Technical Information on Translating Final Fantasy II

Information for Translating Final Fantasy II

Version 0.06 Released January 2541. (1998)
By Joke

This page describe all information needed to translate Final Fantasy II (US version which is (almost) equivalent to Final Fantasy IV Japanese version) to other language (than English).

Some part of this information may be able to apply to Japanese version of Final Fantasy IV.

I released the first version early September. The document is far from complete, but I will continuously update it along with my FF4 Thai translation.

Introduction.

Translating game is a chalanging work. Most of translating projects are translating Japanese-only game to English. However, this page was built to provide *all* needed information for translating Final Fantasy II (US) to other language than English.

Current know FF2 translation project are Spanish translation and Thai translation.

You may want to read basic concept on translating game ROM. These are some useful links.

Essential Tools.

You must have some good tools to translate the game. Ranging from hex editor to tile editor (font editor) to word finder to special code editor, etc.

These are the tools I use.

Norton Utilities 8.0's Disk Edit (DOS) - A good hex editor.
SMC-RiPPER (DOS) - For changing font. It's very fast and have a lot of tools.
SNES Sprite Editor (Win95) - Alternated tool for changing the font. It's much slower than SMC-RiPPER, though.
Turbo Pascal 7.0 (DOS) - For write FF2 specific tool such as searching or replacing texts.
FF2 storyline word-by-word transcript. You can see *all* story text in the game with some description.
etc.

Other useful tools.

X-Char (DOS4GW) - Another tool for changing the font. I can't save.
X-Late (DOS) - Translated editor. It crashes every time I use it.

Note! All ROM addresses mentioned in this document includes 512 (0200h) bytes header. This mean the ROM size must be 1,049,088 bytes.

Font.

The font in FF2 is 8x8 font and located at 057200h (include 0200h bytes header.) There are English characters, digits, marks, symbols and borders. However, there are quite a lot of free tiles.

Figure 1. FF2 font table. The tile No. 8Ah - BFh and CAh - F6h are free (letter v, w, H, ... and v at bottom are not used.)

Code.

Unfortunately, the code used in FF2 is not ASCII. It is propritary code. From figure 1, capital letter A - Z are located at 42h - 5Bh, lower letter a - z are located at 5Ch - 75h. Digit 0 - 9 are located at 80h - 89h. Finally, some mark are located at C0h - C9h.

For example, the word 'Hello.' will be kept in ROM as 49h 60h 67h 67h 6Ah C1h.

Dual-tile encoding.

Most story texts in FF2 are kept compressed. They are encoded with simple algorithm 'Dual-tile encoding'. Square select most frequency used two-character such as 'th', 'at', 're', etc. and use single byte to represent these two-character set. For example, 8Ch is used to keep 'th' and 8Dh is used to keep 'he'.

80h 0 90h a A0h yo B0h en C0h ' D0h et E0h ot F0h ge

81h 1 91h s A1h y B1h ed C1h . D1h le E1h be F1h n

82h 2 92h er A2h i B2h hi C2h - D2h f E2h el F2h ee

83h 3 93h in A3h al B3h or C3h _ D3h g E3h om F3h wi

84h 4 94h re A4h ar B4h , C4h ! D4h es E4h 's F4h M

85h 5 95h d A5h h B5h I C5h ? D5h ro E5h il F5h ke

86h 6 96h an A6h r B6h u C6h % D6h ne E6h de F6h we

87h 7 97h o A7h s B7h me C7h / D7h ry E7h gh F7h p

88h 8 98h on A8h at B8h ta C8h : D8h l E8h ay F8h ig

89h 9 99h st A9h n B9h b C9h , D9h us E9h nt F9h ys

8Ah e 9Ah w AAh c BAh I CAh f DAh no EAh Wh FAh B

8Bh t 9Bh o ABh ng BBh te CBh d DBh ut EBh Yo FBh am

8Ch th 9Ch m ACh ve BCh of CCh ow DCh ca ECh wa FCh ld

8Dh he 9Dh ha ADh ll BDh ea CDh se DDh as EDh oo FDh W

8Eh t 9Eh to AEh y BEh ur CEh DEh Th EEh We FEh la

8Fh ou 9Fh is AFh nd BFh l CFh it DFh ai EFh g FFh

Table 1. Dual-tile encoding table. (Green values are not encoded. They are shown as single tile.)

There are a lot of free space in character table to do this. Square use data from 8Ah to BFh and CAh to FEh to keep these two-character.

For example, the word 'thank' can be kept in ROM as 8Ch 96h 66h. This can save two bytes. Imagin that there are tens of kilobyte of text, thus dual-tile encoding can save a lot of space.

The decoding can be disable so you will see actual data instead of two character it represent. For example, you will see the tile 8Ch instead of letters 'th' in above example. You can change the font so you will know that the tile 8Ch is displayed.

To disable the decoding, change the byte 003472h in ROM image from 8Ah to FFh.

Texts Address.

There are a lot of text in the game, character names, items, magics, etc. They are located in groups and thus translating them is easy. However, curtain text are encoded with dual-tile encoding. Most of story text and conversation do, also some of message dialogs.

Text in FF2 can be divided into 2 groups, series of constant length text and variable length text. First group consists of character names, jobs, items, monster and called monster. Second group can be devided into 2 types, story text and other text. Story text is big issue so I will discuss it in next section.

All constant length text are kept unencoded. Most story text are kept encoded and some of other text does.

Constant Length Texts

Constant length texts are kept in series. Table 2 shows start address of each series, size of each item and number of items in series.

Texts Start Addr Size Number

Character Names 07A910h 06h 000Eh

Jobs 07A964h 07h 000Eh

Items 078200h 09h 0100h

Magic 078B00h 06h 0048h

Monster 071A00h 08h 00E0h

Called Monster 078CB0h 08h 0068h

Table 2. Constant length text

Variable Length Texts

Option Screen

All texts in option screen except the word Level are kept unencoded. Search for them strightforwardly.

Story Text.

Stories are kept at various address in the ROM. It is impossible to list all of them here. Just search it by using Hex Editor. Or you can wait me to release my searching tool. (I can't guarantee when will it be released!)

If you decide to search, make sure that you have disabled the dual-tile encoding. Or you won't found them.

There are a lot of code used in story text. For example, the code 01h means new line marker, the code 09h means one blank line, etc. Table 3 shows known codes.

Code Meaning

00h End of message marker

01h End of line marker

02h Unknown

03h XXh Sound Effect (To be explain.)

04h XXh Character name. See Characters subsection below.

05h Unknown

06h XXh Some constant used in status box (at the top of screen in fighting screen.) For example, 'Learn xxx', 'Receive xxx GP', etc. (To be explain.)

07h Unknown

08h Unknown

09h One blank line. Use more than one of 01h to put more than one blank line won't work. You can put 01h at the first position to advance to new line. But next blank line, you need 09h.

Table 3. Story codes.

Characters Due to the fact that player can change character's name. The name mentioned in any text was kept as a code. For example, Cecil's name was kept as 04h 00h. This 2 bytes code represents Cecil's name (whatever his name is.)

Name Code Name Code

Cecil 04h 00h Palom 04h 07h

Kain 04h 01h Porom 04h 08h

Rydia 04h 02h Cid 04h 09h

Tellah 04h 03h Edge 04h 0Ah

Edward 04h 04h FuSoYa 04h 0Bh

Rosa 04h 05h Golbez 04h 0Ch

Yang 04h 06h Anna 04h 0Dh

Table 4. Character's name encoding

For example, the text 49h 64h C4h FFh 04h 00h C1h represents "Hi! Cecil."

Level, Parry and Change.

The word 'Level' in option screen and 'Parry' and 'Change' in fighting screen are very annoying. How hard method square use to keep easy word! I found that the word 'Parry' is kept as 'Pary' and the word 'Change' is kept as 'Chnge'. 'Pary' is kept at 0B7D90h and 'Chnge' is kept at 0B7D94h

When the word will be displayed, the game insert third letter of 'Pary' (r) at forth position. Thus makes the word 'Parry'! The bad thing goes worse, the game use second letter of word 'Pary' inserts at third position of 'Chnge'. And... Haleluya! We get 'Change'!

I will work to disable those insertions. But as I know *very* little about 65816 assembly, don't expect it will be solve soon. (It may not be solved by me at all.)

I still don't know about the word 'Level'. :-(

Legal Note.

This document is copyrighted by me. To redistribute this document, you must not edit anything between END HEADER and BEGIN FOOTER. And you must also notify me.
Final Fantasy IV (FF4), Final Fantasy II (FF2) are trademarks of Square Soft.
SNES/SFC/Super Nintendo Entertainment System/Super Famicom are trademarks of Nintendo.

jmeam@geocities.com
28/02/2541 (1998)

Texts	Start Addr	Size	Number
Character Names	07A910h	06h	000Eh
Jobs	07A964h	07h	000Eh
Items	078200h	09h	0100h
Magic	078B00h	06h	0048h
Monster	071A00h	08h	00E0h
Called Monster	078CB0h	08h	0068h

Code	Meaning
00h	End of message marker
01h	End of line marker
02h	Unknown
03h XXh	Sound Effect (To be explain.)
04h XXh	Character name. See Characters subsection below.
05h	Unknown
06h XXh	Some constant used in status box (at the top of screen in fighting screen.) For example, 'Learn xxx', 'Receive xxx GP', etc. (To be explain.)
07h	Unknown
08h	Unknown
09h	One blank line. Use more than one of 01h to put more than one blank line won't work. You can put 01h at the first position to advance to new line. But next blank line, you need 09h.

Name	Code	Name	Code
Cecil	04h 00h	Palom	04h 07h
Kain	04h 01h	Porom	04h 08h
Rydia	04h 02h	Cid	04h 09h
Tellah	04h 03h	Edge	04h 0Ah
Edward	04h 04h	FuSoYa	04h 0Bh
Rosa	04h 05h	Golbez	04h 0Ch
Yang	04h 06h	Anna	04h 0Dh