ROM Hack Game Center CX : Arino no Chosenjo 2 (New Start?)

[Sludge]

Eh, I think the GCCX3 looks okay. While I'm not as impressed by the games as I was for 1 and 2, but if it came out in the US, I'd probably get a 3DS (or 2DS) to play it. I'm also not as impressed by the art style, a lot of NES era games just look a little... off. Of course to be fair there were a lot of real NES games that didn't have very good graphics. I do like that they're finally making a Zelda style adventure game.

Also I don't think their going to keep the games from one and two, not only are those for another system it's also a different developer.

 

[kikuchiyo]

Hey, I'm famous

 

[AnotherGamer]

Can't say much about the new GCCX game but at least it's got a more FF-style RPG, not really a huge fan of the old DQ ones.

 

[Fishaman P]

By the way, kinda off topic but... has anyone seen RGC3?
It looks... I don't know. Ugly and weird.

How have I not heard of this!?
Maybe I should finally get a 3DS...

 

[Sora de Eclaune]

How have I not heard of this!?
Maybe I should finally get a 3DS...

Considering the 2nd game was never localized, it's likely the third one won't either.

 

[Fishaman P]

Considering the 2nd game was never localized, it's likely the third one won't either.

I didn't mean in English; it's obvious I'll need a Gateway or a Japanese 3DS.

 

[Sora de Eclaune]

I didn't mean in English; it's obvious I'll need a Gateway or a Japanese 3DS.

I feel it's a bit too much work just for the Gateway. I'd just buy a handful of systems and label which region they are, and then leave it at that.

 

[Aaron Chmielowiec]

From what little I saw and remember of the GCCX3 shots, you and young Arino were facing towards the bottom screen instead of looking at them from behind (and their room) like the others. I think I would find that unnerving. About the games, I'm undecided so far. It looks like the earliest ones are more akin to the old Atari 2600, Colecovision and Intellivision type of games moreso than NES. I'm not sure if that is too far back in gaming history for anyone other than the much older players to find enjoyable or nostalgic, even if just for the fact those games were often very simplistic and repetitive with no clear goals other than survival and score. But anyway, I'm getting off topic.

As for my end, I set up a batch file/environment similar to what I did for the Adventure but for the RPG. There are almost as many files in the RPG as the Adventure but the largest file there is only 9kb and there is a *lot* of repetition so it shouldn't be so bad. (Maybe 5% of all the files are larger than 2k each) I'll let Kukuchiyo munch along at it while I plug whatever he gets done as he gets it done into the scripts and let it zoom its way to great justice.

I touched up the Adventure Game text so that everything *should* fit on screen now and I patched up some of the roughest parts of the translation (I think, remember it is all out of order). Punctuation is the last thing I'm doing on the fly as I update the LBS files. I don't think I made too many exceptions except for places like everything fit on one screen if I didn't put a space after the last comma (the font adds a bit of space after one anyway) and a few indent special cases...I hope it doesn't affect things too much. In any case this should make it easier for the testers to read and get through the game(s), hopefully.

You can see the updated dump of just the text (barring tags...most of them; sorry if I left some in by accident. Also, NAME is your player name in the game) here:
(WARNING: Spoilers since it is the entire game text for both Adventure games)
http://aaronin.jp/shashin/arino2/outputjustadvdialogue_fixed.txt

So what I'm doing now is reflecting those changes in the actual game by changing the source string files and rebuilding the LBS files...all of them. It's tedious and time consuming but at least I can do this stuff on the run now with my laptop.

I'm in a position to do this exact same thing for the RPG but it isn't done (the translation) and I need to see where I only have two lines to work with on screen vs. three.

/me dreads the rapidly approaching point of no more text to do and the great shift of focus to hammering those graphics in the game.

 

[Kelebek]

I'm not sure if you're too bothered or not right now, but while just quickly scrolling through the file, I noticed a few spelling mistakes.

km_01_01_062-strings.xml:

string 0: "happpen" - Is that for emphasis?

In km_38-strings.xml:

string 1: "Accellerates" should be "Accelerates." Same deal in string 11.
string 6: "Arino: NAME, promis me" should be "promise." Also "deceipt" should be "deceit."

km_42_00_118-strings.xml:

string 0: "can prove your innocense!" should be "innocence."

km_44-strings.xml:

string 18: "belive" should be "believe."

km_44_04_109-strings.xml:

string 0: "grafitti" should be "graffiti."

km_58_part1-strings.xml:

string 39: "a minure more than scheduled!" Should be "minute."
string 43: "and Sasano's alibies." Should be "alibis."

Those were the ones I noticed in a few minutes. Maybe a few more hiding around. There's also a bunch of small things, like capitalisation after commas, and sentences without full-stops. Nothing major though.

Keep up the good work!

 

[Aaron Chmielowiec]

That helps, thanks. I actually do need others looking at it since its so massive and I'm bound to miss a bunch along the way including stupid mistakes.

In general, I'm not making those spelling mistakes on purposes and I'll fix those. For some of the capitalization I purposely made the first character of the 2nd or 3rd line or parts of proper nouns in Caps but that was more aesthetic and even then not sure how that will work out; it seemed to look better in game doing that at points but its no biggie to change it either way.

Ah yes, I'm sure you noticed too and I mentioned it before, but ignore the punctuation for the moment. I'm missing periods in many spots that I'm putting in anyway so I'll need to update that in a bit.

 

[Aaron Chmielowiec]

Hello again.

It's been a few days since I wrote anything so I'll keep you all up to date.

So you remember that huge text file I posted this week with all the re-aligned text and some (now) fixed errors? I've been merging the changes back with the original text files I made and rebuilding the lbs files for the adventure. Progress on that is good and I'm fixing errors along the way as I see them since I literally have to do each file line by line but it is still a fair bit of work. On Monday I spent quite a few hours working on it and almost got through half of it all. My kids are down with the flu so that throws a wrench in my progress today but it shouldn't take much longer to finish that all up. Hopefully by the end of the week. I figure if I have to retouch every file in the adventure games that's a good solid two days of work, or one if I don't sleep and am not disturbed.

Once I have the new files in the game, even though I think there are still some questionable parts and some unknowns (e.g. In some cases Arino talks about his superior but without seeing the scene I wasn't sure if he was talking about Kan or Ishikawa), as far as I'm concerned, it's ready for testing.

After that I hope to assemble what I can into the RPG. The process is similar but fortunately there is less text to work with.

Finally, I would like some mockups of the menus made if anyone has time. I have the one used in the RPG (not in-game yet; still have to do that). In specific I just want the two menus you see in Arino's room and the game shop (JoycoLand) and the game selection screens...I think that handles the basic ones. I would be happy just having those. When I'm at my PC ill try to grab shots of the menus and write up a text list of what it should say.

The Triotos menu screen descriptions are all graphics, too, but like I said before I'll try overlaying a flat image of what I want to say over it all.

After that, I think that is pretty much most of the basic game done. The magazines and manuals are all done, the challenges are all done, the game descriptions are done. All the Arino, phone, and discussion (in-room/shop) dialog is all done. A lot of this will probably need some tweaking after but it's shaping up nicely. I seem to remember my earliest translations needed some patching (should I use Tasogare Town as a phonetic label or the translated Twilight Town? The latter?) but during testing I hope we can all help to iron out the translation.

 

[MarkDarkness]

Best wishes for the health of your kids, Aaron. We're still here holding on tight as the translation gets ever closer to our hands. Seriously, the job you are doing is something that I think none of us were even hoping for... I'll certainly call in sick the day the patch gets released.

 

[greator]

Can you change the title back to Game Center CX: Arino's Challenge 2 or something?
Using those name Retro Game Challenge might get you in trouble.

 

[Nightwish]

Thank you, mate.
I should really finish RGC1 then...

 

[Fishaman P]

Can you change the title back to Game Center CX: Arino's Challenge 2 or something?
Using those name Retro Game Challenge might get you in trouble.

Yes, that's the most prominent thing in this project that'll attract unwanted attention.

Spoiler

 

[Aaron Chmielowiec]

Meh, I'm impartial to the title. If "Game Center CX : Arino's Challenge 2" is what people want that's fine, too. I just need someone to whip up a title graphic. It was made the way it is because I could recycle parts from the first game and it was easy to put in place.

Okay, I got through the 26,000 line Adventure game file (collection) and fixed the text so (almost) all of it fits on screen now. There are quite a few places where I was one character over or the alignment is a bit off but it is much easier to fix these things now. Other than some minor annoyances like that and possible human error when I was lining up the text or possible spelling errors, it looks ready to test.

(For the testers I'm debating on including a zip/rar/whatever of the same source text files I use for the conversion so the testers can also make their own changes as they see errors and send these files back to me to reconvert and put back into the game)

EDIT from Saturday> Although a lot of the text now fits on screen, horizontal positioning is an issue for some characters (ones with long names), however this is the fun part for me. I'm playing through the game and fixing the source text files as I spot errors in the game and after a bit I regenerate the LBS files and try again. Surprisingly this doesn't take as long as I thought. It's also a nice change from just starting at walls of text. Why not, it's snowing here in Tokyo today.

I'm going to bed now but I do want to take a good look at the RPG and see how that is shaping up with the text substitutions. Last time I checked I was overflowing the text area box and getting all sorts of wonderful graphical corruption. It was glorious, but I'm sure the RPG wasn't intended to be played that way.

I also have a mockup of the RPG main menu so I can try to hammer that into the game. I do need to edit the Overlay file for all of the proper nouns in the RPG but many of them are just simple, common item names and some place or character names.

Now the "fun" part... the menus in-game. They are graphics and have to be put in as such, but could someone with way too much time on their hands make a mockup? I'll list the menu items as they appear below the image but feel free to use artistic license if you can think of a better word. I'll put notes in parenthesis to help you out.

* Select Game ("Games" might be fine since in your room I think the dialogue says to select "Games")
* Chat (literally Discuss but it is just idle chatter)
* Go Home (Return Home? You pick one)

* Start Game
* Read Manual
* View Challenges
* Game Records (your high scores, number of times cleared, etc.)

* Select Game (Or just "Games" as the dialogue mentions)
* View Magazines (Or just "Magazines" as the dialogue mentions)
* Go to JoycoLand (The Game Shop)
* Chat (Discuss or talk with Arino about the current challenge)
* Telephone (Phone a friend for help or Arino for help/give up on the challenge)
* Quit (Also lets you save but it doesn't say that in the menu)

 

[kikuchiyo]

Small update from the RPG side; I'm still chugging away, but got a little more freed up because another project has been pushed back for me. I'm also close to hitting my first big block of empty strings in the file. They take up space, but are blank and need no translation, so it's a total freebie

I'm definitely excited to help get this out to everyone and get the kacho out to a larger audience.

 

[Aaron Chmielowiec]

That's good news.

Since we got snowed in, when my kids took a nap I worked on aligning (fine tuning) the Adventure game text. The first half in particular was pretty rough at first but I smoothed out a fair bit today.

One thing I will need to retouch is the overlay file for the Adventure games. The nouns I wrote originally are too long and I need to shorten a fair number of them. Fortunately it isn't a very big list all things considered.

(The RPG is set up in a similar fashion; the overlay for that has all the proper nouns and selectable/usable items in the game)

So yeah, I'm playing the game while taking note/fixing up the text that's displayed. This is just to get it looking roughly okay. Anyone testing the game can look into the deep meaning of the conversations and suggest something better if they so wish.

Next update I hope to put up some screenshots from the RPG which should also help Kikuchiyo see how everything is going to lie on the screen.

 

[Truner]

I'm 99% sure that the folks at XSEED won't mind the usage of "Retro Game Challenge".

Plus, the original title is even riskier, giving more attention to the patch on the Japanese side.

 

[HumbertHumbert]

Now the "fun" part... the menus in-game. They are graphics and have to be put in as such, but could someone with way too much time on their hands make a mockup? I'll list the menu items as they appear below the image but feel free to use artistic license if you can think of a better word. I'll put notes in parenthesis to help you out.

I'm taking a shot at it. For now, I've created blanked-out PNG files, which I'll post below (are these just literally "mockups," or would it be helpful to move the menu selection arrow as well so you can insert the graphics at some point?):

I'll update this reply after I insert the text, but I thought these might be useful for anyone else creating the mockups to use, if they're better artists than me.

Edit: I tried a couple of mockups of one screen. The closest font I could find to the original RGC menu font is "Simplified Arabic". I adjusted the horizontal scale to about 85%. I mocked up the full translated text as-is, but the font needs to be much smaller than the Japanese font, 12 pt, so I think it looks a bit constrained. The second mockup just shortens the name, but allows us to go from 12 pt to 18 pt, and the text looks more similar to the Japanese font size and clarity.

Thoughts? I can mock up the rest of them pretty quickly (and share the PSD files if anyone cares), but thought I'd check on what the right way to go is (simplified and large vs. as-translated and small).