Hacking Xenoblade menu translation

[iamatmylimit]

@Sephy = ill agree with you.keep "bond"....based off the description i thought it meant relation to towns/towns people and bond sounds more like a forge/merging as opposed to friendship/relation....i know it means measure because he also added "bond graphing"....graphing being measure which you can see doesnt fit on screen.

@ zeforte = "It may be useful for a "QA phase" to see if it sounds natural, but we're nowhere near that."
actually this QA is exactly what we are doing now responding to each others comments.what else are we doing?

"And please, for future reference, leave the translations to the actual translators. We'll get nowhere if people who don't know the language second guess each translation decision. "

1.If we're leaving that to the translaters why do you have editing priveleges and are deciding who gets to edit and not edit?you admited yourself in your first post you dont have a clue about translation and it was the basis for this whole thread.

2.I wasnt second guessing.i read days earlier that gamefaq post and many others to get a good view of whats going on and noticed "bond" should be "relationship" or "measure of friendship",also "chain attack" a lot of people even on a japanese site i ran across is really "union attack" i want to see you correct me on this one since you "have no or limited translation ability"......



@HisshouBuraiKen = i didnt add your full name because those videos get taken down fast and i didnt want your name associated with it if that happened.thats also why i put testmenu.but ill change it now.i've been keeping up with ps3 hack scene as well and was checking up on geohot and failoverflow's trial since sony sent them a cease and desist letter for creating "tools" that gave them access to the keys which grant permissions to sign code which lets you play homebrew/backup games...so just being cautious.the mainland stuff i meant main.xls the field menu.

"Also are the story scripts uploaded anywhere yet? It would be awesome to at least to the intro tonight " = the story scripts havent been found by anyone in any complete form....but someone already beat you and translated the intro and it is quite accurate.you can tell by the action on screen its accurate as well as the fact another guy made a video with intro translation which was awefull so no need to be a translater to "prove" its off..just comparing 2 videos side by side is good enough to make a decision..here is the video of the good translation

xenoblade introduction cut scene translated

i wont bother showing the awefull one as seeing this alone you will know for the first time whats going on and theres no need to "second guess"...also days earlier.....

"I wont touch that" as zeforte said and let HisshouBuraiKen do the translating as your doing good job.i wil help in other ways such as looking for errors,problems in the text,posting videos,images etc and i wont nitpick dont worry.that time and clock ya i agree bad example.....i want to work together with you guys

 

[HisshouBuraiKen]

Oh don't worry, if they did it the way I think they did it, it'll take them about 5 minutes to change the text limits (though it's hard as hell to reverse engineer). And judging by the fact that there's a pretty nice looking variable width font for English and traces of Unicode(äöüß etc) support(it's not quite working it seems) means that they definitely planned an American/worldwide release.

Hard as hell to reverse engineer, eh? Meaning "fuck it", or meaning "it's technically possible but will take a lot of work?" Maybe the guys who patched Fatal Frame 4 have some advice?

 

[HisshouBuraiKen]

iamatmylimit - No need to get defensive bro, there's plenty of hackers out there too but we all like Xenoblade so we're all working together. Just because someone knows JP doens't mean they'll want to help, and just because someone's a hacker doesn't mean they'll want to help. The stuff I've done so far doesn't have to stay that way forever, we can think of it as a first draft (the main.xls is a good example, the translations work but there's no room! Obviously I need to revisit that).
I would say, though, that if it comes down to "I like this word better vs that word" it's not worth picking a fight about. Don't be afraid to make suggestions, but don't be offended if I decide not to use it.

Here's an example - I had an idea, since the @ symbol represents a line break, see if you can add it to an enemy name and get another row of space for names. You might tell me as the hacker "that won't work trust me" and it's best for me to let it go since that's your domain and I should trust your decision. Or you might try it and it might work!

Do you have a save file from late/the end of the game so we can see more stuff, like maps, landmarks and enemies in later areas?
So the two key problems we face right now are space limits and not having all the text. The latter I think is just a matter of time, but is there anything at all that can be done about the former? Some way to redefine how long the strings are? I'm a former programmer so I understand the basics like how the variables are stored, but I've got no clue how to go about changing that in compiled files, if it's even possible. Point the variables to new memory with longer string space? I dunno, I leave that up to you guys.

I got some more stuff done today that I'll put on the google docs later. Enemies and landmarks mostly, and the colony 6 rebuilding menus.

 

[Snakegunner]

How do you add the English translation to the game? Does anyone have a step by step tutorial on what to do? I would truly appreciate it =) Thank you all for the hard work! =D

 

[iamatmylimit]

i wont be offended dont worry.i thought of that already when we finish this if theres something i found out wasnt right ill edit it myself,on my own time but wont release it since im considering this your work.your right its not worth arguing over those kinds of things....i dont mind admitting when im wrong..


i dont have a save at the end but ill try to get one for you...

 

[ZeForte]

If we're leaving that to the translaters why do you have editing priveleges and are deciding who gets to edit and not edit?

I have editting privileges so I can eventually add files, I have no intention to even touch the others' translation. And I'm leaving the whole organizing thing to Hisshou (as far as I get it, now that I added him, he can add other people himself)

i will have to start my own group by enlisting other translaters

You make it sound like an awfully easy task. The current extractor/compiler doesn't work with all text in files and if I decide to not release the updated tool to the public (which I'm strongly considering because absolutely nothing good has come out of making the first revision available), you'll have to get your own hacker, which might be a bit difficult since there has been hardly any interest in the last half year.

i was already able to get as far as the bdat files using falo's script though i couldnt get to the xls/text but would have figured it out eventually as i was already far.

I honestly doubt that. You don't seem to possess the necessary programing/scripting knowledge.
Getting the text out of the files is fairly easy, but putting it back in is not (and if you want to do it properly, you'd need to remap the pointers.
The way linkzero's translated files look, he was using a binary editor to make the changes to the text manually and I'd venture a guess that none of the Japanese speakers you listed are both proficient in Japanese AND know their way with binary files. Unless of course you're implying you were close to doing something even linkzero didn't (not to discredit him in any shape or form, it's just not so simple to extract the text and put it back into a file as you seem to think it is).

QUOTEYou might tell me as the hacker

He's just using the tools I published over at http://forum.xentax.com/viewtopic.php?f=10...;p=48271#p48271 and you should do the same if you want to test something (it really doesn't take long if you're using dolphin and have an iso)

QUOTE

Hard as hell to reverse engineer, eh? Meaning "fuck it", or meaning "it's technically possible but will take a lot of work?" Maybe the guys who patched Fatal Frame 4 have some advice?

It's definitely, 100%, possible and there's some directions I can take a look at. The way I hear it, the Tales of Graces people ran into similar problems.

And goddamn my habit of starting large projects when the exam phase at university is drawing near. It worked out the last time I did it, but Xenoblade is such a handful.
I really should be doing something more productive instead of arguing on a forum.

 

[iamatmylimit]

@ zeforte = i said i used falo's script's to get to the bdat files which are not your tools ( at the time no one was creating scripts and he was the first know person to attempt a translation)...look at the date of his posts (Sun Jun 13, 2010 ) and look at the date of your posts(Thu Jan 27, 2011 ) he made his script available a full 6 months before you....

"I've decided to write my own text extractor/inserter and if it goes well, search for a translator"

falos script is a longer process where you
open the iso using wiiscrubber
extract static.arc
extract all.pkb,.pkh etc...... using a u8 extracter ( i used u8 extracter)
extract .bdat files using "his" quickbms script
and that is how i got that far and got stuck cause the last script he wrote didnt work but i know what it was meant to do...inside the .bdat is the text (in binary form)

your method makes it less steps
open the iso using wiiscrubber
extract static.arc
extract whats inside arc,bdat,xls at the same time

i looked inside your xbse pogram and you made some sort of automated script that extracts the text inside the .bdat file into an orderly spreadsheet/xls......that is what i couldnt do and i said thanks already....so i never said i made my own script,i used falos at first then used yours and since you made yours i didnt use his anymore but if you didnt come along i would have kept pursuing how these "scripts" work to the point where i find another resource that lets me get that text out in an orderly fashion......i admitted already im not a hacker,coder etc,i dont speak japanese but using other sources you can still accomplish these things so my famous statement you dont need to be a translater to translate "anything" if you are smart enough and can come up with ideas such as using a program to translate,looking at posts on gamefaqs where people list problems in the game while mentioning names,descriptions etc which you can use as reference and most recently those 2 translated videos i found which you can just put side by side and judge which makes more sense "without knowing ANY japanese"......


this is what everyone does...even bruce lee...he didnt use just boxing or karate to fight,he used and studied all the styles and took what was usefull and got rid of what was useless and made his own art called jeet kun do....this way he was good at all styles because there is some usefullness in everything,if someone tried to fight him they didnt know how to come at him cause he knew all styles....so i also use recources that are available to me and discard whats useless......programmers do the same they are using the c/java etc language (which they did not create first of all) so they are using someone elses resources to create "new" things..... and that is why i say you can program without being a programmer,code without being a coder etc.....

anyway we shouldnt be arguing,i already said your the man and your script/work is helpfull and made us progress farther than anyone as im sure no one else (except maybe falo) are working on this....i already told HisshouBuraiKen i wouldnt be nitpicking anymore...i will look at what hes doing but i wont be so critical....i appreciated your update which made the roman numerals more recognizable too...it was usefull

 

[iamatmylimit]

ill make a video turtorial showing how to add said files to the iso

 

[HisshouBuraiKen]

Zeforte - Part 1 is to get all the files on google docs, that when when you guys DO figure out how to get me more characters we'll have all the translations ready

I would rather see you and iamatmylimit not argue. We've all got the same goal here.

BTW Limit (I'mma call you Limit now) I don't care about my full nick being posted, I'm not really afraid of being sued over something like this and I'd rather make sure my name's out there getting credit than being anonymous to avoid a lawsuit that'll never come. If your vids are taken down we'll make more.

Anyways I knocked out a bunch of landmarks, enemies and armor and put them up on google docs. Sort by "last modified" and they'll be at the top. Next I will revisit the main & battle skills menus and revise them. Keep things Short 'n sweet. Can someone test the main menu and mark where things are getting cut off like I talked about above, or just give me the hard character limit for them?

 

[iamatmylimit]

@HisshouBuraiKen - I added your new translations but got that compile error on dolphin so ill check to see which lines/characters were too long.

is it just me or did linkzeros website get taken down?its not there anymore

....i made a tutorial and i will show the video tomorrow with text and files....unless zeforte or HisshouBuraiKen object....keep in mind we are still working on this and its not complete....the most recent changes made by HisshouBuraiKen which i tested had line troubles and i will look through them when i wake up so ill be providing his translations before the changes he made on 2/4/2011....those files work perfectly and a lot is translated there to begin with. so in a couple of hours ill add a tutorial....

 

[HisshouBuraiKen]

Yeah this is gonna be trial and error while we find the character limits.

Zeforte reported the btl_skilllist wasn't working, probably because I changed the order of the files and forgot to change things back. I'll fix that tonight.

 

[Sephy]

Hi, sorry for being absent for a while.

@HisshouBuraiKen: I have a long train travel ahead of me tomorrow (5-6 hours

) and might as well translate something while I'm on the train. So this might be a good time to split some of this work up.

Any particular suggestions what I should busy myself with?

 

[ciris]

How do you add the English translation to the game? Does anyone have a step by step tutorial on what to do? I would truly appreciate it =) Thank you all for the hard work! =D

Geez dude! Have you not been reading this hread....

 

[HisshouBuraiKen]

Hi, sorry for being absent for a while.

@HisshouBuraiKen: I have a long train travel ahead of me tomorrow (5-6 hours

) and might as well translate something while I'm on the train. So this might be a good time to split some of this work up.

Any particular suggestions what I should busy myself with?

Sure!

All the quest ones (do what you can, if you have web access you can cross reference the FAQ websites to refresh your memory what the quest is about)
pctalk_02.xls (the banter when you're taking quests)
JNL_relatelist.xls (the bond graph relationships)
ene_arts.xls
BTL_PSVskill.xls

Everyone else: I uploaded completed ITM_equiplist, FLD_npclist, and I fixed BTL_skilllist so that it shouldn't crash the game anymore. Try them out and see how they look. Next I'll redo the main menus like I said before.

Zeforte - You think you can spare some time to approach the guys who did fatal frame, tales, etc patches to get some advice or recruit them to the cause? I'm gonna do the first draft as longer translations, then when it's all done go back and shorten things if we still don't have a length solution.

 

[FullMetalEnginee]

I love seeing the community band together like this, keep up the great work

/hopes captain rainbow is still being translated

 

[iamatmylimit]

I made the tutorial.give me a few min.uploading to youtube

 

[HisshouBuraiKen]

Good cause I'm messing with stuff and whenever I use ZeForte's packer I'm getting dolphin errors ;P

 

[iamatmylimit]

heres the tutorial


video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvmf-WGvuB0


This is HisshouBuraiKen and sephy's translation work up to 2/7/2011



If you want to replace the text inside the xls and translate it yourself look at zefortes posts as he already described the process...i also dont want to put the tutorial for that till we are finished.out of respect to thier work it wouldnt be right to change what they have right now,its better to let us finish this and then you can translate it to german or whatever later on.also we can give pointers,advice on prroblems you may run into so its better to wait till we finish what we are doing,.if they object then ill just edit these words and you can do whatever you want with these files but it is a sort of beta,not finished and a lot more has been translated but being fixed.so ya you can pop this into your wii right now and start playing...as more is translated the file will get updated.

 

[HisshouBuraiKen]

Do you get a java error with Zeforte's packer? I'd like to be able to modify static.arc on my own to see results right away. I know how to use wiiscrubber already - that's the easy part, just replacing the file. What I'd like to know is how you're getting the xls files back into static.arc

Here's what happens, I run compileeverything.bat and I get

E:\ROMs\Wii\Xenoblade [SX4J01]>set staticFolder="static_arc" 

E:\ROMs\Wii\Xenoblade [SX4J01]>set binPath="static_arc/dvddata/common/jp/bdat.bin" 

E:\ROMs\Wii\Xenoblade [SX4J01]>set bdatsPath="bdats" 

E:\ROMs\Wii\Xenoblade [SX4J01]>set xlsPath="xls" 

E:\ROMs\Wii\Xenoblade [SX4J01]>XBSE -c "static_arc/dvddata/common/jp/bdat.bin" "bdats" "xls" 
Updating BDATs
[b]Exception in thread "main" java.lang.StringIndexOutOfBoundsException: String index out of range:-1
ÂÂÂÂ at java.lang.String.substring(unknown source)
ÂÂÂÂ at util.Util.getFileName(Ulti.java:69)
ÂÂÂÂ etc...
[/b]

E:\ROMs\Wii\Xenoblade [SX4J01]>cd "static_arc" 

E:\ROMs\Wii\Xenoblade [SX4J01]\static_arc>pack

E:\ROMs\Wii\Xenoblade [SX4J01]\static_arc>darchd -c adx.pkh common.pkh dvddata font.pkh obj.pkh snd.pkh ahx.pkh eff.pkh map.pkh work.pkh chr.pkh menu.pkh script.pkh ..\static.arc

It seems like it can't find a file?

If I use the static.arc this creates I get errors in Dolphin. This happens even with a fresh set of .xls files that have no translations. Your static.arc works fine. Anyone know what I might be doing wrong? Limit, can you upload your pack of Zeforte's tools and the arc packer/unpacker? Maybe I have a weird or corrupted version of something. Zeforte, please advise if you have time.

 

[iamatmylimit]

oh ya that just means your missing java...installing the 32 bit version is fine its 16mb...i had the same error.the script Zeforte made requires java to put the text files in the right place in the right context/way.....