Rabio Lepus Special: English Translation Released!

[4lorn]

Update 17/09/2021: The English translation patch can be downloaded from this Romhacking.net page.

Hello.

Over the past week or so, I've been hacking Rabio Lepus Special in an attempt to localize it to English. The PC Engine version doesn't seem to get much love compared to the arcade version, but while I understand why this is the case, it's still a nice cute'em up, so I figure why not. I mean, the only thing stopping me is that I never hacked NEC's platform.


So, what changes have been made so far? For one, I've redrawn the title screen with the localized name of the arcade release in the US:



I've also managed to translate the level intros, and applied a slight shade to make the text more visible. It is white, after all, and smaller than the much larger characters initially used. Ideally, the letters would be outlined but there's not enough room for that due to how I've tried to take full advantage of the allowed 16x16 space.



We now come to the part that is missing:

1) Unfortunately, the text in the level intros is still shown as the original one: one 16x616 block at a time. While I have found the code that dictates when each character appears on screen, I have yet to locate what handles how long it stays there. So, I can make all characters appear simultaneously to counter the lower overall readability, but they still go away too fast - even faster if made to appear simultaneously.

2) The bigger issue, however, is... At the end of Levels 1, 2, and 6, characters will show up and thank Rabio for the rescue (they're the same ones as the arcade version: the Princess' sister, the King, and the Princess, but with much less revealing attire). But maybe I'm feeling a bit burned out as I haven't done much more recently than going back and forth through the ROM, but I still haven't found where nor how I might change the code responsible for printing the dialogue intermissions in the game. The dialogue refers to a set of 37 characters (including one which is printed on top of a letter on occasion) but uses 1 byte for 2 character combos.



On the other hand, not only do I know exactly where this dialogue is, the ROM makes no effort to conceal it - to the point I found it just by looking at it raw with a hex editor and recognizing the dialogue screen itself. Further, the code in this location is so malleable that one can easily extend the dialogue boxes without much of an issue. So in theory, armed with a way to insert single characters and with the dialogue I've translated, this could probably be done in half an hour's worth of editing and playtesting. It's just... I can't seem to locate it.

I don't know if other efforts to localize Rabio Lepus Special have been made, but it would be nice to see this finished. On request, I can provide the script, the codes for the JP dialogue, the dialogue screen offsets, and the timing code I've found.

This request is also posted at Romhacking.net

EDIT: I may have found the table. Looking into it now.

Edit 2: Table rewiring and script insertion is underway. All that's really missing is the timing code...

[paranoiadragon]

Sweet, looking forward to the finished product!

[4lorn]

Sept 14, 2021 2:23:47 GMT paranoiadragon said:

Sweet, looking forward to the finished product!

Thanks for the support. So far, it seems to be done:

What I thought was a timing code for level intros actually just seemed to be a "read-ahead" value, if that makes sense, but I think the edit I made to it is an acceptable compromise. Will give this a playtest or two to see if I missed anything, then provide a patch. Incidentally, do PCE HuCard games require checksum validation?

[dshadoff]

At various points in the past, some versions of the rips have been distributed with headers (or without).
Since the headers don't hold any necessary information, the "expected" way for these to be identified nowadays is headerless.
Rabio Lepus special would be a 3 megabit (384KB) file, with a CRC32 of d8373de6

[4lorn]

Hi dshadoff, thank you for your reply!

The CRC32 value checks out for the ROM file I worked, which means thankfully, I worked from a good dump. Would it be recommended to modify the new CRC32 value to the old one? The modified game runs fine on the more recent builds of Mednafen, Ootake and PCEjin, though.

[dshadoff]

The CRC32 should only be used to verify that the original ROM is the correct "starting point" for the patch; a good emulator shouldn't need to change behaviour based on ROM identification.

So just identify the starting point, and perhaps what the final CRC32 ought to be (so that the person executing the patch can verify that they did it correctly).

[4lorn]

My thanks once again, dshadoff.

So, the translation is done. It can be downloaded from this Romhacking.net page.

For someone who's never hacked a PC Engine game before and worked on this on his own, I think the end result is positive. Getting some of the dialogue to work with the available space was close to an air-thin miracle, but I managed.

There's certainly room for optimization. The font used for level intros could be reworked and better shaded; the way I made it, some letters could not have an outline at all. Also, I really wish I could get an extra second for some of the level intros but the way it's programmed, any slower and it would negatively impact the game as the associated code is actually reading ahead tiles and data such as enemies. I'm sure more proficient romhackers can improve on it, should they want to.

[dshadoff]

Sounds great, and just in time for the weekend !

[4lorn]

Hope everyone enjoys it  Hope everyone enjoys the weekend, too

[dshadoff]

You must be pretty good at the game after all that testing... but I found some cheat codes in a Japanese book called "Daigirin" that might help for worse players like myself.

I'm not sure whether these can be stacked, but I tried each to verify that they work.

More Credits:
- At the title screen, while holding 'Select', press 'I' once, then 'II' twice, then press 'I' three times, then 'II' four times

5 Rabbits:
- At the title screen, while holding 'Select', press 'I' 5 times, then 'II' once, then 'I' 5 times, then 'II' once, then 'I' 5 times, then 'II' once

Get 5 units of shield:
- At the title screen, while holding 'Select', press 'I' 9 times, then 'II' 8 times, then 'I' 7 times, then 'II' 6 times, then 'I' 5 times, then 'II' 4 times, then 'I' 3 times, then 'II' 2 times, then 'I' once

'Expert Mode':
- At the title screen, while holding 'Select', press 'I' twice, then 'II' twice

Yellow ribbon from the start:
- At the title screen, while holding 'Select', press 'I' three times, then 'II' three times, then press 'I' three times, then 'II' three times

Blue ribbon from the start:
- At the title screen, while holding 'Select', press 'I' four times, then 'II' four times, then press 'I' four times, then 'II' four times

Green ribbon from the start:
- At the title screen, while holding 'Select', press 'I' three times, then 'II' three times, then press 'I' four times, then 'II' four times

White ribbon from the start:
- At the title screen, while holding 'Select', press 'II' four times, then 'I' six times, then 'II' four times, then press 'I' six times, then 'II' four times, then press 'I' six times, then 'II' four times, then press 'I' six times

[4lorn]

Ah yes, the cheat codes!

I actually found them on a couple of sites, the Cutting Room Floor and GameFAQs, while researching the game. They helped with testing the level intros

The nice thing about the codes is that you can combine some. For instance, activate the Blue Ribbon, stop pressing the Select button, then activate the Stage Select. Whatever stage you decide to begin in, you'll have the Blue Ribbon. While it's true you need to keep Select pressed when activating the code, the game seems to lock into memory whatever choice you made while the cheat was active. So if you choose Stage 3, let go of Select - "Stage" will disappear from the title screen, but when starting, you'll be taken to it.

Also, the buttons you need to press are irrelevant when it comes to A or B. You can activate Expert Mode by pressing I once and II twice, or II once and I twice. It's the amount that matters.

And if you feel that pressing 37 times (!) for the Stage select is a bit too much (it is), or if you feel like changing the required number of button presses, open the ROM and head on over here:

The red, square brackets are the times you need to press buttons for the Stage Select. You can change these values safely. Just remember the game defines the numbers first, and the cheat afterwards (ie., the numbers after the Stage select are for the Sound Test). The game's also picky about the presses if you make it so 2 cheats require the same number of presses; they all seem to need a different value.

And finally, I have no idea what Video System does. After activating it (pressing a button a whooping 192 times!), I completed the game but saw no difference. Any ideas?

[dshadoff]

Oh, very interesting... I hadn't seen the stage select one, and I don't know about the Videosystem...

[dshadoff]

After activating videosystem once (I won't do it again without modifying the ROM), it seems like whatever it is, it may be dependent on keeping the SELECT button pressed and manipulating some other keys. I suspect that it may be something like the sound test, but maybe adjusts screen position or something.

[keithcourage]

Awesome! (4lorn)Deep Blooper. Thank you for your time and effort translating this.

[4lorn]

Sept 20, 2021 10:22:42 GMT keithcourage said:

Awesome! Deep Blooper. Thank you for your time and effort translating this.

You're welcome! I just hope people enjoy it.

I'm looking into working on more PCE games, but time will tell...

By the way Dave, I've sent you a PM - hope you don't mind