here's my check-in! i extracted a whole lot of in-game text strings, and i've found even more variables to play with. this is getting interesting...

firstly: i used a program called GBA Explorer. this is a sort of all-in-one tool that lets you do a lot of things, but most importantly (to me), i was able to use its string search function, where one can search for a specific string of text and match it to a likely string of bytes to create the game's "lexicon". when it's mostly filled out, the game reveals its text, like magic, in the hex view section.

i uploaded the list of strings to my github in a txt file here; the formatting kind of sucks, and some punctuation strings are a little broken so random letters can show up, but more or less are what is present in the code. it's more readable there than it is in GBA Explorer...

the most interesting parts to me were:

• a debug string referring to a shop debug menu: "the pet shop. for debugging and testing, use select to increase money." not sure how to access ingame.
• strings for each ending, including a congratulations message for getting all the endings (of which there are ultimately 8!): "you've reached all possible endings! congratulations! thanks for all the time you've spent playing!"
• "not so dirty after all. rats...! i thought i saw something on the floor, but i guess i was wrong...", a string that may not actually show up - perhaps related to the mess cleaning function that doesn't have a 'no mess found' check?
• there's no ending related to high mood stat that i can tell - what is the point??

some promising stuff. i also took note recently of the dialogue bits in-game where the language seems to change, and i think it's due to some change in the dialogue storage, because the surrounding text for the english cutscenes are just fine, aside from this seemingly random part where the english changes to something else. it would be interesting to see if these change at all in the other languages.

and then there's also the bouncy ball, which, despite being labeled in english correctly in the shop, displays the french name instead when using it in the house.

outside of all that, i've been tracking down more variables for RA set creation. lots of different ones...

some are still mysterious to me. but i'm working it out! and i am optimistic that i will be able to find everything i wanted. i mean, i already found the endings, and that was my side goal. but i really look forward to poking at this some more!