Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Game Translation Project

[Anath]

Okay... I ran into another problem >_> I haven't played that far into the game (just finished the prologue, and saved right at the start of the scene on the train), but so far I have not run into any sound effects except for the cries of the higurashi. I checked with the original Japanese game, and there are definitely supposed to be more sound effects.

I decompiled the nscript.dat file for the translation and the file names in the WAV folder certainly seem to match what they're supposed to be, but that's about as much as I can think of to check. If you want me to upload anything for you to check with the files in the physical copy, I can get that done.

So there's no *whoosh**thwack**squish* in the prologue? Do you at least hear the train sounds in the later part?

Hmm... could you post the list of files that are just within the top-level WAV folder?

Thanks,
Mion (Sonozaki Futago-tachi)

EDIT:
Actually, could you also put the original nscript.dat file someplace web-accessible? I'll check for differences from the CD higurashi nscript.dat.
Thanks.

[Anath]

Nope, no *whoosh*, *thwack*, *squish*, train sounds, or anything but those darn higurashi. I'll pm you a link to the original nscript.dat file.

Top-level WAV folder files:
A5_13391.WAV
A6.WAV
Anahori.wav
BB.WAV
BELL.WAV
Boyoon.WAV
Chaimu.wav
Dageki.wav
Daidageki.wav
Densya.wav
Door.wav
Down2.wav
Down3.wav
Down.wav
FINAL.WAV
Finish.wav
FLY.WAV
Furu.wav
GARASU.WAV
Hikaru.wav
HIMERARETAKYOUSOU.wav
Interfon.wav
IWANAKATTANOHATUGA.wav
JAKINIMITITAHAIKYO.wav
JIKUUNOSAKEME.wav
Kamera.wav
Kami.wav
Kaminari1.wav
Kaminari2.wav
Kaze.wav
Kira.wav
KIRINOMEIKYUU.wav
Koroku.wav
Kyupirn.wav
MC071.WAV
Nageru.wav
Pou.wav
SE051.wav
SE068.wav
SE137.wav
SE149.wav
SE194.wav
SINZOUAPPAKU.wav
SIZUKU.wav
Suzu_1.wav
Suzume.wav
SWORD.WAV
Taitoru.wav
Tatakiwaru.wav
Tataku.wav
Thisikuki.wav
Waru.wav

That all looks right.

What are the file properties of "WAV\Nageru.wav"?

-Mion (Sonozaki Futago-tachi)

EDIT: Also, are you able to play Nageru.wav by double-clicking on it?

Originally Posted by Anath

ひぐらしのなく頃に.exe
It also creates a "main.bin" file when the program is running.

"Main.bin" is probably the *real* executable, and the other one is some kind of loader\protection. I guess it's not so important, but IMHO i would do the copy of that file, renamed it to "main.exe", checked for the "MZ" header with an HEX Viewer\editor and tried to run it and watch what will happen. ^_^

[Anath]

Originally Posted by Sonozaki Futago-tachi

That all looks right.

What are the file properties of "WAV\Nageru.wav"?

-Mion (Sonozaki Futago-tachi)

EDIT: Also, are you able to play Nageru.wav by double-clicking on it?

47.7kb, and I'm unable to play it by double-clicking on it.

Originally Posted by dsp2003

"Main.bin" is probably the *real* executable, and the other one is some kind of loader\protection. I guess it's not so important, but IMHO i would do the copy of that file, renamed it to "main.exe", checked for the "MZ" header with an HEX Viewer\editor and tried to run it and watch what will happen. ^_^

Good idea about the executable.

However, the download version's nscript.dat file is different as well, in the first few lines. Those lines are garbage (so you can't run the download script with onscripter.) I suspect that's related to the security stuff as well.

Any ideas?

Mion (Sonozaki Futago-tachi)

EDIT: Ok, I got & tried running the exe file (not main.bin), and it's definitely a software wrapper; it tries to access a JP website for confirmation.

Originally Posted by Anath

47.7kb, and I'm unable to play it by double-clicking on it.

Hmm. The file size is right; I suppose I should ask, are you running Windows XP or Vista?

Thanks, Mion

[Anath]

Windows XP

Well shoot. I took a look at your Nageru.wav file and....... its header is all encrypted or something. No wonder you can't play it straight - Windows can't process the header. The exe program must do some special decoding on the nscript.dat file as well as these WAV files.

Sorry about that; unfortunately, it looks like onscripter can't play all the sound effects. Now I wish I hadn't recommended buying the download. :-(

Well, maybe we could work out something for onscripter to be able to work with this stuff...

Sorry,
Mion (Sonozaki Futago-tachi)

[Anath]

Hopefully you'll be able to work something out ^^

Don't feel too bad... I bought the game as soon as I saw it was available for legal downloading, and I would have done so regardless of if you recommended it or not.

If you need to check on any more files for the downloaded version, don't hesitate to ask. I want to help as much as possible ^^

It looks like it's the first 64 bytes of these files that get "garbaged". The first 4 garbage bytes are a repeated byte. The registration code for the game is 20 bytes of alphanumerics, possibly indicating a 120-bit encryption key. Does that sound familiar to anyone, for an encryption scheme?

Thanks,
Mion (Sonozaki Futago-tachi)

Originally Posted by Anath

Hopefully you'll be able to work something out ^^

Don't feel too bad... I bought the game as soon as I saw it was available for legal downloading, and I would have done so regardless of if you recommended it or not.

If you need to check on any more files for the downloaded version, don't hesitate to ask. I want to help as much as possible ^^

Well, here's a sort-of temporary solution: go and download the Higurashi demo here. Install it. Now, copy (or move) the WAV directory to the folder that contains the higurashi translation patch files. This will at least take care of sound effects that show up in Onikakushi. There are other sounds that get used in the other 3 games, but at least this will take care of most of them.

Some of the theme music in the WAV\LP folder is different between the demo and the release, though, so you might want to remove demo-WAV files if you're somehow able to play the full-game counterpart by double-clicking it. (This would save some hard drive space, too.)

Hope this helps for now,
Mion (Sonozaki Futago-tachi)

If I'm reading what you said correctly, it's only the headers of the WAV files that are encrypted, correct? So the actual PCM audio data is still the same? It's not hard to reconstruct the headers, as long as the sample rate, resolution, format, and number of channels are known. It should be fairly trivial to write a patch that rebuilds the audio headers.

Even if that first 64 bytes encrypted covers part of the PCM data, assuming the worst case with 22KHz audio, mono, with 8-bit samples (I don't know what they actually are) that 64 bytes covers at most 64 samples, or 3 milliseconds of audio that could possibly be truncated from the beginning of the sounds without having the decryption keys. If it's 16-bit 44KHz mono audio, it's at most 725 nanoseconds.

So if it's only 64 bytes, trying to recover encryption keys wouldn't even be worth it.

I may just have to buy a copy and take a look ;)

Yeah, it's just the first 64 bytes, and the rest is the same PCM data; so recreating the header probably wouldn't be too bad.

The thing is, the first-64 byte encryption might apply to some of the mp3 theme music files as well, which complicates things.

Anath, perhaps could you check and post which files under the WAV hierarchy aren't encrypted (i.e. playable via double-click)?

Thanks,
Mion (Sonozaki Futago-tachi)

EDIT: Actually, some the mp3s don't look too bad either, for the first 64 bytes - they are definitely header data, and mostly empty.

EDIT2: I checked through the WAV files, and unfortunately they aren't all the same format: some mono, some stereo; variety of frequencies; some 8, some 16 bit. So, a simple header replacement isn't going to work, sorry.