Hacking Zill O'll infinite plus

[Kitsu-neechan]

Lets make a little interest check here.

i wasnt sure where to post this, or if i should even post this at all tbh...
as some of you who know me, know that i generally like to just mind my own business more or less, but the fact is that me and my group lack the manpower for this, and even if we did have it, we are still busy with other things. So here goes.

has anyone even heard of this game ? does anyone have any interest of seeing it in english ?

Zill o'll is a game originally released for ps1 back at 1998 (i think it was 1998) then remade for ps2 as Zill O'll infinity, and then ported to psp as Zill O'll infinity plus. all 3 titles are the same game, which never saw the light of day outside japan. Which is a terrible shame, this game is one of the most unknown/underrated rpg's in the history of videogames, a game with no real objective, an actual free roam, mission based RPG with hundreds of unique endings, tons of characters and pretty decent gameplay as far as RPG's go.

so anyway, why am i posting?
i made a menu translation patch for the psp version some years back and stated that I can indeed do more, but lack the manpower for doing it.

my boredom led me back to this game and hence some of that "do more" got a bit refined.

so here's what's done:

1) full filesystem access through the arc/bin and par archives.
2) full graphic access granted by reversing the fileformats above.
3) executable completely mapped and more or less completely translated.
4) full font engine access, the entire game font redone from scratch.
5) full script access extract, edit, reinsert.

tl;dr: it's completely pwn'd now.
now, i am considering crowdsourcing a translation for all the ~60000 lines of text this game contains, but is there any interest for such a thing ?

enjoy pics

some english text as a test with the new font.

new font compared to old font.

yup, shit's hacked.

 

[Tobirama_senju]

woooooo this looks promising,, i love free roam games... theres a lot of japanese games thats are good but some of them arent translated,, so keep up the good work.. good job

 

[flame1234]

I at least checked it out, but I'm not too interested.
It looks a lot more interesting from those screenshots, but the first battle was absolutely dreadful.
First battle on YouTube: Y4VSMTPUnqY?t=4m13s
GBAtemp mutilates links with time indices, add http://youtube.com/ to the front of it.

The main problem is that it resolves too slow.
FF6, FF7, [insert good game here] has a boring first battle too, but it resolves quicker, a lot quicker. Either that, or it has a more interesting first battle.

 

[Kitsu-neechan]

well, i dunno, usually i just autoattack each mob once and solved
takes 10 seconds ^^

there's also the fact that the start changes depending on which kind of char you make.
not all start scenarios have a battle even.

that's really what makes this game interesting, it has hundreds of missions and no clear objective at all, coupled with a different "motive" the player starts with and the fact that the psp port has over 50 different endings, this game has nearly infinite replay value

 

[Deleted User]

Sweet job! ! ! This is another game that was looked over. Glad someone took an interest in its translation.

 

[Kitsu-neechan]

im working on it for what i can but like i said in the op, my group doesnt have the manpower to work the script, so we'll just have to wait and see what happens.

 

[Digitsie]

It looks interesting, I'm curious to see where you'd go. I'm not a translator, though. Proofreader, maybe?

 

[Kitsu-neechan]

to be honest im not quite sure how to approach looking for a translator for this even.
the way the game and it's scripts are built is not fun to put it in a mild way.

first of all, there's a full rpg worth of text, i dumped out some 60k lines or so, secondly, due to the way the game itself works, you can affect the way some scenarios play out with varied results,
this leads to the fact that there are script files with dublicate entried containing VERY minor variances of the script, and if that's not all, the game does not store them linearily.
it can read line 74 from file 1, then decide to read line 642 from file 132 and then something else, depending on what you did in the game to make the chars say things.

to put it in a simple way, testing this game's translation will be a complete hell, and to even produce a translation, a very skilled translator is needed. Preferably a single person, because having 5 people work on the files will produce a hell of inconsistency i do not wish to be a part of.


im currently reworking the executable from scratch, and translating the simple things like character names, menus, items, skills and their respective descriptions. That alone is pushing it as far as i can work alone.

 

[Deleted member 377734]

gahhhh . I wish I could help somehow but sadly I don't know shit bout translating . been wanting to play this for forever though .

 

[Kitsu-neechan]

gahhhh . I wish I could help somehow but sadly I don't know shit bout translating . been wanting to play this for forever though .

goes to me too, but as usual, if you want something done, gotta do it yourself lol. -_-

i've been working on the engine side and graphics while attempting to locate a translator for it, and i did find a person who has expressed interest on that, but their blog was last updated 8 months ago and i've so far failed to contact him.

oh well...

 

[Deleted member 377734]

goes to me too, but as usual, if you want something done, gotta do it yourself lol. -_-

i've been working on the engine side and graphics while attempting to locate a translator for it, and i did find a person who has expressed interest on that, but their blog was last updated 8 months ago and i've so far failed to contact him.

oh well...

I just hope you do find someone to help you . I cant help but ill be supporting you every step of the way .CHEERS to you

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actually I could ask around gbatemp if anyone wants to help . if I find someone . ill send them your way . sound good?

 

[Kitsu-neechan]

progress!

also, the project now has a translator.

 

[Deleted member 377734]

progress!

also, the project now has a translator.

YOU . ARE . AWESOME . btw are you guys translating the story too ? thanks

 

[Kitsu-neechan]

the entire game will be translated t oenglish down to the last piece of text and graphics.
a lot of the existing graphics such as character avatars and otehr miscalleanous stuff will also be imported from the ps2 version and/or remastered for improved quality.

no need to be so hasty
this project has only existed for no more than couple weeks

 

[Deleted member 377734]

the entire game will be translated t oenglish down to the last piece of text and graphics.
a lot of the existing graphics such as character avatars and otehr miscalleanous stuff will also be imported from the ps2 version and/or remastered for improved quality.

(jumps for joy) . you are soooo damn cool I'm not gonna ask for an E.T.A or anything but . how far along are you guys ? once again . I'm grateful that someone is actually taking their time to work on this . could you link me to the project . maybe I could proofread or something?

 

[Kitsu-neechan]

the translator acquired the files yesterday, and will most likely not work on them until christmas holidays are over (sometime january was his guess)
what is done is practically everyting except items list and the main script itself, along with tons and tons of engine hacking to make everything fall in place.
this game is massive in terms of how much work it needs and it's completely unreasonable to expect a release in atleast 6 months, and in reality propably more.

project can be found from RHDN and of course, my own site. i update both rather randomly so for actually staying up to date, check both my own forum, and RHDN.

 

[Deleted member 377734]

so any open position for me ? id like to help out in ANY way I can . just don't expect toooo much

 

[Kitsu-neechan]

so any open position for me ? id like to help out in ANY way I can . just don't expect toooo much

sorry, no. Not at this time. However, considering the sheer size of testing this game requires, i will propably launch a beta test for it when the time for that is more relevant.

 

[Deleted member 377734]

sorry, no. Not at this time. However, considering the sheer size of testing this game requires, i will propably launch a beta test for it when the time for that is more relevant.

okay fair enough . ill be around to help with the beta testing if you want any help

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btw , just curious . but do you guys need another translator? just an offhand question

 

[Kitsu-neechan]

no. At this time the current translator works alone, until he wishes to get assistance.
judging by his previosu work it will not be necessary though.