Hacking Legend of Heroes Translation

[Guren no heya kara]

Cool. What's the girl's name? I've found some suspicious dialogues in the EBOOT and I guess they are hers, by looking at how she ends the sentence there.

As for the eboot (a cute little mess that will have to be deeply tested) I did these lines today

197, 201, 201-4, 206-9, 211-14,
222, 23, 24, 26, 27, 29, 31,
233, 34, 36, 38, 40, 42, 43, 45,
250, 51, 54, 55, 257-311, 313,
330-36, 338-40, 344-48, 350, 352,
354-63, 365-67, 401, 403, 407, 409,
421, 424, 439, 441, 442, 472, 474,
526,528, 640-659, 663, 665-68, 670
674, 676, 677, 679, 680, 682, 684-87
689-92, 694-96, 698-704, 706-711, 741
826, 845, 858, 860, 862, 864,
922, 977, 979, 982, 1016, 1020-25,
1027-28, 1030-33, 1035-37, 1040-42, 44-47
1050-53, 1055-69, 1071-73, 1075-77
1079-80, 1082, 84, 85, 87, 90-92, 1108-9
1111-14, 1116-18, 1120-23, 1136, 1138
1171-80, 1184, 1196, 1202, 1225, 1304
1464-70, 1472

Question: in the eboot, all those #1C #0C that are completely attached to the jp characters must be attached
to the english text too? If so...I'll have a ton of stuff to revise because I've put spaces to have the eng text be more easily readable.

 

[zero_g_monkey]

Like 360 that looks like dialog is in fact stuff from the extras menu. The girl talking there is KeA. Somewhere is the eboot I think there was a question about unlocking stuff. You gain points in the game to later unlock the extras. I believe they are unlocked by finishing the records/accomplishments. Those codes look like stuff from the dialog that refer to face codes. Will have a more indepth look at them when I finish ironing out the bugs with the town file. But yes, they have to be there.

 

[Guren no heya kara]

So...I guess I'll have to take away all those spaces...

Yes, in the eboot there's the unlocking part using achievement points to gain various benefits.

 

[zero_g_monkey]

Don't worry about taking away the spaces. I have to convert the stuff from utf-8 to shift-jis encoding. As long as the control codes are present. I'm good.

 

[xrainex]

About the achievements, there is an Extras option in the title menu that unlocks after you cleared the game. Depending on how many achievements/game records you achieved during the course of your playthrough, you get points to use toward unlocking different parts to the Extras section. There are sections in the big item translation file, namely the Movie 1, Movie 2, and Ex-character, that all belong in the Extra section.

 

[zero_g_monkey]

Speaking of those parts... I have a good portion of them inserted. And.... crossing fingers.... I may have the map thing fixed from a previous post. See below.

 

[Belmondo]

wow, from the looks of it you guys are doing great. just wanted to say thanks and can't wait to play it

 

[zero_g_monkey]

Located what appears to be the pointers in the eboot. About 90% sure it is them. Problem is there is multiples of most of them with minor changes. So anybody got any advice on eboots basically relating to pointers & such.


Do they ever break eboots down into sections like single files and then create the pointers for them? Reason I ask is because the stuff I am looking at starts at 2640BC (doing a search for BC40) turns up several results. The next line is 2640D4 and with most of the search results. there is a number matching what I would have searched for like D440. But there isn't one that matches with the 26 as the third number. Would there possible be a lead that I need to subtract to find them? Gonna run a few tests to try and narrow down if in fact they are the pointers. But looking for some advice on this one.

 

[zero_g_monkey]

I managed to get editing the image files to work somewhat.... See below screenshot of test image. But now I have lost the transparency in the images. For some reason you have to use a program called Colga to re-save the files. Here is what I did to get this far. Maybe somebody can help.

Step 1 - Use itpcnv to convert the itp to bmp
Step 2 - Edit the bmp in ms paint and save as 256-color bmp
Step 3 - Open image in Colga and do nothing but just re-save it.
Step 4 - Convert back to itp with itpcnv use the cmd prompt itpcnv -v2 battle1.bmp ------ found this over at ancient land of ys forum when searching for itp editing.
Step 5 - Take appropriate steps to re-insert the image (adjust files and remake iso)
Step 6 - Shake my head and rub it accordingly in confusion. LOL.

Should I be using a PNG format since I don't think BMP supports transparencies?

EDITED PART​

Just gonna leave a message saying that I will be taking a break from the game for a few days. Hopefully in my absence somebody may come by with knowledge on editing images in these games.

 

[GHANMI]

Some of the entries are a single kanji long. We'll just have to teach players some Japanese (you can't say "earth" in two letters). No way around that. Also, I think they can learn it naturally (without studying) from the context of their appearance in the game.

No! You can't leave Japanese text in a translation in the main text in the middle of an otherwise English sentence.
If you expect the readers to know kanji, they might as well play the original game in Japanese... And it would be a real shame people will dismiss this translation as "lazy/unprofessional" because of this particular issue.
Now don't get me wrong I understand where you're coming from.
You have two solutions for the "how can I translate a single kanji within the space limitations" problem that both involve modifying the font (with tilemolester in this case) and not the actual text pointers (which can be next to impossible with stuff like the eboot file):
1/ redraw the kanji to a symbol. Examples: 火 redrawn to a small fire icon, 上 redrawn to ↑ (Quintet SNES localizations actually did this a lot), a fiol graphic for "poisoned", and so on.
2/ redraw the kanji to stuff in the whole word, or just two or three letters, or at the very least a stylized letter that's the initial of the word in question.

tl;dr: fit in your translations using those useless-for-English-version kanji, go crazy with altering the font as well

 

[Guren no heya kara]

I just saw this in the Eboot file

"There is two types of control codes in this file. The ones that reference a place in the game that have % in them. Then there is the ones that color the text with a # in them. When you are translating something that has # in it, please surround the word like it does in the dialog. Those are key words.
CONTROL CODE TYPES -- %s (anything with a %) = reference to game stuff. -- #1 (anything with a #) = refernece to a color change for text and is important to that word."

So in a case like this, literally "storage media checking."
#1C記録メディア#0Cを確認中です。

if I properly phrase it like "Checking the storage media."

#1CChecking the#0Cstorage media.

this will be wrong because #1C does not originally refer to を確認中です。but to 記録メディア ?

So do I have to basically swith words and codes like this

"Checking the#1Cstorage media.#0C"

to have the original colors where they should be?
Are we sure it's fine changing the codes position like this?

 

[zero_g_monkey]

Flame and Ghanmi --- This screenshot is just for you guys. There is sometimes some wiggle room in the eboot. I think the only one I will have a problem with is Illusion and any of the ones longer than 6 bytes for these. Might remove the dashes to clean the look up a little bit. I do know there will definitely be some custom tile stuff done after the discovery of inserting the town data. It messes with the monster database book. See screenshot below the first one here.

Original Look

After inserting town data.

Here is one to answer your question Guren.

Yeah. The codes should be around the word they are referring to. Pay no mind to the extra space, it is basically just place holder stuff that is for me.

 

[Guren no heya kara]

All right, when I have time I'll check and modify everything.
Just to be sure, did you modify the メモリースティック㊥
Simply changing to Memory Stick㊥ and the ㊥ automatically became the TM?
Because I suspected that ㊥ was TM, but even googling it nothing comes up.
Maybe it's an internal shortcut of some sort to which TM is associated...

 

[MrShyCity]

zero_g_monkey yea i think you should use PNG instead of BMP to have the transparent then convert PNG to BMP to ITP.
try using CTF_Theme to convert PNG to BMP should have transparent or code your own program.
if you want to convert 256-bit to 8-bit color use PNGtoPTF with 8-bit color the graphics should about the same.

 

[zero_g_monkey]

--Guren
It is something they more than likely made a special icon for. It is 8786 in the game files.


It's not pretty... but with some advice here and elsewhere... I believe I can now edit the menus properly.

 

[GHANMI]

--Guren
It is something they more than likely made a special icon for. It is 8786 in the game files.
It's not pretty... but with some advice here and elsewhere... I believe I can now edit the menus properly.

Really happy for this development.
Please share how you did, that could help with future Falcom translation efforts (namely Nayuta)

About the size limitations, in the worst case scenario, you could go with abbreviated names like with the Megaman Battle Network chip names, or Terranigma's weapons.
The dash is unneeded. And you might want to get rid of the 12px interrogation mark and use the half-width English one, if only to make it more consistent with the one used in dialogues.

And I hope the town translation is just a placeholder for demonstration purposes and not what you're going with in the final (I can tell it's missing a lot)

 

[zero_g_monkey]

Will gladly share my findings as soon as I narrow down the "exact" process for doing it. It does involve the tool colga (which I really wish and gonna attempt to get the source of so it can have an english version better than the butchered one I am doing with a hex editor). I asked skyblade about images since it seems he is pretty proficient with them and that is what pointed me in the right direction to figuring it out. I actually used the bmp format and not the png because itpcnv does not convert png back properly.

A lot of the stuff here is completely proof of concept. Not being a programmer it might be hard for translators to take me seriously so I like to show that I am fully capable of working on games. I mean for crying out loud, I've only done it for the past 15+ years. Just didn't step off into disc based stuff till recently when I took an interest in that screw job atlus did with Persona - EP/IS and P4. That was the only reason I got a PSP was to have all those games on one console.

The town stuff... you mean the screenshot for the monster notebook or the map one?

Taking on Nayuta, let me know if I can help. That is another game on my to do list after I get this and the original Dragon Slayer - Legend of Heroes 1 & 2 PSX done. Oh yeah... another gem we missed out on. Part 2.

 

[GHANMI]

View attachment 8896

After inserting town data.
.

This one, of course. "St" doesn't even have anything to do with the JP town name
The map one was much more polished.

And actually I'm not undertaking any PSP project for the moment being, since a) I'm already involved in a DS project and b)I can't quite figure out the seemingly general problem for PSP games where editing the uncompressed text files (not only the eboot) seems to have no effect whatsoever on the game, a major roadblock that put a miserable end to my experiments with Nayuta no Kiseki and Tengai Makyou IV (the two games I'm interested in atm)
I'd be the one who'd love to help with Nayuta, though just my graphical editing and dirty hex editing "skills" won't cut it
I did extract a text dump for that game on the Brandish topic, but I think it only needs a translation for the intro, sidequests and menu text... the abysimal plot might as well be google translated and it wouldn't be that much of a loss: in fact a Working Designs-type abridged rewrite might be the only thing saving it, no matter how unethical a method it is.

And apologies for the minor annoying question, but on a 1 to 10 scale, how would you rate how much is this game spoiling the trilogy (and if possible your point of view on the matter for the other games)? I hear their plots very intertwined.

 

[G-Han]

And apologies for the minor annoying question, but on a 1 to 10 scale, how would you rate how much is this game spoiling the trilogy (and if possible your point of view on the matter for the other games)? I hear their plots very intertwined.

With trilogy you mean, Sora no Kiseki? From what I've heard, Zero starts off isolated in its Prologue and early first Chapter, until it drops a major plot twist from Sora no Kiseki (SC) and becomes immediately intertwined with the rest of the series. And since all instalments (Sora, Zero/Ao, Sen/Sen II, the next Kiseki) are taking place in the same world and roughly the same period, there's a lot of spoiling.

This is also the foremost reason why I have to sit out this translation project for now. In my regard, the Kiseki games are the pinnacle of storytelling and creating an incredible world, so I want to enjoy them to the fullest and avoid spoilers at any cost. Once I've caught up - currently blasting my way to Sora no Kiseki SC's fourth chapter - I'll try to hop on.

 

[xrainex]

And apologies for the minor annoying question, but on a 1 to 10 scale, how would you rate how much is this game spoiling the trilogy (and if possible your point of view on the matter for the other games)? I hear their plots very intertwined.

Just to add a bit of my view. Like G-Han said, you can get through the prologue quite spoiler-free. IIRC, sometime during Chapter 1 (or maybe it's chapter 2) though you get introduced to characters from the Sora trilogy and what they did in Liberl Kingdom. That part is quite spoilery since it has to do with the ending of SC. Other then that reference, you meet this other character from the trilogy. Since a good part is spent dealing with that particular character in Zero, it's best to know about said character from the trilogy beforehand to get the most impact out of the events surrounding him/her in Zero.
Other than those, Zero isn't that intertwined with the trilogy. Like you can understand the story fine, you just won't catch some of the references. But then, once you get into Ao, the game basically requires you to know everything in the trilogy and zero beforehand, or else you'll be confused in lots of areas (terminologies, people, events, groups).
And I guess Sen is like Zero, I know lots of people that started with Sen, but went back to play the others to prepare for Sen II (because you'll really need to, else it'll be like Ao and you'll be so confused)