Hex editing game files

[Csucskos]

OK, so I was really into translating, particularly in Borderlands 2 but I ran into a problem. In general translating is quite accessible for that game, all the text files are neatly in one file. (Actually not, because the english is partially baked into the game, so it does not contain all the text files, but the other languages do, so I can just work from them.) The ingame font does not have all the required letters (like ű and ő) and instead of the letters it displays squares. So I tried to reach out to the developers if this was something they could easily add, but was not successful (probably because the game is quite old, and the time they were working on BL3 with full force and I don't think I'm that high on their list anyways as a noname player.) I tried to look online for some advice and found a tool for XCOM with which I was able to extract the needed font file from the game files. And with the help of a font editor I added the missing letters. BUT the problem is, I don't know how to put the files back and compress them. According to the sources, it is not even possible because the game has the information on how big the file should be, so even if I could insert it, it would probably not run because it would not recognize it.

 

And that's why I ask for help, I've tried a thousand ways, harassed people online to help me (only those who offered though :D) but they were not able to do anything. I gave up already, but then saw a video on implementing high quality music into Lego Island by tampering with the files and that gave me some hope. I know this is quite a niche question but I have nothing to lose so why not. Any ideas?

[Gokuma]

As far as editing text with a hex editor, there's some good youtube tutorials for doing that to NES roms.   Now that information how big the file should be I think is called a checksum.   I ran into that hacking save files of a special version of the Japanese Gameboy Advance version of River City Ransom (Downtown Nekketsu Monogatari), I think called 2007 Parodi Ban.  Hacking the save data to change items in the inventory such as different technique books, whatever I changed the hex values by positively or negatively, I had to offset that amount by changing one item to some junk with the change to its value equaling the sum of all the other various changes.  Well this checksum as I think was, wasn't necessarily the size of file, but rather the sum of all its data bytes added together.  I have no idea where in the save file the checksum was located.   Sorry if this is totally different and in your case, it literally just checks the size of file which was getting changed.   But I guess this might give you some ideas of what could be going on.

Edited May 14, 2021 by Gokuma

[Csucskos]

Thank you, I will look up NES hacking. The problem though is that usually they tamper with save files. I don't care about save files, there's quite a big audience for that, and such tools have already been done to make save hacking easy to many. (I've been tempted to do that, but no, I grind my gear even if that means I have to kill the same enemy a houndred times. I've cheated in other games and then the achievement is not there, you don't feel you did anything, the magic is lost.) But getting back to the topic, so I want to edit resource files the game uses. And I haven't been able to hunt down such tutorials. So something like adding custom models to the game or such should work, but that seems to require too much knowledge I don't have.

 

So the workflow should be: extract game files from game -> read custom file extension (yeah I haven't mentioned this, but they use some kind of weird file extension probably to prevent tampering) -> change necessary files (let's say that's what I've already did) -> insert files into the game -> make the game read the data (this is where I think check for something, but I don't know for what. In XCOM it is said to check the file size and since both games were built in unreal engine I made the assumption they share this quirk...)

 

But thanks I may as well give Nintendo a shot.