Sekai Houretsuden: problems correctly hooking the dialogue

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!

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

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 itAttachment 173373

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.

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

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

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by 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

---

THANKYOUSOMUCH!

:nooo:

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?

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?

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.

Yeah, I noticed that, too. It's like the newer Windows' memory management is a bit more all over the place. I saw the script being shoved around in memory in 3 different places, then moved around constantly. I had problems trying to lock down anything. Guess it's a bit out of my range of experience.

And The Gimp, you say? It can open that strange format? Huh. Never would have thought it would.

Sorry about that. Also, lemur7 really wants the CG set for this game. Perhaps you could give them a bit of a hand, if you've managed to extract the files and convert them? ^^

Yes, either GIMP or Graphics Gale and then you can convert those into any format you want ;-)
I've already informed lemur7. We kinda worked together ^^

Well too bad then I guess. But thank you very much for trying of course!
I can emulate an older Windows version and then play the game. It's just a bit of too much a hassle just for one game @_@

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by mickey_ex

Yes, either GIMP or Graphics Gale and then you can convert those into any format you want ;-)
I've already informed lemur7. We kinda worked together ^^

Well too bad then I guess. But thank you very much for trying of course!
I can emulate an older Windows version and then play the game. It's just a bit of too much a hassle just for one game @_@

---

then why not just have a dual boot and put the student version of windows XP along side your win 8 ...:-) it doesn't require a trip to MS to activate it ...your bios should be fine as are your drivers for the mother boards chips set ...it should stay because you already have an operating system on the hard drive ..but check it all out first I could be very wrong ....

I think that would be great for all of the BL games on here.... ????...CG pack is going well ....just can't seem to get the backgrounds ...got music/dialogue cg events sprites/characters...but the backgrounds ..don't know ..but will try again tonight .....very very new to this "extracting" business... XD

EDIT :: ...those background images ....were already in the "I" folder ...lol

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by lemur7

then why not just have a dual boot and put the student version of windows XP along side your win 8 ...:-) it doesn't require a trip to MS to activate it ...your bios should be fine as are your drivers for the mother boards chips set ...it should stay because you already have an operating system on the hard drive ..but check it all out first I could be very wrong ....

I think that would be great for all of the BL games on here.... ????...CG pack is going well ....just can't seem to get the backgrounds ...got music/dialogue cg events sprites/characters...but the backgrounds ..don't know ..but will try again tonight .....very very new to this "extracting" business... XD

EDIT :: ...those background images ....were already in the "I" folder ...lol

---

I was just about to say, yeah! XD The backgrounds are already exported in that folder. I have no clue why. I think it was an oversight, because the game actually checks the packfiles, first, for the CG's, then finds them in files.

Well, good luck! ^^ Maybe at this point it might be a good idea, if someone can, to translate the game by hacking it.

I tried the new .ini to play in a window ...the text dialogue did not show ...mind you I do not have anything installed to display text in games I let it run natively ...I have no display problems when not using the new .ini....so ...I just wanted you know this...you might need to tweak it ...but that might also fix the the problem you have right now with only some characters showing ....thank-you Mickey_ex

for people still having problems with getting into some sections or pages ..please do try the "TOR" web browser it can be gotten as a portable ,,so no install...it is what I myself am using to gain access to the games section as well as the other blocked warning pages..if you really want to get into those sections or view favourite pages that are blocked at the moment ...please do try it ...


Oh ....on a side note the CG set for the Game and its FanBox can be found HERE

I'm not sure if this makes a difference or not for you, but the INI file mickey_ex posted has a few errors.

Essentially if you edit that file, you'll see a lot of lines starting with semi-colons ( ; ).

This means the game won't read that line of text, so you can leave comments freely without causing issues. Though, there are some comments that don't have that ; at the beginning of the line. It might not normally cause problems, but it perhaps in some peoples' cases.

This game doesn't really use anything beyond the "Fullscreen" and "UseTitleBar" (From what I can tell), but maybe fixing that might work for you?

Here's the touched up file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/kt4n6q6w70jk5pe/GAME.INI?dl=0 Overwrite yours with this one.

Are you doing anything else with the game before starting it? Like running AGTH or something?

nope..nothing..like I said tried the ini to see if it did work...all the text and options show when in full screen and not using the file...I'll check how it works with the new edited file ...thanks....

...looks good thanks....