Ok, so I've been playing Metal Wolf Chaos, a really damn fun game, Problem is most of it is in Japanese. Now its simple enough that I understand the game enough to play it.

But hey, I like a challenge and I'm never happy unless I'm messing with stuff, so I figured I'd try and do a small scale translation on it. Just some menu options and stuff so its a little easier to navigate and understand what the hell is going on sometimes.

The main issue here is I have no friggin clue where to start.

So heres my main questions:
Where are game text files usually stored (file types)
What tools exist to extract these files?
Anything like this exist for other games?
Anything I should know before I start this?

Utter newbie to modding really. But I'm willing to learn and I want to give something back.

Welp. I guess I'll just post what I have and hope that someone can help me based on that

I've identified 3 main file times for the game, TEX, MSG and DDS. Through some research if ound TEX and DDS are mostly textures, images and that kind of thing, leaving MSG the only thing remaining.

Now the issue here is when I try opening MSG with a text reader, I get some japanese stuff, which is a good sign, but its mostly garbled mess. Presumably because word wasnt meant to be doing this kind of thing.


Just as an example.

Any ideas from here?

Update:

Just had another poke. when i look at it in a different format or two it makes a bit more sense, at least in some of the files. I'm gonna test something and post back.

E: That didnt work, heh. I can change text no problem but the game can't load the file afterwards leading to a crash. I get a feeling its an issue with saving the file that does it. Gonna keep trying and see if I can find a solution

Haha, Ok. Duh. Hex editing works. No support for japanese characters or the encoding they use though. Welp, gonna have to keep looking.

nice great work thanks for your contribution to the xbox

Thanks man!

I'll update a little more when I have some of it down. So far I have the menus and Items done. Now I need to get the Results page and Weapons sorted and I'll post my work.

Ugggh. Hit a road block.

I've got loads of the text done, they aint no thing at this point. BUT, two problems.

Something important is stored in the MRB files. Anyone have any idea what those file formats are and if there's any way to open them?

second, some of the more minor things are in DDS files. Now I can open that shit, but anyone know any way to edit it and then save it as a DDS or convert it to DDS?

MRB stands for Multiple Resolution Bitmap. It is a bitmap image file which contains many resolutions of an image. It cannot be opened in windows. It is unreadable for the imaging tools. This format is used by Microsoft C/C++ tool. http://www.fileinfo.com/extension/mrb
http://www.fileinfo.com/extension/dds shows some programs that can open it maybe one can save it as one worth a try? I hope i didn't make a fool of myself and hope to see you continue.

Why Am I the only one commenting? this is pretty big stuff guys show some support

Thanks for the info buddy but I've actually worked this part out already! haha. I also worked out TEX files. Hold On I'll post some videos I've been making of the progress in this;
http://www.youtube.com/user/bobandalot?feature=mhum
Just if you want to keep up to date. I do and find out so much crap in one day a post I made ends up being completely irrelevant by the time anyone sees it haha. Not to say I don't appreciate the effort and support though buddy.

Currently I've resigned myself to the fact that editing the Mission results page is gonna be nigh on impossible. the TEX files which seem to contain the relevent info basically are uneditable. maybe I'll have luck with the MRBs but I've yet to find something that can actually open them properly. And the ones that can open them say they arn't valid files so, who knows.

Some interesting stuff I found out I've posted in a blog I made for this project http://mwctranslate.blogspot.com/ Some little tidbits like "What the hell, why is there like, 3 files completely dedicated to Otogi items and menus" to "Is this an unused weapon image?"

I think people arnt commenting cause of a combintion of two things - A) These people see hundreds of threads like this that fizzle out into nothing and never see any good come of it and MWC is a pretty unknown niche game I guess. I just hope through the blog and vids, even if I burn out people will know enough to finish it themselves. Thats not me saying I will burn out, just making sure I show my work!

I guess a quick status update for now would be good, Stuff I have Translated already:
90% of menus
100% of in mission text (besides some image based popup things that I have someone working on)
100% of pistol description text
100% of shotgun description text
100% of machine gun text
like 5% of the story text
And a couple other things here and there.
To Do:
Finish weapons
Finish what story stuff I aim to do
Finish menus
Not Gonna Do
Subtitles
Results page (unless I have a breakthough, at which point hells yes I'll do this)

Excellent work on the translation really looking forward to your release
I know that their are threads like this all the time but your actually making progress on something unlike the other idiots who simply request someone else do all the work for them. Even if it is an obscure game people should recognize progress and at least show some support for any breaking xbox 1 developments I guess A600 is getting all the glory(though he does deserve it) . Just things can seem pretty dead here with the exception of mainly surreal64
once again thanks for your great work half a translation is better than nothing . I'll continue to follow and try to help as best I can

Update: Think I just worked out how to change the skins. Will report on my blog later.

Update2: I can edit the popup images that show during missions. Woop Woop. On step closer to 100% in game translation.

I'm just gonna leave this here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObYopvDEdNc

damn you work fast nice video. out of curiosity what are you translating the text with?

A hex editor called MadEdit. The only one I could find with japanese charcter suppirt.

If you look through my videos on that channel you can find one or two that show exactly how I work, if you're interested. I also did a tutorial in that blog I linked.

Annnd we have a release! http://mwctranslate.blogspot.com/2011/04/t...ta-release.html Is this ok to post? I know the rules are kinda strange about this kinda thing here. Just gimmie the word and I'll pull it down. Whatever. Enjoy it guys!

oh thank you thank you thank you i'll make sure to test it out right now you sir are awesome

Heh, you're welcome buddy. Its gonna be messy with a lot of spelling mistakes and junk. but it should work

great work as i expected makes the game way more playable and understandable for english speakers. I still think its funny that microsoft would only release this in Japan but hire english voice actors and never release it outside Japan especially when it revolves around America too patriotic maybe. It only points out the obvious lack of support for Japanese xbox gamers the little their were which led to less Japanese sales and less Japanese developers for xbox. well at least the game is fun and understandable. Thanks again

Well as far as I heard, From Software released something over here that bombed, Sales for MWC were really low and they just didnt have the money or inclination at the time to properly port the game.

Course they started to, I show it off in one of the videos but the game actually has English subtitles for missions that you just can't use. And there's alot of things here and there that imply they at least began translation. Just kinda makes it more weird I guess

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pd56UElyZvg

Made an amazing video advertising the project. Have a look. Link it around.

i have MWC, how do i implement the translation?

Go to the blog I posted -> here http://mwctranslate.blogspot.com/2011/04/t...ta-release.html and follow the instructions. if you still dont get it, send me a PM and I'll try to walk you through it

wow, someones awake today! holy cow!

i was coming back to edit my post with,
"sorry, the instructions are in the download, thanks!"


i'll post up if i have any problems, but it seems pretty cut and dry. thanks for this. this is one of the most ridiculous games i have ever played. maybe with this i can get past the first stage successfully.

I tested out the MWC English translation, and it seemed to work perfectly. However, every time I load a save, it freezes after a few seconds on the loading screen. I'm not sure if it's due to a shoddy ISO or if I have the wrong setting for the game now (I'm running on NTSC on UnleashX v0.38). I used an ISO ripper to get to the files, and even without the patch, it freezes up when I get to the loading screen. However, if I just rip the ISO using DVD2Xbox, I'm able to play the game just fine (albeit without your translation).

Any help would be great for me. I'm still new to using my modded Xbox to its full potential.

P.S. I also got some ISO for GunValkyrie and kill.switch, but every time I try to load the files up via Filezilla's FTP, the games either bring me to a black screen and refuse to load, or they reboot the dash. I'm not sure if the ISO files are faulty or if I didn't set up my Xbox correctly (they're both NTSC, as well).

P.P.S. I also downloaded a torrent for Ultimate Spider-Man, but it came with a .fvd file and a few .dgr files rather than the usual ISO and .xbe files. I wanted to know why anyone would make a torrent with these files for a Xbox game and what I can do with them (if anything) to get them to play on my Xbox.

Downloading games is ILLEGAL, so it against the rules to talk about such activity here. Are there that many thick people here?

Then, if you're a moderator, just delete the post. I've already gotten in contact with the person, and I've deleted the ISOs from my computer.

This is impressive work!

Hey Cylide unless you still plan on working on this you may consider upping this to Romhacking.net in the xbox translation section so its not lost because of dead links. You'd be the first xbox translation. Just a thought