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 Post subject: AGTH and Anex86
PostPosted: April 22nd, 2015, 2:08 am 
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Joined: March 26th, 2015, 1:13 am
Posts: 3
I don't like to ask but I thought I would finally. I have never been able to get AGTH to work with Anex86. I have tried many games that would probably work, but nothing hooks. All that hooks is the emulator text. I look on the internet for instructions specifically for anex86 but they are vague. I tried the tutorial from the Russian PC-98 website, but variables are missing. The only time I get AGTH to work is with win games.

Much obliged if someone could lead me in the right direction.


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 Post subject: Re: AGTH and Anex86
PostPosted: April 22nd, 2015, 4:11 pm 
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Joined: January 9th, 2007, 9:57 pm
Posts: 529
Location: Russia
Russian PC-98 website - this is my.
There were no complications. It is possible that you have picked the wrong game. AGTH cannot pull out the text of the Anex86 in many games. There are only two ways to run AGTH with Anex86. By using the key / x (adds an additional hook stream) and without it. The use of key / x can slow down the emulator is not recommended unless you need to. Example bat file to run AGTH and Anex86
agth.exe /x anex86.exe or agth.exe anex86.exe If the emulator is broken you have to delete multiple files with the extension .e86 in the folder with the emulator, but not all of them are installed.


At the moment, better to use a special version of the emulator Neko Project II with support AGTH.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1498


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 Post subject: Re: AGTH and Anex86
PostPosted: April 24th, 2015, 5:47 pm 
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Joined: March 26th, 2015, 1:13 am
Posts: 3
Previously, I created the .bat file and input /x, however it still did not work. But, you have helped me now! I did not see that special version of the Neko emulator. Thank you for linking it to me. Now then, everything seems to work; I included the /x and it works. At last, I can finally play Vain Dream without having to resort to my paltry Japanese and online dictionaries.

Thank you very much al32gabby.


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 Post subject: Re: AGTH and Anex86
PostPosted: April 25th, 2015, 12:41 pm 
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Joined: November 27th, 2007, 2:19 pm
Posts: 478
I've been out of the loop regarding this, but apparently due to some new developments in the last years, it's in theory possible to hook all kinds of emulators. See this thread with Tyr's posts, there is e.g. a picture of a hooked Playstation game linked.


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 Post subject: Re: AGTH and Anex86
PostPosted: May 2nd, 2015, 10:50 pm 
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Joined: March 26th, 2015, 1:13 am
Posts: 3
Hmm vndb, I should have known they'd have a PC-98 thread somewhere there. Very informative.

Here's a problem I've encountered. Whenever I load up an HDI, the text that gets captured is usually a garble of text? For example, text gets captured, but the proper kanji is mixed up. Doesn't make any sense to me. Not compatible I suppose? I don't understand why not because the text still gets captured., but it gets mixed up.

edit: Nevermind, tried with a different game, and it worked. Yes, not all games work indeed.


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 Post subject: Re: AGTH and Anex86
PostPosted: May 12th, 2015, 9:54 am 
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Joined: May 5th, 2015, 12:30 am
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Location: Germany
Starscream the 2nd wrote:
I've been out of the loop regarding this, but apparently due to some new developments in the last years, it's in theory possible to hook all kinds of emulators. See this thread with Tyr's posts, there is e.g. a picture of a hooked Playstation game linked.
Haha, never thought my name would come up here ^^

Well, I just want to add some things which weren't mentioned yet and I think would enhance the hooking experience quite a bit.

First of all: Don't use AGTH.
Yes, we often mention "AGTH" when we talk about hooking Japanese characters but most of the time, we don't mean the actual "tool" only the concept behind it. AGTH was the first tool as far as I know but is now outdated and superseded.
(Well, that's actually not really true. Latest version of AGTH has some unique functions enhancing it capabilities in theory but as far as I know nobody ever used them because they are not very user friendly. So practically speaking, there is no reason to use the original AGTH.)
Even if you want to use AGTH for whatever reason, you can always use the inbuilt version of AGTH inside Translation Aggregator. You're using TA for parsing/translating anyway.

Instead of AGTH, use ITH. There are different versions (original, Andys' version and ITHVNR), but for the purpose of hooking a PC98 game it's irrelevant which you use, because they all have the Anex Hook and the WinAPI hook NPTH uses. (I recommend Andys' ITH, though.)
ITH can do nearly everything AGTH can do, but it's much easier and handier to use. It has also some essential features AGTH lacks like linking threads (though again this is not really relevant for PC98 games).
The only feature it misses is the suppression of endless loops. There are some PC98 games doing this, especially RPGs. In those rare case, it may be a good idea to use the internal hooker of TA (or AGTH, but I personally like the internal hooker more).

Now about NPTH:
As far as I understand it, the NP2 source code NPTH is compiled from was changed in a way that every time the emulator uses some basic PC98 routine for text output it will call the WinAPi strlen function with the string which shall be outputted which can then be hooked by every text hooker tool.
This will work in most cases. I only encountered two cases where NPTH fails.
  • A very rare case is when the game in question uses a custom font and does not rely on the basic text output routine. The only games I encountered doing this were very late games which also had a windows port so I just played and hooked the windows version instead.
    So in my experience this isn't really a problem.

  • The other case is when NPTH is only outputting garbage characters. I think this is the problem peonybloomer had. (It has nothing to do with HDI-images, though.)
    Sadly I'm not familiar with the hardware and the internal text processing of the PC98, but I think this has something to do with expanded memory.
    There is nothing you can do to fix this in NPTH. Good news however is that in my experience every line having this problem can be hooked by the Anex Hook. So if you encounter a game with this behavior in NPTH, just play this particular game with Anex.

    Sadly, the Anex Hook is in some cases a little buggy. There are some games where the Anex Hook will not capture the repetition of a character. For example "ここは" will only be hooked as "こは". Whether this is a small problem or a hugh problem is depending on the writing of the game.
    Again, I don't know why this happens because I have no idea how the Anex hook works so I don't know how to fix this. Maybe there is some font caching in place or repetition characters are coded differently, but I haven't researched in this direction and probably will not because I don't know anything about the PC98 architecture.

I hope I could be of help.


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 Post subject: Re: AGTH and Anex86
PostPosted: May 16th, 2015, 1:05 pm 
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Joined: March 24th, 2008, 1:50 am
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Location: Salad Kingdom
Thanks! That's really useful info


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