FFV (RPGe) Text-editing

[NonagonGoron]

I want to start out by saying that your tool is VERY very helpful and easy to use. Thank you so much for creating it! I started using it a few months ago, working on a personal FF5 text hack. I haven't used it since I started, but I had the page bookmarked. When I started my project back up, the tool was recognizing certain letter combinations as single hex codes, and would display them as such in the text banks. This is Final Fantasy V (RPGe)

Example: "Obtained \gp Gil!" is now "Obtained \gp G\0x94!"

This isn't too much of an issue. The real issue comes whenever I try to edit a text bank with a hex code somewhere in it. Say, for example: "Welcome!\n One night is \gp gil.\n Would you like to stay?" which turns into "Welcome!\n One night is \gp g\0x94.\n Would you \0x97ke to stay?" however, when I edit any part of this text bank and click off to save or move on, it turns into "Welcome!\n One night is \gp g" It cuts off the text after the first hex code. I thought maybe it may have just been my ROM, but it does the same thing for any ROM translated with RPGe. If I wanted to continue my text hack, I would have to write down each hex code and the corresponding set of letters, then manually edit each instance.

EDIT: So, it turns out that the ROM file I've been using was NOT in fact clean. I tried it again with a clean ROM and it does work as intended. However, the hex codes appear after I add more text than there is allocated space, save, then open up the new ROM, which makes sense. The problem then occurs from there.

[everything8215]

Hi, thanks for the feedback. I know of a few issues that affect the text in the RPGe translation:

• There are a few different versions of the RPGe translation available. The one I consider to be the de facto standard is version 1.10 (unheadered CRC32: 0x17444605). Besides checking the CRC32, you can tell if you're using this version if your ROM uses "Gil" instead of "GP", "Cara" instead of "Kururu", and "Black Belt" instead of "Monk". It should also use “smart quotes” instead of "straight quotes" in the dialog text. You will probably see some text issues if you're using a different version of the RPGe translation.
• When FF6Tools saves a ROM, it stores all of the dialogue strings sequentially. However, the dialogue code in the RPGe translation does not allow dialogue strings to wrap from one bank to another. So after saving, there will be one or two strings (the ones that straddle two banks) which will not display properly in-game. For now, you will need to find these strings, relocate to empty space manually, and change their pointers so that they don't straddle two banks (the strings will normally be near 0x220000 and 0x230000 in the saved ROM, look for a 0x00 null-terminator to see where the string starts and ends). Note that FF6Tools will not be able to locate these strings in the modified ROM after you do this, so I'd recommend waiting until your hack is complete.
• The RPGe translation uses a few special characters in the small font (but not the large font) that correspond to two or three consecutive Latin letters ("il", "it", "fi", "Bla", "pel", etc.). I had incorrectly included these special characters in the large font encoding table, which is probably what caused the issue that you're seeing with the dialogue text. I fixed the issue with 3 commits on 6/21/2020. If you saved a ROM prior to that you will probably need to start over. Sorry about that.

Some tips:

• When you save with FF6Tools, you will get a zip file with 3 files inside: the modified ROM, a text file with a map of the modified ROM (for information only), and a JSON file (ROM definition). When you re-open the modified ROM, FF6Tools will prompt you for a definition file. Make sure to select the JSON file that you got when you saved. This file has all of the information needed to correctly re-open your modified ROM (including the text encoding tables). So if you're using an old definition file to open a newly saved ROM you might see some issues.
• Make backups often. This is always a good strategy with ROM hacking.

I wasn't able to reproduce the issue you're having. If you're still seeing the hex codes after opening a clean ROM, modifying dialogue text, saving, and re-opening with the corresponding definition file, let me know exactly what you did. There might be something going on that I haven't thought of.

[NonagonGoron]

Thanks for the reply! Quickly I would just like to say that yes I did save my ROMs before 6/21. Another thing, and I didn't even notice this until now, because I was only working in the "dialog" tab, you updated a LOT for the FF5 editor. That's amazing!

Onto the issue: You were right, I was using a different ROM version. I found a pre-patched ROM of the same CRC you mentioned and now the things I see under the "dialog" tab are completely different. I see the smart quotes now, too. I tried a new ROM with a different CRC from different website and still brought up the newer version. So I guess even the ROM I thought was clean wasn't so after all (I have too many of them anyways from backups, I need to delete them for space). It shouldn't take me that long to get back to where I was in my personal project, especially with the new additions you made, like Character names, Monster attacks, Job names, etc. Again, thank you for the help! I guess I'll keep this discussion open, just in case I find any other problems?

[everything8215]

Great, I'm glad it's working. Let's leave this open to track the other FF5 dialog issues. Let me know if you find any other problems.

[NonagonGoron]

I've got a quick suggestion. I don't know how you handle these, but would there be any problems defaulting the [ ' ] apostrophe key to recognize as a right or closing smart apostrophe [ ’ ]? It used to recognize it as such before but now it does not recognize it at all, removing it from the text whenever I click off.

[everything8215]

You can edit the JSON file and search for the smart apostrophe and replace it with the straight apostrophe. It should only appear in one line.

change "0x99": "’", to "0x99": "'",

There is also a left single quote (looks like an upside-down apostrophe) in the character table. It's used in the dialog in a few places. You could change this to a backtick (`) to make this easier to type on a keyboard. FF6Tools doesn't allow two values to be mapped to the same character.

change "0xAA": "‘", to "0xAA": "`",

[NonagonGoron]

I'm not sure I follow. I'm able to edit the .json file, but what do I do after that? Is there an option to import the .json file onto the html?

[everything8215]

When you open a modified ROM, it should prompt you for a definition file. It will give you a list of vanilla definition files and then a button at the bottom to select a custom definition file. This is where you can import your modified .json file. You should always import a custom definition file if you are re-opening a ROM that you saved with FF6Tools.

[NonagonGoron]

Oh, I see! Alright then, I guess I was just blind