Hello

Hello, I'm somewhat new here. But I've been visiting this forum for a long time now and decided to get an account here. I wasn't sure where to put introductions to newcomers, but I figured the general section works. My name's Julayla, I can type in some pretty good dialogue for NES or SNES games that need that type of "pizazz" or "oomph" feel and make the dialogues feel natural (sadly, I cannot do text editing with hex editor), but I hope that even if I do not do well in game hacking, I hope I'm welcomed to this forum.

hello julayla and welcome to zeldix. when it comes to text editing, there are instructions on how to do it on the zelda compendium which you can find the link (no pun intended) in the documents section.

but I hope that even if I do not do well in game hacking, I hope I'm welcomed to this forum.

Why wouldn't you be.

sadly, I cannot do text editing with hex editor

That's actually easier than it sounds, but there is one main problem. The games usually want to save space, so the original authors come up with some "dictionary shortcuts", like only one byte for "THE" instead of 3 bytes (one for each letter) etc. Once you decode this dictionary, you can decode everything, but since in ALTTP all texts are one long hex string, you might want to use somekind of program instead of direct hex editing.

There should also be no huge problem for any coder to mimic the dictionary and obviously letters, so that their editor can read the text (this was already done in Hyrule Magic and also Zeldix magic programs for ALTTP).

More here:
https://www.zeldix.net/t1281-zelda3-hacking-compendium

when it comes to text editing, aren't there more space limitations than in the JP version? for example I want to change "flute boy plays again" to "ocarina boy plays again" but when using the hex editor, there does not appear to be any empty characters where it will fit.

wizzrobemaster wrote:when it comes to text editing, aren't there more space limitations than in the JP version? for example I want to change "flute boy plays again" to "ocarina boy plays again" but when using the hex editor, there does not appear to be any empty characters where it will fit.  

That's not really monologue editing, but gfx loading editing, that happens to be text. And you are correct, in such instances you can not do this, because Ocarina is longer than flute. You are limited to the exact amount of letters, since otherwise you will exceed the hex-string space. Thus you will have to repoint data - this is doable, but more difficult, since the pointers for the ending sequence texts were not really documented properly.

surprisingly the japanese version's text was much different from the US version. the only differences were ocarina, priest, and finger webs (and i am certainly not renaming that). palace to temple can be done because they are equal characters in terms of length.