How to translate an amiga game in english ?

[Iena]

I want to translate Italian Night 1999 in english , but i really dont know how to do it , i tried to extract files from the adf and watching them with an hex editor but nothing , is there someone that know how to do ?
Thx Diego.

[jotd]

Originally Posted by Iena

I want to translate Italian Night 1999 in english , but i really dont know how to do it , i tried to extract files from the adf and watching them with an hex editor but nothing , is there someone that know how to do ?
Thx Diego.

Most of the time files are packed. If this is the exe, then just unpack the exe using XFDDecrunch, translate the texts using an hex editor, and repack the exe (using powerpacker or turbo imploder) in order to make it fit on the disk.

If the text is within data files which are packed, XFDDecrunch usually is able to unpack the data, but once you processed the text you must repack the file with the same packer.

Most used packers in games:

PowerPacker (PP20)
RNC (ProPack)
Imploder (ATN!, IMP!)
Crunchmania (CrM!)

bye

jff

[Iena]

I extracted one file with adf opus , i unpacked it with xfddecruncher ( PowerPack 3.0 the program said when decrunching ), then i used ppack22.lha from aminet to crunch the file but the size changed ( i didnt modify the file with the hex editor ) from 33300 to 32700 and when i put the file on adf and run the game i got a software error.

[Ironclaw]

RNC is it ProPack??. thought it was Ronald Northern Cruncher..


I used to have fun changing text in games ..

[BippyM]

you need to recrunch the file with powerpacker, most likely as an executable.

RNC may have compressed it as data or whatever, but seeing as ppack is the wrong packer you might have problems.

Try and get powerpacker..

[Codetapper]

Iena: You should ensure you have crunched the data exactly how the original was. It might be that you have crunched the file as an executable when the game wanted a data file. Maybe the packing options you picked are incompatible. There is also a chance the game has some check on the data and it has detected that it has been modified.

Ironclaw: RNC = Rob Northen Cruncher (RNC is the first 3 bytes of the header used in packed files from ProPack).

[BippyM]

some files seem to be custom compressed, but I'm guessing they are just a standard (maybe powerpacker) packer with the headers changed.

Powerpacker 3 is used to compress the binary (executable) and that could be re-packed as an exe with any packer, though the game might have code in it which checks if the packer/filesize or whatever (CRC) changed.. who knows!

[Iena]

Here is the crunched file IN1999 of 33k and the decrunched file of 53k ( i modify 2-3 words with hex editor ) with the adf of disk 1 , can someone give a look , because im not so much expert with this

[ant512]

Which encoding methods do PPacker and the others use? If they use a variant of Huffman or LZ, surely the compressed size will change if the data in the original file changes. Quick example using RLE:

Original file:

aaaabbbbccccddccdd

Compressed file:

4a4b4c2d2c2d

Altered file:

abcdbbbbccccdabacd

Compressed altered file:

abcd4b4cdabacd

Even though the original and the altered file are the same size, you end up with different sized compressed files. The same applies to Huffman (unless you're using a pre-computed tree, which isn't particularly size efficient, and which might not even be an exception) and LZ (unless, possibly, it's using some sort of pre-computed dictionary, which makes no sense).

[Galahad/FLT]

RNC= Rob Northen Computing, Propack is the name of his cruncher, PDOS is the name of his MFM protection system, Copylock is the name of his serial check protection