PC Advanced Military Commander IV Translation
PC Advanced Military Commander IV Translation
by Nebelwurfer
Sega has been producing a series of Strategic War games since 1991.
The first one of these came out on the Genesis, later ones came out on the Saturn and Dreamcast.
Now Sega is continuing the series by releasing the latest installment on the PC. Most people
haven't heard of these since only one was released in the U.S on the Saturn and was called Iron Storm.
Progress Update - June 23, 2006
I ran out of space on my website and had to find a way to throw out
something to keep posting updates to my game replay. What I am going
to do is convert the Strategic and Tactical portions of the Game Manual
from Wordpad documents in ZIP files to simple HTML text. In the process,
I will convert the large .BMP graphics into .jpeg graphics to save
space. The conversion of the Strategic section of the Game Manual
has already taken place. The other will get done when I need some
more room.
I have translated all of the .PXL files with the exception of the
Factory Conversion Screen. I'll probably put out a new release of
the .PXL File ZIP archive once this is complete. I may also change
it to only include IPS Patch files instead of the translated
graphics files to save space. Perhaps I can write a command line
script to apply all the patches at once to make things easier.
Progress Update - Feb 24, 2006
I just released a new version of the ad4data.dll file. This version
translates several General names that I missed previously. Also, some
early war French and British Weapon names have been translated. This
brings the translation progress up to 31%.
Progress Update - Jan 18, 2006
I just released a new version of the ad4data.dll file, that has numerous enhancements.
This brings the translation percentage up to 30%. All the Vehicle motion types and Weapon Load catagories
have been translated. Also all German Commander Names and all Enemy
Commander names have been translated. You might need to restart the
campaign to get the translated Enemy names to show up. All the German
Weapon Names have been translated, along with some of the Polish ones.
Also the Hints that are displayed at the Beginning of each turn have been
translated. There is really too much to list in detail here. I have been
translating pop-up dialog text as it has appeared in my game.
Progress Update - May 30, 2005
Tactics Map Conditions1 Screen - Japanese
Tactics Map Conditions1 Screen - English
I made a major breakthru tonight as I figured out the .PXL format that is used to display the interior graphics for
ADIV Dialog boxes. I have written a utility that allows me to insert a MS Paint .BMP file into a ADIV .PXL file,
to cover up the original Kanji text with the English equivalent.
You can see the results in the above screenshots. This was the last piece of the puzzle that was holding me
back from a complete translation. One thing that I am not going to attempt is translating the town names used
in all the Tactical Maps. There is a separate data file for each Map Point, and I have no desire to comb through
all 230 of them.
Progress Update - May 26, 2005
I have released version 0.05 of ADIV translation patch file. There are three files that need to be patched
for this release. Refer to the patch page and patch readme files for details of what is translated and how to do it.
Progress Update - May 9, 2005
Here are screenshots of the Base Information Screen from the Strategic Map.
Base Information Screen - Japanese
Base Information Screen - English
Progress Update - May 5, 2005
I have made good progress on the Tactics Screen section of the ADIV Manual. The only pages that remain
to be translated cover the Submerge and Construction commands. This will pretty much complete the manual
translation unless I want to translate the section on how to install the game. Also the section which covers
all of the menu commands has a couple of sentences describing each menu entry, but for the most part I think
translating this is unnecessary.
One thing I am leaning towards is going back and converting all of the MS paint format graphics into JPEG
format to reduce the size of the ADIV Manual section files. As it stands now, the complete manual takes up
about 3 megabytes of disk space. I would like to reduce this to under a megabyte to save download time for
people with slow modem
connections (like me).
Most exciting though is that I have returned to my effort to locate Japanese strings in the game and convert
them to English. I got an excellent shareware tool called Resource Hacker by Angus Johnson that allows
you to enter a .EXE or .DLL file and modify String Tables, and Dialogs. When you are running in the Japanese environment, you
can easily change static text used in Dialog Boxes. I have already used this tool to change the text captions on the
Army Corps Control Dialog and Army Corps Formation Control Dialog in the Tactical Game to English. I will try
to post some screen shots later.
One problem is that there are multiple executables and DLLs that need to be modified. For example, the ad4world.exe
application runs while you are viewing the Strategic Map. Likewise the ad4game.exe application runs while you are
fighting a battle on the Tactical Map. Also many common items like Commander names and City names are located
in a file called ad4data.dll. So any Translation effort would need to contain separate patch files for each of
these files.
If that weren't bad enough, Sega keeps releasing new patches for this game every 3 months or so. These patch files
overwrite one or more of the files mentioned above. So any translataion patches I made would be useless once a newer
Sega patch file came out. I may have to put my foot down and force the patch to only work with a particular version.
If that's the case, I may wait until just after a new patch comes out before making extensive modifications to the files.
So far I have figured out how to change General Names and Strategic Map Point names which are
contained in ad4data.dll by using a Hex Editor. I also figured out the file format that is used to store the
Black and White General pictures. So I could overwrite one of these to place a picture of myself into the game.
Now THAT would be cool.
Progress Update - April 21, 2005
I created a new ADIV Manual download (Part 3) that contains the Glossary section at the end of the Manual.
This section describes all the terminology used in the game and goes into great detail on the Weather and
different Unit types. This section of the Manual is complete and I won't be updating it. I now need to
concentrate on the Tactical Screen section of the Manual. The Strategic Section of the Manual is 90% complete.
Since the last update, I have started playing a Hard level campaign where the money that you have to work with
is severely restricted compared to the Easy Level campaign. I will be updating my progress periodically on this
website and hope to tell a story as I mix in elements of gameplay without hopefully giving too much away.
Progress Update - August 25, 2004
I posted an update of the ADIV manual, Part 2. This document now has a complete listing of all the screens you
can call up from the Tactics Menubar. I still have quite a bit of work to do on the various unit commands.
Progress Update - August 20, 2004
I posted the first draft of the ADIV manual, Part 2. This has a listing of all the menubar commands for the
Tactics screen, as well as the most important Unit Commands such as Convert and Unit Statistics.
Progress Update - August 12, 2004
The manual is going to be too big to place in a single file. I'm going to split it up into 2 or 3 separate files
so that once I finish a section, you won't have to download that part anymore. I added the Tips on Winning the
Game section from the end of the Game Manual to the ADIV Manual, Part 1. I'm working steadily on the Tactical
Screen section, but don't have any screenshots to illustrate the manual sections that I've been translating.
No effort has been made to alter any of the Game Screen text yet. The shareware tool that I downloaded expired
before I could try it out.
Progress Update - July 23, 2004
I finished translating the Strategic Map section of the Game Manual and started on the Tactical Map section.
Here's an advance look at the Unit Statistics Screen which is covered in the Tactical Map section.
Unit Statistics Screen (Click to see full size)
Progress Update - July 21, 2004
I'm about 1/3 of the way through translating the game manual.
I found a program that allows you to edit the resources of a Windows based executable. In theory this would
allow me to at least modify the text used for captions on the various dialog screens.
However I still don't know where the tables are located for various things like weapon names and city names.
Also there are about 5 separate executables and numerous DLLs that the program uses. So its not all in one
convenient location like the cartridge based game was.
For now, I intend to keep plugging away at the manual, so that I can know enough to start playing the game.
If you are interested in playing the game, you can purchase a copy from the following website. (I have no
affiliation with them, other importers probably have it as well)
Himeya Soft, Inc.
Also get the latest patch from Sega's website:
ADIV Patch File
Contact Nebelwurfer HQ
