Motteke Tamago English Translation 1.0 September 1, 2002 Copyright 2002 by Dave Shadoff CONTENTS -------- README.TXT - This file MOTTEKE.IPS - IPS patch for track 2 & 9 when in Mode 1/2048 format size = 15,372 bytes MOTTEKE.PPF - PPF patch for full-disc rip (see NightWolve's page) size = 120,536 bytes ABOUT MOTTEKE TAMAGO -------------------- History ------- This is a pretty fun maze/action game that was nearly released in 1993 by Naxat. It was apparently complete, but there may have been hesitation over releasing it as a HuCard or CDROM. Actually, I don't know why they didn't release it, because it's a pretty entertaining game in the style of Bomberman and others, and there were a lot worse games released in that era. It was finally released in 1997 as a "free pack-in CDROM" in the second issue of "Super PC Engine Fan Deluxe" magazine. Hats off to Naxat for releasing it under these circumstances, and also for cooperating with Tokuma Shoten Intermedia (the publisher of "Super PC Engine Fan Deluxe"). Overview -------- You control a cute little duck walking around a maze, collecting eggs and powerups. When your eggs hatch, they head for your home, and bring you points (sometimes bonus points too). Of course, you can always disrupt the efforts of the other players, and there are other perils in the game. HOW TO APPLY THE PATCH ---------------------- I have included a choice of 2 patch types: IPS and PPF. You can use whichever one suits you. PPF: ---- To apply the PPF, you would read the original CDROM into a CUE/BIN set, with software like CDRWIN from GoldenHawk. The BIN file should be 391,285,776 bytes in length if it was done correctly. Then, apply the PPF against the BIN file to create the patched version using software like APPLYPPF3.exe like so: ApplyPPF3.exe a Motteke.bin Motteke.ppf Better instructions can be found at NightWolve's Xak III translation pages here ("How To" section): http://home.earthlink.net/~nlivaditis/xakiii/index.html You can also find the PPF software there or at: http://www.paradogs.com/pdx_ppf2.htm IPS: ---- To apply the IPS patch, you need to have the data track(s), track 2 (and track 9 - the redundant data track) read from the disc as Mode 1, 2048-bytes per sector. You need software such as SNESTool to apply the patch to each of these tracks. Then, you would need to re-assemble the CDROM image with the patched versions of these tracks. I'm assuming that anybody who chooses this method knows what they are doing. I used SNESTool to make the patch, but I also hear that IPSWin is pretty cool - it's at: http://zerosoft.zophar.net/ I hope to make more translations of PCE games in the future, but you never know how schedules can be. CREDITS ------- Hacking: David Shadoff Major Text Translation: Forrest Richmond Minor Translation/Edit: David Shadoff PPF version of patch: NightWolve Coming soon: English version of game manual Translator: Forrest Richmond Layout: Adam Pavlacka Special Thanks: NightWolve for giving me the translation itch everybody on #utopiasoft (EfNet). Other patches, tech information, and even some tools can be found at my website: http://www.interlog.com/~daves BUGS ---- Let me know if you see any mangled menus or other oddities; I will try to fix them if you let me know how you got them to appear in the first place, and what the problem is. daves@interlog.com Tech Overview (notes for the interested): ----------------------------------------- TOOLS USED ---------- SNESTool for IPS MAKEPPF3 for PPF TMOD2 with my plug-ins for graphics Daemon Tools MagicEngine Hex editor Numerous custom utilities Items I had to change --------------------- - Uncompressed font (it was ugly) - Sprites for selection choices on main screen and "press RUN" - Compressed font - Compressed sprite for "choose level" - Explanatory text and bonus scoring areas - Some other miscellaneous text - NO EXECUTABLE CODE WAS CHANGED Text storage ------------ Text was not stored as regular 1-byte ASCII, 1-byte SJIS, modified character set, or even 2-byte SJIS. It was instead stored as 2-byte VRAM references, such as would be copied directly to the BAT area of VRAM. It wasn't too terrible though, since one of the bytes was like an ASCII value, with a modified 1-byte JIS table containing both hiragana and katakana. It really helped that I could find the uncompressed character set, and work backwards from there. Another great hint is to use MagicEngine gamesave snapshots in uncompressed format (not the default setting). These, together with a hex editor and the TMOD2 program with PC Engine plug-ins, helped immensely. Compression ----------- The compression scheme employed was a specialized 16-bit run-length encoding. For each 8-bytes in the output stream, there is a header byte and up to 8 payload bytes. The header byte is a bitmap to show which of the payload bytes exists, and where to put them. A '1' bit represents "use the next payload byte here", and a '0' bit represents "repeat the same byte from 2 bytes ago (ie. 16-bit). Examples: input: FF 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 - header = FF = 11111111 (use all 8 bytes) output: 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 input: F0 00 01 02 03 - header = F0 = 11110000 (4 bytes & repeat) output: 00 01 02 03 02 03 02 03 input: C4 00 FF 00 - header = C4 = 11000100 (3 bytes) output: 00 FF 00 FF 00 00 00 00 Special things I found - future possible hacks ---------------------------------------------- The level maps can be found at offset 0x36b00 in the data track. There are 30 levels, one after another, in 16x16 array format, uncompressed. This offset is relative to the beginning of the data track, when viewed as a MODE1/2048-bytes per sector data track (as PC Engine data tracks should be). So, anybody can make hacks to change the shape/structure of the various levels... but I'll leave it to the reader to explore the various meanings of the bytes in this array. Keep the PC Engine alive !