Since the beginning of Persona hacking, text editing has far eluded our grasp. This is much to the dismay of fan translators, who have only recently gained the means to overwrite text, change graphics coordinates and even make their own custom fonts.
But finally we can go even beyond editing pre-existing text and add completely new scenes to the games thanks to TGE’s recent release:
https://shrinefox.github.io/tools/p5#compiler
Here’s how it works:
Atlus games use a format called BF, which is the compiled output of code from their original scripting format. TGE’s decompiler takes these binary files and converts them into editable scripts called flow and msg. You can edit these flow files to change the logic of the script, or the msg files to change the text.
Compiling them back to BF, of course, is a feature as well. You can even compile multiple flow/msg files back into a single BF by “importing” them into your new project.
All of this might seem complicated to the average user, but expect some in-depth tutorials with examples of things you can try out yourself!
In the meantime, here’s an example of what’s possible by editing the flow script. As always, if you’d like any assistance using our tools and mods, head over to our forum, the guides section of our website, or even our Discord chat! You don’t even need to be a modder to join– if you’re interested in our findings and development, we welcome you just the same.