LOG2 Arena String Information
I am calling this part of the ROM where all the text boxes for characters are laid out in the ROM. All offsets will be adjusted by 0x80000000 to accommodate the fact that the GBA loads ROMs at this space in memory.
Chronologically the story strings starts at 0x83B81AC (On Disk 0x3B81AC), it is prefixed by "The End" of the game chronologically which is a bit odd, but that could be a quirk of the packing. It appears the first logically packed string is 0x83B5FB4.
The first Quest/Arena Table of Contents can be found at 0x83B8340
Here is the example of the First chunk of text displayed from the Home Screen.
- AC813B08
- D8813B08
- 78823B08
- 98823B08
- 18833B08
When you convert these from Big to Little Endian you get the offsets of the string and other information the game requires to draw the information.
- 083B81AC
- 083B81D8
- 083B8278
- 083B8298
- 083B8318
all those addresses point to what I am calling a Quest Index, it is the 'order in which this marker' appears in the table, they can be null or random bytes, but seemingly never another address.
-
083B81AC - Points to the following String in game.
-
083B81D8 - Is a compressed chunk using JCALG it points to the String in game.
-
083B8278 - Is code for an animation, though I suspect more realisitically it just drawing sprites and changing color on a loop instead of a proper video/animatioon. You can interject this offset in other quest markers for it to play at in place of it, but it seemingly doesn't rebrighten the screen by default.
-
083B8298 - Is another compressed chunk of text, it appears as so in game.
-
083B8318 - This rebrightens the screen to allow a transition, it will seemingly loop however if used elsewhere(?)
This example can be difficuilt to spot, but scattered all throughout this part of the ROM onwards is different strings, compressed and not that coincide to "arenas" that are in use by the game, some have their string content prefixed with one or two bytes that can dictate certain information about the forthcoming message.