ROM Hack Questions about making a translation

[Kazetsukai]

Me and a friend are considering trying to translate Tacticslayer, mostly because we want a project and we haven't seen any other attempts to translate it yet. This would be our first translation/romhack, and it is mostly for fun.

We started a couple of days ago, and have been making progress figuring out the scenario format, plan to whip up a script extraction program once we understand it a bit more.

Main questions I have are:
Is this a good idea?
Being naive dudes with big dreams, are there any sagely words of advice from hardened translators/romhackers that we should heed?

and also:
Are we wasting our time with the scenario format because there are other games with the same format?
0x01 = starting sections of 3 lines of 0x00 terminated text
0x04 = changing character displayed on messages using next 5 bytes
0x50 = applying an effect to message box character's face
0x51 = removing current effect applied to face

Does this format ring any bells for anyone?

 

[FAST6191]

Good idea: it is a tactical RPG so probably not quite full blown reams of text but probably not far off. We tend to suggest people avoid such things as first projects, if however one of you is a competent translator and as we are working on the DS (few limits on what you can do like on the older systems) then it should not be too bad. From what I know of the game a fair bit of the text is not quite slang but a definite play on words which could get fun trying to translate.

The format does not ring any bells but I will thank you as I am always on the lookout for nice examples of various text formatting methods for the hacking docs and that is a good one.

Good luck though, another ? tactics game on the DS is always welcome and moreover this looks like it could be a good candidate for a total conversion.

 

[Marvin Dalkiri]

Can you upload here the file, so I can check it?

Just by these informations, I can't figure out anything.

 

[Kazetsukai]

Cheers. We are both fairly new to translation, so that will be the big test.

If you are interested in the format, we have our current progress with figuring out the format up on a google doc here: Spreadsheet

Here is a small sample.
* A character change
* String section
* Another character change
* First character of the next string section

0x04 0x06 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x01 0x01 0x82 0xed 0x82 0xa9 0x82 0xc1 0x82 0xc4 0x82 0xe9 0x82 0xe6 0x81 0x42 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x04 0x2f 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x23 0x01 0x82 0xa2

Ninja Studio's site say they did Izuna and Tactical Guild, I was wondering if they have the same format and someone had translated them (or started to).

 

[Kazetsukai]

Yeah, translating plays on words scares me. I guess at some point we will have to decide on translating vs. localizing.

Third day and we have a bit of a script reader going. I should be doing university work, but at least the power of procrastination is being channeled into a slightly productive outlet.

Spoiler