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I had posted this on another message board, so I'm copying and pasting it here...

I'm having a hard time with one of my more recent projects. It's for the NES game, "Kamen Rider SD: Grandshocker no Yabou". I need to insert a rather large script into the ROM.

Here's what's been done so far...

First off, thanks to some help on Discord, I managed to enable Dual-Tile Encoding into the game (Though I had have some issues with the RAM bytes in the code that appears to be working normally now... hopefully... but that's not why I'm typing this.)

The dumped scripts have been fully translated, edited, and are ready for insertion into the ROM via Atlas... all of which were broken down into four script files. The first and second script files were successfully inserted. The third and fourth one, however, is another story.

This script file is supposed to go into $A208-C00E into the ROM. But even with DTE enabled, the translated script is way too big to insert. I'm receiving script text overflow messages of as much as 6810 bytes overflowing. (Before, it was at 7128 bytes.) Inserting this text block in the ROM in its current state may become next to impossible without sacrificing the script's quality.

Edit: Upon further examination, the fourth script file is also just as hard as the third to insert. That script file is supposed to be inserted at $C1F6-DC0E. (At first, I thought it extends to E00E. That was my mistake there.) I thought that by editing the script and working with pointer recalculating, I could get the script to fit. In fact, I thought it had worked at first. Upon further testing, after I had inserted my script in that area, the game crashed. Turns out that the insertion process had overwritten code that was located at $DC10-DFA8. Thus, the area in which that script needs to be inserted it smaller than I had thought. After checking, that spot gave me script insert overflow messages of about 1500 bytes. So inserting that script is also extremely difficult to do without sacrificing the script's quality.

That's why I'm typing this.

I'm gonna need someone who can expand the ROM so that the third and fourth translated script files can be inserted without any apparent errors, and that's an area in rom hacking I still have trouble with. If anyone can do this, please let me know. I'll, of course, share with you what work has been done so far (patch file and table file) as well as the infamous scripts for any possible perusal. Other than graphics (which shouldn't be an issue as all graphics are uncompressed) this is the only issue I see that's stopping this project from seeing the light of day.

Of course, you will be credited when the patch goes live. (I give credit where it's due.)

So can someone help me out here. Thank you in advance.

I could not find this game for the NES. I think you mean the SNES game. SNES ROM expanding is really easy to do yourself or you could use a tool like lunar-expand https://www.smwcentral.net/?p=section&a ... s&id=31275 to do it for you.

For NES this could be a bit more complicated depending on how the game handles banks swaping and you need to do it manually.

You probably filled up a bank and would need to change some bank handling related data or write extra code to have text data on other banks. Not sure how familiar you are with coding tasks on the consoles. Feel free to share resources. Personally I would paste everything in a ASM file to patch with a tool like asar since it is much easier to understand what your are doing in my opinion.

bogaa wrote: ↑Sun Oct 27, 2024 10:03 am

I could not find this game for the NES. I think you mean the SNES game.

There are a couple of similar sounding games by the looks of it. One for each system (going by GameFAQs).

@BlackPaladin
I only follow translation hacking stuff from a distance, so I can only suggest looking at one of the NES ROM expansion docs for insight. KingMike details a process and I saw that you benefited from his DTE doc.

https://rhdn-archive.romhackplaza.org/? ... romexp.txt

Probably a case of substituting older resources for whatever is in vogue. You might be able to get some technical assistance here or elsewhere, but it could also be a good skill for later projects.

For anyone following along, BlackPaladin has also posted in other places:

• ROMhacking.net Forum: [Technical][NES]Script Insertion Help/ROM Expansion for Kamen Rider SD

• ROMhack.ing Discord server, personal_projects forum "Kamen Rider SD: Grandshocker no Yabou (NES)", messages where blackPaladin begins discussing that fitting the script(s) into the ROM may require expanding the ROM. (A Discord invite link is available at the top right corner of the romhack.ing homepage.)

bogaa wrote: ↑Sun Oct 27, 2024 10:03 am

I could not find this game for the NES. I think you mean the SNES game.

BlackPaladin is referring to a NES/Famicom game. You can look in the NES Cart Database to see a picture of it and various data about it: Kamen Rider SD: Guranshokkaa no Yabou / 仮面ライダーＳＤ グランショッカーの野望

I did see he got help on the Discord about expanding.. yeha I did miss that there is a NES title.. sorry

In theory I have a expansion here. There is a ips and there is also a readme and the code.
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/s3gxlsca ... z7sa2&dl=0

Probably not needed anymore but since I made it I post it here. I am not familiar with script insertions anyway so I would not be of much help to do it that way. But the assembler would had cool tools for text too.

!update:
also added the resources shared on discord so you do not have to join the discord to get the script and the expansin done wiht Xkas along the romhacking done to expand the text to the new banks.