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Is this a correct transcription of the katakana at the bottom of the screen in Level 1 of Chack'n Pop? If so, what's a good translation? Everything in brackets is an image:

[monster]ノコウゲキヲウマクカワリナガラ [bomb] デ
[monster]ヤ[caged heart]ヲヤッツケテ [heart]ヲタスケテデヨウ!

I don't really know katakana (and only have about a 50% knowledge of hiragana), so forgive any silly errors.

(As you might guess, I was toying with the idea of attempting to translate the Japanese text in the game, but it's pretty much beyond me.)

If you're going to translate the game, might as well fix the ending screen that says "you bet 5000 points" Which of course should be "you get"
Anyway, here's what you get when you set the arcade version to English text.

0001.png (3.58 KB)

Hey, it's a bit belated, but thanks for that. I'm actually working on the translation now, and have unexpectedly gotten much further with it than I expected (despite my very limited abilities). I've figured out the text encoding and can definitely fix "YOU BET X PTS." and other bits of mangled English, but I'm running into a hard time with the actual Japanese, since that screen uses a totally different character set that only includes eight Latin letters. Hmmmm.

ROMSearcher can fix the BET part.

For the Japanese, it's pretty easy: the tiles are stored uncompressed in the ROM, so load it up in Tile Layer Pro and edit in some Roman characters. The relevant tiles start at offset 00005B0F (that's the start of the numbers, which you can see in Meka's Tiles Viewer are the start of the tiles). You may need to re-jig things if you need all 26 characters but I think you don't.

You can drag and drop the existing font over the Japanese characters in TLP. Just scroll up a little bit to find it.

Then convert the displayed text to tile numbers; the first "word" is numbers 22, 23, 34, 24 (hex). Search for that in the ROM and it shows up at $205e, which is the middle of the block of data defining that screen. Change the relevant numbers (and note the ones that draw the image parts) to put whatever you want in there.

Maxim, thanks for your reply. I'm on a Mac and it's a PowerPC to boot, so a lot of the tools you mention aren't available to me, alas. In fact, I've been using a command-line program called Opensearch, a hex editor, a text editor, and not much else!

It takes the wind out of my sails slightly to realize that most of this stuff is drag-and-drop with the current tools, but then again I wouldn't have learned as much otherwise. :) Going through this thing with a hex editor and a relative search program has been illuminating indeed.

Anyway, in the last hour I discovered much of what you just posted, and took a trial run at replacing the katakana with Latin characters, which worked well. Sometime this week I'll try to replicate the arcade screenshot, as well as fixing the grammar/syntax errors.

For graphics editing, maybe you can use a program called Tile Molestor?
It's Java-based, so it should run on most OSes (I don't know specifically if Java is available for PPC Macs, but it's available for a lot of OSes).

Also, as long as you're hacking the game, see if you can get a proper header put in the game.

I tried it once, and ended up overwriting part of the floating heart sprite.

Oh, and total wishlist item: Make the mighta white and the rock it's pushing green. Should be do-able, as they share seperate tiles.

OK, here's the fruits of my labor. I've replaced most of the Japanese font with Latin characters, restored the tutorial text from the arcade version, and corrected a couple small English errors (YOUR ELIMINATED is now YOU'VE DESTROYED, and YOU BET is now YOU GET).

My character set is out of order somewhat because I was having problems with T, U, and W -- I think the program does something "extra" to the katakana they replaced? In any event, I used the slots for B, C, and J respectively. Note that this only applies to the character set used to display text below the first maze.

Beyond this I fear my skills are exceeded, especially with the tools available to me on a PPC Mac.* I think there's room for a valid header at 0x7FF0, but I'd do better to defer to someone more experienced on that.

Similarly, I don't know how to change the colors, though I would note that on a real SG-1000 the mighta is white -- because of the palette issue it shows up grey on a SMS. Maybe you already knew that. For someone with better skills than mine it should be easy to fix, and hopefully the rock can be green too.

I'd like to generate an IPS patch and submit this to Romhacking.net, but if someone wants to address the header and color stuff first, that'd be great. I think my comma graphic could be improved as well; it's located at 0x5CA7.

I still can't believe I did this! I guess it's small potatoes to anyone who's done this stuff a lot, but for me, I'm punching well above my weight.

*(KingMike, thanks for that tile editor which does work on PPC; I wasn't able to get it to work on Chack'n Pop)

[attachment deleted on 2010-09-24; see post below for v1.02]

Tile Molester does work - pick the 1bpp codec and use the byte advance to get things aligned properly.

The header area is indeed used. I can't see any easy way to fix that up without expanding the ROM or introducing art compression and completely rebuilding it.

Thanks, Maxim, I did get it to work. Chalk it up to being exhausted and not initially understanding the UI.

Just as you said, 0x7FF0-7FFF is used for a graphics table, though all the tiles in that region are $00 which tricked me. When I tried putting a header there I corrupted the heart graphic (or at least the animated version thereof). There's some wasted space in my character tables (since the katakana are gone and there are now duplicate/unused letters), so it might be possible to make room by deleting some of those and moving pointers around, but that exceeds my skills.

The block up to $7fff is quite large (a few hundred bytes) which makes it very hard to shuffle around. Expanding to 48KB and rewiring the start pointer to $8000 would do the trick. Debugging in Meka makes that sort of thing easy, just "b r 7ff0" and backtrace from there. (Or, to put it a different way, you'll have a hard time on a Mac.)

New version, with one tiny tweak to fix the comma display issue. I've also made an IPS of this and submitted it to romhacking.net.

Chack'n Pop (J) [T+Eng1.02_Goldenband].sg.zip (17.19 KB)

Say, are there multiple endings in this game, or just the one? Our hero doesn't look very happy in the wedding shot (attached). Not that he looks that happy in the arcade game, either:

Does it change if you get a perfect score on every round? Or if you don't kill ANY monstas? I'm not spotting a happy Mr. Chack'n in either of the tilesets, so I suppose not.

There's all kinds of interesting info here about the arcade game, including the fact that the pattern of the Super Heart item follows Pi! Perhaps I'll check if the same algorithm applies in the SG-1000 game.

chack'n pop ending.png (7.23 KB)

I think it's just a Japanese culture thing for the groom to look powerful and serious, and the pic of Chack'n at the end is sort of a spoof of that, There's only the 1 ending.

Author	Message
goldenband Joined: 24 May 2010 Posts: 127 Location: New York	Chack'n Pop question Posted: Sun Aug 22, 2010 4:18 pm
	Is this a correct transcription of the katakana at the bottom of the screen in Level 1 of Chack'n Pop? If so, what's a good translation? Everything in brackets is an image: [monster]ノコウゲキヲウマクカワリナガラ [bomb] デ [monster]ヤ[caged heart]ヲヤッツケテ [heart]ヲタスケテデヨウ! I don't really know katakana (and only have about a 50% knowledge of hiragana), so forgive any silly errors. (As you might guess, I was toying with the idea of attempting to translate the Japanese text in the game, but it's pretty much beyond me.)

Raccoon Lad Joined: 16 Dec 2004 Posts: 495 Location: El Cerrito, CA	Posted: Mon Aug 23, 2010 3:23 am
	If you're going to translate the game, might as well fix the ending screen that says "you bet 5000 points" Which of course should be "you get" Anyway, here's what you get when you set the arcade version to English text. 0001.png (3.58 KB)

goldenband Joined: 24 May 2010 Posts: 127 Location: New York	Posted: Mon Sep 20, 2010 7:12 am
	Hey, it's a bit belated, but thanks for that. I'm actually working on the translation now, and have unexpectedly gotten much further with it than I expected (despite my very limited abilities). I've figured out the text encoding and can definitely fix "YOU BET X PTS." and other bits of mangled English, but I'm running into a hard time with the actual Japanese, since that screen uses a totally different character set that only includes eight Latin letters. Hmmmm.

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14740 Location: London	Posted: Mon Sep 20, 2010 7:52 am
	ROMSearcher can fix the BET part. For the Japanese, it's pretty easy: the tiles are stored uncompressed in the ROM, so load it up in Tile Layer Pro and edit in some Roman characters. The relevant tiles start at offset 00005B0F (that's the start of the numbers, which you can see in Meka's Tiles Viewer are the start of the tiles). You may need to re-jig things if you need all 26 characters but I think you don't. You can drag and drop the existing font over the Japanese characters in TLP. Just scroll up a little bit to find it. Then convert the displayed text to tile numbers; the first "word" is numbers 22, 23, 34, 24 (hex). Search for that in the ROM and it shows up at $205e, which is the middle of the block of data defining that screen. Change the relevant numbers (and note the ones that draw the image parts) to put whatever you want in there.

goldenband Joined: 24 May 2010 Posts: 127 Location: New York	Posted: Mon Sep 20, 2010 8:28 am
	Maxim, thanks for your reply. I'm on a Mac and it's a PowerPC to boot, so a lot of the tools you mention aren't available to me, alas. In fact, I've been using a command-line program called Opensearch, a hex editor, a text editor, and not much else! It takes the wind out of my sails slightly to realize that most of this stuff is drag-and-drop with the current tools, but then again I wouldn't have learned as much otherwise. :) Going through this thing with a hex editor and a relative search program has been illuminating indeed. Anyway, in the last hour I discovered much of what you just posted, and took a trial run at replacing the katakana with Latin characters, which worked well. Sometime this week I'll try to replicate the arcade screenshot, as well as fixing the grammar/syntax errors.

KingMike Joined: 14 Oct 2008 Posts: 510	Posted: Mon Sep 20, 2010 5:28 pm
KingMike Joined: 14 Oct 2008 Posts: 510	For graphics editing, maybe you can use a program called Tile Molestor? It's Java-based, so it should run on most OSes (I don't know specifically if Java is available for PPC Macs, but it's available for a lot of OSes).

Raccoon Lad Joined: 16 Dec 2004 Posts: 495 Location: El Cerrito, CA	Posted: Mon Sep 20, 2010 11:38 pm
	Also, as long as you're hacking the game, see if you can get a proper header put in the game. I tried it once, and ended up overwriting part of the floating heart sprite. Oh, and total wishlist item: Make the mighta white and the rock it's pushing green. Should be do-able, as they share seperate tiles.

goldenband Joined: 24 May 2010 Posts: 127 Location: New York	Posted: Tue Sep 21, 2010 2:09 am Last edited by goldenband on Fri Sep 24, 2010 8:15 pm; edited 1 time in total
	OK, here's the fruits of my labor. I've replaced most of the Japanese font with Latin characters, restored the tutorial text from the arcade version, and corrected a couple small English errors (YOUR ELIMINATED is now YOU'VE DESTROYED, and YOU BET is now YOU GET). My character set is out of order somewhat because I was having problems with T, U, and W -- I think the program does something "extra" to the katakana they replaced? In any event, I used the slots for B, C, and J respectively. Note that this only applies to the character set used to display text below the first maze. Beyond this I fear my skills are exceeded, especially with the tools available to me on a PPC Mac.* I think there's room for a valid header at 0x7FF0, but I'd do better to defer to someone more experienced on that. Similarly, I don't know how to change the colors, though I would note that on a real SG-1000 the mighta is white -- because of the palette issue it shows up grey on a SMS. Maybe you already knew that. For someone with better skills than mine it should be easy to fix, and hopefully the rock can be green too. I'd like to generate an IPS patch and submit this to Romhacking.net, but if someone wants to address the header and color stuff first, that'd be great. I think my comma graphic could be improved as well; it's located at 0x5CA7. I still can't believe I did this! I guess it's small potatoes to anyone who's done this stuff a lot, but for me, I'm punching well above my weight. (KingMike, thanks for that tile editor which does work on PPC; I wasn't able to get it to work on Chack'n Pop) [attachment deleted on 2010-09-24; see post below for v1.02]*

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14740 Location: London	Posted: Tue Sep 21, 2010 7:12 am
	Tile Molester does work - pick the 1bpp codec and use the byte advance to get things aligned properly. The header area is indeed used. I can't see any easy way to fix that up without expanding the ROM or introducing art compression and completely rebuilding it.

goldenband Joined: 24 May 2010 Posts: 127 Location: New York	Posted: Tue Sep 21, 2010 10:09 pm
	Thanks, Maxim, I did get it to work. Chalk it up to being exhausted and not initially understanding the UI. Just as you said, 0x7FF0-7FFF is used for a graphics table, though all the tiles in that region are $00 which tricked me. When I tried putting a header there I corrupted the heart graphic (or at least the animated version thereof). There's some wasted space in my character tables (since the katakana are gone and there are now duplicate/unused letters), so it might be possible to make room by deleting some of those and moving pointers around, but that exceeds my skills.

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14740 Location: London	Posted: Wed Sep 22, 2010 2:23 pm
	The block up to $7fff is quite large (a few hundred bytes) which makes it very hard to shuffle around. Expanding to 48KB and rewiring the start pointer to $8000 would do the trick. Debugging in Meka makes that sort of thing easy, just "b r 7ff0" and backtrace from there. (Or, to put it a different way, you'll have a hard time on a Mac.)

goldenband Joined: 24 May 2010 Posts: 127 Location: New York	Posted: Fri Sep 24, 2010 8:14 pm
	New version, with one tiny tweak to fix the comma display issue. I've also made an IPS of this and submitted it to romhacking.net. Chack'n Pop (J) [T+Eng1.02_Goldenband].sg.zip (17.19 KB)

goldenband Joined: 24 May 2010 Posts: 127 Location: New York	Posted: Fri Feb 04, 2011 8:52 pm
	Say, are there multiple endings in this game, or just the one? Our hero doesn't look very happy in the wedding shot (attached). Not that he looks that happy in the arcade game, either: Does it change if you get a perfect score on every round? Or if you don't kill ANY monstas? I'm not spotting a happy Mr. Chack'n in either of the tilesets, so I suppose not. There's all kinds of interesting info here about the arcade game, including the fact that the pattern of the Super Heart item follows Pi! Perhaps I'll check if the same algorithm applies in the SG-1000 game. chack'n pop ending.png (7.23 KB)

Raccoon Lad Joined: 16 Dec 2004 Posts: 495 Location: El Cerrito, CA	Posted: Sat Feb 05, 2011 4:48 pm
	I think it's just a Japanese culture thing for the groom to look powerful and serious, and the pic of Chack'n at the end is sort of a spoof of that, There's only the 1 ending.

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