FF7: Add native support for japanese text rendering

[CosmosXIII]

Summary

Adds an option to enable japanese text rendering for the japanese version of the game.
Right now field text only works if the jp flevel is re-exported using Makou Reactor.

Related #39

Motivation

To end the pain of the japanese nation.

ACKs

• I have updated the Changelog.md file
• I did test my code on FF7
• I did test my code on FF8

[julianxhokaxhiu]

Tested the PR on top of the native Japanese eStore release and first of all, well done :) I'm really impressed by this achievement!
I mainly noticed some bugs while using it, at least visually, I'll try to list them here so we can have a look together on how to fix it in case.

1. Save slots are not aligned with the hand, here an example:
   JA:
   
   EN:
   

2. Location text seems to be wrong/broken(?) I can see this in both save menu as well as in-game menu:
   
   

3. Loading text seems also to be broken(?)
   

I'm not sure if the context of those makes sense as I don't know the language, so any help on your side to check that is appreciated :)

Thanks a lot and looking forward to this really promising PR!

P.S.: I changed a bit the logic on how we enable this layer. Your original flag has been removed in favour of ff7_japanese_edition as it was already there since the beginning of the code, and we auto-enable it when we detected the japanese version of the game. However I left it also as a flag in the toml in case we might need to enable this manually because the auto-detection fails. Hope this is fine for you, let me know in case. Finally, I updated a bit the changelog message to fix the overall mission of this PR, let me know what you think.

[CosmosXIII]

Thanks for testing it.

1. Save slots are not aligned with the hand

For the iro I was replacing the exe text with hext so I just added a few spaces to fix this.
By the way, the english exe text also has 3 spaces after each "Save x"
I'm not sure why but the japanese one did not have spaces so my guess is they hardcoded the spacing somewhere in code...

2. Location text seems to be wrong/broken(?)

I think this is because of the broken flevel. Once I fixed that with Makou the location also worked fine for me.
Also the saves have to be new because this text gets stored in the save file so loading an english save file will have broken text.

3. Loading text seems also to be broken(?)

The text here actually is correct but it's going outside the box.
So I think the fix here is to resize the box so that it fits the text but no idea where this is done.

[canesalato]

Thank you so much for this work Cosmos!
Will this require a repurchase of the game Japanese version or will the steam version be able to be converted to support Japanese language, like with FF9 and Memoria?

[CosmosXIII]

Thank you so much for this work Cosmos! Will this require a repurchase of the game Japanese version or will the steam version be able to be converted to support Japanese language, like with FF9 and Memoria?

Unlike FF9 the JP data is not included in the Steam release but it's technically possible to make it work with the Steam version if you provide the JP data in an IRO mod. Not sure yet if we it will go in that direction though.

[zaphod77]

the android version seems to have broken flevel files too. even the english one. at least the version I got.

the windows store version does not have broken flevel files.

How exactly did you do the makou reactor fix? i tried editig a text so makour rector would save, and it didn't fix a thing.

[julianxhokaxhiu]

How exactly did you do the makou reactor fix? i tried editig a text so makour rector would save, and it didn't fix a thing.

Please do not hijack this PR with offtopic questions. If you need support or help, use Discord support channels. Thank you

[zaphod77]

the new ffnx resolves all broken lgp file issues including the one that's messing with this. the jp e-store release jfleve.lgp should read fine now, like the android version.

[julianxhokaxhiu]

@zaphod77 that was never the issue blocking this PR. Read above what was pending for.

[CosmosXIII]

@zaphod77 that was never the issue blocking this PR. Read above what was pending for.

I think zap is referring to what I wrote in the PR summary about field text not working with unmodified flevel unless it’s re-exported with MR. I’ll check later to see if it works.

[canesalato]

I have been testing this PR using the mobile version (extracted from my iOS copy of the game).

To start with, I can confirm that, before the recent fix by @zaphod77, field text was completely broken with unmodified flevel, making the game unplayable. Even though it could finally display real Japanese characters, it was making meaningless "words" with them. I am very happy to report that such major problem is completely fixed now. The game plays just fine in Japanese, out of the box. I checked all the main menus, tried different resolutions, 16:9 vs 4:9, loaded different save files and, overall, it seems to be working very well!

For the most part, things are correctly aligned and displayed, but there are still some issues (see points 1, 4, and 5).
Concerning points (1-3), originally raised by @julianxhokaxhiu:

1. This still happens in the save slot selection area, and I found it in game dialogues as well. It seems indeed to be related to some hardcoded spacing value. The attachments are just examples of this minor bug, which is visible every time there is a multiple selection during field dialogues.
   
   
2. Location names look fixed after @zaphod77 's latest commit! (see attachment) 👌
   
   
3. I confirm that the loading screen also looks fixed now! (I think this was fixed by @CosmosXIII a while ago). 👌

Something I found, not previously reported:

4. An issue with text when displaying input keys: eg. playing the piano at Tifa's house (see attachment, compare JP with EN):
   
   
5. The characters name input screen seems to be broken. In addition to being misaligned on the right side, the last two lines of characters are different from what they should be. We should have:
   line 8: やゆよゃゅょっ　、。　
   line 9: らりるれろわを！？
   Instead, we have line 8: ババぽはへほくクぴほく、line 9:ク　ババババババドコ.
   Note that this is not just appearance. Selecting these wrong characters actually "correctly" inputs them into the name field!
   Finally, there seem to be no way to select Katakana and Romaji.
   Fortunately, it does not make the game unplayable, as it is still possible to move forward with the default name (けってい).
   
   This is how the same dialogue appears in the (japanese) Nintendo Switch version:
   

[canesalato]

A couple of additional instances where things go weird.

1. Gold Saucer, Chocobo racing, Chocobo selection screen.
   
2. Gold Saucer, Mog video game, at game over