I'm having some problems translating Etrian Odyssey 2. Since I came into this (hobby) project a complete noob, I'd like to see if there's anyone else who's seen the same thing happen before and would be willing to help me.
First off here are some images to show a little of what I've already done, so you don't get the idea I'm a *completely* worthless noob.
Right now there are some translation work-arounds (severe shortening) because of the 8 character limit. This is a project for understanding and ease of use rather than a complete English overhaul, so it's fine for me (for now).
You may notice that the "LV:" part of Allslash has been garbled. This is actually a minor problem arising from the real problem I'll explain soon. This will be mentioned later, so be patient.
Here's a pretty nice view of how well my table file is working. I actually started this process by making an EO2-tailored table file from scratch. I'm only about 360 characters into defining characters, which is why you'll notice parts written in kanji are missing. I stopped pretty early into the kanji section because they were jumping around so much and it was taking so long. I stopped at around 160-170 (HEX) into the table file. One of the entries in this hex shows us 3D8, meaning I'm probably lacking at least 278 kanji definitions. Probably a lot more. I may continue plugging in values, but for now this is more than enough to give a nice visual helper.
Here's a good view of my problem. As you can see, each skill is 8 characters long. Any skill that falls short of 8 characters has the end flushed with 0000 to make 8 characters. Any skill that = exactly 8 characters has a row of 0000s placed on the next line, splitting it from the next skill. Other than this, there are no breaks in the skills all the way from the first class to the last. There's also no compression, and even heavily repeated skills (stat ups) are listed every single time. In case anyone asks, the line I highlighted has the break after it because it was 8 japanese characters before the translation.
My problem goes something like this. An 8 character limit is really too short for English. To add onto that last statement though, the game doesn't even give me 8 characters to work with. I can only use 8 characters if the next line is filled with 0000 to break the skills apart. Without it I get that corruption on "LV:" you saw, and a few other choice graphical problems. As you scroll through the skill screen, once you hit Rayslash every skill name you see disappears (they still show up on the lower info section though, making it cosmetic) until you scroll Rayslash off the screen, at which point everything pops back like nothing happened. This basically means I'm limited to 7 characters unless I want cosmetic problems. And before it's mentioned, I've tried tailoring the file to match the scheme. The problem there is that the game has the skills pinpointed to that line and that line only. If I remove unnecessary lines or add them in, the skills shift names to reflect the line they think they should be. This also means that simply working in a smaller font for the game to allow more characters is impossible, at least until I can safely reroute the skill name lines to where I want them to be.
So, anyone see anything like this before? I have a feeling it's pointer related, but haven't bothered to really dredge around looking for more info in case someone else already has experience with something similar. The items I'm working with here are pretty easy to spot if you unpack the rom. I'm not going to post them here because that would probably be illegal.
On a side note, the script text is fairly easy to edit. Items seem to be a real mess, skills are fairly easy but come with a 7 character limit, but the game text seems to be fairly flexible. Not that I'm going to edit it any time soon (or ever), but it probably wouldn't be that much of a job.
First off here are some images to show a little of what I've already done, so you don't get the idea I'm a *completely* worthless noob.
Right now there are some translation work-arounds (severe shortening) because of the 8 character limit. This is a project for understanding and ease of use rather than a complete English overhaul, so it's fine for me (for now).
You may notice that the "LV:" part of Allslash has been garbled. This is actually a minor problem arising from the real problem I'll explain soon. This will be mentioned later, so be patient.
Here's a pretty nice view of how well my table file is working. I actually started this process by making an EO2-tailored table file from scratch. I'm only about 360 characters into defining characters, which is why you'll notice parts written in kanji are missing. I stopped pretty early into the kanji section because they were jumping around so much and it was taking so long. I stopped at around 160-170 (HEX) into the table file. One of the entries in this hex shows us 3D8, meaning I'm probably lacking at least 278 kanji definitions. Probably a lot more. I may continue plugging in values, but for now this is more than enough to give a nice visual helper.
Here's a good view of my problem. As you can see, each skill is 8 characters long. Any skill that falls short of 8 characters has the end flushed with 0000 to make 8 characters. Any skill that = exactly 8 characters has a row of 0000s placed on the next line, splitting it from the next skill. Other than this, there are no breaks in the skills all the way from the first class to the last. There's also no compression, and even heavily repeated skills (stat ups) are listed every single time. In case anyone asks, the line I highlighted has the break after it because it was 8 japanese characters before the translation.
My problem goes something like this. An 8 character limit is really too short for English. To add onto that last statement though, the game doesn't even give me 8 characters to work with. I can only use 8 characters if the next line is filled with 0000 to break the skills apart. Without it I get that corruption on "LV:" you saw, and a few other choice graphical problems. As you scroll through the skill screen, once you hit Rayslash every skill name you see disappears (they still show up on the lower info section though, making it cosmetic) until you scroll Rayslash off the screen, at which point everything pops back like nothing happened. This basically means I'm limited to 7 characters unless I want cosmetic problems. And before it's mentioned, I've tried tailoring the file to match the scheme. The problem there is that the game has the skills pinpointed to that line and that line only. If I remove unnecessary lines or add them in, the skills shift names to reflect the line they think they should be. This also means that simply working in a smaller font for the game to allow more characters is impossible, at least until I can safely reroute the skill name lines to where I want them to be.
So, anyone see anything like this before? I have a feeling it's pointer related, but haven't bothered to really dredge around looking for more info in case someone else already has experience with something similar. The items I'm working with here are pretty easy to spot if you unpack the rom. I'm not going to post them here because that would probably be illegal.
On a side note, the script text is fairly easy to edit. Items seem to be a real mess, skills are fairly easy but come with a 7 character limit, but the game text seems to be fairly flexible. Not that I'm going to edit it any time soon (or ever), but it probably wouldn't be that much of a job.
