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Post by spenoza on Jan 2, 2019 18:40:28 GMT
With all this talk about how to do the hacking side of translations, and with the Xanadu project resuming a slightly more active pace, again, I think it's time to start looking at likely candidates for translation. Why? Because we have as many technically competent folks here on the forum as we ever have. Someone's bound to have an itch, especially if it nets them some attention and others the ability to play and appreciate their hard work. There are obviously a lot of things to consider, but the easiest aspects to examine are: - How good is the game?
- How hard is the game to experience or appreciate if you don't understand Japanese?
- How much recorded speech is there that might have to be re-recorded?
If we start with these to identify candidates, from there was can explore the more complex issues, such as: - How is the text encoded? Is it compressed? How difficult is it to extract?
- How complicated is the scripting around the text?
- How tight are memory or storage constraints? Any available room for subtitles?
With that in mind, I'll get us started. I think Necromancer would be a neat title to consider, and maybe some of the Momotarou titles. Chip-based does mean limited memory and storage space, but it also means no concerns about having to rerecord a ton of audio. And I suspect these games, even if they aren't the best on the system, are good enough to sustain community interest.
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Post by dshadoff on Jan 2, 2019 19:12:00 GMT
Chip-based games basically have fewer memory constraints: a ROM which is less than 1 Megabyte can trivially be expanded to 1 megabyte before any special thinking needs to come into play. Only a few games are actually that big. CDROM games require more consideration because: - There is a limited amount of RAM available on original hardware (although extended-RAM hardware and emulator support do exist). Compressed scripts (which gained popularity around the same time as CDROMs) may also force one's hand on space, as text space isn't as easy to reclaim on those.
- In general, one needs to write a new print function (and embed a font) in order to print English. Again, function and font both take up memory which may not be available.
- Even if RAM was not an issue, if you needed to extend the disc storage (say, in the event that a script could be "paged in"), extending a data track and forcing head seeks to the end may cause annoying delays.
- The games are simply a lot bigger, so there are more assets (sound, graphics, text) which need to be localized.
These are the reasons that CDROM translations are "the holy grail" of translations.
Having said all this, it could also be said that a "CD-ROM" game could be upgraded to "Super CD-ROM", taking advantage of the newly-available RAM for all kinds of things. It's more a question of finding a game worth translating (and thus, the thread, I suppose !).
Dave
P.S. How many translators do we have around here ? It seems to me that we will need a few...
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Post by dshadoff on Jan 3, 2019 22:36:20 GMT
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Post by spenoza on Jan 3, 2019 22:51:43 GMT
I know someone I bet I could recruit.
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Post by fusoya on Jan 3, 2019 23:12:44 GMT
My HuCard Candidates for translating would be; 1. City Hunter 2. Momotarou Katsugeki 3. Susano O Densetsu 4. Daichikun Crisis Do Natural 5. Benkai Gaiden
Even after reading Dave’s breakdown on the difficulties in translating PC Engine games (especially CD) I’m still disappointed of the distinct lack of interest for the PC Engine translation scene outside of this group. Translation teams and hackers seem to pore most of their efforts into the SNES or NES. This a real shame but I also find it also bizarre as PCECD games have by far the most classic, untapped JRPG’s and Digital Comics, both genres requiring extensive knowledge of Japanese to play. I always dream if we will ever get to play the consoles classics like Tengai Makyou Manjimarou, Seiya Monogatari, Blood Gear, Neo Metal Fantasy, Sol Moonarge, Gulliver Boy, Tenshi no Uta, Emerald Dragon etc in English!!
In the future I do intend to start slowly learning how to hack into these games (fantastic guides, thanks Dave) as I do have a couple of close friends both fluent in Japanese that I could use. Maybe when my 6 month old becomes much less demanding of my time....
In the meantime I’ll keep looking forward to the Xanadu games. Truly an incredible and mammoth undertaking by Elmer and SamIAm and I hope we can enjoy them soon. 😀
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Post by dshadoff on Jan 4, 2019 1:23:58 GMT
This may be a good time to bring up all the games that are in progress (that I'm aware of).
Filler/(potentially Cabbage) - City Hunter (extracted and translated by Filler; Cabbage may work on the technical portion)
elmer/SamIAm: - Legend of Xanadu 1, 2 - Seiya Monogatari (extracted but not translated) - looking into Tenshi no Uta 1, 2 (preliminary analysis)
myself: - Dead of the Brain (needs English Translation, but easy to re-implant script) - Cosmic Fantasy 1 (about 50% complete)
released, but not widely accepted: - Startling Odyssey II (by Tru; machine translation, and uses built-in font). -> This might be interesting to 'fix up' to be a proper translation using a more appropriate font.
in Limbo: - Emerald Dragon (extracted but only partially translated)
Dave
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Post by elmer on Jan 4, 2019 20:27:09 GMT
megatron_uk was posting on PCEFX about his translation of Cyber Knight back in 2016, but I've not heard anything about that since.
He seemed to have gotten one heck of a long way into it, but might have hit too many problems/bugs in the text-insertion phase.
Anyone know if he is on any other forums?
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Post by spenoza on Jan 4, 2019 21:26:35 GMT
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Post by Black_Tiger on Jan 4, 2019 21:50:59 GMT
I don't know if it uses a difficult compression or has other challenges, but Far East Of Eden Fuun Kabuki Den is a good candidate for a full translation, as only a text translation is required.
After the intro/opening cinemas, all of the game's (plentiful) voice acting is subtitled.
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Post by digipiggy on Jan 4, 2019 23:11:40 GMT
what every happened to Baby Jane? Cyber Knight ? Ah never mind I wonder if they will share their existing work with someone..
Maybe one of the Momotaro Dentetsu games or even Fire Pro Wresting 3 which has an awesome sound track
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Post by cabbage on Jan 5, 2019 5:15:54 GMT
what every happened to B aby Jane? Cyber Knight ? Ah never mind I wonder if they will share their existing work with someone.. Maybe one of the Momotaro Dentetsu games or even Fire Pro Wresting 3 which has an awesome sound track The work done on Cyber Knight has been available since the beginning but no one else seems to have taken over.
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Post by fusoya on Jan 5, 2019 16:22:28 GMT
what every happened to B aby Jane? Cyber Knight ? Ah never mind I wonder if they will share their existing work with someone.. Maybe one of the Momotaro Dentetsu games or even Fire Pro Wresting 3 which has an awesome sound track The work done on Cyber Knight has been available since the beginning but no one else seems to have taken over.
Looks like he was also working on translating Spiral Wave and Gai Flame.
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Post by elmer on Jan 7, 2019 5:09:07 GMT
It would be nice to know if the project has been officially abandoned, and what (if any) problems there are. Then, perhaps, he could either seek some help, or someone else might be willing to pick it up. I did some investigating, and made some notes about the game, back when megatron-uk was first posting on PCEFX back in 2016. I provided some help to him back then, but didn't want to step on his toes. There is plenty of free space in the ROM to hack in the translated text and make any other changes that are needed.
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Post by fusoya on Jan 8, 2019 17:38:06 GMT
It would be nice to know if the project has been officially abandoned, and what (if any) problems there are. Then, perhaps, he could either seek some help, or someone else might be willing to pick it up. I did some investigating, and made some notes about the game, back when megatron-uk was first posting on PCEFX back in 2016. I provided some help to him back then, but didn't want to step on his toes. There is plenty of free space in the ROM to hack in the translated text and make any other changes that are needed. I sent him an email a few days ago with an invite to join here or if he could just update me on the projects status. Unfortunately I haven’t received a response yet.
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Post by soop on Jan 9, 2019 13:49:02 GMT
Ooh, City Hunter would be really good.
I think someone was working on it, But Spriggan 2 would be a good one.
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