Welcome to the Brightis Translation Wiki

If you would like to help, or follow along with our process, please check the Getting Started doc.

This repo will have all the latest changes & discoveries. Please disregard the original General Discoveries file.

Table of Contents

General Text Discoveries

ALL text that we have discovered gets loaded via an overlay.
There are 4 types, each with their own location in RAM where text gets loaded into.

Overlay Type value Description
Base Overlay 80158138 The default overlay, used in MOST cases onscreen
Prog(ressive) Overlay 80153EB0 displays text, then auto-advance by scrolling until a control code instructs a stop.
Cnst(Constant) Overlay 8015F328 Used in menus & shops that will stay static.
Sub Overlay 80156CA4 used w/ other overlays (such as Base or Cnst) to make additions/varibles show as needed.

When patching each section/blob, we pad 4 bytes similar to how the original text performs.
This is done to calculate the continous section/blob properly, and save space. While this isn’t necessary for every section, doing this by hand would be very difficult & time-consuming.

Other Text Details

  • Text is (mostly) readable using a Shift-JIS table once decompressed.
  • Most in-game text is displayed using a BIOS standard font (due to the regular calls to the Krom2RawAdd PSX library function.)
  • Some files seem to be normally compressed in OVR.BIN while other text are compressed using different methods.
  • Pointers are used differently across files.
    • ONMOVR.BIN appears to use Immediate Pointers.
  • The locations at which the overlays are put in RAM are static. If one overlay is too big, it would interfere with another overlay.
  • Any ASCII code displayed in game is converted to SJIS Full Width via subroutines.
  • Every character displayed is 4px wide, and clips into the character itself when reduced.
  • The game respects the RECT used to draw the overlay, and will not draw outside it.
  • The frame supports about 22 Full-Width SJIS characters per line, with 3 lines max.

First text patch

Font manipulation

Need to lock down where this is controlled in code:

  • 8001c0c0 - Set Character Widths
  • 8001c0c4 - Set Character Height (from top)
  • 8001c0c8 - Set Character Height (from bottom)
  • 8001c0d0 - Set Font total height (will squish character)
  • 8001c09d / 8001c070 / 8001c060 - Set Character boldness
  • 8001c09c - Set Character Aliasing
  • 8001c06c / 8001c05c - Set Character Transparency
  • 8001c0b8 - Character kerning

Addtional readings on how Overlays on PSX [similarly to Brightis]

Text Control Codes

All control codes are 1 byte (less than 0x20) & examples can be found wherever there is SJIS text (such as 002_ONMOVR) at 0x8015463c in RAM.

Code Action
4 Stops text, req. button press, starts at the top left in new textbox
5 Stops text, req. button press, continues same textbox
7 Creates linebreak
10 represents player name to be inserted
11(dec) / 0B(hex) Denotes a wait time in frames in the following bit. (typically 15)
14, 17 Enable “jumping” in text to certain lines. 14 jumps unconditionally, 17 will use the flags 16/19. Also uses labels (1/2/3).
15(dec) / 0F(hex) Typically found as a wait time in frames
16 Works with 14/17, acting as a jump location in the overlay
19 Works with 14/17, setting a flag for a “jump.”
18, 21, 25 - 31 Invalid codes/skipped by Overlay

General Image Discoveries

  • Palette data appears to be stored in the SCPS_101.05
  • Game uses Standard TIM matches.
  • found many Magic Tag hex sequences
    • (A magic tag “0×10000000” is basically what Identifies if it is an image or not)

We’ve recently managed to extract how text glyphs are used in game

  • The game takes the BIOS font and in-code actually modify it to have various styles
  • The BIOS font contains 16x15 glyphs, each bit just describes if a pixel should be set or not. And in one instance they make it a 16x16 glyph (bottom line is always transparent) and the colors and the drop shadow are added when interpreting the bits of the BIOS font.
  • The glyphs go through a different routine when they are used for text box text.
  • The devs create new glyphs from the BIOS font on the fly

image

Decompression Notes (& what to look out for)

(Discovered by Onepiecefreak)

  • If the data is coincidentally set up in a way that displacements never go out of the start of the buffer, you can decompress any buffer given to it.
  • For repetition you only need 2 bytes along with a properly set up bit pattern in the flag for it.
    So you most likely end up with either a seqeuence of raws until you hit the offset, or sliding window pairs that don’t go back too much by coincidence
  • Just being able to be decompressed is never a sure-fire way to declare something compressed
  • Most .BINs use a “table of contents” at the start to track where data is located across blobs/sectors. These need to be updated as changes are made to the files.
    • Within entry/slot, specific items can be listed to load into memory. They are limited, so any additions will require patching.
  • The game has a common buffer to store something it currently has to process. Be it image data, text objects, or whatever. If it’s currently needed, the game puts it at 0x801beee8
    • Issue: when loading an overlay (and by extension any file that needs decompression) also uses this location.
    • i.e. if you inject an overlay in places the game initially didn’t do it, we run the risk of overwriting overlay memory & the common buffer, when the game is using it.
      • Example: When exiting the save/load menu using the newly patched draw method (which injected loading a different overlay for all the ASCII related patching necessary) the common buffer was overwritten, while the save/load menu was actively using that point to keep track of which texts to print.
    • Therefore, it’s very possible that we can’t patch this draw method to use ASCII.

Ghidra Discoveries

Using Ghidra, I was able to find some comments at the top of some files & functions. They may be useful so I’ll save them here.

 SYSTEM.CNF: // ram:00000000-ram:0000003c ()
 OVR.BIN: // ram:00000000-ram:000d8fff 
 PDADOC.BIN: //ram:00000000-ram:0019e7ff 
 PDADOWN.BIN // ram:00000000-ram:000d8fff 
 SCPS_101.05 [Has the main() function, mutlitple ram locations]
   - main // ram:80010000-ram:8009e30f 
   - cache // ram:1f800000-ram:1f8003ff 
 SND.BIN // ram:00000000-ram:0044ffff 
 ONMOVR.BIN // ram:00000000-ram:0001279b 
 CHR.BIN // ram:00000000-ram:0039a7ff 
 MAP.BIN // ram:00000000-ram:010d9fff 
 PDADOWN.EXE [Another main() function]
   - main // ram:80010000-ram:80037dbf 
   - cache // ram:1f800000-ram:1f8003ff

These functions can be found using the decompilations in the Decrypted Files/Ghidra folder, and browsing them in Ghidra or IDA.

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