GoldenEye 007 Nintendo 64 Community, GoldenEye X, Nintendo 64 Games Discussion

[PaD]

I just figured how stringtables actually work and wow, you can add your own strings and make them work perfectly!

I will do this using an example.
I want to make the weapon set "Slappers Only!" be called "Hello", but without modifying any original string.

1. "Register" your new stringtable
at 8008C640, there's a list of pointers to currently loaded stringtables.
stuff like weapon pickup texts or cheat option texts are always loaded.
at the end of the list, there's space to add maybe 3 pointers.

I'll add mine at 8008C6F4, 0xB4 bytes from the start of the list:
8108C6F4 802B
8108C6F6 DE00

the pointer points to 802BDE00, there's enough 00s there to create a stringtable there

2. Stringtable "header"
I want my stringtable to have 2 strings, "Hello" and "Goodbye".
I want the string data for "Hello" to be at 802BDE10, which is 0x10 bytes from the stringtable start.
so I do this:
812BDE02 0010
812BDE06 0016

"hey, what's the second line?"
the second line points to my second string, "Goodbye".
I'll need 6 bytes for "Hello" (5 letters + 00 termination), so "Goodbye" can begin at 802BDE16 (0x16 bytes from stringtable start)

3. String data
OK, this step is obvious.
I put the string data where I determined it to be:

(Hello)
812BDE10 4865
812BDE12 6C6C
812BDE14 6F00
(Goodbye)
812BDE16 476F
812BDE18 6F64
812BDE1A 6279
812BDE1C 6500

4. pointing
OK, stringtable ready for action!
the name pointer for the "Slappers Only!" text is at 800490F0.
so I change it to "Hello":
810490F0 B400

B4, because the pointer to my stringtable is 0xB4 bytes from the start of the stringtable list.
00, because "Hello" is string #1.
For "Goodbye", I could use B401

---
I bet somebody found this already, but now it's documented right here
besides, I'm kinda proud to having figured this

[Wreck]

PaD, I'm proud of you, too!
Great work. I've been investigating the text strings for the past two weeks, since the Caves Mission needs a briefing file. I was forcing it to read from the actual setup file, but later decided to upload it to another part of memory. Using the Caves slot, it's quite simple. After reading into all of the cool stuff you've been doing with the text mods for your wonderful Editors, I checked to see if it was possible to add a brand new set. Seems as though we both used the same "B4" address. I set mine to "8008000" at first, which worked, but ended up getting overwritten at one point. It's very cool being able to do this, and I'm mighty happy to see that you did it. The only pain is that you need to set up pointers to all of those used in the table. Your codes would need to change with nearly every amount of strings.

P.S.: Atleast your text was nice, mine was a bunch of profanities.

[PaD]

Of course, if you want to have more strings in your table, the "header" must be longer. The pointers are required so the game knows where's what...
But, you can do it this way, change this:
812BDE02 0010
812BDE06 0016

to this:
812BDE02 0400
812BDE06 0406

now "Hello" would begin at 0x802BDE00+0x400, which leaves room for 256 pointers before the string data and therefore enables you to have 256 strings, which is not easy to ever reach...
and of course, you can increase that to incredible amounts.
just be sure you got enough 00s that don't get overwritten

what you should also do is mind your string lengths.
I actually knew that I'd type "Hello" and that it'll require exactly 6 bytes.
Though I'd have a problem wanting to change that now.
So if you don't know how long your string will be, just make it insanely long and let "Goodbye" begin 64 bytes later or so (812BDE06 0440).

Thanks btw.
Knowing myself, I'd love to implement this possibility into an editor. I'll see...

[zoinkity]

Sorry to resurrect a very dead topic, but does anyone know how many stringtables can be added to the list before it fries something?

The last possible entry is FC due to the 2-byte limit, but they might not have left that much space... Certainly somebody has already tried this?
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