Replacing Dreamcast Game Text

[naiaru]

Does anybody know how hard it is to edit text in a Dreamcast game? Is there a text editor or something out there so someone without programing knowledge can replace game text? Basically, I want to know if there is a way to take a gdi or cdi file or something, delete the text in the game and replace it, then save it back to a gdi or cdi or whathaveyou.

Thanks guys for any help

[Aleron Ives]

Every game is different, so there's no way to do what you want. You need a different editing program for each game you want to modify, and most games don't have such tools. You have to crack the files yourself and use a hex editor to modify them.

[naiaru]

And I take it that cracking files and using a hex editor would require some programming know-how? Are there any simple tutorials or something like that?

[Aleron Ives]

You need experience with reverse engineering. Games made by the same developer are likely to use similar file formats, but beyond that, each game requires a different approach. The main problem is figuring out where the text is stored and how to extract it, since it's probably compressed using some unknown compression algorithm and possibly encrypted using an unknown method.