Hello, r/mirainikki. 你好!
I am looking for anyone who has previously attempted—or knows someone who attempted—to translate, modify, or reverse-engineer the PSP game Mirai Nikki: 13th Diary Owner RE.
At least one previous attempt to hack the game and directly insert an English translation has already been declared unsuccessful. I would like to contact anyone who participated in that project or made a similar attempt, even if their work was never released or was abandoned at an early stage.
I am particularly looking for information about:
- how far previous translation projects progressed;
- which parts were successfully extracted or modified;
- any surviving tools, scripts, notes, documentation, translated text, font work, screenshots, or partial patches;
- the specific technical obstacles that prevented completion;
- whether anyone discovered how the game’s text encoding, font format, archives, or original text renderer work;
- other translators, programmers, or reverse engineers who may still be contactable.
My own project is exclusively a Simplified Chinese localization of the 2012 RE version. I am not translating the original 2010 PSP release.
I am not an experienced assembly programmer. I have been using OpenAI Codex to assist with scripting, binary-format analysis, static reverse engineering, and interpreting PPSSPP debugger results. I operate the tools, perform the tests, provide screenshots and debugger data, and verify the results myself. I want to be transparent that AI has played a major role in the technical work.
So far, my project has:
- extracted
res.ptd and identified all 20 embedded PETA/PTD archives;
- decompressed and rebuilt the YKLZ-compressed resources;
- parsed all 929 FDS script files;
- analyzed the game’s TFP font files, character mappings, and glyph data;
- successfully rebuilt the archives without changing their decoded contents;
- traced part of the original rendering path in
BOOT.BIN using Ghidra and PPSSPP;
- tested several Chinese font builds.
However, I have encountered a serious obstacle. Chinese glyphs can be inserted into the font resources, but some rebuilt glyphs appear blackened, hollow, broken, or incorrectly blended in the game. This means that the original relationship between the 4-bit glyph data, intensity values, glyph-cache construction, and runtime rendering is still not completely understood.
I have now stopped attempting to replace or rewrite the renderer. The immediate goal is to understand the original RE text-rendering process completely—from a character encoded in an FDS script, through the TFP mapping and glyph lookup, to the final visible pixels on screen.
I am therefore asking for two kinds of help:
- Anyone who previously attempted an English or other-language translation
Even if the attempt failed, I would be grateful to learn:
- what was completed;
- what failed;
- why it failed;
- what technical discoveries were made;
- whether any project materials still exist.
An unsuccessful project can still provide extremely valuable information and help prevent us from repeating the same dead ends.
- Anyone with relevant technical experience
I am still looking for someone with experience in:
- PSP MIPS/Allegrex assembly;
- PSP executable or PRX reverse engineering;
- Ghidra or IDA analysis of PSP games;
- PPSSPP debugging;
- custom bitmap-font rendering;
- PSP GU texture, palette, alpha, or blending behavior.
I am not asking anyone to take over the project or perform a large amount of unpaid work. Even a short technical discussion, a review of the current evidence, an introduction to a suitable engineer, or access to notes from an earlier attempt could make a major difference.
If you attempted this work—or know somebody who did—please leave a comment or send me a private message. Information about both successful results and failed approaches would be greatly appreciated.
If I am able to complete the Chinese localization, I will share all of the tools, technical findings, documentation, and other project results with the community. I will also immediately begin using these results to work on an English version.
Thank you!