca0d65894b7d3.mc0 can be renamed to simply CyberKnight.mc0 and it should load even without a checksum match

[megatron-uk]

Thanks to both of you. Both methods work, but I'm still stuck with the problem of refreshing the rom file from disk. Savestates load fine now (thanks for the checksum tip, Cabbage), but at that point, the rom data in memory (checked with mednafen debugger) still reflects the pre-modified file. I've tried loading the status screen, finding a battle to fight, viewing another on-screen text dialogue etc, short of having to exit and leave the main playfield (which is the whole point of using a save state to bypass a dozen or so battles) I can't seem to find anyway past this hurdle.

[Edit] Still can't find a way of refreshing the rom data when using either emulator like this, but on this occaision just using the debugger to to alter one or two bytes was sufficient. There was a sequence of bytes embedded in the text sequence on that screen:

Code: [Select]

"08", "13", "3a", "6a", "00"

Now 08 is 'pause until button pressed' and 00 is 'end of string'. I don't know what the 13/3a/6a sequence is, but it appeared to jump somewhere else (way, way off, into text for the next world - the 'Trader' quests), rather than printing the 'drive coil found' string which was the next thing to show. This seems to be in the original rom too, so I'm not sure what it's actually doing.

For now, I've replaced those 'jump bytes' (for want of a better term) with my 'no-op' codes - 0x5c (actually, character shift, but they have the effect of padding without printing anything on the screen), and the result is as shown in the image below!

[Dicer]

That's great - I managed to find a binary of yame that works on Linux (no recent versions unfortunately - so no sound support, but that's not important). I'll give that a go this evening.

Cheers,
John

Magic Engine runs under Wine in Linux quite perfectly, just a heads up there.

[megatron-uk]

As you're probably aware, I'm using the SNES version of Cyber Knight to help in the translation. I have a dump of the English script so that's the basis of the text, it's helped a lot.

I've now played and translated everything up to and including the defeat of the dome on the southern continent and am now back talking with the president (and receiving his deepest thanks for dealing with the robot threat).

In the SNES version the dialogue goes something like this:

"Our deepest thanks, the planet is now free"
"You want to go back to earth, yes?"
"I'm afraid we cannot help with our technology"
"The Traders mentioned a race called the Seeclan with advanced technology, maybe they can help"
"Ask details from the Traders. You can find them on Worldring-3"

At which point I presume you then use the rebuilt jumpdrive and move to the Worldring system.

In our PCE version the President says basically the same thing but his last sentence is different:

"Our deepest thanks, the planet is now free"
"You want to go back to earth, yes?"
"I'm afraid we cannot help with our technology"
"The Traders mentioned a race called the Seeclan with advanced technology, maybe they can help"
"『‥‥‥ただ‥‥‥さいきん れんらくが とだえているそうですが‥‥‥』"

I think the last line is something along the lines of 'we had regular contact with them, but it was suddenly cut-off recently'. - that's the last thing he says - no mention of the Worldring system. Hmm, now how do I know I'm supposed to get to the Worldring system?

[Bonknuts]

In mednafen, if you want to reload the rom, then you'll have to do it through the debugger alt+3 tab/window. Go to that, change the window to 'cpu physical'. Use the L option to load a file into start/end part of external address range. Just make sure the rom is raw (headerless), else it'll load the header as well.

 Be careful, as some games load part of the text string from rom, into ram. So this will mess you up for savestates.

[megatron-uk]

Ah, so that's how to do it! Nice one Tom. That will be very helpful, thanks!

[whisper2053]

I feel incredibly dumb right now.

Python is installed, I have your archive from github, and I acquired the proper rom in hopes of being able to perhaps test this out. For the life of me, I cannot figure out how the heck to get Python to execute the appropriate extract and inject .py's and it's driving me crazy.

Sigh.

Had to vent, sorry

[megatron-uk]

What happens when you run:

Code: [Select]

python injectScript.py -i "Cyber Knight (J).pce" -o "Cyber Knight (E).pce" -d ./patches/
Sorry for lack of updates recently. House finally sold, everything is packed up or in storage and we're waiting to move into our new home (end of June, most likely) .

[whisper2053]

Granted, I'm almost certain I am doing something wrong, as I have never used Python before.

[megatron-uk]

Don't type 'python' or double click the python icon - it starts an interactive shell; you're running python code at that point. You just need a Windows command prompt open.

Open a command prompt and paste in the full line that I wrote, above.

Something like (presuming you've created a directory called 'cyber' will all the downloaded files and folders in). As long as Python.exe is in your path, you should be able to do something like this:

Code: [Select]

c:\> cd cyber
c:\cyber>
c:\cyber> python injectScript.py -i "Cyber Knight (J).pce" -o "Cyber Knight (E).pce" -d ./patches/
I do intend to distribute an ips patch once the translation is complete, but for now, having access to the source of the translation is easier for those with a programming background who may want to help out or try their own script.

[whisper2053]

Have there been any further updates on this project?

Also, I finally figured out what my previous issue was (ie, I did *not* have Python.exe in my path, and that is fixed now), but I am running into a new issue currently. When I attempt to run the string you provided above, I receive this error:



Hopefully some light can be shed on this

[megatron-uk]

I've done a little more - I have some changes that take the translation up to the end of the first world, but these are not committed to GIt yet. I haven't made as much progress as I would have liked as I'm constantly hitting free-space issues in the script.... there is some free space in most text segments, but it seems random whether they can be used or not (there's no lookup table as such - each string is simply delimited from the next one and the print routines loop over the delimiters until they get to the correct string).

In terms of the error you're getting, I think you must be using Python3 - the 'print' call changed from Python1/Python2, which used the directive:
print "STRING"

to be a proper function called like this in Python3:
print("STRING")

Fortunately the latter format is backwards compatible with Python2 - so I could go back through the code and change it and it would be compatible with all Python versions.