[PS2] Final Fantasy X-2 International - English Patch RELEASED

Hello, I have an English Patch project for Final Fantasy X-2 International + Last Mission for the PS2, as many of you know, this game was never released outside of Japan with several extra features added after the release of the American version, with that arose the problem of not having a fully English version for it, years ago there was a translation by pbirdman that was incomplete and I never understood why, so I decided to work on this game to have an English patch considering that the PS3 / VITA / PC version had an English version, so porting the localization was not difficult, however it is worth mentioning that there are many obstacles in the way which I ended up encountering, but I was correcting them one by one in which I will explain each of them:

1. Font and VWF:

As for the font, I simply took the American version and replaced it with the Japanese version. It worked perfectly, considering the font format with the "FTCX" header has the font mapping and VWF implemented, so that was the easy part.

As a result, the texts were replaced, see the before and after images with some texts in English:



2. Font Style

The FFX/FFX-2 engine has opcodes in the script that are used in various places and vary depending on the game version. In the menus, the Japanese version uses the font with a drawn outline. The American and European versions use drop shadow fonts, avoiding larger spacing. I had to do this to make the text fit within the menu, so I did this for all menus, especially the International + Last Mission menus. See the before and after comparison:




3. Bestiary Descriptions

The monster and character descriptions in the bestiary were limited to 2 lines in the Japanese version, but in the American version they were limited to 3 lines. Because the lined text was so large, it even extended beyond the screen, becoming completely disproportionate.


Later I discovered that this was caused because in the Japanese version the images responsible for the bestiary were smaller in the Japanese version and the positions of the texts both in width and height were inside the script with opcodes, so I had to adjust and this was the result:


4. Editing Japanese Images

The game has a total of 357 Japanese images used in menus, titles, options, and even aircraft. I needed a friend named @gdkchan to help me with the tool to work with the images. I successfully ported the identical images from the American version and translated the International version's feature:



5. "MNO" letters not appearing.

The letters corresponding to the values "5C, 5D, and 5E" are not programmed to be printed in the game. In the Japanese font, they correspond to the following letters:
5C=⑱
5D=⑲
5E=⑳

With the font changes, they are responsible for the letters "MNO," which correspond to the following letters:
5C=M
5D=N
5E=O

Unfortunately, I couldn't get them to appear. One thing is for sure: the problem isn't with the font, but possibly with the program executable. I don't understand much about MIPS Assembly, so I'm left with this error. With a simple test, you can see they're missing here:
With the help of user @kr_ps2 this problem has finally been fixed.

6. Rename Menu

The rename menu contains the Japanese alphabets Katakana, Hiragana, and Letters. However, with the game in English, the menus responsible for Katakana and Hiragana would become obsolete and unusable. I tried everything to find the values that would eliminate them, but unfortunately, I was unsuccessful. With the help of user @kr_ps2 this problem was also fixed, see the image below with the Rename Menu fixed and the letters NMO appearing.

English:


This is how the menu is in the HD Remaster version of the PS3/VITA/PS4/PC versions, based on this I do the same for the PS2 version.


7. RAM File Size Issue

This specific game has a fixed RAM size. When a file exceeds the limit, the game crashes and won't run. I don't know if this fixed RAM size is caused by an unknown TOC file or something else. However, this issue was reported by user xXFaloXx on the Gamefaqs forum in 2012 and was the reason he gave up:


More information here:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/918914-final-fantasy-x-2-international-plus-last-mission/63087357#7

With the Denim help, I also found this value in IDA PRO, which I believe is the memory allocation size:


If I increase it, the game runs, but it overwrites other files in memory and the game doesn't run on the PS2 hardware. It crashes on both DVD and OPL media, proving that it overwrote a file in memory that caused the crash on the PS2 console hardware.

That's all I did for the game, and I'm practically fully in English. However, I just need to fix the following issues to release the English Patch:

5. "MNO" letters not appearing.
6. Rename Menu
7. RAM File Size Issue

I'll be releasing an XDELTA Patch if anyone is interested in fixing these pending issues. When the patch is applied, the game will intentionally fail to launch due to the "7. RAM File Size Issue," which for me is the biggest issue right now.

EDIT: There is only the "RAM File Size Issue" to be fixed so that I can release the game fully playable in English, I just need someone to be able to fix just this issue.
EDIT2: I'm writing to inform you that the "RAM File Size Issue" problem has been fixed by @kr_ps2.

The problem with it not working on the PS2 (Real Hardware) was that the game size wasn't being updated in the Primary Volume Descriptor (PVD). Because of this, I had to create a tool based on Falo's ToolPack to extract/rebuild the FFX/FFX-2 ISO with these problems solved and the PVD updated during the rebuild.


Now I'm making the necessary adjustments to the translation so that we'll soon have the game fully in English.