New user / Starting an (overly) ambitious project.

[Rozekail]

Just joined because, honestly, I'm in a bit over my head. I'm not a programmer, a coder, or anything even close to any of that. The main reason I'm here is because I've taken it upon myself to try to replace all of the dialogue and text of MediEvil's Japanese release with the dialogue and text from the U.S. release. The reason I'm attempting to do this is because the Japanese version had the longest development time, and therefore is the most refined. However, it's entirely in Japanese, as you'd expect from the Japanese version of a game.

Extracting the correct audio was easy enough. jpsxdec got the job done. And luckily for me, both versions share similar naming conventions. For example, E1.STR[0] and J1.STR[0] represent the same lines, with one being on the U.S. disc and one being on the Japanese disc. I'm not sure if the diferences in how long the audio is will make a difference, but I'm hoping not, as that'd be less work on my end.

My first major difficulty is figuring out how to build the proper .STR files (which I've seen are commonly video files, but in MediEvil's case, everything in its XA folder is strictly .STR audio) out of the .WAV files I extracted from the U.S. game. I've seen this done with mods like this one for The Legend of Dragoon, with their voices being "un-dubbed".

My second hurtle will be learning how to create a PS1 disc image from the Japanese disc and U.S. XA folder/.STR audio files.

And if the audio causes some weird syncing issue due to the lines being longer/shorter in comparison to the Japanese audio, that'll add another huge loop for me to jump through. Reeeeeally hoping that's not the case, though.

Lastly, replacing all text in the game seems like it's going to take a LOT of time, even for someone that knows what they're doing. Not sure where to even begin with this one.

So, yeah, that's why I'm here. If anyone has any information that would be of use for any of the things I mentioned, I'd greatly appreciate it. I know practically nothing about this, so even if you think it's something simple, it's probably new information for me. Thanks in advance.