yaze/docs/internal/plans/message_system_improvement_plan.md

Message System Improvement Plan

Status: Proposal Last Updated: 2025-11-21

This document outlines a plan to enhance the dialogue editing capabilities of YAZE, focusing on translation workflows and data portability.

1. JSON Import/Export

Goal: Enable external editing and version control of text.

• Format:

  [
    {
      "id": 0,
      "address": 917504,
      "text": "[W:00][SPD:00]Welcome to [D:05]...",
      "context": "Uncle dying in sewers"
    }
  ]
  

• Implementation:
  • Add SerializeMessages() and DeserializeMessages() to MessageData.
  • Integrate with the existing CLI export commands.

2. Translation Workspace

Goal: Facilitate translating the game into new languages.

• Side-by-Side View: Show the original text (Reference) next to the editable text (Translation).
• Reference Source: Allow loading a second "Reference ROM" or a JSON file to serve as the source text.
• Dictionary Management:
  • Auto-Optimization: Analyze the full translated text to propose a new optimal dictionary for that language.
  • Manual Editing: Allow users to define custom dictionary entries.

3. Expanded Text Support

Goal: Break free from vanilla size limits.

• Repointing: Allow the text blocks to be moved to expanded ROM space (Banks 10+).
• Bank Management: Handle bank switching commands automatically when text exceeds 64KB.

4. Search & Replace

Goal: Global editing operations.

• Regex Support: Advanced search across all messages.
• Batch Replace: "Replace 'Hyrule' with 'Lorule' in all messages".

5. Scripting Integration

Goal: Allow procedural generation of text.

• Lua/Python API: Expose message data to the scripting engine.
• Usage: "Generate 100 variations of the shopkeeper dialogue".