Sekai Houretsuden: problems correctly hooking the dialogue

[mickey_ex]

Hello!

I've got problems getting to hook the dialogue correctly with this rather old game called 'Sekai Houretsuden'.
Normally it should work using any version of agth with the parameters /v and /kf and it does so on WinXP.
However I am using Win8.1 and it does not work. The thread is the same, ":000003A4 MultiByteToWideChar" ,
but on WinXP it displays the correct Japanese text but on Win8.1 it displays just wrong text.
I tried changing the compatibility mode (you know, run with winxp service pack 1-2-3 etc.) on both the Sekai .exe, its shortcut and the agth.exe in all available variations but it's no use. It just won't work.
Does anybody know a solution to this or is at least willing to help me out?
I can re-upload the game if the links aren't working in the game's specific section.

And here's a little something that makes this ordeal a little bit easier
Extract the .ini file from the attached rar in the same folder the game's .exe is located. It will run the game in window mode.
Gone is the fullscreen mode!

[lemur7]

Mikey_ex ...I just had a brain-fart....try this it way off the beaten track but it might just work ....try extracting the games fonts and add them in Win8's font folder...might work ...might not ...I don't run win8

[mickey_ex]

I don't think it has anything to do with the fonts. On that note I got so many different Japanese fonts installed it's just very unlikely. It also looks like the game doesn't use any exotic fonts as well.

Here's how it looks when I run itsample.jpg

[Kojichan]

I'd love to be able to help, unfortunately the game links in the Games section are all dead. I've actually been having a dilly of a time trying to find it, myself. Guess I'll go surf the Googles once more to try. XD;;

I'm actually wondering if the encoding is different in Windows 8.1 compared to Windows XP. Windows XP had a different way of displaying Asian characters, so it might be a different encoding thread. Not sure absolutely... I can't tell without sniffing the game's memory.

[lemur7]

I'm back ..okay over night I've uploaded the game and its fan-box(they both at at Mega) ...find it HERE

[lemur7]

oopps....that link in the new posting works now...my bad seems I forgot to put the link into the url ....XD

good luck with the display troubles..at least now they have something to poke around in to find a solution

[Kojichan]

oopps....that link in the new posting works now...my bad seems I forgot to put the link into the url ....XD

good luck with the display troubles..at least now they have something to poke around in to find a solution

THANKYOUSOMUCH!

[mickey_ex]

But don't forget to work on the problem I've mentioned

Just one thing. It cannot be the font. If it were the font then the text would already be incorrectly displayed within the game. Besides I have installed so many different fonts already(thanks go to debonosu games...)
It's only this game that's causing problems.
How about a working hook for ITH perhaps?

[Kojichan]

Sorry for the delay, I was trying a buttload of things.

I did some preliminary testing, extraction, and poking and prodding in memory... It's actually Shift-JIS, using MS PGothic fonts. (Or at least the script files themselves uses this and load into memory)

The pictures are a proprietary Shockwave Director image format. It -looks like- BITMAP/GIF, but I seriously don't know (As I noticed a couple years ago). BITD/DTIB doesn't appear to be well documented other than it -might- be a 16-bit image format, or just a fancy compression for image types.

On a different note, I managed to extract the game's music (strangely enough, they're just MP3s)... Just not the event CG's.

Anywho, onto the AGTH Hooking stuff-ages...

The game appears to be piecing together the character names from one file, and slapping it together with the text from another file. But, it's not directly outputting the string to a particular place in memory that I can find. Unless it's outputting into a different Encoding format, period... But it doesn't look like Unicode, or ANSI.

Also, the game swaps out the location of the script files in memory every time you advance text, so you can't always be looking at one memory area. It changes every time.

How far have you gotten in Seikai Houretsuden in Windows XP with AGTH?

[mickey_ex]

I've already extracted everything there is within the game files.
The images you have to convert using programs such as GIMP for example. There's surprisingly no complete script files like with other games, instead the scripts are packed together with the voiced lines and the narration-only scripts are thrown together in-between.

I've actually played the game and unlocked everything years ago, which of course was a VERY tedious task(especially Rui's route which almost always gave me a Game Over -.-)
I've just wanted to dive into this great game again but it seems to have problems with Win8 or at least any text hooking device has.