Hacking Legend of Heroes Translation

[G-Han]

The type-o project was pretty exciting. Teach game companies to screw with fans. Something I find amusing and disturbing at the same time is the recent announcement that Xseed is doing Brandish shortly after it was fan translated. Takes me back to when the whole Ys fiasco.

Unlike Square Enix, who waited almost one year and a half until the fan translation was finished, Wyrdwad dropped the hint of XSEED's localisation two days after I posted a heads up on ALoY -- can't really blame XSEED for that.

I'm looking forward to the uploaded sheets - and the answer to flame's question about the size of the script - , zero_g_monkey and flame1234!

 

[flame1234]

I updated the dumper... seems to be working. Link.
Usage is same as before.
*.pre turned out to be a red herring, the dumper doesn't use those files anymore. And now it dumps all dialogue. And 5b opcodes too (but there's not very many of those).

I couldn't figure out the bytes after the 5c opcode (they make no sense), so we'll stick with decoding faces where available for now.
EDIT: Figured it out. There's an index at the end of the .bin files with names. The dumper is now pulling names from there when it's appropriate to do so. So now you have more of the one-off names.

 

[zero_g_monkey]

Added the scripts to the first post and will be putting any new information about it there. Just a heads up. Make sure to check that post for game related files and such. Gonna upload some image stuff for the monsters as soon as I get a chance for those interested in helping complete that list.

 

[flame1234]

FYI: By my count, there are 105,000 lines (approximately) in the script. I am pretty sure we are not missing very many in our dump. There's a small number of false positives (lines with no text) in the uploaded scripts - these can be deleted without any problems, and it's been taken into account in the estimate. The script is so big it will not fit into a single Google Spreadsheets workbook. It's probably because I have too much meta data but whatever.

Brandish has about 2000 lines.

Okay, so we need to split it into more than two different sheets. In particular set 1 has too many lines (was trying to add a column for translation).

 

[zero_g_monkey]

Give me about an hour. Gonna have a new version of the spreadsheet.

 

[flame1234]

Made a new sheet with 1/2 of the content from the original "1."
1: c0000 onward
2: c0250 onward
3: r3070 onward (end)

I renamed the old 2 to 3.

 

[Shinintendo]

I translated couple of sentences of the first file. I hope you like it.
first I'm not a pro and second it's very hard to decipher the meaning without a context.

 

[zero_g_monkey]

Any help is appreciated. The context part is difficult. Falcom is sloppy as hell when it comes to their games. There is almost no pattern what so ever. They will literally split lines up from all over the game and stick them in a group. Done that as far back as I have messed with their games. I will see if I can find some good guides that might be able to help people out with context.

 

[flame1234]

"It's too bad I suck at Japanese." I say this as I cry myself to sleep every night, usually with study materials in hand. Usually Kanken DS3 I posted about here.

If you need help figuring out contexts, let me know. I'll try to help.
Like for example, the m3000 dialogue at the beginning begins at 0x2e28 and continues until 0x30aa. But starting at 0x2e28, each line is right after the previous one (at least up until 0x30aa).
It's probably a good idea to put context info in the TL note column at the beginning of certain conversations.

I'll start working on an inserter. There are way too many lines for manual insertion of every line. I think I could use the current translation of m3000 as a good test.
However, m3000 is actually quite a bad test because it has only 5c opcodes.

 

[Shinintendo]

I think to translate here and there in a spreadsheet is sportive and fun but the only way I see you translate it is by playing the game while translating sentence by sentence (for it to make sense). or is there another way to get the full meaning of the text apart from watching it play out while playing?
I know it's a nightmare but it could help if there's a way to at least batch together sentences from the same scene/chapter or however you're going to split it.
But even than it's problematic as it's not arranged in order as zero_g_monkey stated, scene/chapters could and would contain a huge chunk of words each (depend on the split).
Overall the options is to work from scratch with a dedicated translator or translate without context than go over it and smooth it over(very sloppy job imo).
Are there many people who willing to give a hand to translate the spreadsheet? all the point of making it public is to let many people work on it and finish it faster.
To all the translators out there, If you know a better way do share

 

[zero_g_monkey]

Found a pretty good blog about the game that could help with some points of reference. It is not my work and all credit for the blog goes to the person who put the time into creating it... and believe me, it probably took some time. There is also one of Ao no Kiseki, if we happen to knock this game out.

Spoiler

01
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
09
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22

 

[G-Han]

Now the text has been dumped, it looks like no one really knows how to proceed in order to tackle this behemoth. The next logical step would be translating, indeed, but since the Kiseki games are extremely context sensitive, as noted by Shinintendo, I think it's best to add two additional steps prior to the process of translating: preparation of the files and management of available resources.

Preparation: With the blog provided by zero_g_monkey here, someone should be able to reorganise the ".orig" tables in the sheets. The early beginning of the game, table "m3000.orig", is found toward the end of the second sheet. As a translator, I would imagine it would be more helpful to have this entire table at the beginning of the sheet(s). If that would mess with flame's inserter script, you could consider making a list of tables in what order the tables appear in-game. So basically, matching the screenshots with the ".orig" tables and listing these. This, however, doesn't take into account the NPC dialogues. I don't really know how they're formatted in the script files/dump either. Unlike Sora FC, in which you would move from region to region and the dialogues of NPCs would change based on events happening in that particular chapter, in Zero all NPCs are available at any moment and have their dialogue changed after every, if not most, major event(s). I'm not quite sure how to tackle this problem -- maybe sort them by town and chapter? I'm only guessing right now.

Resources: What this project need is finding someone who is intimately familiar with the Kiseki series, who has already finished Zero (and since there's a lot of foreshadowing, preferably Ao as well), and is willing to serve as a dedicated translator. This might sound obvious - and it is - but I think it's crucial for a game like this. If you've played through the game once in Japanese, you understand and might even be able to identify with the characters. If you haven't finished the game or start playing while translating, haven't got an inkling as to who Lloyd, Randy, Colin etc. really are. It's like chatting on IRC: at first, the only available information about others are user names and whatever they're saying, and only after having invested some time with them, you're able to understand their personalities - not to mention to translate this into a different language. Alteratively, the role could be split in 1) a Kiseki loving dedicated translator and 2) a walking Kiseki encyclopaedia/dedicated editor, of course.

It's still early here and I'm not able to put my thoughts on paper properly, but I hope it makes sense.

 

[zero_g_monkey]

I'm currently working on redoing the scripts by chapter as well as trying to get the misc stuff translated. It is time consuming but there is another format for the dialog dumps down below the first three with the files separated by sheet. Yeah it looks really disorganized at the moment, but there is a whole lot going on behind the scenes at the moment.

 

[zero_g_monkey]

Here is a sample of the format I am working on for the dialog stuff. Feedback is welcome. I am having to manually edit these because I absolutely cannot find the pointers for the missing dialog bits yet. But I really don't mind doing a manual extract sometimes. Falcom is evil for random stuff being all over the place and it is easier to catch it like this.


Now on the other hand.... If some programmer has some free time and would be willing to make a small tool that can dump stuff with simple (well mostly simple pointers) to help with creating real clean dumps of the misc stuff. I would appreciate it. Also I am in search of somebody who specializes in image modification. I have been editing the images for say the menu screens and such but when I go to reinsert them, the screen is blank. I notice the tool I use from the Falcom tools collection (hehehehe) just isn't working or else I am using the wrong tool to edit it. I believe they are 8-bit index bitmaps stored in an .itp container file. Should I be using photoshop or just plain paint? If I am using photoshop is there some settings I need to be extra careful to notice? Thanks in advance.

About the dumper. The pointers are all reverse style (I believe that is little edian is the proper term). The tables are 16 bit and back to back, except for the item stuff. Those files have an pair of pointers but it is no problem to edit them manually. Just extremely time consuming and it looks like all my time right now is gonna be devoted to choking people with information with these scripts. Lol. If anybody has questions, feel free to pm me or just leave them here. I wanna try to share all the info I can about this stuff with the rest of the world so that we can all come up with solutions for it.




[sorry about the double posts]

 

[GHANMI]

Make of this what you will, but Xseed recently confirmed Trails: Second Chapter, and Brandish, will be indeed effectively their final PSP projects (unless "Brandish somehow sells very well on PS Vita".. yeah )
http://www.facebook.com/XSEEDGames/posts/10152202944783354
Vic Ireland has one single J-RPG he hasn't announced (highly hinted to be Konami-owned...)

In other words, a Danganronpa/Type-0/Brandish situation isn't very likely for any potential PSP RPG fan-translations, thankfully.

 

[zero_g_monkey]

I am a long time fan of Brandish... but it would be a second coming type miracle if they even break even with Brandish on the vita. Which is sad because for dungeon crawler/you better plan ahead or die type games. It was the first to make me actually kick my television back in the day. As for the other legend games, I will still continue to work on them even if they are announced. This is a hobby and has been for almost 15 years for me. Even if it turns out I have to use online translators to give my mind a break sometimes. LOL.

 

[flame1234]

It doesn't matter because even so, they could announce localization of this game (Zero) because Falcom made an improved version for Vita. It's not technically a violation of the statement since it's for Vita.
I don't think our translation, if it is ever done, will steal any sales from such a product. I'm really quite liberal when it comes to things like this. The reason is that a commercial product will be of higher quality, plus it has the Vita version improvements that ours won't have. Ours will have the advantage of being cheaper.

It might not be very likely since Zero is a little bigger even than Sora no Kiseki 2nd chapter.

 

[zero_g_monkey]

This is a little strange but it looks like Falcom has changed the official site for Zero. Might be able to scrape some new info out of it...


Edit. Still has same PSP site but they made one for the Vita upgrade. LOL.

 

[Shinintendo]

Just random translations of the file "weapons,misc... etc"
Tell me if you like it (couldn't update the files, It's restricted now)

Spoiler

捜査手帳 -Investigation Notebook
料理手帳-Cooking Notebook
釣り手帳-Fishing Notebook
戦闘手帳-Combat Notebook
自治州の地図- Map of the self-governed state
クロスベル自治州の地図。\n - Map of the self-governed state CrossBell (kurosuberu)
現在地を確認することができる。- It is possible to confirm the current location.
クロスベル市の地図 -Map of CrossBell City
クロスベル市内を網羅した、観光客向けの地図。\n - Comprehensive Map of CrossBell city, map for tourists.
市内散策の頼れる味方。- Dependable ally of the city walkers (citizens)
練習用武器-Weapon Practice
戦術書・星- Tactics book · star
エリィとランディが『ライアットスター』を習得する。- Randy and Ellie learned 『Riot Star』.
戦術書・月 -Tactics book · month
戦術書・太陽- Tactics book · sun
ランディとティオが『ハーケンストーム』を習得する。 - Tio and Randy learned 『Haken Storm』.
ノービスロッド- Novice Rod
扱いやすく調整された汎用タックル。\nノービスロッド - Easy to handle modified generic tackle.

 

[zero_g_monkey]

Crap! Thanks for bringing that to my attention. Still learning to use Google Spreadsheets. I think I have it fixed now.

Looks good on the translations. Gonna go ahead and insert them into the spreadsheet. Feel free to add anymore and if it still says you can't edit them, let me know. I have the files in another format on the pc.