ROM expantion and bank shifting

Ahoy, guys. I will save you an introduction line, because I cannot come up with something smart here.

Please note that english is not my first language, so I beg your pardon for weired or ill-constructed terms and sentences, even though I tried to do my best getting rid of them.

My problem: there is not one single working FF6 SNES version which's english translation I like.
The original script is too blunt and often makes me facepalm, also it does not carry many of the subtilities.
SkyRender/RPGone are too literal.
GBA version is OK, although it's again based on the original script - but the GBA version is not enjoyable for technical reasons (grafics, music and screen height - the first two can be fixed with patches, but they are not 100% perfect at all, and it also does not fix the third issue).

So, I want a FF6 SNES ROM that has a decent translation. In fact I kinda liked the Lina Darkstar translation, and there is a version that is based on that translation - but the ROM is technically broken, the game softlocks in Zozo when you try to jump between buildings. The error is known, but the uploader of the ROM stated (if my memory serves correctly) that he just
patched the ROMs and has no idea how to fix that error. Trying to manually patching the ROM for a better translation failed utterly (that is, the game crashes horribly the moment the first fight in Narshe starts, with a distorted battle menu and character sprites shown for about 2-3 seconds until the game restarts), and the uploader did not reply to my mails.

So, if there is no working version of what I want, I suppose I should try to create one on my own. That's what I am currently trying to do.
I am working with FF3usME on Linux (Gentoo) under Wine, exported the scripts of the SNES version and the "broken in Zozo" version, opened the Lina Darkstar thread, got a copy of the GBA
script and also played the japanese version, to create a translation that I truly think is the best ever made. A huge goal, but I will try nonetheless.

Yet I have run into a certain problem: space limitation. I just have not enough space to fit the entire text into the ROM.
I have spent the last several days trying to learn how ROMs actually work (being a C programmer helps a lot here), learned about LoROM, HiROM, the SNES header, and even wrote a small disassembler for the 65816 processor of the SNES, in hope that "somewhere" there's a pointer (not an address ) that would tell me where the dialogs are saved, which worked (kinda).

In order to gain more space in the ROM (AFAIK I can expand the ROM up to 32 MBit without problems with HiROM, that's more than enough space for me considering that the original ROM is just 24 MBit in size), I want to expand the structure that holds the dialogs. But for that (at least that's what I figured out) I have to shift all banks for the number of banks I want to insert. And I'd have to change all references to these banks from other banks to the new positions.

I am very much looking forward not having to do this manually - although in the end, if there is no easy solution for this, I will HAVE to do this.
So, my question would be if there is a simple solution for this problem? I consulted your tools page, but there
was no program that would suggest such a function. google also wouldn't suggest such a tool.
Or maybe I totally lost track of what I want?

Also, merry Christmas, folks.
Thanks in advance.

Hi there, and welcome!

That Zozo jump bug is a known issue caused by a patch needing to be applied, once it has already been applied and then FF3usME (a multi editor program) is used to edit text or w/e. So the patch needs to be applied every time after using FF3usME. I was not aware the Lina Darkstar patch had this issue though, perhaps it is also caused by something else since I don't see why Lina Darkstar would include the patch in question, which is the one called "Miraculous, Death-Defying Always-Left-Facing Jumps in Zozo" and can be found here: http://zephyr129.brinkster.net/

That should fix up that jumping between building issue. The ROM needs to be headered for the patch.

And for the ROM expansion question, using FF3usME's ROM expansion and bank expansion for dialog is the best option. You just need to open up the ROM with FF3usME, and the first thing that opens up is an option to Expand ROM, or Manage Expanded ROM. So expand it to 32 bit, then go to Manage Expanded ROM, and then apply the built in patch there for the Town Dialog Hack in order to add a ton of extra bytes of dialog. Unless this is not at all what your wanting to achieve...?

OK, thank you very, very much!
I just tried out the patch, and it works.

About that ROM expansion thing ... I'm sorry for being so dumb. FF3usME does have a patch called "Expand Town Dialog captions" ... but I thought this was to use longer town names (because it was "Town Dialog captions") ... m(

Again, thank you very, very much.