Where is the Menu Options Text?

[alanmugiwara]

Hello everybody! I want to know wher's in the game, the folder that contais the menus texts. I discover is this thread "http://lmtalk.proboards.com/thread/220/change-text-luigis-mansion" wher's dialog's texts, thanks!

[lmfinishgamer]

You just can't. These icons are from some earlier version of the game that were updated for the final release (meaning that they're probably lost forever), and the screenshot just served as a little example of how you start a game from the GC's menu. It was quite a surprising coincidence though.

[alanmugiwara]

Thanks for your help, lmfinishgamer. But I'm talking about these menus. Is't possible to modify them?

[luigim1]

Your best bet is to hex edit the text through start.dol but that is just my assumption, other than that it may be impossible.

[lmfinishgamer]

Well, basically, some of those stuff are BTI textures, but some others are just managed by text scattered around the .dol.

[alanmugiwara]

Thanks, lmfinishgamer, you was very helpful. I extract some important files in BTI textures, and using HxD to search on start.dol, and aparently found text includded in Menu options, but how extract or acess .dol content? Using IDA Pro?

[lmfinishgamer]

There's no way to access .dol content as far as I know. That's probably why people like the guys of the LBA team have been editing the code in its raw form itself.

[alanmugiwara]

lmfinishgamer, you say to me that menu options possibily be in .dol? And .dol can't be extracted, is a dead end.

[lmfinishgamer]

No, it's not "possibly" in the .dol, I'm saying it is in the .dol. However, it's not exactly a "dead end" (at least for a game's translation); just figure it out if you have the sheer patience to and then edit your desired stuff. Also, if you're not aware of it, stuff at the .dol are hex-editable. Just adding to my argument.

[A Horse With No Name]

Probably just btis in the game's embedded archive. There is a rarc in the executable (the dol) containing a lot of important game files, just open the executable in HxD and search 'RARC' the identifying FOURCC for the format. Based off the rarc spec, the next 4 bytes are the total size of the rarc in bytes. Copy that many bytes (starting before the 'RARC' identifier) and paste it into a blank file. After that you can simply extract it with arc extract or whatever tool you use. Make sure when editing btis that the bti format you are converting to is the same one the original image uses (check if the first bytes match), its an easy way to ensure that you dont accidently make the image bigger and impossible to re-insert into the game. When you are done, repack the archive and copy paste it back in but first make sure that the size of your new rarc is the same size as the original one (you can check that with the 4 bytes after the 'RARC' identifier). If done right then you should be good to go. Good luck.

[lmfinishgamer]

There's no way to put that archive back in the .dol without it or the BTI getting bigger in size. From what I've heard from some "old" friends in Discord, more specifically Spacecats, you need to pad some stuff with 0 to make it smaller in size and then prevent crashes and those stuff. However, I don't know exactly how to do that. Try contacting him.

[A Horse With No Name]

There absolutely is and I explained how to make sure its the same size. Even then you dont need to re-inject the entire rarc you ont need to re-inject the specific files you want, the embedded rarc is not yay0 compressed so you can easily follow the rarc spec to find the file and replace it with a hex editor without doing so for the whole rarc. Though you really should just re-add the whole rarc, it is not hard to get it to the right size.

[lmfinishgamer]

Well, the thing is, you forgot to mention in your explanation that compressing tools doesn't use the exact same compressing method as original. Going further into this, compressing tools (such as ARCExtract and yay0) doesn't use the exact same compressing method Nintendo used for packing their stuff. Those custom methods are usable and all, but that difference makes the output bigger in programming terms I can't explain since it's not a hobby of mine.
Not only that, but probably overwriting more than probably 2 or more bytes will make the game crash since there are stuff that comes after the data that the game potentially uses for something important.

[A Horse With No Name]

Did you actually read what I posted? The problem with archives being bigger almost always stems from people using the wrong type of texture compression for their bti files (check the first byte of the bti header) which makes them bigger or including alpha when there shouldn't be any. If the texture you replace and the new bti use the same image format there is no problem. Also a correction, rarc is not compression and arc pack does not compress files it packs them into an archive. It is a bit like a tarball in that nothing gets compressed, just packaged neatly into a single file.

[lmfinishgamer]

Okay, okay, I accept it that I was wrong about the compression thing. However, all the rest that you made posts on simply won't work. Any BTI compression type or tool may you use (TGA to BTI, PNG to BTI, BMP to BTI), the texture will come out bigger. That goes not only to BTI but to any archive/compression used in the game. Even you just unpack and repack for example game_usa either to ARC (I'm aware that ARC comes out bigger due to it being just an archive packing but you can still see it in files that are naturally ARC files in the root) or SZP, the file will come out bigger. At most times in normal files around the root you don't need to worry that much about the file size but when it comes to a file that is compressed in another one due to Nintendo's programmers "feelsmartness" it's certainly challenging to edit it. There's no other method to put it in other to pad not exactly necessary stuff with 0 and copy and paste the rest. Sure, if I'm wrong again, if there may be any impressive BTI or archive packing method that I'm not aware of, you forgot to mention it in your posts.