Medapedia:Medarot 1 Translation Project/Text
Here's the stuff that might actually help with making a translation patch.
Text locations
I'm about 98% sure this is all of the text in the game.
Main text:
| Bank # | Address | Contents |
|---|---|---|
| 0x0C | 33E00 | Story/Dialogue snippet 1 |
| 0x0D | 37E00 | Story/Dialogue snippet 2 |
| 0x0E | 3BE00 | Story/Dialogue snippet 3 |
| 0x0F | 3FE00 | Story/Dialogue snippet 4 |
| 0x13 | 4F800 | Story/Dialogue snippet 5 |
| 0x16 | 5A000 | Story/Dialogue 1 |
| 0x18 | 60000 | Story/Dialogue 2 |
| 0x1A | 68000 | Story/Dialogue 3 |
| 0x1D | 74000 | Battle/General text |
Part 1 is only around 70-80 strings, while parts 2 and 3 both take up entire banks. I'm not sure what order the story text parts really go in (it looks pretty disorganized), but part 1 includes the intro text from when you start a new game. The short snippets are shoved in at the end of some of the graphics-containing banks and seem to feature late-game text.
Other text with pointers:
| Bank # | Address | Contents |
|---|---|---|
| 0x02 | 0BF04 | Attributes |
| 0BFC0 | Skills | |
| 0x16 | 59360 | Credits |
| 0x17 | 5E4E6 | Medarotter names |
| 5F6D2 | Attack names | |
| 0x1E | 78000 | Menu text, text boxes, map |
| 0x1F | 7F298 | Parts descriptions |
The credits and Medarotter names include some non-text bytes, probably for formatting and extra data. Out of all of these, the attack names would probably be the easiest to edit manually since they're located right at the end of their bank.
The menus are pretty weird. The menu text is sort of mapped out tile-by-tile along with the positions of the text box borders and other stuff. It appears to use a slightly different text table (with no voiced characters) and some scheme for compressing repeated tiles... Each text box/screen has its own pointer though, so it would theoretically be possible to rearrange and translate the menu screens if you could recalculate the pointers afterwards. (There's a lot of extra space in the bank.)
Lists without pointers:
| Bank # | Address | Contents | Limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0x17 | 5DAF0 | Items | 8 chars |
| 5DD50 | Medals | 7 chars | |
| 5EC36 | Medarot names | 8 chars | |
| 0x1C | 725CC | Parts names and model numbers | 8 chars |
Pretty sure these use even spacing instead of an editable pointer table.
Item names have space for 15 characters in the ROM but are limited to 8 on-screen (same goes for Medarot names). Medal names only have space for 7 characters, and part names only have space for 8.
Text table
The text table in .tbl format can be downloaded here. (Use this to look at the Japanese text in a hex editor.)
Some notes:
- 00: Normal space
- 4A: Clears previous text on a line (weird form of new line, used in battle text)
- 4B____: Shortcut to a piece of text, 4B23C9 is the player's name
- 4C: Starts a new text box
- 4D__: Changes text speed, lower numbers are faster (4D02 is default)
- 4E: Moves to the second line in a text box
- 4F__: End of string, 4F00 is normal but 00-04 all seem to be used.
- 50: Space/End character in lists
- 51-6A: English alphabet (caps only), only shows up on certain screens and appears blank/different when used in normal dialogue. (Y and Z show up as A and B in dialogue, used when talking about buttons.)
There's also a lot of non-text tiles mixed in, which I didn't include in the table file... This should cover anything that you'd find the the dialogue and battle text, though. ._.
The dialogue text seems to alternate between using 4E (new line) and 4C (new box).
