Editing Fire Red's Intro Text Made Easy

[metapod23]

Before reading:
There's an even easier fix that's been brought to my attention. Click the "Special Dialog" box in A-Text when editing the intro dialogue. This should fix any problems. If for some reason it doesn't, proceed to my more complicated solution. :)

I hope at least this thread's existence will make some people's lives a lot easier when it comes to the intro text, though. :)

On with the probably pointless rest of the thread:

This thread is for those who have had the same problem I did when editing the intro text to Fire Red - the whole "In the world which you are about to enter" stuff. If I'm the only one who's had this problem, then just ignore this thread.

Tools Needed
Advance Text
Hex Workshop
XSE (optional, but helpful)

The problem I'm talking about is having Fire Red's intro text dialogue cut off after two lines with that little flat arrow showing up afterward after you've tried to edit the text in Advance-Text. For instance, if I wanted to change the first page of the intro text to:

"Hi, welcome to my hack!
I hope you enjoy playing it, because
it's really really fun!

Don't you think it will be fun to play?
Well, I hope you do!
If you do, please let me know,
because I worked really hard on it!"

I would go into A-Text, search for the original text, "write to INI" and change it like so:

I'd click "Save Text" and that would be that, right? Nope! Because after finding the text and replacing it with what I want, it looks fine in A-Text, but when I start up the game it looks like this:

Pretty frustrating (for me anyway)! So what's the deal? Well, it has to do with the fact that, for whatever reason, the intro text doesn't like to use \l and \p to separate lines of text. It only likes to use \n! Weird, huh?

As you might know, A-Text automatically converts the codes for how we separate the lines. So once \n is used, the next line separation will be \l, because that's the way it does it in game. But it just won't work for the intro text! But don't worry, there's a fairly simple solution using Hex Workshop. But first thing's first. Let's write the text in a way that we can edit it simply in Hex Workshop.

We can leave it basically unchanged except for one small difference. Whenever you would want to start a new paragraph with \p, instead of hitting return/enter twice to go to a new paragraph in A-Text, put a space and hit return once:

^ See how I did it there? This is done to reserve the right amount of space we'll need, since we'll only be using \n for the intro. Thus, instead of having \p separate out paragraphs, we'll have to use /n/n. Got it?

Now that you've saved the text in A-Map the right way, it's time to edit in Hex Workshop. Open up the Rom in Hex Workshop and go to offset 0x1C5A04:

Now this is where the intro text begins, but I highly recommend using XSE's built-in Hex Viewer to find the few #s you need to edit, because it shows you what the numbers mean in english!

^ See, that's much easier to follow. See on the right side where there's a period after a word? That's standing in for the \p or \l or \n. So we find the one we want to edit. In my example, there's a period right after "because" that's marking the line change. If we click on it, XSE tells us the offset where it's located, so we can just navigate to that in Hex Workshop.

Once we find it in Hex Workshop, it's time to change it from \l to \n. All you really need to know for this is that, in Hex:

\n = FE
\l = FA
a space = 00

\p is FB, but if you followed this tut, you won't have that in your text script. So navigate to the # you want to replace in Hex Workshop. For a line space it will say FA. We need to change that to FE, like so:

So now I've just changed the line spacing after the word "because" from \l to \n! So let's test it in the game. We boot up the game and it looks like this:

Success! Another line of text! But now it's time to change the part where we have a paragraph instead of a line break. For paragraphs, we need to have FE twice. This is why I had you put a space and a regular line break before. So the code in Hex Workshop after "really fun!" will be 00 FA. We need to change that to FE FE, like so:

Save and test it in the game, and:

It worked! And so you just follow this process for all the lines breaks until you have this:

And so on with the other two pages of text. This way, with only some minor Hex Workshop editing, you can write your intro dialogue to Fire Red in A-Text and not have to worry about it not showing up! I hope somebody finds this tutorial useful, as I have found this the best and easiest method that I know of to change the intro text properly.

 

[Team Rocket's Raichu]

Wow, this seems a little hard, but useful. Thank you.

 

[metapod23]

Wow, this seems a little hard, but useful. Thank you.

Haha, well there goes the thread title! But this was easier for me than, say, trying to go into Hex Workshop and edit the text letter by letter, which is the only other way I know of to do this. :)

Also, I might have a tendency to make things sound more complicated than they really are ...

 

[universalconsole]

I wish i wrote this
dang!
thanks alot
really helped

 

[Sierraffinity]

I'm pretty sure that ticking the 'Special Dialog' box under the text will fix any problems you'd have here.

 

[metapod23]

I'm pretty sure that ticking the 'Special Dialog' box under the text will fix any problems you'd have here.

Oh, well that seemed to make things easier. I wish something in the program explained that ...

This would be a really good solution, though, if that "Special Dialog" box wasn't there! :P

 

[Sierraffinity]

Oh, well that seemed to make things easier. I wish something in the program explained that ...

This would be a really good solution, though, if that "Special Dialog" box wasn't there! :P

True dat. Even though A-Text as many glitches, it serves well for some editing.
Somebody should make a text editor that is glitch-free and much better to use.

 

[Team Rocket's Raichu]

True dat. Even though A-Text as many glitches, it serves well for some editing.
Somebody should make a text editor that is glitch-free and much better to use.

Let's see if we can get HackMew to do it, or another major tool maker. HackMew could hack A-Text like (s)he did with UNlz.gba.

 

[Sierraffinity]

Let's see if we can get HackMew to do it, or another major tool maker. HackMew could hack A-Text like he did with UNlz.gba.

[offtopic]HackMew's a boy. XD[/offtopic]
Anyways, maybe he'll do it, but maybe it's just too much of a tool used by lazy hackers to do anything with.

 

[Team Rocket's Raichu]

[offtopic]HackMew's a boy. XD[/offtopic]
Anyways, maybe he'll do it, but maybe it's just too much of a tool used by lazy hackers to do anything with.

I sent him a PM saying something like this. It is similar not the same though.

HackMew could you make or hack A-Text? A-Text is full of bugs. You may think it is a lazy way out of scripting, but there is somethings you can't make scripts for. Example: The text Oak says at the beginning.

Thank you for your time. :)

 

[colcolstyles]

HackMew could you make or hack A-Text? A-Text is full of bugs. You may think it is a lazy way out of scripting, but there is somethings you can't make scripts for. Example: The text Oak says at the beginning.

Thank you for your time.

I think that HackMew is already planning a tool that is designed to edit the entire intro. Included in this tool, I assume, will be a way to edit Oak's speech's text.

HackMew's a boy. XD

Correction: HackMew is a man.

 

[Sierraffinity]

headslap

I meant to say that HackMew is male.
And yeah, I'm guessing that A-Intro will have that in, but what about other things?
Ex. text that appears when you faint

 

[colcolstyles]

And yeah, I'm guessing that A-Intro will have that in, but what about other things?
Ex. text that appears when you faint

Get a hex editor and a table file. It'll take you a couple minutes tops if you know what you're doing.

 

[BLAZEQUAZA]

Cool, I'm making a Fire Red Hack and no other TUT's worked

 

[U.Flame]

I can`t believe all I had to do was click "Special Dialog". Now I can put the finishing touches on my Mother`s Day hack and release it by the end of the day! Thanks!

 

[The_Talking_Shellder]

Thank you for this! I haven't had any success with other tutorials, but this one worked.

 

[PeregrineFig]

I found an easy way to do this for people like me that can't run Advance Text. What you do is, take the first, say, three words of the page you're editing and convert it into hex, then search for it in a hex editor, now take the offset that text starts at and invert it, (for example 7530EB would be EB 30 75) and add 08 (so in the previous example you end up with EB 30 75 08), then search that in a hex editor. Now, open your ROM in XSE. Start a dynamic script, but don't put any scripting commands in it, just a text string, like this:

Spoiler:

#dynamic 0x740000
#org @start
= (The text will go here)

Now, don't put in that equal sign, leave the line blank but have your cursor in that line. Use XSE's text adjuster and type out your intro text page, not exceeding 8 lines in length. Now convert and insert it, and go through and change any \p or \l commands to \n, then add \x at the very end. Hit compile, and invert the offset the same way you did earlier. Now back to the hex editor, edit the offset you found after searching earlier to point to your new text. (So, if the old offset was 7530EB and the new is 768954, replace EB 30 75 08 with 54 89 76 08) Save the changes, and boot it up. I did the edit shown in the thumbnail with this method, as my Vista with heavy user account controls won't run A-Text. I hope this helps someone, and metapod, sorry for writing a full tutorial in your tutorial thread :P

 

[metapod23]

I found an easy way to do this for people like me that can't run Advance Text. What you do is, take the first, say, three words of the page you're editing and convert it into hex, then search for it in a hex editor, now take the offset that text starts at and invert it, (for example 7530EB would be EB 30 75) and add 08 (so in the previous example you end up with EB 30 75 08), then search that in a hex editor. Now, open your ROM in XSE. Start a dynamic script, but don't put any scripting commands in it, just a text string, like this:

Spoiler:

#dynamic 0x740000
#org @start
= (The text will go here)

Now, don't put in that equal sign, leave the line blank but have your cursor in that line. Use XSE's text adjuster and type out your intro text page, not exceeding 8 lines in length. Now convert and insert it, and go through and change any \p or \l commands to \n, then add \x at the very end. Hit compile, and invert the offset the same way you did earlier. Now back to the hex editor, edit the offset you found after searching earlier to point to your new text. (So, if the old offset was 7530EB and the new is 768954, replace EB 30 75 08 with 54 89 76 08) Save the changes, and boot it up. I did the edit shown in the thumbnail with this method, as my Vista with heavy user account controls won't run A-Text. I hope this helps someone, and metapod, sorry for writing a full tutorial in your tutorial thread :P

No prob. :) Hopefully it will help someone.

 

[zZJoennZz]

This tutorial help me alot.. ! ^_^

 

[ERROR]

never wouldve thought of using advance text for editing the intro text