OK time for the update!
I bring neither good or bad news. Every thing is going alright, not great and not bad.
The last thing I've been working on is a demo patch with the day 0 translated. It is not fully complete, but I think I'll let this go this time. This demo patch is not a product of by work but instead a byproduct. By that I mean that when I search for bugs on the script insertion tool, the result is the rom with some translated scripts. Those generally are the scripts that have some unexpected behaviour that messes my rudimentar insertion tool.
The only script that I'm yet to fix in this demo is the script right after the fight between your yet to be partner and the second weirdo. (there is another minor issue on another script but is only one line)
I'll also describe the process which I go through to do the translation of these scripts.
Inside the rom there are many tables of pointers, one of those is the table that holds all compressed scripts (cutscene, map and maybe some unknown type).
This table has the pointer to the begining of the compressed script data and it's size.
We then extract and decompress those.
Then I analyzed these scripts and identified opcodes and the lenghts they have. This process is akin to dissassembly, but of a custom script language. (I guess it is custom made by the developers, but maybe I'm just stupid)
We need to know those opcodes and how they work to identity what opcodes do control flow. (dialogue branches and that kind of stuff)
Without this we wouldn't be able to make text larger than the japanese, because the pointer would point to wrong places making the game unplayable.
The translation format comes here. Since I can control if both MCs say diferente things or the same, we need to be able to reinsert this into the rom in a automatad way. (insertion of 1000+ scripts is no joke)
Once the translated script is inserted into the original properly rearanging the pointers we can recompres them (with a better compression rate than the original \o/), and finally overwriting the rom also remaking the table.
The thing I need to do are:
-Find every control flow opcode (I think I found most but nobody wants the game to freeze middle way through the story, so I need to be sure)
This will allow me to release the second batch of scripts for proof-Reading. (these are the map scripts, which are much more comprex than cutscene script)
-Finalize the insertion tool and fix the export tool and or re-export script that may have been exported with erros.
-Turn my code into a proper application so that people can also translate the game for other languages. (Using the ascii alphabet characters that is)
Finally the patch.
I'll take down the link in two days be quick!!!
http://www.mediafire.com/file/x5yvhvrjmyw5o9f/Day_0_v0_demo.ups
BTW when using the transalted scripts for the day 0 I found lots of oversized lines, missing <end_line> tags, Unicode characters inside the <ascii> sections and some other minor stuff. I suggest reviewing the translation since these make the reinserted dialogue look strange, bugged and or bad looking. (but I guess it is hard to know this right away, without inserting it and seeing the result)
I hope to be able to make a tool that parses the translated scripts and find all issues.
Some thing that would also be great is if someone could make a translation application with an interface which is much better than editing a .txt file and hoping to not mess up the tags.
Just kidding. I'm not going to take down the link for the patch. lol
Hope you enjoy the demo. (Some of the scripts used for it are edited by me and do not reflect the scripts that are on the drive for proof-Reading, almost like my version of the script)