Gaming Sol Trigger - English Translation

[doorbell8423]

How much in precents % the WHOLE game is translated?

 

[JamRules]

Difficult to tell, the gamefiles are a mess with a lot of repeated and unused data,
but I say well over half. Most of the main story is done, menus/items/skills/names/etc. seem near complete.
I think there's some less important stuff that needs doing like the "Word" glossary section.

 

[doorbell8423]

Cool i hope game is worth waiting

 

[JamRules]

Haven't posted in a while so here's a quick update to show progress.
I managed to figure out more of the layout system, still working on the font though.

 

[Star-scream]

Good Job man cant wait keep up the work

 

[GHANMI]

I could have sworn you posted those already, or is it just my hazy memory
Good luck on the font width

Say, there's a game I'm interested in, "Tengai Makyou IV" for the PSP. I already found and edited as proof-of-concept some pmf files, and the text (which uses Shift-JIS but also supports ASCII, which shows properly as half-width letters -seems like they wanted to localize it-
However, I'd like to find the font (it's a mostly complete basic English font, but I want to add accents)... and possibly the rest of the graphics if possible at all (the files are BIG, so I can't just skim through it all).

So I need your advice about how you manage to locate the font using the debugger emulator.
DesMume for the DS shows a list of files loaded atm which makes the task much easier, is there anything remotely similar for PPSSPP?

-offtopic: I'm aware of rumors of an English 2014 PSP release for TM IV by Gaijinworks being discussed, but even then it will come only in English.

 

[JamRules]

I'm only a beginner but if PPSSPP does have such a feature then I don't know about it, would be great if it does,
with Sol Trigger the font was in a separate FONT folder so that wasn't really an issue.

And the image is slightly different since this time I figured out how to resize the text box and made it 4 lines.

 

[GHANMI]

Oh My bad, I didn't notice, that's a pretty huge development
I remember Terranigma was hastily localized by Nintendo of America -and then released exclusively in Europe-
Well, the Japanese text boxes had three lines and 16x16 tiles... it seems they couldn't make the font in the English version 8x16 (and I suspect they essentially hacked it and didn't have the source code, because of untranslated text everywhere) so as a compromise they just made the boxes with 4 lines.
When I see your screenshots I'm reminded of this solution

 

[JamRules]

The best idea is to replace each japanese char image with an image of 2 half-width chars,
for every possible combination of letters including lower/upper and punctuation.

 

[Cargodin]

I think Esperknight actually would be a good person to ask about that, over on Romhacking.

He's quite proficient with Sega Saturn hacking, and he has looked at the game before. I think he's been working on the series, like Zero and Oriental blue? I don't remember the specifics, but he and I did chinwag a little about the series (Apocalypse IV specifically) at some point since he's tremendously helping me out with a Dreamcast game.

(As far as I'm aware, TMIV, like Princess Crown, was just slapped onto an emulator and thrown out into the world. Think of the Zelda master collection on Gamecube. Hudson did the same thing with the Galaxy Fraulein collection, as well as the Tengai Makyou Collection of Ziria, Manjimaru and Fuun Kabuki Den on PSP). I say crack open the Saturn iso and look through there instead.

Update: The English letters were used here and there throughout the game itself (You have one hella stereotyped character that goes, "WHY? WHAT YOU SAY?" before going right on back into slurred, dialect Japanese.) I don't think they ever really showed interest in bringing it over-- it was a Hudson game, after all.

 

[GHANMI]

I think Esperknight actually would be a good person to ask about that, over on Romhacking.

He's quite proficient with Sega Saturn hacking, and he has looked at the game before. I think he's been working on the series, like Zero and Oriental blue? I don't remember the specifics, but he and I did chinwag a little about the series at some point since he's tremendously helping me out with a Dreamcast game, Apocalypse IV specifically.

(As far as I'm aware, TMIV, like Princess Crown, was just slapped onto an emulator and thrown out into the world. Think of the Zelda master collection on Gamecube. Hudson did the same thing with the Galaxy Fraulein collection, as well as the Tengai Makyou Collection of Ziria, Manjimaru and Fuun Kabuki Den on PSP). I say crack open the Saturn iso and look through there instead.

Update: The English letters were used here and there throughout the game itself (You have one hella stereotyped character that goes, "WHY? WHAT YOU SAY?" before going right on back into slurred, dialect Japanese.) I don't think they ever really showed interest in bringing it over-- it was a Hudson game, after all.

Thanks a lot for the recommandation. I'm aware someone started translating it before ... vanishing? The circumstances surrounding that project are, to say the least, mysterious. Even the topic under RHDN got deleted, and I could only see the first few pages with the internet archive. It could be nice if they kept at least the script...
I'd like actually to start a translation of TMZ after the English one is released... even though I have a preference for IV (much more Earthbound-like).

I would like to clarify something:
Unlike the Tengai Makyou collection, Princess Crown PSP and Tengai Makyou IV PSP are not just emulating the Saturn isos. (I'm not sure about Galaxy Fraulein)
They are ports, with very noticeable differences in the engine.. and the file system.
For more juicy romhacking information about Princess Crown PSP, you can check here (in French)
That Atlus rep who said it was an emulation was either full of it, or misinterpreted.

As for TM IV, Vic Ireland confirmed it's a port. The drastically different 3D overworld map (appears very late in the story) is on-par with Terranigma/Treasure Hunter G maps with a gorgeous palette in the Saturn version.. while it's a bland mode 7 map like the ones you'd see in a SNES launch title in the PSP version.
And the PSP version actually added a fully working English half width font in addition to the full width one used in the original Saturn release. But since they just copy-pasted the script which uses the full-width English letters, it's not really used except for a PSP-exclusive scene and the credits.

 

[Cargodin]

I guess you're right in that the visual updates don't make it a port. I just know it wasn't an overhaul from scratch. I've played the original thoroughly and the port for a fair bit, so I did notice that framing took a bit of a hit, so I should have noticed it from jumpstreet that things were not really an emulation in proper (otherwise, some sort of backdoor to emulating Saturn games of any variety on PSP would have been explored a much longer time ago, I'm sure, speaking Saturn emulation on PSP is a bid of a harrowed joke, still).

As for PC, that conclusion was actually from a conversation I was reading over on 2ch about the game, as people were confused by the performance of the game and the borders/slowdowns and whatnot, so no Atlus rep is to blame, but me [and I'm the fellas that were having the conversation on the site itself] and my being led to believe it was probably too dumb for my own good.

I'm not very strong in French (only studied it for a year), but I'll give it a read and see what I can make of it. Looks like it'll be a good read though, so thank you!

Sorry for the misinformation, but I actually really appreciate the clarification, so thanks for taking the time!

 

[GHANMI]

Don't apologize like it's your fault I have seen this piece of misinformation in major gaming sites, actually... And the attributed source was an Atlus rep that justified PC not being localized by "We just put an emulated Saturn iso/rom as a PSP title, we lost the source code, we can't modify it"... which is bullshit.

Tengai Makyou IV has the black border problem much more prominently in its PSP version for non-scrollable areas. And it's missing the animations for the finish moves But it's still the best way to experience the game, I dig the new interface and the added scenes which provided some closure for Zengo and Ace were not bad (but the dungeon was uninspired.. oh well, at least they warn you before you enter New York that you can't go back).

Here's an example of the half-width font. They used it only in this PSP-exclusive scene.

I didn't know Galaxy Fraulein Yuna got PSP ports. That's nice: I should try and play that game

 

[Cargodin]

Hearing that from Atlus shouldn't be so surprising to me, since it sounds like something someone over at NISA would say, given their popularity for being unable to program themselves out of a paper bag. XSEED too though-- not that they can't really handle that kind of stuff, but they don't even touch titles where the original studio isn't willing to reinsert the text and all that for them. From what I've seen, you can fit their entire staff into a single bathroom stall.

As for GFY, I should let you know that it was the first two that saw the port with Sapphire thrown in in for kicks.

III was on a different console (Makes sense that it would be separated, given it's directly tied to the Dark 13 Fraulein OVA instead.) It would have been cool to release a PSN port of III (since it itself was ported to PSX), but I don't think they ever did?

Otherwise, since they were PC-Engine, the collection plays rather smoothly, like the TM collection. Although appropriate sound complaints make it a bit of a bother to play with headphones and/or with the volume turned up to high.)

 

[GareJei]

Huh, I didn't know this. And I've been speaking English since forever. I guess you learn something new every day!

Oh, uh... yeah, something on-topic. Translation is still going, although I've been a bit more busy/tired lately so progress has slowed a little bit.

 

[JamRules]

I thought the same when I saw it.

Edit:
Another small progress update, there was one type of text I didn't find before which is for the ones that come up with your next objective, that's now sorted.

Just to make it difficult they're stored slightly differently so some manual editing is needed.

 

[Deleted User]

Do they make these games so they are impossible (or extremely annoying) to translate without the tools that only the publisher has?

 

[JamRules]

I think part of it is just lack of quality/cleanup, there's quite a lot of unused data in the game files.

At least Sol Trigger's a lot easier that Final Promise Story since it actually came with a full alphabet.

 

[GHANMI]

Do they make these games so they are impossible (or extremely annoying) to translate without the tools that only the publisher has?

Well, actually they really do obfuscate the internal files on purpose... either for anti-piracy purposes, or to prevent other shady people from "reusing" a.k.a stealing the assets (i.e. the kind of people that rip the 3D models from Mario Kart Wii/Super Mario Galaxy/Flappy Bird (!) and use them in their clones/games they sell on PC/App Store)

I saw this in "The Game Producer's Handbook"... it IS included in their QA checklist.

But on the other side, on systems as weak as the PSP/DS/PS2 (compared to PC, anyways) the little available system horsepower is precious enough they'll want to avoid as much wasting it on resource consuming decryption operations. After all they want to make the game run in the first place (and no matter how they encrypt, the game will have to decrypt it when it runs so that it works). That's why they usually resort to simpler compression/encryption methods...
That's the reason many SNES/PS1.. games have heavily used assets like the font, battle interface graphics or the text uncompressed and laying out there in the open. The game just grabs them, without doing decompression calculations and saving precious time.

However there are exceptions. The makers of Tsumuji (a nice little Zelda PH/stealth hybrid on the DS) had no qualms sacrificing performance for asset security. They encrypted everything under cpk archives, hence load times. It makes sense considering it's produced by EA Japan

 

[darekasan]

GHANMI That was really informative! Thanks for the explanation!