Dumpster
So those of you in IRC have probably heard me ranting on occasion about the program I've been working on Here's a quick rundown of what has been eating up my life lately:
The program is called Dumpster, since it's primary function is to dump text from video games. This concept and process isn't really anything new (see programs like Thingy and Translhexation), but previous programs are a bit dated and not the most user friendly or stable. Dumpster is more of a refinement with some extra features.
Text on any system is simply a table of numbers. Text on a computer uses various standardized forms (ascii and unicode, par example), but video games and other such non-standardized devices can use whatever table of numbers they want to represent text. The concept with Dumpster then is to use a translation table, that assigns a number from the video game table to a letter or word and such in a readable, standard format. For example:
This is a portion of what a table file looks like in Dumpster. The value on the left is a value (a single byte) found in the game, and text on the right is its standard equivalent. It works for more than just single characters too:
Some games (especially RPGs) use this as a way to compress text, by using common clips from sentences as one byte. How convenient! with all those leftover kanji slots...
I originally started the program in visual basic, and developed all the basic functions on it from scratch (not that it's really a complicated algorithm..) The program basically met all it's goals, but was still buggy, and I wanted to do more. However, VB's limitations were really starting to show up, so I dropped the project for a long time till TornSoul rewrote the core functionality into a basic Windows c++ app (in a couple days too, what took me months originally =P). I've since used this as an opportunity to finally teach myself C++, with a goal in mind.
Luckily,I've caught on pretty well, and I'm proud to say that the command-line C++ version of dumpster is 100% functional in dumping text using a slightly modififed form of Thingy tables. I'm currecntly working on trying to put it in a windows MFC application; this is proving to be a little troublesome, but it's meant to be a learning experience anyway.
I'll post more info as I get more done~
The program is called Dumpster, since it's primary function is to dump text from video games. This concept and process isn't really anything new (see programs like Thingy and Translhexation), but previous programs are a bit dated and not the most user friendly or stable. Dumpster is more of a refinement with some extra features.
Text on any system is simply a table of numbers. Text on a computer uses various standardized forms (ascii and unicode, par example), but video games and other such non-standardized devices can use whatever table of numbers they want to represent text. The concept with Dumpster then is to use a translation table, that assigns a number from the video game table to a letter or word and such in a readable, standard format. For example:
- A0=A
- A1=B
- A2=C
This is a portion of what a table file looks like in Dumpster. The value on the left is a value (a single byte) found in the game, and text on the right is its standard equivalent. It works for more than just single characters too:
- 9D=o th
- 9E=are
- 9F=in the
Some games (especially RPGs) use this as a way to compress text, by using common clips from sentences as one byte. How convenient! with all those leftover kanji slots...
I originally started the program in visual basic, and developed all the basic functions on it from scratch (not that it's really a complicated algorithm..) The program basically met all it's goals, but was still buggy, and I wanted to do more. However, VB's limitations were really starting to show up, so I dropped the project for a long time till TornSoul rewrote the core functionality into a basic Windows c++ app (in a couple days too, what took me months originally =P). I've since used this as an opportunity to finally teach myself C++, with a goal in mind.
Luckily,I've caught on pretty well, and I'm proud to say that the command-line C++ version of dumpster is 100% functional in dumping text using a slightly modififed form of Thingy tables. I'm currecntly working on trying to put it in a windows MFC application; this is proving to be a little troublesome, but it's meant to be a learning experience anyway.
I'll post more info as I get more done~