How to edit P3P .dat files?

[Shadow_Soul]

I'm currently looking to translate the game. To do so, I need to modify the various skill-names, Persona names, items and their descriptions.
I suppose they're all stored inside the .dat files within the .TBL files.
Does anybody knows how to edit them and would be kindly enough to point me towards that solution?

[Shadow_Soul]

Is there no way yet?

[InfernoMerrick]

Use a hexeditor. Personally I use HxD.

[Shadow_Soul]

I already tried doing something with HxD but failed.
Am I looking at the right place? Are skill names actually in the .tbl files?
I tried relative searching for, let'say, "Agi" but couldn't find anything.

[DniweTamp]

Open the whole msg.tbl inside a hex editor, not just .dat



as you can see, there's a 19(?) character limit for skill names

[Niopack]

Some texts are hardcoded inside the eboot.bin file, although you can find the same texts in tbl files, are not used by the game.

The text inside the eboot.bin is:
- Enemies names.
- Personas names.
- Skills Names (not the Attack names such as Slash Attack, those are inside init_free.bin>battle/MSG.TBL>MSG(01).DAT).
- Items/Weapons/Armor/Boots/Key Items/Accessories names.
- All-Out Attack quotes.
- Orgia Mode Tutorial.
- Every command in-battle description (what does the attack, defend, flee, command, Persona, and items options).
- Menu Text.
- Status Progression. (Academics/Charm/Courage's levels).

I think that's all. You have to decrypt the eboot.bin and open it with HxD to change it. If you don't know how to do it, you need to use the PPSSPP emulator.

- Open the PPSSPP and go to Settings>Tools>Developer Tools>DUMP decrypted EBOOT.BIN on game boot.
- Load the ISO and run it.
- Go to Documents\PPSSPP\SYSTEM\DUMP\ULUS10512.BIN

That is you decrypted eboot.bin, modify it and when you finish, save with the name EBOOT.BIN and replace the original inside the ISO (open with UMDGen, go to PSP_GAME\SYSDIR folder and replace it, save as new ISO and done).

I hope it helps, if I didn't explain myself very well, tell me and I'll explain again :D

[Shadow_Soul]

Okay, thanks to your help I was able to make some progress although new problems have arisen.

I'm currently trying to translate an ULES version of the game, although that shouldn't create any problem.

Now, when I modify the eboot.bin, not everything I change gets changed in game. For example, even if I translate a persona name or its arcana, they stay the same in the game, even if they're clearly edited in the eboot.bin. This also happens for the stats menu related things.
Does this happen to you also? Or am I doing something wrong?

As for the menu text description, I was able to correctly translate them although I think the actual "commands" are graphical and not text based. So, if I wanted to change let'say the S.Link voice in the menu to something else, I should probably edit it graphically. That's just a theory for now.

I wish I could locate pointers so I could gain some more room for editing but I'll have to dig some more for that.

[Niopack]

I realized that the actual Persona names are inside init_free.bin>battle/MSG.TBL>MSG(03).DAT. You can open the init_free.bin and extract the mentioned .dat file, modify it with HxD, and replace it when finished (I recommend you to do this instead of editing the MSG.TBL file as a whole).

That's how it worked for me. As far as I know, all the Arcana names are images, the ones inside eboot.bin are used for the "S.Links" option in the pause menu (where you can check the details of each social link you have established, if you already changed them, check it out).

The Arcana names that appear when you rank up and establish a new social link, are inside the init_free.bin>battle/MSG.TBL>MSG(00).DAT. Is not necessary to modify the eboot.bin to change them.

The Status menu... It seems it doesn't work for me either. I know it's possible because someone did it, he posted here: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=269 but he didn't say how to do it, so I'll continue researching to see what I can found.

And yes, would be great if we could have more space relocating the pointers. If you found out something, let us know.