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Need help getting started with exaction and then later language patch.


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So basically, I'm a translator who usually just translates web novels. With that in mind, one of my projects has a visual novel I presume was used as promotion. However, since I don't like leaving anything left behind, I decided to take on this visual novel project for the heck of it. I understand a lot of coding knowledge is going to be needed, but I can take my time to learn; I mean, I was dipping my feet into it already since my desired profession kinda requires reverse engineering knowledge and a basic core understanding of programming language. 

Anyways, I've lurked around the forums until I recently made this account for my questions. Everything I looked at was sorta vague, and I don't think is designed for the kind of system I'm looking at. I think I got an idea how to extract the text, but what I'm really looking here is how to make a language patch from the script.noa the VN has. If you need the visual novel name or the files to see what I'm getting myself into, I think I can private message it? 

If you do decide to help me, I very much appreciate it. 

EDIT: I didn't think the title would be relevant to what I'm asking, but if people must know its Bishoujo wo Jouzu ni Nikubenki ni Suru Houhou. NSFW if you look it up, FYI.

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21 minutes ago, Rubian said:

Everything I looked at was sorta vague

Like your own post?

Summary: I want to translate this VN (title not revealed). It has a file called script.noa, but I don't know what to do with it.

 

Based on this I don't know what to say. Sometimes a VN takes a lot of knowledge to extract/insert the script and sometimes it's really easy. For a start, try using notepad++ to open the file to see if it is plain text. It likely isn't but it is a really easy first step to check. VNs are usually encoded in shift-jis, meaning you likely should change the encoding to that.

 

I can't really say more based on what little you wrote. However I can say that I would welcome any new translators. Have you considered making a translation group or joining an existing one? Back then I started, I didn't know anything about organization or workflow and just tried to figure out stuff on my own. It worked, but joining a group with proper leadership and organization is a totally different world and the organized steps with editing and stuff does provide a much better result. If you just start on your own, you may end up re-inventing the wheel and odds are your new wheel wouldn't be round.

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19 minutes ago, tymmur said:

Like your own post?

Summary: I want to translate this VN (title not revealed). It has a file called script.noa, but I don't know what to do with it.

 

Based on this I don't know what to say. Sometimes a VN takes a lot of knowledge to extract/insert the script and sometimes it's really easy. For a start, try using notepad++ to open the file to see if it is plain text. It likely isn't but it is a really easy first step to check. VNs are usually encoded in shift-jis, meaning you likely should change the encoding to that.

 

I can't really say more based on what little you wrote. However I can say that I would welcome any new translators. Have you considered making a translation group or joining an existing one? Back then I started, I didn't know anything about organization or workflow and just tried to figure out stuff on my own. It worked, but joining a group with proper leadership and organization is a totally different world and the organized steps with editing and stuff does provide a much better result. If you just start on your own, you may end up re-inventing the wheel and odds are your new wheel wouldn't be round.

Oh, was it really that vague? I'm sorry. Honestly, I'm sorta lost on what to do, so that may have transcribed into my post.

I already tried using Notepad++, since I thought that would be the very first shot I had. However, like I assumed it was encrypted.

The next step I tried were extraction method from a tutorial post I can't show right now due to being on the phone.

Lastly, I checked the forums' main post involving this, and saw .noa, but nothing really helped me there either.

You may be right that joining a group would be really beneficial to me, but I'm a sole translator already doing web novel peojects weekly. I'm only picking this up because it's directly related to what I do now. In addition, I don't think it'll be good just to make a group for one project; seems sorta silly, no? As such, I'm not looking to get into the VN business, sadly. Thanks for your input, though!

 

EDIT: I didn't think the title would be relevant to what I'm asking, but if people must know its Bishoujo wo Jouzu ni Nikubenki ni Suru Houhou. NSFW if you look it up, FYI.

Edited by Rubian
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2 minutes ago, Rubian said:

However, like I assumed it was encrypted.

That's likely, though it's also possible that it is just a compiled one or both compiled and encrypted. It could be the script and the strings could be stored in a different file. It's hard to tell since I still don't know which VN you are talking about.

 

4 minutes ago, Rubian said:

You may be right that joining a group would be really beneficial to me, but I'm a sole translator already doing web novel peojects weekly. I'm only picking this up because it's directly related to what I do now. In addition, I don't think it'll be good just to make a group for one project; seems sorta silly, no? As such, I'm not looking to get into the VN business, sadly. Thanks for your input, though!

So whoever made the web novels made a VN. Seems like a reasonable entrance to VN translations. Not sure about not making a group just because it will only be one VN. However I was thinking of joining a group to watch experienced people at work, but that conflicts with the statement that it is just one VN and it has to be that VN.

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10 minutes ago, tymmur said:

That's likely, though it's also possible that it is just a compiled one or both compiled and encrypted. It could be the script and the strings could be stored in a different file. It's hard to tell since I still don't know which VN you are talking about.

 

So whoever made the web novels made a VN. Seems like a reasonable entrance to VN translations. Not sure about not making a group just because it will only be one VN. However I was thinking of joining a group to watch experienced people at work, but that conflicts with the statement that it is just one VN and it has to be that VN.

I just edited the title in my last post. It's an eroge. I can send you the files once I get home, if that's fine?

And yeah, I honestly plan for this to be an one time thing. I was in a group before for manga, and I didn't really enjoy it due to lack of communication and conflict of interest. After that I headed towards light novel/web novel translations, and entered a group that had a lack of coordination. I don't see how the VN business will be anything different. So at this point, I feel that relying on myself to learn on my own is a lot better then sitting back and praying this works. 

 

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You can send me the file. I can't tell if I can do anything about it, but I can try.

4 minutes ago, Rubian said:

r this to be an one time thing. I was in a group before for manga, and I didn't really enjoy it due to lack of communication and conflict of interest. After that I headed towards light novel/web novel translations, and entered a group that had a lack of coordination. I don't see how the VN business will be anything different. So at this point, I feel that relying on myself to learn on my own is a lot better then sitting back and praying this works.

I can't say I blame you. Not all groups work equally well. A well working group is awesome and can do more than the combined effort of each member working individually. However when it just isn't working, then it sucks big time. The reason why I mention a group here is that I'm thinking of one person for each task, like one translator and one to deal with the script issue.

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17 hours ago, Kelebek1 said:

Crass should be able to do it.

EDIT: Yep, the official tool is linked on the TLWiki, handles the game perfectly well: http://www.entis.jp/gls/utility/noa32v109.lzh

 
 
 
 
 
 

Excuse me, sorry for the late reply I was out, but how would I use it? Can't seem to find a direct tutorial on how to, and I'm worried if I fiddle around it too much I'll just be creating a mess.

[EDI] Nevermind, I think I got it. What do I do now, though? Like, for language patch? Do I just replace the Japanese text in the Japanese .xml of here?

 

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My experience is that extraction tools aren't well written. They usually do their task, but they usually do not check if it makes sense what they are doing. Often they read the filename as a string from the packed file and then opens a file for writing using that string as a filename. In theory it's fine, but unless the filename is ascii, it assumes the file system to use the same encoding as the packed file. If the VN use cp932 (most of them do), then windows will have to do the same, which it will only do if it is set to Japanese locale. In other words extraction tools have a high risk of using garbage filenames unless windows is set to Japanese locale.

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32 minutes ago, Scorp said:

If you want to work with japanese tools, you should do it, when your locale and region settings are japanese.

Official entis tool works perfectly with .noa files if you use japanese locale.

 
 

 

44 minutes ago, tymmur said:

My experience is that extraction tools aren't well written. They usually do their task, but they usually do not check if it makes sense what they are doing. Often they read the filename as a string from the packed file and then opens a file for writing using that string as a filename. In theory it's fine, but unless the filename is ascii, it assumes the file system to use the same encoding as the packed file. If the VN use cp932 (most of them do), then windows will have to do the same, which it will only do if it is set to Japanese locale. In other words extraction tools have a high risk of using garbage filenames unless windows is set to Japanese locale.

 
 

 

1 hour ago, Kelebek1 said:

Yeah, and you can add the file back to create a new script.noa. The filename is wrong though so it doesn't actually work as-is, don't know how to fix that. Going fully JP might fix it, dunno.

 

My region is already changed to Japanese (Japan). That was the first thing I did. However, my question is if I replace the Japanese text with the final English one, how would I exactly make sure the other windows don't have to do what I did? It's suppose to be an easy patch for my readers.

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If you manage to make a new script.noa, place it in the VN and the text appear ingame, odds are that whoever gets that file will get the English lines. I have seen people work differently, but I think it's a very good start to extract, translate the first few lines and then put them back into the VN to make sure they appear as expected. If they do, then you can just translate and you know it will work. If you translate without the test, you risk having a full translation you can't figure out how to insert, or one where you learn that you have to modify every single line to match some required format or whatever. I don't know why people skip the test, but some do.

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33 minutes ago, tymmur said:

If you manage to make a new script.noa, place it in the VN and the text appear ingame, odds are that whoever gets that file will get the English lines. I have seen people work differently, but I think it's a very good start to extract, translate the first few lines and then put them back into the VN to make sure they appear as expected. If they do, then you can just translate and you know it will work. If you translate without the test, you risk having a full translation you can't figure out how to insert, or one where you learn that you have to modify every single line to match some required format or whatever. I don't know why people skip the test, but some do.

 
 
 
 

Yeah, right now I'm trying to figure out to convert it to a .noa file once again, lol. Once I got that down I will certainly do this trick! I don't know why I didn't think of that before.

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41 minutes ago, Rubian said:

Yeah, right now I'm trying to figure out to convert it to a .noa file once again, lol. Once I got that down I will certainly do this trick! I don't know why I didn't think of that before.

I don't know about Crass, but the tools I linked can do it. Click on the New button (the piece of paper), and then right-click on the file list area, and select ファイルリストに追加, add the files you extracted from script.noa (and your new edited .xml), click the red arrow button that says アーカイブ化して保存 and then put it in the game folder where the original script.noa is.

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2 hours ago, Kelebek1 said:

I don't know about Crass, but the tools I linked can do it. Click on the New button (the piece of paper), and then right-click on the file list area, and select ファイルリストに追加, add the files you extracted from script.noa (and your new edited .xml), click the red arrow button that says アーカイブ化して保存 and then put it in the game folder where the original script.noa is.

 
 
 

I just did so, and the VN launches, but when I click start it won't start the sequence. Perhaps it would be better if we discuss it live? Like in a chat?

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11 hours ago, Rubian said:

I just did so, and the VN launches, but when I click start it won't start the sequence. Perhaps it would be better if we discuss it live? Like in a chat?

It's because that filename is wrong like I said. That's not the filename the game is looking for. It can't find the script file, so it can't start. If going full JP mode doesn't work, then I dunno. Couldn't Crass extract the correct filename either?

EDIT: Ok I got it, it's actually called 共通ルート.xml in UTF-8. Apparently the tool can't handle UTF extraction, don't know why. Re-name the file, and it can compress the file properly:

SFqsepe.jpg

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2 hours ago, Kelebek1 said:

It's because that filename is wrong like I said. That's not the filename the game is looking for. It can't find the script file, so it can't start. If going full JP mode doesn't work, then I dunno. Couldn't Crass extract the correct filename either?

EDIT: Ok I got it, it's actually called 共通ルート.xml in UTF-8. Apparently the tool can't handle UTF extraction, don't know why. Re-name the file, and it can compress the file properly:

 

  Hide contents

SFqsepe.jpg

 
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Just out of curiosity, how did you find the actual name? Anyways, thank you. I got it to work!

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1 minute ago, Rubian said:

Just out of curiosity, how did you find the actual name? Anyways, thank you. I got it to work!

I put the mangled name into http://freaka.freehostia.com/charset2.php and then searched for some of that hex in the script.noa itself to find the original name. Found it, and coped it into http://freaka.freehostia.com/charset.php and it displays correctly as UTF-8.

 

 

 

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4 minutes ago, Kelebek1 said:

I put the mangled name into http://freaka.freehostia.com/charset2.php and then searched for some of that hex in the script.noa itself to find the original name. Found it, and coped it into http://freaka.freehostia.com/charset.php and it displays correctly as UTF-8.

 

 

 

 
 

Well thanks again, man! This really has helped me. Now the only stuff I have to do is potential redrawing, translating, have a friend edit, perhaps figure out how to change the settings from Japanese to English (more so when you exit the game) and I'm good I believe!

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45 minutes ago, Kelebek1 said:

I put the mangled name into http://freaka.freehostia.com/charset2.php and then searched for some of that hex in the script.noa itself to find the original name. Found it, and coped it into http://freaka.freehostia.com/charset.php and it displays correctly as UTF-8.

 

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 

It's me again, lol. Uh, I have two more questions before I leave you alone (I hope). 

How do I translate the settings/edit in this game? I assume it's in systems, but when I open it with Notepad++ it's simply encrypted, which makes me think I may need to something to prepare it.

The other question is how do I pull the front page picture to edit? I have someone that is willing to redraw the English part in the file since it's missing 'a' to make it Grammarly correct, but can't seem to use XnView to convert them to .png or .jpg.

Sorry for bothering you, but you are very helpful.

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13 minutes ago, tymmur said:

First quick check is to verify that notepad++ is set to shift-jis encoding. That might break the "encryption".

I changed the font to a Japanese-friendly one as well as doing that, so that should have worked. However, it still is the very same.

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42 minutes ago, Rubian said:

It's me again, lol. Uh, I have two more questions before I leave this forum for good (I hope). 

How do I translate the settings/edit in this game? I assume it's in systems, but I can seem to open it with Notepas++, which makes me think I may need to something to prepare it.

The other question is how do I pull the front page picture to edit. I have someone that is willing to redraw the English part in the file since it's missing 'a' to make it Grammarly correct.

Sorry for bothering you, but you are very helpful.

Check the stuff on http://www.entis.jp/eri/

There's a photoshop plug-in, but I don't know if it works anymore since it's from 2004. You can use 恵理ちゃんコンバーター to convert images between BMP and ERI though, and that works.

Inside system.noa there are 3 more .noa archives you can open full of more .eri. All the config stuff is in there I think, it's hard to tell.

EDIT: Yeah this looks like it, here's ID_CONFIG_SYSTEM_FRAME:

 

E2eEoBA.png

There's also ID_CONFIG_SCREEN_FRAME you'll need to edit. The title text is in ID_TITLE_LOGO inside wm_title.noa.

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Not the font, the text encoding. You go into the encoding top menu, character sets, Japanese, shift-jis. That will read the same bytes as a different encoding, meaning they will render different characters. If you try to read shift-jis while notepad++ thinks it's utf-8, you might end up with something, which looks like it is encrypted.

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