Translation Project in Need of Programmer

[Sil]

Hello Everyone,

I am a new member, but long time lurker, of these forums. I'm posting here today because my group is in search of a skilled programmer for our completed translation project and this was the first place I thought to look for such a person.

My translation group is working on various otome game projects, that all run on the same system: .ARC. We can program all the text and everything just fine. What we need is someone to help us extract, edit, then repack the images of these games. The images are .WIP files. From what my group has found, and from various programmers I have spoken with, it seems that .WIP can be extracted and edited but not repacked into the game. So it seems we may need someone who can create a custom program to do this.

The other matter we need some help with is extracting the op and ed movies which are .DAT files so we can sub them and repack them into the game.

I know this is asking for a lot, but if you guys could help us or know anyone that could we would really appreciate it! (And I'm sure everyone who is waiting for these projects will as well)!

Thank you very much,
Sil

[Asceai]

WIP images in games that use the Will engine are lzss encoded. it's trivial enough to encode and decode, but would still take a bit of playing around. images can have multiple layers and stuff like that. The actual archives themselves are basically an index followed by the raw files, no effort there.

And if you ever, ever ask for technical help without naming the freaking eroge(s) in question again I'll stab you. Do you know how many games use archives with .ARC as the extension? Just looking in my personal eroge directory OVER 40

I'll look into coding up a quick thing later on if nobody else does it first

EDIT: also, the opening movie is probably an .MPG file; rename it. come on >_>

[Sil]

Thank you very much for replying^^

I must apologize for not explaining why we didn't post the name. The project is a popular title and we did not want to attract unwanted attention to it until we released the full patch. If this caused any problems, then I apologize. If you want the name of the game I can PM it to you if you like.

We are really grateful that you are willing to take the time to consider helping this project. If you need any specifics on the game(s) feel free to PM me for them and I'll try to answer.

Once again thank you for the info on the .DAT! It worked^^ I apologize if I come off as not knowing anything, but I'm not a programmer. I am a translator, who taught herself the basics of programming in order to teach the other girls in my group how to program. My knowledge is only in AnimeED and the tools that go with it. That's why my group and I really appreciate the help!

Thank you very much,
Sil

[Asceai]

Originally Posted by Sil

I must apologize for not explaining why we didn't post the name. The project is a popular title and we did not want to attract unwanted attention to it until we released the full patch.

That's fine, since there's only a small number of titles it could be anyway, so I think I know what it is.

[Sil]

It's been sometime since we have received a reply to this post. I was wondering if anyone has had any luck with creating a compiler/decompiler for the .WIPs. Our project is basically finished now, and the main thing preventing release is trying to alter the images. All our other prospective projects have their images sealed as .WIPs, so whatever program you can create for us will definitely be used more than once.

If anyone at all could help us out, we would really appreciate it! Otherwise, we'll be forced to release the configure menu, shortcuts, and other menus untranslated.

Thank you for your time,
Sil

[Asceai]

It's harder than I expected.

On the same note, could you tell me what you need in terms of utilities for these? I mean, an extractor and repacker are simple enough, but presumably you're going to be creating some sort of translation patch and you want some way of modifying the game archive to add files to it in the patch installer.

Asceai, you can always look into AE's sources - the .arc extraction/creation code is simple and easy to make (though I doubt people here do like Object Pascal).

Backwards .wip image conversion is easy, you don't have to recompress the data stream back - just emulate the compression by inserting $FF byte every 8 bytes. As for multipage images - extract data as multiple .tga files, then merge everything back. The pixel conversion routine is not trivial, yet easy (see the sources).

Spoiler

The modules you'll need to look at are:
format/archives/AA_ARC_Will.pas
format/graphics/AG_Will_Picture_File.pas

Ugh, wish I could have more free time...

[Asceai]

Hang on, so your tool already supports these?

[Sil]

I apologize for the late reply.

@Asceai
Basically all we need is the extractor/ repacker for the .WIP. So something that can let me alter the images, then re-encode the altered images back into .WIP. We can use AnimeED to get the files to go back into the Chip.ARC. So we're good on that end.

As for the information dsp2003 explained, that's really over my head and skill level. Basically, what we need is a program that could do that for us, or at least less technical(since our programming skills are limited).

Also, it's wonderful to know that there are methods out there that allow you to convert it back to a .WIP! Thank you for the information dsp2003^^