.:The Wonders of A-Text and unLZ GBA:.

[Spherical Ice]

.:The Wonders of A-Text and unLZ:.
ALWAYS MAKE A BACKUP!​

Hi. Welcome to my anthology of miniature tutorials, focusing on the many possibilities with only A-Text, unLZ GBA and possibly Paint. If you already know all of this, and think that I am pointing out the obvious, just walk along. Ignore me. Okay? Now, onto the (mini) tutorials... Oh, and one last thing, I'm using FireRed for all of these. Sorry, RS/E hackers...

Default Naming Options

Rivals Name:

Spoiler:

You'll Need:
~ A-Text
~ VBA
~ A FireRed ROM

This tutorial will teach you how to edit the four default options for names for your RIVAL at the beginning of the game. You know, the GREEN, GARY, KAZ, TORU part? Yeah. Editing those four names.

1. Load your ROM in A-Text and open the Search Tool.

2. In the left textbox, enter your RIVAL's first name - GREEN (make sure it's in capital letters.)

2a. Yeah, for Green, Green Path/Pattern Bush will appear. We don't want that, though, do we? Nope. So we click the Resume button twice. Now back to step 3...​

3. Once you've found the correct piece of text, click WRITE TO INI.

4. In the first textbox, type in, for example, Naming. Then, in the second one, entitled: Text Name (Enter), type in the name that you are editing (i.e. GREEN).

5. Repeat the above processes for the rest of the names (GARY, KAZ, TORU), but this time ignore step 2a.

6. Load your ROM in VBA and test it out! Here's my output from Kyanpu, my hack:

Spoiler:

Player's Name:
You'll Need:
~ A-Text
~ VBA
~ A FireRed ROM

This tutorial will teach you how to edit the thirty-seven default names for the player - the ones you get if your say you've finished inputting your name and you've really just left it blank. Really, this is more of a resource than anything.

1. Repeat the steps done in the above tutorial, however, instead of just searching for the four default names (GREEN, GARY, KAZ and TORU), search for the thirty-seven(?) different names that the male and female character has, combined.

2. The list is as follows: HINT: If, for example, you have to scour through many different results with the same word/name in as the name you are trying to edit, go for the ones who's offsets begin with 1857.

BOY

• FIRE
• RED
• ASH
• HIRO
• GEKI
• JONN
• JON
• TAYLOR
• KAY
• TOSH
• MAX
• KARL
• RALPH
• JAK
• KENE
• JANNE
• ROAK
• OSCAR
• KAMON

GIRL

• FIRE (Same as Boy, I presume)
• RED (Same as Boy, I presume)
• MOMO
• OMI
• KIKO
• MINA
• MICHI
• SAI
• AMANDA
• NORIE
• SUZI
• PAULA
• JODI
• MAKEY
• SEDA
• JUNE
• REY
• CASSIE

The Button Introduction

Spoiler:

You'll need:
~ unLZ GBA
~ A-Text
~ A FireRed ROM
~ VBA
~ The BIK (Button Intro Kit):

You know RIGHT at the beginning of the game, the game explains the controls... for the GBA? Well, we aren't playing on the GBA, are we? So we need to edit the controls to suit our keyboard... don't we? Well, reading this tutorial may solve your problem! Read on...

1. Load your ROM in unLZ GBA. Check Black and White Mode and go to ~335. To tell if you're at the right place, look for this:

2. Using the +/- Option, adjust the image to look like this:

3. Import the BIK and write it to the ROM.

4. Close unLZ GBA - the file shouldn't be too big.

5. Load your ROM in A-Text. Open up the Search Tool and, ocne again, in the left hand side box, type in what you want to change in the text for the intro - I typed in the explanation of L/R, which is now going to be changed to A/S. Also, I wrote the part where they mention the word button or press to the INI to change to key and push.

6. Just as before, choose a name for the Section Name and type in something for the Text Name part, too.

7. Get to the text which you want to edit and edit away.

7a. If you edit the L/R part, remeber to shorten it to two lines of length. For some reason, if you just keep it as a three-liner, it put the red-arrow thing after the text, and you can't view anymore of it. I shortened it to say:
If you need help playing the game, push the A or S keys.​

And, to finish off, here's a few unLZ GBA offsets:

- 1695 - Bag (Male)
- 1696 - Bag (Female)
- 2009 - Titlescreen Text - Pokémon FireRed Version
- 2011 - Charizard (Titlescreen)
- 2013 - Press Start, (C) 2004 GAMEFREAK
- 191 - Worldmap -gulp-

Sorry, I know it's not much. Feel free to ask questions.

 

[HackMew]

Just wanted to say that replacing A and B with Z and X might not be always a good idea. Even if those are the default ones, VBA can customize then and at that point the button wouldn't match any more.

 

[sab]

about the button thing, I always customize my controls so they wouldn't fit! people don't always use the default settings.

 

[Spherical Ice]

about the button thing, I always customize my controls so they wouldn't fit! people don't always use the default settings.

Okay, I suppose you're right. I'll post here how to repoint, but I'll also say it on the first post.

When you click Write to ROM, make sure that you've checked 'Auto Abort if new data is bigger' and 'Export Image'. If a little box pops up saying: 'Compressed size is [HEX NUMBER]. Which is too big. Aborting.' Take note of the HEX number. Now, open up Free Space Finder, and load your ROM. You'll find in the corner two little boxes, one entitled HEX, and the other DEC. In the HEX box, type in the little number that appeard on unLZ GBA. Another number will appear in the DEC box. Copy that number and paste it in the Bytes Needed part. Click Search and copy the offset that appears. Return to unLZ GBA again and, when you are writing to the ROM, type in 00[OFFSET] in the box entitled Image Offset. Click OK and hope for the best.

I'm not 100% sure if this works, but I've seen it elsewhere and it's worked so far. Please tell me if it doesn't work!

 

[BananasGoMoo]

yea i use an XBOX 360 controller, so the original controls would actually be correct. but nice idea though.

could be helpful for replacing other things.

 

[Bentley1994]

Thanks for usefull guides!

 

[colcolstyles]

Hey this is pretty cool! I always wondered how people changed the default Rival/Player names. I promised I'd figure it out myself with a hex editor and a table file but alas, I never got around to it :(
I already knew about the buttons but this was definitely worth reading for the name-changing thing. Well done!

 

[FoggyDoggy]

I use psp... XD

I know off topic.
In any case, it is nice to see some tutorials that work well.
These tutorials make good use of old, yet effective tools.
Bravo.

 

[Spherical Ice]

I think I should reword the button thing to: IF YOU USE A PC. Lol. Thanks for all the praise.

 

[Vrai]

Okay, I suppose you're right. I'll post here how to repoint, but I'll also say it on the first post.

When you click Write to ROM, make sure that you've checked 'Auto Abort if new data is bigger' and 'Export Image'. If a little box pops up saying: 'Compressed size is [HEX NUMBER]. Which is too big. Aborting.' Take note of the HEX number. Now, open up Free Space Finder, and load your ROM. You'll find in the corner two little boxes, one entitled HEX, and the other DEC. In the HEX box, type in the little number that appeard on unLZ GBA. Another number will appear in the DEC box. Copy that number and paste it in the Bytes Needed part. Click Search and copy the offset that appears. Return to unLZ GBA again and, when you are writing to the ROM, type in 00[OFFSET] in the box entitled Image Offset. Click OK and hope for the best.

I'm not 100% sure if this works, but I've seen it elsewhere and it's worked so far. Please tell me if it doesn't work!

I don't know if you understood exactly, but that's not what HackMew and sab meant (unless you agreed with them and then just randomly told us how to repoint, which makes no sense at all. :/). They meant that they were using different key configurations on their computers besides the default (Z=A, X=B etc.). As an example, they could have had A=A and S=B, so a hack that tells them to press Z to talk to people just wouldn't make sense, now wouldn't it?

Of course, if you understood that beforehand and was just randomly stating how to repoint, then I apologize. ;3

Also, I liked the rest of it. ^^

 

[Spherical Ice]

Heh. I suppose that was weirdly done. I was posting how to repoint because I thought sab needed to repoint and didn't know how. However, I understood what HackMew was saying.

 

[Strdstwanderer]

can you tell me how to fix an A-Text problem see what ever i Change the dialog for the picture in the rival's house it is the same thing the rival will say before oak comes in the lab how can i fix it?

 

[lilJburroughs]

Thanks for the name changing tutorial, i've been tryin to figure out how to do this for weeks.
but ive got a sort of dilemma here...
see, some scripts i did, i used the name "jeremy", and others, the code for the player name.
this is because i figured there would be a way to make it so the player has to use the name "jeremy".
i've set all the preset names to this, but i was wondering if there was a way around this so that the player's name is jeremy regardless,
or if you can just not give the player the option to type in their own name.

any ideas? i'd really appreciate any help on this. im dreading the idea of starting over, even though ive saved most of my scripts.

 

[Ninja Caterpie]

Thanks for the name changing tutorial, i've been tryin to figure out how to do this for weeks.
but ive got a sort of dilemma here...
see, some scripts i did, i used the name "jeremy", and others, the code for the player name.
this is because i figured there would be a way to make it so the player has to use the name "jeremy".
i've set all the preset names to this, but i was wondering if there was a way around this so that the player's name is jeremy regardless,
or if you can just not give the player the option to type in their own name.

any ideas? i'd really appreciate any help on this. im dreading the idea of starting over, even though ive saved most of my scripts.

How hard could it be to just edit the scripts?

 

[lilJburroughs]

im not really sure how to without rewriting them to the game, which i could do, but it'd be a lot easier in terms of future scripts that i wanna be able to leave alone to have it so that the intended name will appear no matter what.

i figured out a way to do it i think. im using the search function in A-Text for every time the game mentions the player name up until the point i've reached in hacking so far, and editing it that way. thanks anyways tho.

and sorry for the double post.

 

[Spherical Ice]

Well you could just reword what Oak says and make the Player's name be used for something else, like another rival or something, and then in your scripts, not use [player], and just type in your desired name.

Another option would be to edit Oak's intro to not have the Player's naming thing, but I'm not sure how to do that, so it'd be useless for you to ask me; sorry. ):

But what you're asking isn't really relevant to the tutorial, to be honest. :/

Edit: Oh, I didn't see the post before - Ninja's and your first post - and I agree with Ninja Caterpie, that it'd be easy to just edit your scripts, and do what I said before. :/