Translation issues: Hacking the Panzer Dragoon Saga font

[Ryo Suzuki]

Hello,

we are a friends from Spain making a game translation Panzer Dragoon Saga to spanish lenguaje.

Whe have the 100% of the script of the Disc 1 done, all is translated. And we understand and can modifiy the pointers of the text, no prob with this.

Our problem is modify the font or the characters table to add special caracters needed (ñ, á, é, ¿, ect). We know that the font is the file ascii.cgz, there is:

http://www.yousendit.com/download/bVlETGsycWZGR0VLSkE9PQ

We can access to the graphics of the the characters table in this file, via Tile Molester for example. Extension CGZ is compressed or encrypted, and seems the game desencrypt this file on fhe fly to show the letters in the game

You know how can "break" the compression in CGZ file? I first of all think about GZIP compression, but don't works. Is a special Sega Saturn compression, maybe used in others games??

Please help us!!

Regards, thanks in advance.

When we edit the ascii.cgz in the Tile Molester without descompress, the game show this. For sure is compressed

 

[vbt]

Not easy task, I've checked the file, no answer yet. Let's hope the Yabause team will come and save you 🙂

 

[CyberWarriorX]

The most complete solution would be to literally use something like Yabause and track execution until you find where it's decompressing the file, and then figure out which algorithm it's using.

I mean you could just guess and try through trial and error, but honestly there's no header or anything I can see off hand that really gives away what kind of compression algorithm it's using. d might have more insight, but that's what I'm seeing.

 

[rorirub]

You could always opt to leave out special characters. You can still make a working translation without that. Infact its much further than you can get with many other games.

I'd translate Madou Monogatari myself if it didnt have the script (and infact all game files) encrypted/compressed in some custom format. It may be easier to crack this for a skilled person since a few PC games also used this compression format, but I wouldn't know how to trace stuff like that. (iirc the compression on sonic mega collection was broken this way)

 

[TascoDLX]

You know how can "break" the compression in CGZ file?

Lucky you 😉


The compression format is nearly identical to one that was used in the Sega CD / MegaCD BIOS. In fact, I just recently wrote a decompression routine for that format and modifying it to decompress this format only required a little tweaking.


Here's the uncompressed file: ascii.cgz.bin


The compression is LZ77-based but I won't get into the technical details. However I will PM you the source code.

 

[Ryo Suzuki]

Many thanks!! you're great man


It is right to give him thanks and praise

What odd thing that seems to a MegaCD BIOS compression


We have to modify the graphic, file. Seems no prob with this:

We are working on it! Of course you appear in the credits of the translation, THAANNNKS 🙂


P.D: I think we need help again to compress the file when is mod whith the new characters

 

[TascoDLX]

I think we need help again to compress the file when is mod whith the new characters

 

[rorirub]

Lucky you 😉

The compression format is nearly identical to one that was used in the Sega CD / MegaCD BIOS. In fact, I just recently wrote a decompression routine for that format and modifying it to decompress this format only required a little tweaking.

Isn't that the format also used in tons of Megadrive games? Nemesis compression or something?

 

[TascoDLX]

No, it's actually "Kosinski" compression. I've never heard of it referred to as "Kosinski" compression (I didn't know Jerzy Kosinski wrote a compression scheme... er, nevermind, must be a Sonic Retro thing 😛). Decompression is very fast and does not require any extra RAM.


"Nemesis" compression is a bit more complex -- it's entropy encoding using Huffman and RLE and it requires a small amount of RAM for the Huffman table. Since it's more suitable for the Sega-style of tiled graphics, it could've been used on this file, however I'm sure the developers didn't find a higher level of compression neccessary. After all, it's quite a small file for the Saturn.

 

[holy_3051]

In first place, say that my written inglish isn´t marvelous. I have translate a lot of lines of Panzer Dragoon Saga but, in fact, Inglish to Spanish.

I'm Holy_3051, I drive the taduction project of PDS to Spanish and I would like to thank very much the community for the interest, in special for TascoDLX.


Here I show you the results:

This is a fragment of snapshot make with the SSF emulatos.


See you soon and thanks again.http://forums.segaxtreme.net/images/smilies/laugh.gif

 

[rorirub]

oh, Kosinski. Thats what I meant.

Strange how it was still used in the Saturn days.

 

[Ryo Suzuki]

Hello again friends.


Finally we make the release of the 1st CD a few days ago.


You can download in our site:


http://www.segasaturno.com/portal/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3813


We have all the discs already translated but the 3 remaining are passing the beta test process.


Many thanks to all this community in special to TascoDLX's

 

[FantasyNik]

Help me please unpack ASCII.CGZ from the game Panzer Dragoon Saga.