Actor Names in Ending Scene

[Angelo26]

Curiosity is killing me regarding the actor names during the ending scenes, so here's an attempt at deciphering it.

Nattak has discovered that the names are written starting at C2/8FD0.
After looking into it a little bit, here's what I discovered. Take Shadow's name for example.

Shadow has 6 letters in his name. At C2/8FD0, you can see the following four bytes: 74 31 00 10.

The ROM divides each letter into two chunks. Each chunk is written in the game with 4 bytes. My guess is that the last two bytes correspond to the (x,y) coordinates of the position of the top chunk of the letter, while the first two bytes correspond to looking up the letter "S" in the rom.
If my theory is right, there are 48 bytes in total responsible for the writing of "SHADOW" at the ending.

Code:

Shadow
C2/8FD0: 74 31 00 10        S, top
C2/8FD4: 3E 31 08 10        S, bottom
C2/8FD8: 3F 31 10 08        H, top
C2/8FDC: 07 31 10 10        H, bottom
C2/8FE0: 17 31 18 08        A, top
C2/8FE4: 00 31 18 10        A, bottom
C2/8FE8: 10 31 20 08        D, top
C2/8FEC: 03 31 20 10        D, bottom
C2/8FF0: 13 31 28 08        O, top
C2/8FF4: 0E 31 28 10        O, bottom
C2/8FF8: 1E 31 30 08        W, top
C2/8FFC: 26 31 30 10        W, bottom

Edgar Roni Figaro
C2/9000: 36 31 14 80         POSITION??
C2/9004: 00 48 31 00         E, top
C2/9008: 10 68 31 08         E, Bottom
C2/900C: 10 69 31 10         D, top
C2/9010: 08 03 31 10         D, bottom
C2/9014: 10 13 31 18         G, top
C2/9019: 08 06 31 18         G, bottom

[DjinnAndTonic]

Do you know where the next PC's name starts? That would probably make it easier to figure out.

[madsiur]

The ROM divides each letter into two chunks. Each chunk is written in the game with 4 bytes. My guess is that the last two bytes correspond to the (x,y) coordinates of the position of the top chunk of the letter, while the first two bytes correspond to looking up the letter "S" in the rom.

This is really interesting but have you run some test to see if this is true or is it just a theory? It would be really simply to check this, but this is not one of my priority. And yes, I'm back to hacking, at least more often than than the last two weeks.

[Angelo26]

I am slowly confirming my suspicions about this, will edit the original post with locations of letters for each char.

[madsiur]

I am slowly confirming my suspicions about this, will edit the original post with locations of letters for each char.

I've mapped all the names and letters. I only need to write some offset and description. I'm going to do a document about this and which routine(s) are concerned as well as the range of positions.

Since you're working on this too, as I said previously, it would be nice if we could work together on this and co-write the document, if you're willing to make some extra investigations. Credit goes also to Gi Nattak for finding where the letters where and whoever labeled shadow's name as data(?) in C2.

Check your offsets, Edgar String start at C2/9005, not C2/9004. it shift everything of one bytes. Positions start with (00, 10), (08, 10), (10, 08), (10, 10) and so on...

Download Ending names mapping document (1.2.1)

Edit: Corrected numerous mistakes and updated the link.
2nd edit: Replaced download link with document version 1.1
3rd edit: Replaced download link with document version 1.2

[Gi Nattak]

Very nice document work there, madsiur. I can't believe you made this in just one night, damn - albeit a sleepless night lol. I love the format you used. It's going to be fun changing the names, I'm sure. Still looks pretty confusing, but it's there to do now and will benefit all hacks with different characters. =)

[madsiur]

That's very professional document work there, madsiur, bravo! I can't believe you made this in just one night, damn - albeit a sleepless night lol. I love the format you used. It's going to be fun changing the names, I'm sure. Still looks pretty confusing, but it's there to do now and will benefit all hacks with different characters. =)

Thank you!

I'm posting version 1.2 because I just added 2 pointer table relative to the position of the start of the names. The (00,00) position of the name has a position in the screen, which is determined by those two tables. I still have more data to sort and find where the order of appearance is set.


Final PDF release (1.3)

Edit: Switched to text format instead of PDF.