Super Mario 64 Text Wrangler 1.1b

©2007 By VL-Tone - Email:starxon@gmail.com

Website: http://homepage.mac.com/qubedstudios/

Blog: http://web.mac.com/qubedstudios/iWeb/Site/Blog/Blog.html

This program can edit most of the text dialog found in the US version of Super Mario 64.

Version 1.1b can now edit level names and act names.

It can only open a Mario 64 ROM that has been previously extended
to 24 Mb using my other program: "Super Mario 64 ROM Extender".

The ROM extender is currently available at:
http://homepage.mac.com/qubedstudios/Mario64Tools.htm

Once the ROM is extended, you can keep it as a backup, and use copies in the editor.

How to use the Super Mario 64 Text Wrangler:

First, read the rest of this document.

Then, start the program.

Click OK on the Binary IO Xtra dialog.

You'll be prompted to open a valid extended ROM.

Once the ROM is opened, you'll see a list, on the left side, with 170 text segments.

By clicking on this list, you can chose which dialog segment to edit.

The text is edited in the big text field in the middle. A preview of how the text will
look in the game can be seen at the right, and will be updated as you make changes.

Note that you can only insert text after you created free space by deleting other text.
Only the total size of the data is really important, the size of each segment can be
be different than the original size. The total size must not exceed 32997 bytes.

These indicators can help you keep track of how much space there is left by
looking at the number between "space" and "left". Other information include the size
of the current text segment, its maximum possible size, the total size of all text,
and the maximum total size, which is always 32997.

A palette contains all special characters, clicking on them will insert
the character(s)in the text field at the current cursor position. Some
symbols are represented with words between brackets. For example, to
insert an arrow pointing up, you can either type "[Up]" or click on its
icon on the symbol palette. The editor will automatically put brackets
around occurrences of "the" and "you". Each of these symbols will only
take one byte of space instead of three, in the case of.

The editor will make sure that any text you try to insert is valid, and
will delete unusable characters.

The "Revert Selected" button will revert the current text segment to the last version saved.

The Save button saves your hard work back to the ROM.
Important: Don't forget to save changes before quitting the program as it won't warn you.

A new pop-up menu has been added to version 1.1b,
enabling you to edit level names and act descriptions.

By default, you'll be editing the game dialog text.

If you click the white arrow, the menu will open.

From there, you can chose other text categories to edit.

Be warned that if you change category without saving, you'll lose any changes made in
the other category.

Saving will only save changes from the current category.

Expert tips:

The param 1, param 2 and param 3 values have currently unknown uses. You can edit them
if you feel adventurous, but be warned that setting the wrong values may crash the game
once you run the ROM in an emulator.

To insert raw hex data, use the following format: <FF>, where FF can be any hex byte from
0 to 255. For example, value <E0> is used to represent the number of missing stars to
open a particular door. You can try other values, but they may crash the game. If you
type/paste an hex value that's part of the character set, it will be automatically converted.

The "Update Speed" value represents how many times per second the edited text is scanned
for errors, converted back to calculate the size and the preview and menu are updated.

This process can make typing slow on low-end computers when editing long text segments.

If you have a slow computer, you may want to set this value to a lower number, so that
you can type faster, but with a slower preview update. You can also work on your text
in an external text editor, then paste it back into the editor.

Bug Fixes in version 1.1b:

- Clicking on the first item in the list will no longer underline the whole list.
- Some problems with the routine that calculates how much space is left have been fixed.
- The graphic text view will no longer truncate the last character of the text.

Future features:

- Better labeling of the params, with menus to chose valid values.
- More speed and control over automatic updating.
- Course name editing, credits text editing (with checksum recalculation).
- A way to export and import the font bitmap from and to the ROM.
- Built-in font editor.
- The ability to modify the text conversion table to facilitate translations.
- Synchronization of text segments with a .rss feed found on the internet.
- Automatic text-to-speech conversion of Princess Toadstool's letter text
so that the voice sample is changed to match the new text.