Question regarding non-gba FE modding & translating

Questions
#1

I recently had a question regarding the hacking, modding and translation of non-gba FE games. I’m VERY new to the community, so please forgive me for wasting your time if I am missing something obvious.

It seems that the vast majority of FE games have been originally coded in ridiculous ways, and cannot be easily modified without a host of errors popping up. According to that recent Vice article, it took around 20 years of failed attempts to translate FE 5, and an entire year for coding geniuses to get Project Exile in a playable state (and that was just in English).

Given this extreme difficulty, I was wondering why we aren’t trying one or both of two alternatives:

  1. Extracting what we can from the original game, recreating what we can’t, and peacing it together in SRPG studios.

This may sound roundabout way to mod an older game, and it would probably be a nightmare (no pun intended) for modding any game with 3D models, but I think that using a $60 app running on JavaScript is a very beneficial tradeoff when the alternative is teaching ourselves a practically useless, convoluted coding language that will steal years of our free time and may crush our soles in the process.


2. Learning Japanese instead of waiting for translation patches

This may also sound extremely roundabout for everyone to learn a foreign language to play the original version of a game that may be remade or translated by someone else in a few years. However, the fact that we are modding, translating, and emulating in the first place is already a testament to how far we are willing to go to be able to play these games. As for me, I’m already teaching myself Japanese for free with Duolingo, and I don’t have a community to back me up.


Anyway, I hope some people find this question helpful.



P.S.

As much as I wish people would speak to me honestly and not hold back if they have anything “negative” or “rude” to say, I would like to request that we keep the comments “civil”. Otherwise, someone with admin rights might shut down this thread and then nobody else will be able to answer this question.

#2

But then you’re not playing the original version anymore. You’re playing an SRPG Studio port. There will always be differences of varying scales between the SNES originals and a PC port. Also, some of us hack for the art. We don’t want to make SRPG Studio games. We want to crack open a rom and hack it. Some people in romhacking as a whole have hacked dozens of games into English. The myth of “spaghetti code” is a prominent one. You also underestimate the effort of recreating an entire game from scratch in another engine. It takes just as much effort, if not more, than actually hacking the original.

Learning languages is a very difficult process. Most of us are English speakers in this community. Learning a language for the sake of playing one game is a questionable decision. Most people aren’t so dedicated to individually mod and translate the Japan-only games. Most just emulate with a translation applied, which is not going very far.

A year for creating a translation patch is absolutely no time at all in comparison. Also that article doesn’t give the whole story by a long shot. From the point of wanting to play the actual original game and not putting in an absurd amount of effort for one highly specific purpose, waiting for the translation is the best choice.

4 Likes
#3

that vice article was ridiculous and inaccurate (and, more importantly, obviously written by someone who didn’t know what they were talking about)

the barrier is not inherent to the games themselves, or the SNES, but rather that the active modding community is far more focused on the GBA games than the SNES

you mean, like, C?

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#4

That Vice article should not be taken as an authoritative source. There’s nothing particularly catastrophic about FE5’s programming; it’s on the same par as other Fire Emblem games. It’s just that no one bothered to figure it out in the same way as the GBA games have been. It’s not that Fire Emblem is ridiculously coded; it’s that it wasn’t coded with the intention of people cracking it open and modifying it. Like most games.

You know the guy whose menu translation people talk about as if it’s the foundation for all FE5 modding? You wouldn’t if you only read the Vice article; it refers to him only once as “a person”. FE5 modding/translation isn’t even entirely built on his tools, either. The old patch certainly wasn’t. Yes, it has dumb “in America” memes, but there’s nothing stopping anyone from making their own meme-free version of that patch. You’ll have to deal with a mono-spaced menu font, meaning you’re going to have to abbreviate a lot of stuff, but this is the norm for fan translations of classic video games. The reason why certain newer patches didn’t have to wrestle with how to handle names longer than five characters was because our guy figured out how to make the font half as wide by poking at the rom himself. It’s not like there was an ancient temple in Peru that he had to steal the knowledge out of. The less technical legwork people are willing to do by their own selves, the more janky will be the rendition in any other language of a game that was intended only to be in Japanese in the first place. As a matter of fact, whenever I play a game that’s fan-translated (annoyingly, with more obscure games, often the only roms people bother to archive are pre-patched) and see weird abbreviations, characters swearing like sailors, absolutely wooden verbiage, and names obviously transliterated from katakana, I feel lucky that Fire Emblem translations have it so good that most of us have the common sense to avoid these things in the first place.

I do agree with “do you wish you knew a language? then just learn it”, especially in the era of spaced repetition apps that mete out your studying in small bites for you. “Little but often” is the way to go. I actually played through FE6 on a cartridge while knowing literally only katakana— you can get through that game solely on knowledge of menu commands, stats, and item icons. Unfortunately, people are trained to view language learning as a huge, monumental task, which they end up unwilling to do just for the sake of playing a video game, and I can’t fault anyone for that. Time is precious.

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#5

This is a pretty sweeping statement that I’m sure is untrue in a number of circumstances. The ‘20 years to translate FE5’ isn’t because of FE5’s coding. That Vice article is not very accurate.

Nope nope nope I’d much rather stick to reverse engineering and hacking ROMs thanks.

I do the vast majority of my FE8 hacking in C, so…

And learning assembly has practical use, especially if you want to get into optimization. Knowing more about how processors work is never a bad thing. The GBA is actually a great place to start learning assembly and reverse engineering - it’s powerful enough that you don’t have to jump through a million hoops to do stuff, and yet it’s still relatively simple.

That said, the answer to ‘why don’t people remake game x in engine y?’ is… that people do. Admittedly I haven’t heard of one for FE5 but there have been multiple ‘remake FE4 in other engines’ attempts.

Learning a new language is a great idea and if you’re willing to do that, more power to you. But the point of a translation patch is something like 'I already know Japanese and I love this game, so I want to make it available to a wider audience!"

3 Likes
#6

I cannot personally evaluate the situration since any and all code is moonspeak for me, but the only games I have heared being called “badly programmed” were FE1 and FE2.

1 Like
#7

But then you’re not playing the original version anymore. You’re playing an SRPG Studio port. There will always be differences of varying scales between the SNES originals and a PC port.

true, but I think some (me at least) might want to understand and play a substitute while they wait for the real deal.

Also, some of us hack for the art. We don’t want to make SRPG Studio games. We want to crack open a rom and hack it.

Ok, that makes sense. However, others might consider function to be more valuable than form, and I’ve seen very few efficient tools that work in English.

Some people in rom hacking as a whole have hacked dozens of games into English.

Ok, that probably my fault for not finding them. (That sounds sarcastic, but I actually mean that).

The myth of “spaghetti code” is a prominent one. You also underestimate the effort of recreating an entire game from scratch in another engine. It takes just as much effort, if not more than actually hacking the original.

Myth? I’ve been trying for half a year to hack FE6’s binding blade into FE 8 (the weapon, not the game), but I have never been able to get the “use to heal 30 HP” effect working. meanwhile, I could do that in a single day If the base code was in JavaScript.

Learning a language for the sake of playing one game is a questionable decision.

I completely agree with you that learning a language for the sake of playing one game is a questionable decision. However, you are actually learning one language for a perfect translation of 7 games, all of Kaga’s “Saga” games, any other Japanese stuff any person might additionally enjoy.

Also that article doesn’t give the whole story by a long shot. From the point of wanting to play the actual original game and not putting in an absurd amount of effort for one highly specific purpose, waiting for the translation is the best choice.

Yeah, I figured the article was untrustworthy, but I wasn’t sure how much so. I was trying to say “according to that Vice article” and imply “this is from Vice, so I’m taking it with a grain of salt.”

#8

No offense but both “solutions” you gave are astoundingly asinine

#9

This has nothing to do with javascript or the quality of the code and everything to do with the fact that a ROM is not intended to be modified after the fact.

2 Likes
#10

that vice article was ridiculous and inaccurate (and, more importantly, obviously written by someone who didn’t know what they were talking about)

Yeah, I figured the article was untrustworthy, but I wasn’t sure how much so. I was trying to say “according to that Vice article” and imply “this is from Vice, so I’m taking it with a grain of salt.”

the barrier is not inherent to the games themselves, or the SNES, but rather that the active modding community is far more focused on the GBA games than the SNES

Really? Because I easily found FEBuilderGBA in a single day of research, but several years latter, I still can’t find any tools that are just as good for the SNES. (If you know were they are, PLEASE tell me!)

you mean, like, C?

no, I’m talking about the hex editer.

#11

you know that supports his point right? someone has to make these tools, they don’t spontaneously generate. the tools were made for GBAFE and not SNESFE because the community there is more active.

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#12

this is precisely because nobody in the active hacking community has put the time or effort into making such a tool for the SNES. It’s not as if FEBuilder existed in some before-the-void state and popped into existence inherent to the GBA engine.

if you’re writing code in a hex editor, then you are either an insane wizard or handicapping yourself for no good reason. I do the majority of my hacking in C these days (or a yet-unreleased domain-specific-format i’m developing); I legitimately don’t think I’ve touched a hex editor in like, 6 years

#13

none of this is meant to be discouragement, mind you – if you think that “a remake of FE5 in SRPG studio” is a thing that should exist, by all means, you do you and go do it. all the answers are directed more at the question of “why hasn’t anyone done it yet”

#14

There’s nothing particularly catastrophic about FE5’s programming; it’s on the same par as other Fire Emblem games. It’s just that no one bothered to figure it out in the same way as the GBA games have been. It’s not that Fire Emblem is ridiculously coded; it’s that it wasn’t coded with the intention of people cracking it open and modifying it. Like most games.

Ok, that’s my ignorance showing. Still though, isn’t that a cumbersome and unnecessary barrer for entry?

You know the guy whose menu translation people talk about as if it’s the foundation for all FE5 modding? You wouldn’t if you only read the Vice article; it refers to him only once as “a person”.

good point.

FE5 modding/translation isn’t even entirely built on his tools, either. The old patch certainly wasn’t. Yes, it has dumb “in America” memes, but there’s nothing stopping anyone from making their own meme-free version of that patch.

What would you recomend? I REALY hate nightmare and its modules, so if you know of something better, please let me know.

The reason why certain newer patches didn’t have to wrestle with how to handle names longer than five characters was because our guy figured out how to make the font half as wide by poking at the rom himself.

Something tells me that he’s a lot smarter and/or luckier than me if he was just poking at the rom…

The less technical legwork people are willing to do by their own selves, the more janky will be the rendition in any other language of a game that was intended only to be in Japanese in the first place. As a matter of fact, whenever I play a game that’s fan-translated (annoyingly, with more obscure games, often the only roms people bother to archive are pre-patched) and see weird abbreviations, characters swearing like sailors, absolutely wooden verbiage, and names obviously transliterated from katakana, I feel lucky that Fire Emblem translations have it so good that most of us have the common sense to avoid these things in the first place.

I was going to use stuff like this as a further justification for my second suggestion, but I had forgotten.

I do agree with “do you wish you knew a language? then just learn it”, especially in the era of spaced repetition apps that mete out your studying in small bites for you. “Little but often” is the way to go. I actually played through FE6 on a cartridge while knowing literally only katakana— you can get through that game solely on knowledge of menu commands, stats, and item icons. Unfortunately, people are trained to view language learning as a huge, monumental task, which they end up unwilling to do just for the sake of playing a video game, and I can’t fault anyone for that. Time is precious.

FE6 was actualy one of the main resons why I thought it would be good to learn the original langauge. While I am still nowhere near good enough to play an untranslated game, I had heard that that the majoraty of people who had played FE6 considered Roy to be an exceedingly bland lord because of a bad translation. I had thought that it would be a huge loss if something similar happend in any other game.

#15

The scene for SNES modding has always been way more Japanese than English. You could try using some of their tools/documentation found on the uploader. Additionally, Lamia’s FE4 stuff, even though it’s FE4-centric, might have some application in FE5.

I don’t actually know off the top of my head what the Shaya patch used for text editing, but I imagine you could do some research on it to find out. But honestly, if you’re serious about it, I recommend just biting the bullet and learning how to use a debugger. You’ll go through the process of finding out exactly when the game decides to display text, how it displays it, where the text is stored and how it’s compressed, etc. Again, it’s the norm for people to have to tear apart their game of choice and find out how it works on their own. The fact that anything exists for Fire Emblem gives us a head start on this sort of thing.

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#16

And that’s the fun part.

The fact that I can bend an already compiled program to my will just because I want to is a lot of the attraction.

#17

“Why not remake the game in a different engine”
Uh, yeah, I’m fairly certain that recreating the entire game from scratch is a lot harder than just taking a finished one and changing out the text.
“Why not learn Japanese?”
At this point, I’m actually realizing this is just a thinly veiled shitpost.

1 Like
#18

This is a pretty sweeping statement that I’m sure is untrue in a number of circumstances. The ‘20 years to translate FE5’ isn’t because of FE5’s coding. That Vice article is not very accurate.

I’ve been getting that a lot, lately. I guess part of me was thinking “they can’t be that wrong. Nobody can be that inaccurate in real life.” Looks like they sure proved me wrong.

I do the vast majority of my FE8 hacking in C, so…

This is the second time hearing “C” instead of “FEBulderGBA”, or “hex editor”. I’m starting to think that I might have learned GBA hacking wrong…

And learning assembly has practical use, especially if you want to get into optimization. Knowing more about how processors work is never a bad thing. The GBA is actually a great place to start learning assembly and reverse engineering - it’s powerful enough that you don’t have to jump through a million hoops to do stuff, and yet it’s still relatively simple.

You are definitely correct there. In terms of learning a language for a job, getting experience with C for free is probably a better deal than learning Javascript for $60

That said, the answer to ‘why don’t people remake game x in engine y?’ is… that people do. Admittedly I haven’t heard of one for FE5 but there have been multiple ‘remake FE4 in other engines’ attempts.

The thing is, SRPG Studio is specifically designed for making a variety of new games, while each FE rom was made with very specific limits. If you take language and price out of the picture, FE 1-8 should generally be far easier in SRPG studio than any other FE.

Learning a new language is a great idea and if you’re willing to do that, more power to you. But the point of a translation patch is something like “I already know Japanese and I love this game, so I want to make it available to a wider audience!”

This is true, but if you take matters into your own hands and learn to read the base game, then I’m fairly certain that your experience will not be affected by imperfect translations, localisations, and/or controversies.

Furthermore, things like rhymes, jokes, grammar, and music frequently lose a lot of weight when taken out of the context of its original langauge (though that admittedly more has to do with Japanese translation in general and may not be much of a factor in FE specifically).

#19

I cannot personally evaluate the situration since any and all code is moonspeak for me, but the only games I have heared being called “badly programmed” were FE1 and FE2.

Interesting, I look into that. If their remakes were considered up to standards, it would probably be educational to see how the games were later changed for the better.

#20

Well, the resstat and manaketes are not broken in shadow dragon for one.