ROM Hack Nora and the Time Studio: The Witch of the Misty Forest – English Translation

[BlackRekuzza]

This game looks great=) Good luck with your transation. It's a pity that I can't help=(

 

[Pharmland]

I'm surprised this got some activity again four months after... here's to a bit more activity again another four months after... I've always wanted to play this game in English.

Atlus and Gust? How come it wasn't translated officialy?

I don't think Atelier Annie did very well. Two more games came after that, Atelier Lina and Rise, that were also not localized then came along Nora to Toki no Koubou afterwards. All games are very similar so...

 

[Sora de Eclaune]

I am all for this translation, but I have a small nitpick...

"Chrono Magic" sounds a bit default. A base term that doesn't sound as exotic as the game's premise or setting, honestly. I would actually pick something slightly different...like "Magichron"! I mean, it would shave off a couple of letters in the case you run into a place where "Chrono Magic" is referenced by name but wouldn't fit, and "Magichron" is still saying the same thing. Plus, it sounds sort of exotic and like a fantasy magic term.

Another one I thought of was "Alchronomy", which would be similar but take up more letters.

I mean, if they said "Chrono Magic" in the original Japanese it would be okay, but an official translation probably would have changed that term anyway.

 

[Blackiris.]

I definitely won't call it Chrono Magic in the final version. I agree it sounds way too boring. People suggested "Chronomancy" to me which is definitely better than "Chrono Magic". I'm not really been working on Nora at the moment, though, but I'll definitely keep your suggestions in mind.

I've played Atelier Annie in December, by the way, and Nora is A LOT like Annie.

 

[Woodland]

Hello! Is this translation still happening? I'm really looking forward to this!

 

[Blackiris.]

It's not happening at the moment for various reasons, but it's not entirely abandoned. I think I'll try to get some work done in the next couple of days, but translation is still at <10% (without much editing done), so there won't be any solid results anytime soon.

 

[Isegrim]

Man, I would love to see an english release one day. It looks so promising.
Ganbare!
Du schaffst das!Vielleicht finden sich irgendwann noch ein paar Leute. Who knows.

 

[Blackiris.]

Good news: I've dedicated my last 2.5 days to this project, and I've made some good progress. Main scenario translation is now at 130/1615, and I've started with the graphics. With some help from Auryn (back in August) I was now able to edit a good chunk of the menu text graphics. The names of 64 (out of 66) characters in dialogues are now displayed in English. That was a damn lot of manual work, since there was no font readily available, so I had to recreate the English names from a slighly hand-resized version of the standard font and put the names together character by character.

I'm done with that, though, and some of the main menu graphics have been edited in the same way. Now it looks like this:

I had to shorten names or use abbreviations a couple of times. Adventurer A is now known as Adventurer, and some more information was lost in the progress, like the "Man With Soup in Face" who is now simply a "Man" since 10 characters is the maximum for names in textboxes.

I have edited almost all .NARC graphics (with lots of trial & error), now I need the help of some experienced hackers: How do I handle .nbgcr and .nspcr graphics? I haven't been able to get CrystalTile2 to display them, let alone edit them. Google also yields almost no results. Help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Woodland]

Do you think you could release a beta version for us to try out and play? Since it looks like you've translated some of the stuff that would make the game a bit more playable Also, if it's worth, I think you're best off messaging one of the more experienced hackers directly, since they might not check this thread.

 

[Blackiris.]

I'll see what I can do. Shouldn't be a problem in theory, but I don't know how to create an IPS patch yet.

And yup, I'll look for someone to message.

(I've found the item translation bug, by the way. Apparently I cannot change the name of the furniture and stuff in Nora's room, or else the furniture does not appear. Not exactly sure why, but apparently the game is checking for the Japanese names at some point. Don't know what I can do about that right now, but I'm glad I found the bug.)

 

[DarthNemesis]

Apparently I cannot change the name of the furniture and stuff in Nora's room, or else the furniture does not appear. Not exactly sure why, but apparently the game is checking for the Japanese names at some point.

Have you tried modifying a furniture item name without changing the length? It's possible that there are additional pointers to the names that need to be updated if they get moved around.

 

[jjjewel]

If DarthNemesis's strategy didn't work, check if you have the same text in arm9.bin or any overlay. Sometimes that's where games check for matching strings.

For .nbgcr and .nspcr graphics, check my post on the first page of this thread. Not sure whether you can code your own program but you only need to get rid of the first 8 bytes (with header SOLCOMP) to get a normal LZ10 compressed file. For an easy way to check, extract the .nbgcr or .nspcr file and then open it in CrystalTile2. Place your mouse on the 8th byte which should have a value of 0x10. Select Tools on the menu bar and select LZ77/Huffman (Extract U). Save your file and you should get a narc file which contains standard nds graphics.

 

[Blackiris.]

@DarthNemesis: Yep, I suspected that as well, but that didn't work either.

@jjjewel: I would have searched for the string next as well. If I can just replace it in wherever place it is checked without creating errors as a consequence, that would be cool. I suspect I'll at least have to adjust some pointers, though

I'll try the .nsgcr/.nspcr stuff, doesn't sound to complicated! Sorry, I kinda forgot you already wrote something about it last year.

Thanks for the help, you two!

Edit: It works indeed! Glad it's so simple.

 

[Blackiris.]

I've extracted and edited the file now. How do I best re-compress it into a .nspcr file again?

 

[DarthNemesis]

I see some furniture item names in overlay9_0004.bin after extracting it (it's compressed) with crystaltile2.

Edit: Tried changing the text in the overlay and it still showed up in Japanese in the game, but editing only item.dat seemed to work fine:

 

[Blackiris.]

Hm, that's interesting. So maybe the problem does not (directly) lie in the names? Maybe there's some sort of pointer miscalculation on my side, but the item names (i.e. in menus) where all displayed correctly and I have compared the unedited item.dat file with the edited file without spotting any inconsistencies. I'll play around with it tomorrow and see what I can find out - I'm glad, though, that fixing this seems to be relatively simple.

 

[Blackiris.]

DarthNemesis, how did you extract the overlay9_0004.bin file?

And about the bug: The furniture (Table, Shelf, ...) does not appear in the beginning of the game. If I load a savegame with changed names of items that were already there before, they don't disappear. Could you start a new game and check if the table appears when the name is not テーブル?

 

[Greymane]

Blackiris. When and if you need testers i dont mind testing for you. I need experience in that branche anyways (tmap next testengineer). And would like to help even if only in small amounts. started learning japanese but i am still busy with the hiragane first.

 

[Blackiris.]

Sure, I'll need testers sooner or later, so I'm happy for everyone offering help.
Nora especially is a game that should be tested by as many people as possible because there are lots and lots choices that lead to small branches, e.g. finishing or failing a quest, or certain points where you can initiate an event with a party member of your choice. I just started translating an event where you can give a flower bouquet to various people in town (including party members), and there are, like, 50 different scenes for that, all of them very short. But I suspect this event is recurring every year (the game spans a time of three years), because I can trigger only about 10 of them right now (year 1).

It will still be a while until I have anything testable, though.

 

[DarthNemesis]

DarthNemesis, how did you extract the overlay9_0004.bin file?

In crystaltile2, Tools -> NDS File System -> right click on the overlay file -> Extract. To reinsert it, select Compression on the same menu.

And about the bug: The furniture (Table, Shelf, ...) does not appear in the beginning of the game. If I load a savegame with changed names of items that were already there before, they don't disappear. Could you start a new game and check if the table appears when the name is not テーブル?

Ah, I was loading a saved game. Interesting, the furniture is missing with only the modified item.dat, but it appears correctly when both item.dat and overlay9_0004.bin are modified. That overlay must be what sets up the initial room layout for a new game.