Hacking Final Fantasy Type-0 RomHacking

[NSRSM]

If you are curious about what this work is like: http://kotaku.com/getting-jrpgs-out-in-english-is-harder-than-you-think-1441094168

I can vouch for every one of these examples.

Yeah the thing about the JP language is that the simplest of sentences can have many meanings and is easily misread and loses the context of what it is trying to convey.

 

[HHTurtle]

Good read. The article pretty much mentions everything we have to deal with while translating the game.

 

[LoyalZero1]

Translators are here! Translators are here! Thank you so much!

 

[SkyBladeCloud]

If team leader want our help... we help ;-)

I would love to have the help of such a great team in the Type-0 translation project. I would definitely make fans enjoy the game sooner.
So far we've been using a SVN server to keep all our progress synced, we are making steady progress but yeah, the more translators we have, the sooner the translation will be finished. However, having a very large team could be difficult to manage. For the time being, there is only one active proofreader (coredecepts) who rewrites all translated text so they make sense in the game's context/universe. As long as he's able to keep up with the translators' activities, I'm ok with adding more people.

Feel free to add me on Skype (SkyBladeCloud) to talk about it (or simply give me your Skype ID ).
We are also in need of graphic/video editors, but since the text translation itself is gonna take some time, we can leave those for later

~Sky

 

[Maverick81PL]

I would love to have the help of such a great team in the Type-0 translation project. I would definitely make fans enjoy the game sooner.
So far we've been using a SVN server to keep all our progress synced, we are making steady progress but yeah, the more translators we have, the sooner the translation will be finished. However, having a very large team could be difficult to manage. For the time being, there is only one active proofreader (coredecepts) who rewrites all translated text so they make sense in the game's context/universe. As long as he's able to keep up with the translators' activities, I'm ok with adding more people.

Feel free to add me on Skype (SkyBladeCloud) to talk about it (or simply give me your Skype ID ).
We are also in need of graphic/video editors, but since the text translation itself is gonna take some time, we can leave those for later

~Sky

I can manage graphics edit but no video, sorry... We almost finish our project (MHP3rd). When we finish we contact you and then we get to work on Type-0 and maybe when we finish we take another... who knows
I'm from Poland in Europe, but other members of TMO are from all world ;-)

BTW: I have also only one active proofreader :-/

 

[Solidmetalme]

I would love to have the help of such a great team in the Type-0 translation project. I would definitely make fans enjoy the game sooner.
So far we've been using a SVN server to keep all our progress synced, we are making steady progress but yeah, the more translators we have, the sooner the translation will be finished. However, having a very large team could be difficult to manage. For the time being, there is only one active proofreader (coredecepts) who rewrites all translated text so they make sense in the game's context/universe. As long as he's able to keep up with the translators' activities, I'm ok with adding more people.

Feel free to add me on Skype (SkyBladeCloud) to talk about it (or simply give me your Skype ID ).
We are also in need of graphic/video editors, but since the text translation itself is gonna take some time, we can leave those for later

~Sky

I might be able to help with the video part. Could you tell me what needs to be done on that?

 

[toroal]

._. that's getting big, thanks a lot, everyone.

 

[ZetaS]

Hey Sky, I just sent you a message over skype regarding possible help translating and/or editing. I don't have any experience translating games but I would love to learn! The language shouldn't be a problem, so please let me know if you guys could use the help.

 

[blackfire219]

I'm glad that the TMO will help on this project..thank u very much for accepting this project sir Maverick81PL!!

 

[SkyBladeCloud]

I might be able to help with the video part. Could you tell me what needs to be done on that?

Have a look:



Videos like the ones you'll find in 2:48 have some Japanese lines on them. For example, you can see in 2:55 Japanese text in the upper right corner. That's the kind of stuff that needs video edition. They are only a few and most of them are dates IIRC. Just so you can have an idea how it's supposed to look, check 27:34. This is a similar scene, but made of simple bitmap graphics, so no video edition was required here.

Actually most graphics in the game are bitmaps, and only a few a directly in the video stream. That's why video edition should be fast.

~Sky

 

[Solidmetalme]

Have a look:



Videos like the ones you'll find in 2:48 have some Japanese lines on them. For example, you can see in 2:55 Japanese text in the upper right corner. That's the kind of stuff that needs video edition. They are only a few and most of them are dates IIRC. Just so you can have an idea how it's supposed to look, check 27:34. This is a similar scene, but made of simple bitmap graphics, so no video edition was required here.

Actually most graphics in the game are bitmaps, and only a few a directly in the video stream. That's why video edition should be fast.

~Sky

Yeah, I'll do it. Let me know when all that stuff is translated and I'll do my best to edit it in. The only thing I just need to know now is which file formats the videos are.

 

[SkyBladeCloud]

I would provide uncompressed AVI files to be edited. Mostly because they have to be reencoded then into PMF (PSP's video format). I hope the edition itself doesn't compromise video quality, but I know using uncompressed AVI's ensure the best result when encoding back to PMF.
So yeah, it would be great to have a video editor in the team. Simple process:

-I extract AVI's from PMF's (no quality loss)
-A translator gives us translation for those text (they are just a few so...)
-The editor edits them (here is where I'm concerned about quality loss (?))
-I recode them back to PMF
-Inserting the PMF back to the game with the translation tools make those text to appear in English "

Also, if I may ask, how would the edited video play in terms of effects over the original text?

Many thanks

~Sky

 

[coredecepts]

I'm up for trying a few different treatments for replacing those date stamps and seeing what works best. But we should discuss that elsewhere.

 

[GHANMI]

Maybe just adding with ASM (if the PSP can handle it) additional, smaller subs on the top of the screen would prevent risking a quality loss?

 

[SkyBladeCloud]

ASM won't help in this case, since events are coded in a custom language that runs on an interpreter. I already checked event files (they the ones who control subtitle timing), but so far I haven't come up with a way to disassemble them (let alone understand the custom disassembled code). It could be interesting to add new subtitles, if that doesn't change the overall feeling of the videos

~Sky

 

[SkyBladeCloud]

<Duplicated message>

 

[Solidmetalme]

I think I can do it with minimal quality loss. Otherwise I'll just experiment a bit.

 

[blackfire219]

it is better to add smaller subtitles on those video parts rather than video editing..to make sure there is no quality loss..but it's up to you guys..

 

[SkyBladeCloud]

it is better to add smaller subtitles on those video parts rather than video editing..to make sure there is no quality loss..but it's up to you guys..

Of course, but as of now, it's impossible for us to do it.

~Sky

 

[blackfire219]

Of course, but as of now, it's impossible for us to do it.

~Sky

i see..it is difficult to do if there are no video editors, so it will take some experiments..

Btw, is there any changes about the translation progress?

 

[dib]

I would strongly suggest not going overboard. We've seen projects flatline because they were too picky about how the final product turned out.

90% of the people who are going to end up playing this just want it for that: to _play_ it. They're not looking for perfection. Considering Square up and abandoned them, having _something_ is better than what's available right now.

And consider the history of official translations has always been imperfect. Look at the older FF games of the SNES era. FF Tactics. Famously botched, but still were published because they were good enough.

Don't worry so much about subtitles over videos and discerning the writers intent in a language that doesn't directly translate. It should be readable and let people fill in the gaps.