Modding Japanese Subtitles back into Steam version possible? Any ideas?

[CKirby]

Great.

The game is out, so are all of its resources, there is no putting the genie back into the bottle. I doubt they would go to that length though, mainly because their profit window is over, at this point might as well patch them fully into the interface, also Sega isn't Nintendo.

ner0, thank you for the information on the hex editing code. Out of curiosity, how did you know which hex values to change for the Shenmue 2 exe? The Shenmue 1 hex editing is more understandable but how did you know what lines to change and what to change it to in the Shenmue 2 exe?

 

[ner0]

ner0, thank you for the information on the hex editing code. Out of curiosity, how did you know which hex values to change for the Shenmue 2 exe? The Shenmue 1 hex editing is more understandable but how did you know what lines to change and what to change it to in the Shenmue 2 exe?

Glado to have helped.

I can't really speak about Shenmue 1 because there was no hex editing or analysis needed since it already had its native external configuration file which could force the subs to japanese. Likewise, Shenmue 2 also had a native external config file where subs could be overridden to use japanese, but for some weird reason the developers decided to disable that in v1.5 or v1.6 of the 2nd game (weirdly not in the 1st game).

As for how I found which lines to change, the answer is straightforward but needs a bit of assembly background. It obviously involved analysing the EXE using a disassembler (I used x64dbg at the time). Initially I tried to find a way to make the external configuration file relevant again, but wasn't able to achieve that due to my own technical limitations.

The next best thing was to find the function which decided which text language the player was using. The first obvious apporach was to look for string references to japanese inside the EXE, that's exactly what I did and hit the lottery immediately:



After that I made a few tests to see which functions would be involved to accomplish that, and I found that 2 of the ones referenced above did the trick:





This essentially just swaps the default English text and fonts with Japanese ones; not the most subtle approach, but it works for the intended purpose. The other languages work normally.

 

[CKirby]

Thank you for the explanation! I really thought I had wasted my money on this game when I realized I couldn't change the text to Japanese, but your work has made me a lot happier!!

 

[ner0]

Thank you for the explanation! I really thought I had wasted my money on this game when I realized I couldn't change the text to Japanese, but your work has made me a lot happier!!

No problem, it's always gratifying to see people enjoying our mods - you definitely didn't waste your money. On that note, if you haven't already checked, I advise you to consider using the widescreen patch: https://www.shenmuedojo.com/forum/i...ease-16-9-cutscenes-fix.358/page-5#post-10013

Happy gaming!

 

[Rakim]

I got 1&2 on steam recently and have been playing in Japanese with no hiccups thanks to this thread. Big ups to ner0!
Also using your widescreen patch

 

[Jerrid'sRamenShop]

Is the journal also in Japanese if you switch to Japanese subtitles? And there are two versions of the Japanese, not sure of the correct terms, but one uses mostly kana and the other uses mostly kanji. Are both available as options? Thank you.

 

[Rakim]

Is the journal also in Japanese if you switch to Japanese subtitles? And there are two versions of the Japanese, not sure of the correct terms, but one uses mostly kana and the other uses mostly kanji. Are both available as options? Thank you.

Super late reply, but yeah the journal, menus, and everything is all Japanese if you change the language settings. I don't think there are any settings regarding kanji usage, though.