Possible to commission translation of a PS2 game?

TheTenkai

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Hey folks! First, sorry if this is the wrong place to post this, I couldn't find a more appropriate place in the forums to post this. Please do point me in the right direction if this isn't it!

For a while now I've been interested in commissioning someone to translate a PS2 game called Hissatsu Ura-Kagyou (必殺裏稼業). This was made by Genki, which released many ps2 games that unfortunately never were released in the west - some of their most known titles are Fu-un Shinsengumi, Fu-un Bakumatsu-den and Kengo! These are all "samurai" games and though they are not the most polished or to the level of other ps2 samurai games (i.e. Onimusha) I believe Genki made some of the most fun Japan-only ps2 games to date. As these never came to the West, though, we're sadly stuck with playing them in Japanese, given that there aren't any fan-translations either.

Again, I'm not sure if this is the right place in the forums to ask - but I figured it wouldn't hurt to try! And before you say it, yes, I do realise how expensive something like this would be, and yes, I do realise how much time it would require. I am fully aware of that and I am more than willing to work it out with the translator/hacker, price and time are both things I'm perfectly fine with discussing. Obviously this isn't easy work and I'm willing to fund it as long as the other person is honest, willing and capable.

Hissatsu Ura-Kagyou does live up to its name, as if you've ever heard the word "hissatsu" you would probably think of some of those old Japanese shows where people are slashed and a fountain of blood burts out of them - or not, feel free to associate it with a ninja pulling off a precise kill or anything else you want : ). This game is a Jidai-geki where the main character is a town-doctor known by the townsfolk as "Young Doctor". During the day, you can walk around town and speak to the several NPCs roaming around the streets, and this game is fully voice-acted to which is super nice. Some NPCs you talk to will ask for help, as they're sick (or someone they know is sick) and they need help. They will ask you a question and you will have to choose the best treatment out of three options (i.e. my son has a bad fever, what should I do?
- Use medicinal herbs
- Feed him a laxative
- Make him fast for 7 days)

The townsfolk will follow your suggestions and you are rewarded based on how correct your answer was.

This is also a very text heavy game, as you must talk to many town residents in order to not only progress the story and learn more about your current objective but to also grow your reputation as a doctor.

However, this isn't a doctor simulator, that is just what you do during the day (yes there is a night-day cycle, crude, but it is there). During the night, the young doctor acts as an assassin, killing people that are evil and have commited wrong-doings in order to rid the town of them and help bring justice. For example, in Chapter 1, an evil merchant kills the other famous merchant in town in order to stockpile and drive the price of salt through the roof. He forces the people in the town to buy salt at exorbitant prices which is leading to misery amongst honest folks. During the day you speak to the people in town to gather more information and at night you invade his residence in order to kill him. The night sections place good emphasis on stealth, as going head-to-head with enemies is really not a good idea as enemies are really hard to kill and you take a fair bit of punishment really easily. Stealth kills is where the focus of this game lies! You can hide behind sliding-doors and lure enemies for a stab in the gut, you can stay hidden behind a wall and whistle to draw attention; there are some really creative kills in this game. At the end of every mission you get a rank and a score, and to get the maximum possible score you HAVE to play as Kyojiro (The main character, the "Young Doctor"). And yes, this game gives you the option to play the assassination missions with multiple characters! While Kyojiro is an "all-round" character, the other characters are unique and have their own traits, strenghts, and weaknesses. This gives you a lot of room to explore and try out different approaches to see what fits best for you. It is interesting to note that the sections of the map, in this case the merchant's residence, has multiple sectors (i.e. Sector 1, 2 and 3: Entrance, first floor, second floor) and you can pick and choose which character to use in which section.


Though this isn't a very long game (only 10 chapters which can be completed quickly if you just bee-line to the end) it is text heavy, which is why I am interested in commissioning a translation of the game. It is one of the more fun games in the PS2 in my opinion, even if it can be very rough around the edges. It is unique, has fun gameplay, an interesting story (from what I was able to gather with limited Japanese anyway) and explores a period of Japan I'm really into. Again, I'm aware of how costly and time-consuming this can be and I'm ready to discuss it all with the correct person/people so long as they are capable and willing! If anyone knows anyone that is open to this sort of thing or anywhere else I can go to for this topic, please let me know! I'm new here so I'm not exactly sure how everything works yet.

Details about creating tools to modify the game files, hacking, etc can all be discussed in depth privately instead of just flooding this thread. If you're capable and interested do let me know, I'd be very happy to be able to play this in english!
 
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master801

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imo if you don't want a translation to die outright, tools and techniques should be publicly discussed so others can replicate.

I'll take a look at the game later since it looks interesting, but no promises.
 

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imo if you don't want a translation to die outright, tools and techniques should be publicly discussed so others can replicate.

I'll take a look at the game later since it looks interesting, but no promises.
Oh, I'm absolutely fine with sharing tools and knowledge publicly, wouldn't want to gatekeep this knowledge anyway since it may come in handy for other folks in the future if anyone ever wants to try and translate other genki games. What I meant by that was just to discuss how the hacker would go about developing and implementing the necessary tools and what the amount of compensation for that would be - of course developing the tools would also incur a cost, so that'd be something discussed in private.

But thanks anyway for giving it a try, even if you don't want to commit to anything. I understand the mountainous size of the task, and just spreading this game around is a win in my book since I don't ever hear anyone talk about it at all despite some of Genki's other works being more well known.
 

TheTenkai

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If no one here is willing, could you guys point me to any particular forums focused on fan translations or any hackers that would be willing to undertake such a task? Naturally, they have to be able to speak Japanese ;p
 

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So, some good news.

I've been working on a .JNT extractor, and it works - somewhat, albeit it only extracts the models (still figuring out how the file works).

On the bright side, I found in-game text in the DATA.JNT file. Not in the portions I could extract, but just in the general file...

The intro text looks to be a bit wonky to work with, but I'm not sure yet since the file hasn't been extracted.

Intro sequence:
菱屋さん!
あなたってお人は、よくも・・・。
黙って言う事を聞いていれば、
一緒にいい目を見れたものを・・・。
先生方、後は頼みましたよ。

This is a "small" dump of the intro script file


Since I know the script exists inside of the DATA.JNT file, all I gotta do is extract it - somehow.

EDIT: Got the script files fully extracted. They put the script files including the "cutscene" subtitles into plain text files, so it should make it easier than before.

DATA/NICHIJO/MAIN_MSG.csv
 
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TheTenkai

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So, some good news.

I've been working on a .JNT extractor, and it works - somewhat, albeit it only extracts the models (still figuring out how the file works).

On the bright side, I found in-game text in the DATA.JNT file. Not in the portions I could extract, but just in the general file...

The intro text looks to be a bit wonky to work with, but I'm not sure yet since the file hasn't been extracted.

Intro sequence:




This is a "small" dump of the intro script file


Since I know the script exists inside of the DATA.JNT file, all I gotta do is extract it - somehow.

EDIT: Got the script files fully extracted. They put the script files including the "cutscene" subtitles into plain text files, so it should make it easier than before.

DATA/NICHIJO/MAIN_MSG.csv

Oh this is a pleasant surprise! Thanks for giving this a shot, I appreciate it! Did you give the game a try at all or just been exploring the files? Anyhow, that intro sequence seems to be the very first cutscene with the evil merchant right? And then the next "bit" of text seems to be between Kyojirou and his father in the very next scene and further on. Safe to say that you've made good progress already and that's legitimately great! I never see anyone talk about this game ever, and it blows my mind. This game is basically a love letter to the Hissatsu series, which I'm a fanboy of lol
 
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master801

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Did you give the game a try at all or just been exploring the files?
I've just been poking around with the files while going in-game a bit to grab some info (that's how I found that text file).

Before I start trying to see if the game will play nice with the Latin alphabet (English) -which I don't think it will- I need to figure out how to re-create the file.

The files seem to be padded to fit in a disc sector (2048) which optimizes laser seek times, I think.

The file extraction script is available on GitHub now. Don't know if they still work or not since I was working on it late into the morning.
https://github.com/master801/PS2-Hissatsu-Ura-Kagyou

As a bonus, the developers were nice enough to put the entire dialogue in a surprisingly well documented CSV file.
Screenshot_1.png
 
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TheTenkai

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I've just been poking around with the files while going in-game a bit to grab some info (that's how I found that text file).

Before I start trying to see if the game will play nice with the Latin alphabet (English) -which I don't think it will- I need to figure out how to re-create the file.

The files seem to be padded to fit in a disc sector (2048) which optimizes laser seek times, I think.

The file extraction script is available on GitHub now. Don't know if they still work or not since I was working on it late into the morning.
https://github.com/master801/PS2-Hissatsu-Ura-Kagyou

As a bonus, the developers were nice enough to put the entire dialogue in a surprisingly well documented CSV file.
View attachment 424254
Good job! Really impressive, making progress super quick! I did try my hand at messing with the files too, and at least to me JNT seems to be easy to work with, at least exctracting data from it doesn't seem too hard. Repacking and modding would probably be much harder, though I'm not great when it comes to modding PS2 games (or console games in general for that matter) so I could just be wrong :x. And that is definitely the first time I see anything like that, never found any games where the devs left dialogue neatly documented like that, damn! That sure helps out a ton
 

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I just learned about the game through this post and I got to say, it could have rivaled Tenchu if it were only released overseas.
Oh, nice! Glad to hear, makes me happy to see more people getting to know the game. Did you give it a shot at all or just watched some videos? Anyhow, I do have to agree with you, though I might be biased given that this is one of my favourite ps2 games :P. This game is super fun, I love the exploration during the day and the assassination missions are great fun too. It definitely isn’t as open as some/most of Tenchu's missions are but given that there are multiple characters in this game I’d have to say you also have a lot of room to explore different approaches to the same mission which in my opinion makes up for the tighter assassination levels. A bit spoiler-y but this game's final mission (chapter 10) is still one of the most intense stealth experiences I’ve ever had in any game lmao, it can be really brutal and mistakes would legitimately just make me restart the whole mission. But of course Tenchu is great in its own right, some of the best stealth games out there, it’s a shame the franchise is basically dead, fingers crossed they bring it back. As for hissatsu ura-kagyou, they probably won’t ever touch this game again, but it sure would be nice to have a remaster for current platforms, such an underrated/obscure gem :/ here’s to hoping a translation is actually possible at the very least, so more people can at least give it a shot!
 

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Small update. I managed to recreate the DATA.JNT file somewhat, but I'm having troubles inserting it back into the ISO file and seeing if it's the correct implementation.

I've tried the ImgBurn ISO method with no avail. PCSX2 just crashes when trying to load the ISO or just hangs at a black screen, depending on how it is created.

Apache3 doesn't work, crashing immediately when "updating" (replacing) the DATA.JNT with the new one.

cdgenPS2 3.0 "works", as in it'll create an ISO file, but it has the same problems as the ImgBurn method - which I think is due to the program only supporting CDs and not DVDs (can anyone confirm this?)

I did find Ps2IsoTools on GitHub (https://github.com/Finzenku/Ps2IsoTools), but it requires writing another program on-top of it (basically it's library file) - which I think is stupid.

Why have "Tools" in the name if it's not even a fully functioning tool?!

At this point, I'm stuck and even considering writing an actual tool for PS2 ISOs, but that'd eat up a lot of time and would require a lot of research on how the ISO / PS2 ISO file structure works.
 
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TheTenkai

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Small update. I managed to recreate the DATA.JNT file somewhat, but I'm having troubles inserting it back into the ISO file and seeing if it's the correct implementation.

I've tried the ImgBurn ISO method with no avail. PCSX2 just crashes when trying to load the ISO or just hangs at a black screen, depending on how it is created.

Apache3 doesn't work, crashing immediately when "updating" (replacing) the DATA.JNT with the new one.

cdgenPS2 3.0 "works", as in it'll create an ISO file, but it has the same problems as the ImgBurn method - which I think is due to the program only supporting CDs and not DVDs (can anyone confirm this?)

I did find Ps2IsoTools on GitHub (https://github.com/Finzenku/Ps2IsoTools), but it requires writing another program on-top of it (basically it's library file) - which I think is stupid.

Why have "Tools" in the name if it's not even a fully functioning tool?!

At this point, I'm stuck and even considering writing an actual tool for PS2 ISOs, but that'd eat up a lot of time and would require a lot of research on how the ISO / PS2 ISO file structure works.
Hey. I got in touch with another hacker and asked about repacking files into an iso - this generally seems to be a ps2 issue. They sent me this linkhttps://yakuzapatch.tumblr.com/post/133244189791/yakuza-1-ps2-undub-possibility . They also said there is a ps2 iso creating tool out there somewhere. This particular example explains how to repack yakuza 1, though I hope at the very least it can be of some use. Worst comes to worst and this doesn’t help let me know so I can compensate you somehow for the research needed into creating the needed tools
Post automatically merged:

Small update. I managed to recreate the DATA.JNT file somewhat, but I'm having troubles inserting it back into the ISO file and seeing if it's the correct implementation.

I've tried the ImgBurn ISO method with no avail. PCSX2 just crashes when trying to load the ISO or just hangs at a black screen, depending on how it is created.

Apache3 doesn't work, crashing immediately when "updating" (replacing) the DATA.JNT with the new one.

cdgenPS2 3.0 "works", as in it'll create an ISO file, but it has the same problems as the ImgBurn method - which I think is due to the program only supporting CDs and not DVDs (can anyone confirm this?)

I did find Ps2IsoTools on GitHub (https://github.com/Finzenku/Ps2IsoTools), but it requires writing another program on-top of it (basically it's library file) - which I think is stupid.

Why have "Tools" in the name if it's not even a fully functioning tool?!

At this point, I'm stuck and even considering writing an actual tool for PS2 ISOs, but that'd eat up a lot of time and would require a lot of research on how the ISO / PS2 ISO file structure works.
After searching for a bit, found something that could (hopefully) be useful herehttps://mariomasta64.me/archive/home.versatel.nl/joeriroels/Download/download.htm . Not sure if cdgen and CDVDGEN are the same thing but most folks online seem to agree on using cdvdgen as the best way to generate iso files. Again, let me know if any of this helps. I'll keep looking to see if I can find anything else, but fingers crossed either the first link about Y1 or this helps out
 
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master801

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Hey. I got in touch with another hacker and asked about repacking files into an iso - this generally seems to be a ps2 issue. They sent me this link . They also said there is a ps2 iso creating tool out there somewhere. This particular example explains how to repack yakuza 1, though I hope at the very least it can be of some use. Worst comes to worst and this doesn’t help let me know so I can compensate you somehow for the research needed into creating the needed tools

Coincidentally enough, I was trying to get CDVDGen 1.5 / 2.0 working, but for whatever reason it doesn't install on my Windows 7 VM. I'm just gonna set up a physical machine for it...

On the bright side, I tried messing around with the ISO insertion a little more and turns out Apache 2 doesn't have the crashing problem Apache3 has.

Bad news, when I reinserted the new JNT file using Apache2, it requires the file to be the EXACT same size as the original, and it ended up hanging at a black screen.

But it turns out I made a boo-boo and forgot to add some data to the new JNT file. 🤦‍♂️

So the game finally boots now, even with my slightly inaccurate implementation.

EDIT:
Proof of concept - Translation is REALLY BAD and was done by Google Translate / DeepL without checking at all.
Seriously. Don't take the translation as literal.

Due to Apache2 file limitations, I had to delete some data within the DATA.JNT file, so this is definitely not a feasible option until the ISO can be created.

 
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TheTenkai

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Coincidentally enough, I was trying to get CDVDGen 1.5 / 2.0 working, but for whatever reason it doesn't install on my Windows 7 VM. I'm just gonna set up a physical machine for it...

On the bright side, I tried messing around with the ISO insertion a little more and turns out Apache 2 doesn't have the crashing problem Apache3 has.

Bad news, when I reinserted the new JNT file using Apache2, it requires the file to be the EXACT same size as the original, and it ended up hanging at a black screen.

But it turns out I made a boo-boo and forgot to add some data to the new JNT file. 🤦‍♂️

So the game finally boots now, even with my slightly inaccurate implementation.

EDIT:
Proof of concept - Translation is REALLY BAD and was done by Google Translate / DeepL without checking at all.
Seriously. Don't take the translation as literal.

Due to Apache2 file limitations, I had to delete some data within the DATA.JNT file, so this is definitely not a feasible option until the ISO can be created.


Well I'll be damned. Lmfao it's so weird seeing this game play in english. But now we know it's possible! Thank you for your hard work so far
 

TheTenkai

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Coincidentally enough, I was trying to get CDVDGen 1.5 / 2.0 working, but for whatever reason it doesn't install on my Windows 7 VM. I'm just gonna set up a physical machine for it...

On the bright side, I tried messing around with the ISO insertion a little more and turns out Apache 2 doesn't have the crashing problem Apache3 has.

Bad news, when I reinserted the new JNT file using Apache2, it requires the file to be the EXACT same size as the original, and it ended up hanging at a black screen.

But it turns out I made a boo-boo and forgot to add some data to the new JNT file. 🤦‍♂️

So the game finally boots now, even with my slightly inaccurate implementation.

EDIT:
Proof of concept - Translation is REALLY BAD and was done by Google Translate / DeepL without checking at all.
Seriously. Don't take the translation as literal.

Due to Apache2 file limitations, I had to delete some data within the DATA.JNT file, so this is definitely not a feasible option until the ISO can be created.


Any news or updates? :bow:
 

master801

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Any news or updates? :bow:
Sorry, haven't touched it since that proof-of-concept was released.

I've been collecting documentation for the file structure of ISOs as a way to avoid working on it, truthfully.

If someone else wants to try picking it up, the project is open source.

Now that you mention it, I should start working on it again...
 

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