I see a lot of people "requesting an English patch" every now and then. Hey, here's a thought: how about we ALL work on the damn thing? I mean, if everyone who wants the English patch actually agreed to work on it (instead of just asking others to do it for them), and we split the workload properly - we could probably get most important things done in a week or two. ... Or, that's what I'd say if I knew a way to get the changed files to work properly. -_-
I actually tried translating some in-game text based on the old US Client recently, hoping to make a "proof-of-concept" for translation. Sadly, it didn't really get me anywhere. Still, here are my observations from the process:
**1) Translated files would be automatically overwritten by the Updater!--Well, the solution seems simple, at 1st glance: patch the game, change the appropriate files with the translated ones (until a proper installer is made), run the Client.exe instead of the Updater.
But is it? Every patch/update might add new content to any file that contains the translated text. So the "translated" file might have to be re-checked and updated again.
**2) US & JP Client actually have a different file structure!--For US Client, all of the game's text is stored in files in this folder: (Install directory)\BinaryData\Client\
CItemData.bin - names & descriptions of in-game items;
DevilData.bin - names of partners;
CStatusData.bin - names & descriptions of in-game buffs & ailments;
CValuablesData.bin - Story-related item (Valuable) names & descriptions;
EnchantData.bin - SoulStone sufixes/prefixes & effect text;
CSkillData.bin - names & descriptions of partner (& player) Skills;
CMessageData_Charastic.bin - text of characteristics (s3) for all in-game items;
CMapData.bin - names of locations on the mini-map;
CEventMessageData.bin - Quest Dialogue, info text, etc.;
--In the JP Client, only 2 of those files are in the same directory: CSkillData.bin and CMapData.bin;
**3) If the files are changed and saved, they won't function properly!--So, 1st thing I tried was to open those files and see their structure. Sadly, any hex editor (HexEdit, Be.HexEditor, WindHex,...) I tried couldn't display their contents properly - not even when used with the AppLocale. In the end, I opened the files in Notepad ran through the AppLocale to see their contents properly.
--When I actually changed the contents of CSkillData.bin, I couldn't see any skill icons in the game anymore. First I thought it might be the character type I was using, so I converted all text to full-width characters and tried again. Same thing happened.
--At this point I thought it was the encoding problem. Notepad saves files with ANSI encoding by default (and supports only ANSI, Unicode and UTF-8), while the original files seem to use SJIS.
--Then I downloaded and started using the "Sakura Editor v2.1.1.3", which can open the Japanese files properly. It seemed to be able to save the code, too, if I use SJIS code set and LF(Unix) line break type. I still couldn't use any alphabet characters, tho. Regular ones crashed the Client at start, while copying full-width or SJIS alphabet characters didn't show any skill icons. Then I copied the "Skill" (sukiru) katakana from the CSkillData.bin and tried replacing the 1st skill's name with it ("10% Life Boost", written in kanji). The Client crashed when I tried to start it. Not sure why. :/
**Conclusion:--Okay, 1st thing's 1st. If we want this thing translated, we need to find a way to edit and save files in a way that would allow them to work properly with the JP Client. Any ideas?
**A warning:If you have high-level characters, I'd suggest against playing around with this and risking getting banned. I've made my character relatively recently, so I don't really care about getting banned if CAVE goes all Nazi about it.