ROM Hack Game Center CX : Arino no Chosenjo 2 (New Start?)

Version 1.0 - Initial Release

Version 1.0.1 - Fixes a number of text overrun issues and spelling/typos in the Adventure games, chats, phone conversations.
- Adds "Back" label to JoycoLand Game Instruction screen.
- Fixes potential issue with Guadia Quest Saga Title on first use.
- Fixes magazine contents and consistency of names across manuals, magazines, chats and challenges.

Version 1.0.2 - Fixes many more cases of text overrunning the window border (Adventure Games, RPG, Chat)
- Fixes some of the multiple choice dialogue options (didn't fit the window originally)
- Fixes GQS bug where START was displayed as ST when you started it for the first time.
- Adds a few in-line graphics to the magazines and manuals that were missing
- Fixes numerous spelling errors and typos (Adventure Game)
- Cleans up a handful of the Skill/Magic descriptions in GQS.

Version 1.0.3 - Adds the Ending Epilogue Slideshow in English
- Fixes apostrophes in the manuals and magazines to be single-byte
- Numerous inconsistancy fixes with the RPG
- Corrections to main dialogue and telephone conversations
- Fixes a game crashing bug with an optional chat late in the game
- Correct several line overruns in the Adventures and RPG.

Version 1.0.4 - Fixes ellpises in the main story, dialogue, phone conversaition and chats
- Fixes some grammatical issues with the magazines and manuals
- Fixes some of the inconsistent items/skills and their descriptions in the RPG

Version 1.0.5 - Fixes the rest (?) of the ellipses in the main dialogue barring full pages of them.
- Added the Fuji TV logo in English.
- Changed the Triotos DX "lose" tile in Endless mode to not have 詰 written on it.

Version 1.0.6 - Tried to address an issue with garbage characters at the end of some multiple choice
screens (ones that have "..." in them)
- Fixed numerous text overrun issues with the Adventures and RPG.
- Fixed a few more ellipses in the main dialogue.
- Fixed various typos in the manuals and Adventure games.

Version 1.0.7 - Should finally fix the garbage characters at the end of some decision options during the main dialogue
- Fixed a number of issues with the 2nd Adventure game

Version 1.1.0 - Ending Epilogue now works
- Adjusted RPG/Adventure Game text appropriately
- Changed ellipses in RPG and Adventure game to 3 full stops
- Very ending character in 2nd Adventure game is now in English
- Fixed Wiz-Man Instruction manual background
- Minor text changes to the Adventure and RPG (about 500+)

Version 1.2.0 - Fixed Japanese in background (Tent tops) of Rally King EX
- Fixed challenge screen to reflect challenges you forfeited
- Fixed Bamco banner on the Adventure Game world map
- Fixed the game select background in the shop to have English
- Renamed many enemies, items and places in the RPG to keep in line with the Guadia Quest universe
- Fixed "Poisoned" icon in the RPG to not have Japanese
- Several fixes to the manuals and magazines
- Many corrections to fix consistency of item names and general spacing in the RPG
- Fixed some challenge text descriptions
- Reworked the look of the menus in the RPG
- Changed the lowercase letter font in the RPG/Adventure to not has so much wide vertical variety in placement.
- Fixed ellipses problem with the optional Chat and Phone conversations
- Adjusted the text in the Adventure Games (appearance)
- Fixed a few spelling and grammar errors in the Adventure games
- Fixed Daily Challenge messages related to time of day and when you clear a challenge

Version 1.3.0 - Fixed several (hundred) inconsistencies with items names, skills and spells in the RPG
- Reworded some of the dialogue in the Adventure games.
- Updated Magazines to reflect changes in RPG and Adventure
- Fixes to the optional Chat and Phone conversations.
- Rewording of main game text that ran over the border of the window.
- Changed the Game Select screen game title graphics (room and shop)

Version 1.3.3 - Fixed a few spacing and position issues with the Adventure games.
- Redid a few of the game select screen game titles in the top right.
- Made some small consistency changes to the RPG and magazines.

The No$GBA emulator has known issues with this game. The fog in Super Demon Returns is messed up, and the portraits in the Adventure game start to glitch out after a while. There is also a strange whitening effect overall on by default.

Desmume works flawlessly but enabling OpenGL may cause issues with some of the 3D textures like Arino's crown and your main character portrait. If you have sound issues in Desmume, particularly with Arino and the announcer, set your Sound Settings to "Synchronous Mode"

The voice data of Arino and the Announcer are left in Japanese in the game. There is no way to add subtitles and even if we could replace the sound data with other voices, there are 1290 voice samples from Arino alone in the game and another 50 or so from the announcer. A chart is in progress explaining what each one is, though may or common grunts or off-handed comments related to the game you are playing.

The RPG (Guadia Quest Saga) and (less so the) Adventure games have a mind boggling possible number of combinations of actions, situations, items, skills and dialogues. There may exist a random combination of these that results in something unexpected. All games have been tested from beginning to end, however.

The Adventure games have word entry puzzles. Mixed capitalization may result in incorrect entry. Stick with all lowercase or uppercase. Camel case works for names, however.

TRANSLATION TEAM:

Translation Team

Project Lead

Aaron Tokunaga-Chmielowiec

Programming

XVirus
Nagato
Aaron T.C.
SubnetPie

Translation

Aaron T.C.
Kikuchiyo
Nina

Graphics

Mars_X
SubnetPie
Pix3l
snapman

Testing

Sora de Eclaune
Celice
Freqman
Taik

Website

Mark W. Datysgeld

Original Team

XVirus
Zach
Nina
Ray Barnholt
zari-gani

Special Thanks

KRiFFiD
Fishaman P
DarknessSavior
Tiny Cartridge
8bitWalugi
windwakr
GHANMI
Arras
AnotherGamer
cubeboy
DaVince
HumbertHumbert
usr_share
joek0
Calitar
Kobalos
xnamkcor X
gato felix
Enrico Tessmer
Brady Kachan
Anthony Baussard
Scott Burk

Hello,

I'm sorry if I am breaking any secret taboos by posting anew like this. If the moderators wish to move this elsewhere, so mote it be. I was a big fan of both games but I noticed there wasn't even a fan translation of the second one. I would love to offer my services/time (when I have it) and/or just tackle the project myself. I have read the rom hacking and translation threads in this forum and can probably take it from there but I wanted to make sure that nobody else was already working on it. I contacted the hosts of a translation project over at http://rgc2.moonfruit.com/ at the beginning of this year but have heard nothing back.

Just a brief bio about me, I came to Japan 15 years ago and still live here along with my wife and two kids. I've worked as a technical translator and interpreter for Hitachi as various tech and non-tech jobs. (The economy is tough sometimes) Gaming-wise I have always been a huge gamer, and I'm sure some quick googling would reveal I have a history with music games and Japanese arcades and have been featured in the media such as the book Arcade Mania : The Turbo-Charged World of Japan's Game Centers and the film 100 Yen : The Japanese Arcade Experience.

Even though I have my JLPT 1kyu and interpreter certification from the now-defunct JIPTA I'm bound to have some awkward phrases and speech due to how I was raised and became accustomed to the language as well as through work, including tech translations of awful, awful Japanese manuals by corporate IT staff. In terms of ROM hacking experience I don't have that much. I messed around with Megaman 2 for fun as well as Super Mario Bros and I touched on the FF3 NES translation by Andrew Jackson (we went to the same University).

I guess that is it. I'll just start with getting the menus, dialogue and in-game magazines translated, that is the easiest. The adventure game and RPG are probably going to be my stumbling blocks and honestly I'm not any kind of artist so any artwork changes are probably going to be a problem. Again, if anyone has already tackled some of this and is willing to share/work with me, I would appreciate it. If not, oh well, it looks like I have to start from scratch.

Best Regards,

Aaron

8BitWalugi · Aug 24, 2013

Oh wow! Someone's actually going to give this a proper go, and not just anyone, but someone with a reputation to boot!

As a Game Center CX fan, the state of the current translation has had me a bit upset, and as far as I know, it's the only one out there. If he doesn't get back to you, odds are you'll have to start from scratch. :/

But, that aside, welcome to GBATemp Aaron! I'm 8BitWalugi, not so much a veteran of the site but a long time member. Please enjoy your stay, but of course there'll be the usual forum unpleasantries.

I really don't want RGC2 see it's 'Last Continue', so I give my full support and hope for this project!

I can't help you much, but I do have a way with contacting people and whatnot. I once kickstarted a 500 EUR donation drive for Wii hacker Crediar to release a project, but that's another thread's story.

I could try to get in touch with the creator if you need I guess, is what I'm saying.

Best of luck!

Aaron Chmielowiec · Aug 24, 2013

Hello, and thanks for the quick reply.

Oh, I'm not asking for money or donations of any monetary value, but thanks anyway. I would just like to see this taken underway.

Above anything else I think I need help with the technical aspects of hacking the ROM. I own the game and can play/test it and all that but what would really help me is a dump of all of the text in the game. I work much better with large dumps of text I can munch on all at once. I can probably do all of the text in the game rather quickly if I had that.

8BitWalugi · Aug 24, 2013

Aaron Chmielowiec said:
Hello, and thanks for the quick reply.

Oh, I'm not asking for money or donations of any monetary value, but thanks anyway. I would just like to see this taken underway.

Above anything else I think I need help with the technical aspects of hacking the ROM. I own the game and can play/test it and all that but what would really help me is a dump of all of the text in the game. I work much better with large dumps of text I can munch on all at once. I can probably do all of the text in the game rather quickly if I had that.

Oh, nono, I didn't want to do another donation drive.

But I can ask around and see if I can track down the guy.

I'm sure someone knows how to do a text dump of the ROM... Maybe check the ROM Hacking section?

Aaron Chmielowiec · Aug 24, 2013

Hrm, I managed to extract everything in the ROM (used DSLazy) and got bombarded with a bajillion files...I'll need to poke around this a bit but at least it is a step in ~~the right~~ any direction.

...and it looks like I found the scripts for all the in-game magazines and game manuals (under data\scene\magazine\magazine_dat\) This helps a lot.

EDIT> They are in SJIS format. They also contain some odd formatting tags in there but at least I have the text to work with.

8BitWalugi · Aug 24, 2013

Oh man I'm getting excited for some reason..!

Good luck with this!

Aaron Chmielowiec · Aug 24, 2013

Okay, I think I found at least most of the rest of the Text using CrystalTile2 though it is spread over quite a lot of files (ndsheader.bin, the overlay.bin files, retro\gqs\ has a bunch, too).

This gives me something to chomp on, though something tells me I'm going to bang my head hard when it comes time to put English text in, especially if it is longer than the original text in terms of bytes. If that isn't an issue or I can figure that out (or get help), I can do chunks at a time and have the hopefully-so-pleasant folks here take a look at it/proofread/correct/suggest improvements.

The images...yeah, I'll have to tackle that later. And maybe I shouldn't even attempt replacing the voice data even though they are all small samples without doing some heavy research.

At least I found what I was looking for.

8BitWalugi · Aug 24, 2013

Aaron Chmielowiec said:
At least I found what I was looking for.

I can see my signature! Haha!

I'm looking around to see if I can find a way to contact the Something-Awful team. Zari-Gani was working on the translation at one point, so they might have access to the current translation.

There's also SA Gccx on Facebook too, I'm about to contact them.

StorMyu · Aug 25, 2013

learn what a pointer is, that should help you.

Aaron Chmielowiec · Aug 25, 2013

Oh, I know what a pointer is. I'm just curious how to mess with them in the context of this project/translation.

Anyway, I have been dumping the text into a more useful format just for translation purposes so I can sit down and work this through (I work a full time job but my commute to work is almost 2 hours so I have time on the trains to do some of this). I'm willing to share it once I have something worth sharing. When I have something done for example one of the instruction booklets in the game I'll get my hands dirty trying to hammer the translated text back in. If that works then that is a pretty big milestone for me and then it is just the tedium of going through every line in the game.

(And testing it/proofreading)

StorMyu · Aug 25, 2013

Aaron Chmielowiec said:
Oh, I know what a pointer is. I'm just curious how to mess with them in the context of this project/translation.

That means you don't know what a pointer is.
http://www.romhacking.net/start/

Aaron Chmielowiec · Aug 25, 2013

Thank you for the link.

I understand it is a reference to another memory address. I do have a bachelors degree in CS but I haven't tackled anything in this way before so it looks like I have my work cut out for me.

Even though I was hired at places like Hitachi as a systems engineer I always ended up being shuffled off to be some sole translator or interpreter (read : haven't really made much use of the stuff I did in University) apart from lots of scripting and a C# project that is still running.

I appreciate the help. At this stage, all input is good.

Aaron Chmielowiec · Aug 25, 2013

*UPDATE*

Well, I got it working in the sense I messed around and changed some text successfully.

Some things to note that I found are that single half-space quotes and apostrophes (" and ') didn't display (there was just a space), but the double-byte ones showed up...odd.

There are also codes in the text that indicate colors and icons like keypad directions and buttons.

It looks like I'm on my way...kind of.

I have a separate file made up with all the instruction manuals. I am preparing something similar for the 18 magazine files. (There are actually 19 but the 19th is filled with a lot of dummy data from the looks of it)

Wish me luck.

yugix · Aug 25, 2013

Aaron Chmielowiec said:
*UPDATE*

Well, I got it working in the sense I messed around and changed some text successfully.

Some things to note that I found are that single half-space quotes and apostrophes (" and ') didn't display (there was just a space), but the double-byte ones showed up...odd.

There are also codes in the text that indicate colors and icons like keypad directions and buttons.

It looks like I'm on my way...kind of.

I have a separate file made up with all the instruction manuals. I am preparing something similar for the 18 magazine files. (There are actually 19 but the 19th is filled with a lot of dummy data from the looks of it)

Wish me luck.

If my thoughts are right, it may be because of Font. Since the font in-game don't have half-space " and '.

Celice · Aug 25, 2013

I fucking love you. Please keep it up!

Chief Arino demands it!!

StorMyu · Aug 25, 2013

Check if you see an something.NFTR or something.NTFR file in the game (I always mix up those two I never remember but it's one of those name)
if there is you will have all the answers to your questions. If not, it's more complicated ^^

Aaron Chmielowiec · Aug 26, 2013

Okay, this is just a note to say I haven't died in the past 24 hours and I have been looking through the game text. The action games probably do not require any translation (There is a big word "GATTAI!" when two players join their ships in GunDuel but I don't know if it is worth it to try and change that to something like Power Up! or Joint Power! or similar related words (but probably not the literal Combine, Join or Merge which all sound odd used like that) or just leave it since in the 80s and the days of the $2 translation they probably would have left bit words like that anyway because it was "cool" to have random words like that. That is small potatoes though, since the two big ones that will need some work are Guadia Quest Saga (RPG) and Detective Kacho (both Chapters), particularly the last one.

One concern with those last two (actually three) is that the name entry screen has no option for roman characters at all. If it is just a case of swapping the kana used in the name entry with the roman alphabet since it is its own entity then this isn't anything to worry about but if it is something different I might be banging my head against a wall for a while.

The manuals vary in size by are about 20 pages each for the main games. The 5 special games you can play at the game shop have instruction "sheets" but they are only 1 page so that isn't bad. The in-game magazines vary in length as well but they are in the ballpark of the length of the game manuals. (About 15 pages or so, actually)

Then there is a surprising amount of dialogue between you and young Arino that happens throughout the game. I keep blowing it off but there is actually quite a bit of volume to it even though most of it is simplistic.

With that, the special Game Training Tool and the in-game Menus I think that will do it...Ah yes, the intro crawl (Star Wars-esque).

Anyway, I'll keep you posted.

Arlock41 · Aug 27, 2013

Take your time man. Rome wasn't built in a day.

N-TG · Aug 28, 2013

With such credentials, I believe that are some people here that can help. I hope they'll see this and make a small team doing everything and you focus on the translation (which is the hardest part of a Japanese game).

I just love Gamecenter CX, watched that show for years now and suggested it to a lot of my friends. Thanks for the effort, since this game didn't manage to get a proper English release :/

Aaron Chmielowiec · Aug 28, 2013

I'm slowly figuring this out but it is very tedious work. Here is something I never did upload yesterday. Nothing is finalized in terms of translation but I wanted to play with the different font colors and mixing the image with the text. I did notice that in the intro it talks about what I thought was "Arthur's Gemstone" or something but in the ending "Engrish" it is called "Arthrian Stone". I think I should play through some more of this to jog my memory.

Since then I've worked on the games you play at the game shop (1 page manual each) and I have all the Challenges done, though trying to fit all the text in one line is a bit of a nuisance.

Maybe there will be more to look at when I do the menu screens and more of the basic interface.

ROM Hack Game Center CX : Arino no Chosenjo 2 (New Start?)

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