ra23mes

MES text file converters for Pokémon Ranger: Shadows of Almia and Pokémon Ranger: Guardian Signs.

MES files are used to store texts in these two games. Pokémon Ranger: Shadows of Almia is the first game to use it, while Pokémon Ranger: Guardian Signs use a revised specification of this format, with different text storage and control characters.

For more information on the MES format, see the documentation.

Download

	Linux	Windows
Release
Nightly	ra2mes ra3mes	ra2mes ra3mes

Usage

Dumping the ROM

You can dump your own Pokémon Ranger: Guardian Signs ROM from:

• a console from the Nintendo DS or Nintendo 3DS family (Game Card release)
• a Wii U (Virtual Console release)

Getting the MES files

To get the MES files, Windows users can run TinkeDSi, but NDSFactory can also be run on macOS and Linux:

1. Download the latest NDSFactory release, then extract the archive and run the executable
2. Open the program, load your ROM, then scroll down until you see the FAT Files Address field. Take note or copy its value
3. Press the Extract Everything button and choose where to save your files
4. Once the process is complete, go to the Fat Tools tab, and fill in the first three fields with the requested files you just extracted (fat_data.bin, fnt.bin and fat.bin) and the fourth with the value from the previous FAT Files Address field
5. Press the Extract FAT Data! button and choose where to save your files

Go to your output directory. MES files location is different depending of the game:

• Pokémon Ranger: Shadows of Almia: in the data/message directory
• Pokémon Ranger: Guardian Signs: inside the data_localize ACF archives in the data directory. These are the first 275 (277 in the USA Kiosk Demo) files in the archives, by default with the extension .bin. You will need acftool to extract them

Running ra2mes and ra3mes

Please use ra2mes for Pokémon Ranger: Shadows of Almia's MES files only, and ra3mes for Pokémon Ranger: Guardian Signs' MES files only.

• To convert a MES file to a JSON file, run ra2mes --to-json in.mes or ra3mes --to-json in.mes
• To convert a JSON file to a MES file, run ra2mes --to-mes in.json or ra3mes --to-mes in.json

By default, the output file has the same name as the input file, with the extension .json or .mes depending on the conversion option specified. However, you can optionally specify the output name, for instance:

• ra2mes --to-json in.mes out.json will output the JSON file as out.json
• ra3mes --to-mes in.json out.mes will output the MES file as out.mes

Building

Dependencies: clang or gcc, make (optional, preferred)

1. Clone this repository by running git clone https://github.com/SombrAbsol/ra23mes, or download the ZIP archive and extract it
2. Go to the repository directory and build the project. You can run make if you have it installed, or the following commands depending on your operating system (replace clang by gcc if needed).

Linux

clang -O3 -Wall -Wextra -Werror -o ra2mes ra2mes.c utils.c
clang -O3 -Wall -Wextra -Werror -o ra3mes ra3mes.c utils.c

Windows

clang -O3 -Wall -Wextra -Werror -D_CRT_SECURE_NO_WARNINGS -o ra2mes ra2mes.c utils.c
clang -O3 -Wall -Wextra -Werror -D_CRT_SECURE_NO_WARNINGS -o ra3mes ra3mes.c utils.c

Credits

ra2mes and ra3mes by SombrAbsol.

License

ra2mes and ra3mes are free softwares. You can redistribute them and/or modify them under the terms of the Expat License as published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.