Xanadu II Translation Development Blog

[esteban]

I actually like the inclusion of the Japanese. It's a kind of nod to some of the branding used in the JPN version. I think it's a bit of circular homage.

Agreed.

I like it, too.



Sadly, it's missing a figure skater or two.

[Phase]

Hmm well it can easily go back in.

Ok here is a comparison for the outline.
1 is full outline
2 is thin outline
3 is a hybrid were we put one on top of the other and change the "full" to a darker shade. softens it up a bit
here is a DL with the original size and 2x. ektophase.com/TG16/XanCompare.zip





sorry for taking up a whole page lol

[esteban]

HYBRID (#3)

[SamIAm]

That third one is looking fantastic.

I'll give you CRT photos within 24 hours of elmer getting it in the game. 

-------------------

Give me a bit to sit on whether to include the Japanese.

Two of the eight characters are illegible (though somewhat guessable) and the rest don't exactly look gorgeous. It's one thing to use this on an ending screen, but to a Japanese audience anyway, it wouldn't be acceptable for a title screen. At worst, it could add an element of sloppiness.

[technozombie]

I don't post too much because I really don't have a lot to say, but damn am I getting worked up for these games to be released in English. Something about following along with it just draws me in. Keep up the good work! 

[SamIAm]

Thanks!

By the way, I just ran across this and can't help posting it.



The original Pepsi logo, 1898-1905.

[elmer]

Hmm well it can easily go back in.

Ok here is a comparison for the outline.

3 is a hybrid were we put one on top of the other and change the "full" to a darker shade. softens it up a bit
here is a DL with the original size and 2x. http://www.ektophase.com/TG16/XanCompare.zip

That third one is looking fantastic.

Yep, I totally agree. The anti-aliasing against the green background looks really, really good, and it doesn't make the outlines look too big.

Nice idea! 

But, OTOH, it's giving the logo a green halo when put on the black background.

I'll have to see if that is fixable during the fade-out of the background.

If not, then I still like the 1-pixel outline better than the 2-pixel outline.

I'll give you CRT photos within 24 hours of elmer getting it in the game. 

Hahaha! No pressure there, then! 

Give me a bit to sit on whether to include the Japanese.

Two of the eight characters are illegible (though somewhat guessable) and the rest don't exactly look gorgeous. It's one thing to use this on an ending screen, but to a Japanese audience anyway, it wouldn't be acceptable for a title screen. At worst, it could add an element of sloppiness.

I don't really like seeing the Japanese there.

It was great to have the chance to look at it and make a judgement, but upon reflection, I think that it makes the whole thing look too busy, and I can't imagine it ever being there if the game had gotten a real US release.

By the way, I just ran across this and can't help posting it.

<Image Removed For Mental Health Reasons>

The original Pepsi logo, 1898-1905.

That's one seriously-horrible logo!   

[SamIAm]

Yep, I totally agree. The anti-aliasing against the green background looks really, really good, and it doesn't make the outlines look too big.

Nice idea! 

But, OTOH, it's giving the logo a green halo when put on the black background.

I'll have to see if that is fixable during the fade-out of the background.

If not, then I still like the 1-pixel outline better than the 2-pixel outline.

If I had to choose, I would guess that the 1-pixel outline will look better, too.

I'll give you CRT photos within 24 hours of elmer getting it in the game. 

Hahaha! No pressure there, then! 

I just bought a 25-stack of cheap CD-Rs with the intent to use them all in the near future for this very purpose. 

I don't really like seeing the Japanese there.

It was great to have the chance to look at it and make a judgement, but upon reflection, I think that it makes the whole thing look too busy, and I can't imagine it ever being there if the game had gotten a real US release.

Yeah, it's a nice salute to the origin of the game, but it's really not necessary, and kanji don't have any reason to exist in the game-world.

That's one seriously-horrible logo!   

I really wouldn't be surprised to see it turning up on tests at design schools.

"Explain at least five things this logo does poorly."

[elmer]

I've managed to get Phase's logo working on the Xanadu 2 title screen now, and the code-hacking required wasn't anywhere near as horrible to do as I'd imagined. 

The logo has be converted into a paletted form, and I had to mess around with the colors to keep some of them PCE-legal, but I think that the result is good ...



BTW, that's a 256-color paletted image with the colors in exactly the right places for the PCE, if someone wants to play with it!


While I was messing around, I moved the "u" up by a pixel to line up with the rest of the text.

Here's what it looks like in-game, running in Mednafen ...



I really, really like it! 

There's definitely room for a little bit of clean-up and fine-tuning, but the concept itself is working even better than I'd imagined.

I think that we're on to a winner with the expanding the logo to 64-pixel height! 

It's really good that Phase's new logo isn't overly wide ... Falcom's "sparkle" effect can't handle a logo larger than 192x64 without dropping frames and slowing down.

That's some new information that we didn't have until today.

I've also found out that the "sparkle" effect is limiting the logo to an 8 color palette, and not the full 16-colors that I would have expected.

Given the processing bottleneck that I also found today, I don't think that we're going to be able to "hack" that problem away, and that we're going to have to live with an 8-color logo.

Given the results that I'm seeing on the screen, that doesn't seem to be a problem!

I'll give you CRT photos within 24 hours of elmer getting it in the game. 

Hahaha ... the clock is counting down! 

[TurboXray]

I looked into that sparkle effect... I'm totally stealing it! ;>_>

[Phase]

Interesting stuff, lucked out on the size.

yeah, I noticed a few goofy spots like the lower left end on the X could be better will try and touch it up some more.

I see you added the lower drop shadow like you mentioned on the options and falcom, looks good and goes with the light rays. 

Edit
This should look better

[esteban]

GORGEOUS LOGO looks great in the game.

[SamIAm]

As promised. Oversized pics incoming.

This looks nice.


Try to ignore the handsome man in his pajamas. Also, spot the PC-FX for bonus points.


However, this does not look good. It appears right before the fade-in starts.


This is also troubling. It looks this way during the fade-in.


What's your diagnosis, Dr. elmer? 

[SamIAm]

Note that the above problem does not happen with a 240x32 image.

EDIT: Also, the problem does not happen with the same ISO in Mednafen.

[elmer]

This is also troubling. It looks this way during the fade-in.


What's your diagnosis, Dr. elmer? 

Aha! I've been tricked by Mednafen! 

You're just seeing garbage in VRAM left from when the machine is switched on.

Mednafen unhelpfully clears this memory, masking the problem that I need to clear out the area before it is used by the fade-in sprites.

My bad ... I thought that Falcom cleared out VRAM at the start of the game and I totally forgot to check it.

Whoops! 

It's trivial to fix.

[Burnt Lasagna]

Elmer and Sam, this looks amazing! Great job

[geise]

Sam, those title pics look nice when finally seen on a TV.  I really like the larger logo better.  It's good to know it might be a fairly easy fix for the fade in issue.  Thank you guys for the work going into this. 

BTW nice to see you back Burnt!

[CrackTiger]

I was hoping to get to continue experimenting with color and shading on my latest couple of designs, but it looks like time is running out, so here's one in its basic form without shading or fancy coloring.

The end of The Legend of Xanadu:


The title screen of The Legend of Xanadu II:

[spenoza]

Game title SHOWDOWN!

[esteban]

I was hoping to get to continue experimenting with color and shading on my latest couple of designs, but it looks like time is running out, so here's one in its basic form without shading or fancy coloring.

The end of The Legend of Xanadu:

Everything you posted is FANTASTIQUE.

[SamIAm]

We're in no hurry, BT. You and anyone else can make a submission whenever you like.

Now...first of all, as elmer recently pointed out, we probably ought to stick to 192x64 or else we're going to face performance troubles, and that's a big problem in Xanadu 1 in particular (assuming it happens there as well) because the cutscene will de-sync with the audio.

Second of all, even though that looks quite good against the black background, it looks a bit messy in front of the background emblem on the main title screen. It's an awful lot of lines.

Thanks for the submission regardless. If you want to keep tweaking or move on to something else, I'd be interested to see it! 

[elmer]

Now...first of all, as elmer recently pointed out, we probably ought to stick to 192x64 or else we're going to face performance troubles, and that's a big problem in Xanadu 1 in particular (assuming it happens there as well) because the cutscene will de-sync with the audio.

We're definitely going to have to test a 64-high logo in Xanadu 1 pretty soon. 

As for the 192x64 ... I'm afraid that I'm going to have to let my female side out, and say that what I said before isn't actually what I meant. 

The actual limits would technically be more like "6KB of graphic data in 8 sprites".

That's 192x64, which makes a lot more sense to most normal folks.

But ... in the case of BT's new logo, which is mainly 160x64 with also 2 short-but-wide bits on the sides ... it may well actually be possible, particularly if one wing is just a mirror of the other.

Second of all, even though that looks quite good against the black background, it looks a bit messy in front of the background emblem on the main title screen. It's an awful lot of lines.

Now this is my big problem with reusing the Xanadu 1 Credits logo on that screen in Xanadu 2 ... it just doesn't look very good to me (in its current form).

IMHO, the whole screen just looks messy with those thin lines on that background.

Perhaps some anti-aliasing on the outline would help thicken up both the interior and exterior, and also make it all look a little less jagged? What do you think?

[SamIAm]

yeah, I noticed a few goofy spots like the lower left end on the X could be better will try and touch it up some more.

The lower left end of the X is the first and maybe only thing that stands out to me as potentially benefiting from some tweaking. It seems a bit stubby and high. I don't know if that's what you were talking about, but anyway... :-

This is quick and dirty, but I lengthened the leg a few pixels and squeezed in the curly part slightly. Does it look at all better to you guys just in terms of proportion?

(My mod is on top; Phase's recent one is on the bottom)


Part of me likes the longer leg more, and part of me thinks it makes the X a little out of balance. Anyway, I just wanted to bounce this off you guys.

[CrackTiger]

I'll continue with some of what I'd planned to try with that logo and another wingless one I'm balancing out.

Before you guys put too much work into polishing off Phase's latest logo, I wanted to point out why I haven't done one with a different font for Legend. By having a tiny "The Legend of" in a very noticeably different font, having it sit on top of a giant "Xanadu II" and contrasting the two by having "The Legend of" in printing and "Xanadu II" in cursive, the title has effectively been changed to "Xanadu II", with a minor subtitle.

It's the reason everyone refers to the first game and the series "Zelda", instead of "The Legend of Zelda". Same with so many other game and non-game titles. Except even more so by using printing for one part and cursive for the other.

Considering how big of a deal it was for Sam to have a "The" on the title logo for a game that everyone calls "Legend of Xanadu", because "Legend" is as defining to the title as "Xanadu", and since Xanadu is a pre-existing game and series of its own, I've made sure to keep the two key words in the same font and so far at least, not made "Legend" proportionately any smaller than it already is in the official cursive logo. In the Japanese logo, Kaze and Densetsu are completely equal.

If you did the same thing to any of the Shining series game titles, it would also break them and people would just call or read them as "Darkness", "Force II" or "The Holy Ark".

[poponon]

holy shit the title screen looks sooooo good. especially on your tv there! HYPE

[ginoscope]

Damn guys I dunno how I missed this thread yesterday but that title screen looks amazing.  I really like the screen shots from the actual CRT.

Really impressed and the attention to detail blows my mind.

[SamIAm]

Before you guys put too much work into polishing off Phase's latest logo, I wanted to point out why I haven't done one with a different font for Legend. By having a tiny "The Legend of" in a very noticeably different font, having it sit on top of a giant "Xanadu II" and contrasting the two by having "The Legend of" in printing and "Xanadu II" in cursive, the title has effectively been changed to "Xanadu II", with a minor subtitle.

I totally agree that it would be ideal to have all the words be more balanced, and that "Xanadu" is perhaps a little overemphasized in Phase's logo. If his has any profound and unfixable flaw, this is it.

I also get the contradiction you feel about your very first submission being disqualified on "Linguistic Faithfulness" or whatever we can agree to call it. Here's the thing: on that criterion, your original gets an F, and his gets a C. Sorry if that's blunt, but I'm trying to be quick and clear.

You can still blame me for not getting on you and elmer earlier about that one, too.

I'm confident that the broad consensus among both casual and hardcore PCE gamers would be that Phase's is simply the best one we have right now, and though it may not get straight A's in every category, it's acceptable enough to ship the game with.

I'm still very interested in seeing your full cursive version, or anything else you have up your sleeve.

Considering how big of a deal it was for Sam to have a "The" on the title logo for a game that everyone calls "Legend of Xanadu", because "Legend" is as defining to the title as "Xanadu", and since Xanadu is a pre-existing game and series of its own, I've made sure to keep the two key words in the same font and so far at least, not made "Legend" proportionately any smaller than it already is in the official cursive logo. In the Japanese logo, Kaze and Densetsu are completely equal.

風の伝説ザナドゥ

風 = Wind
の = (possessive particle)
伝説 = Legend
ザナドゥ = Xanadu

So, "Xanadu" and "Legend of the Wind" are equal. It's certainly fair to say that "Xanadu" is only half of the title. That's your point, right?

Be that as it may, I think it's also fair to say that "Xanadu" is the single most important word, and that this is even more true in the Japanese title than the English. Furthermore "The Legend of" as it exists in Phase's logo is not so terribly downsized that people are going to ignore it altogether.

This game is also part of the same lineage as Falcom's original Xanadu; The Legend of Xanadu 1's credit roll calls it Dragon Slayer VIII at the very end. Whether these PCE games are sequels or spinoffs or whatever else, it doesn't seem too great an offense to risk them being mentally listed in some gamer's minds as "Xanadu, The Legend of".

---------------------

Food for thought: here are a bunch of criteria that I use to judge these, in no particular order and probably not including everything:

- Is it linguistically faithful?
- Is each letter well formed?
- Is the whole harmonious and visually pleasing?
- Is it easy to read?
- Does it jive with the background?
- Is it stylistically appropriate for the games?
- Does it have logo-like flair?

We've had some very nice submissions indeed, but nothing has really thoroughly aced all of these yet. We'll take the best one we have that doesn't have any D's or F's, is the way I see it.

[elmer]

I looked into that sparkle effect... I'm totally stealing it! ;>_>

It's a really clever and effective work-around for not being able to fade in the logo from a serarate layer.

Well worth stealing! 

The lower left end of the X is the first and maybe only thing that stands out to me as potentially benefiting from some tweaking. It seems a bit stubby and high. I don't know if that's what you were talking about, but anyway... :-

This is quick and dirty, but I lengthened the leg a few pixels and squeezed in the curly part slightly. Does it look at all better to you guys just in terms of proportion?

I don't really mind it either way.

We're latching onto different things.

For me, it is the slight inconsistencies in the shapes and visual height of the letters that is much more noticeable.

That's a side-effect of Phase turning the logo into vector format, and then re-rasterizing it at the new size.

It is to be expected ... it just needs (IMHO) a massively nitpicky cleanup pass to get closer to that "hand drawn" look of Falcom's original.

I'd be tempted to make the "The Legend Of" a pixel or 2 taller and see how it looks, too.

I'll continue with some of what I'd planned to try with that logo and another wingless one I'm balancing out.

IMHO, if you want to keep working on Falcom's logo, one thing that you'll need to do is to make the lines thicker so that it doesn't look so lost on the screen.

Here's a simple doubling of the width. Note that I separated all the letters, then did the doubling, then pasted them back together so that I could control and tweak the spacing.

[Phase]

Here's my latest from yesterday.


Maybe I'll try a version where the letters are similar and more font like.
Will take a closer look at SamIAms mod and other input.

[jtucci31]

Man I love the development of these logos, they look FANTASTIC.

The logo Phase made looks really nice, especially with all of those colors in it. But I also think that end screen text would look good too if done properly.

[Phase]

Ok here is a version where the letters are cloned with a few slight tweaks

Then here it is with a pixel taller "The Legend of"

[NecroPhile]

I don't have much of an opinion on the various logo options (other than the obviously bad ones that y'all immediately rejected), I'm just happy that it's all coming together and looking so professional.

All this logo chat makes me want a translated title for Motteke Tamago.

[elmer]

I don't have much of an opinion on the various logo options (other than the obviously bad ones that y'all immediately rejected), I'm just happy that it's all coming together and looking so professional.

All this logo chat makes me want a translated title for Motteke Tamago.

Yep, a good logo is a thing of beauty, and really helps to set the expectations for the attention-to-detail in the game.

The Motteke Tamago logo looks good in Japanese, but it would certainly be nice to see an English one in there to "finish off" the translation! 

Ok here is a version where the letters are cloned with a few slight tweaks

Hahaha ... that's more than a few "slight tweaks", that's an absolutely beautiful job of cleanup work!

You've fixed all the little areas that were catching my eye, and a changed a few extra little details that just add even more polish.

I really can't exaggerate just how happy I am at the way that this looks. 

For those that can't immediately see just how much changed, and what an absolutely lovely effect it has on the look of the logo, here is a before-and-after animation.

There are also the 2 sizes for the "The Legend Of" text. I prefer the larger of the 2, because IMHO it makes the letters less squat, and it makes it look more deliberate and less like a subtitle.

[spenoza]

What would happen to that logo if the ligatures were connected to make it look even more script-like? Most seem to run into each other OK, but the 'a' and the 'n' and the 'd' and the 'u' don't connect, but they look like they could very easily.

[NecroPhile]

What would happen to that logo if the ligatures were connected to make it look even more script-like?

It'd no longer match Falcom's original design.

[SamIAm]

Looking damn good, Phase.



Here, you can see what it looks like against the black background up close and at a slight angle. Notice that some green pixels are standing out now, like between in the tails of the a and the d, and between the X and the a.



I see by looking at the raw png that it wouldn't be easy to erase those without making an inconsistency in the outline pattern, but it also looks like you could probably "cheat" a little and get away with blanking a select few of them. Fiddling around on my own, I was able to separate the X and the a and the tails in a way that I think would work fine with just a few clicks.

After that, we have to wonder what to do with the interiors of the a and d, the upper interior of the n, and the lower interior of the u. Against the black, they do look kind of green. However, it's possibly negligible.

This is all RGB, by the way.

EDIT: Here's a head-on shot from a little further away. I cropped the image because my dumb reflection showed up a lot more in this one.



-----------------------

Elmer fixed the sparkle effect. Here is short, effectively sound-free demo of it working. I couldn't be bothered to turn on my speakers, or to edit the video at all before I uploaded it. 

[elmer]

What would happen to that logo if the ligatures were connected to make it look even more script-like? Most seem to run into each other OK, but the 'a' and the 'n' and the 'd' and the 'u' don't connect, but they look like they could very easily.

Here's a quick programmer-hack to give a rough idea of what it would look like ...



The answer, IMHO, is "clever, but way too busy on the screen, and making the letters harder to read".

It'd no longer match Falcom's original design.

And there's also that very important aspect, too. 

Here, you can see what it looks like against the black background up close and at a slight angle. Notice that some green pixels that are standing out now, like between in the tails of the a and the d, and between the X and the a.

Hahaha ... your turn to be nitpicky!

I'll try to figure out where I can hack in something to change the palette color of those outline pixels when the screen changes to black.

I like the way that they're smoothing out the edges when it's on the green background, so I don't want to remove them ... which is totally unlike me and my regular fetish for putting drop-shadows on everything!

<EDIT>

OK, here's my suggestion for changing the 2 outline colors when on the black background.

I don't know how to achieve it, yet ... but I think that it will look better when I can find out where to do it.

[SamIAm]

That would definitely take care of the problem in the cleanest and most well-rounded way. 

If a palette shift can't work for whatever reason, the only real problem is the one darker-green edge shade (72, 180, 180). I think it only stands out when there are two of those color pixels next to each other horizontally, and even then, only in certainly places.

Also, like I said, the only spots that really stand out are the X-and-a connection and the a-and-d tails. It might be best to erase those connecting pixels regardless of what the palette is.

Original:


X-and-a and tail connections erased:

[spenoza]

What would happen to that logo if the ligatures were connected to make it look even more script-like? Most seem to run into each other OK, but the 'a' and the 'n' and the 'd' and the 'u' don't connect, but they look like they could very easily.

The answer, IMHO, is "clever, but way too busy on the screen, and making the letters harder to read".

It'd no longer match Falcom's original design.

And there's also that very important aspect, too. 

I think the former is a far more compelling reason than the latter. We are already dabbling in the area off artistic license. If it looked better, I'd say a little inconsistency with Falcom's original vision was not an issue (especially for something minor like that). But Elmer is right. It does make it awfully busy and detracts from an otherwise clean logo.

[elmer]

I'll try to figure out where I can hack in something to change the palette color of those outline pixels when the screen changes to black.

That would definitely take care of the problem in the cleanest and most well-rounded way. 

If a palette shift can't work for whatever reason, the only real problem is the one darker-green edge shade (72, 180, 180). I think it only stands out when there are two of those color pixels next to each other horizontally, and even then, only in certainly places.

Well, it is possible to use a different palette for the logo when it is on the black background, that's the good news.

The problem is that there's no way to just fade between the different outline colors when the background fades out.

Now, I can just switch the outline color when the background has finished fading out ... but it looks jarring and horrible.

The only way that I can reasonably do it, is to fade out the logo together with the green background, and then fade it back in with the new outline color when the background with the stars fades in.

That's OK, and doesn't look too bad ... but it is different.

While we're still looking at whether that is worthwhile ... I just went ahead with SamIAm's idea, and just modified the image to avoid the cases where those outline pixels bump together.

That involved moving the entire "X" one pixel to the left, which I think might actually look better anyway. 

Here's the result ...

[SamIAm]

That could definitely work.

I'll glady do another TV test anytime. 

[SamIAm]

This leaves nothing to be desired, really. Great work, Phase. 



(CRT capture-weirdness on this last one. Sorry.)

I want to emphasize that anyone who wants to can still submit an idea. Even a rough idea is nice to see if it shows any promise.

[esteban]

This is GORGEOUS

I am weeping

I am

[elmer]

After much serious effing around, the new logo is working in both the Xanadu 1 and 2 Opening Visuals.

It's going to need to be tested on real hardware, because both games are now having to apply their "sparkle" effects to much more data than before.

They both seem to work fine in Mednafen ... but there's no substitute for a test on real hardware.

I added a drop-shadow on the Xanadu 2 subtitle, and although it really does help to stop it from disappearing into the background, I'm not convinced that I like it, yet.

Maybe it needs more tweaking, or maybe it should just be removed altogether. 

What do you guys think?




<EDIT>

Added original Xanadu 2 Japanese logo screengrab without drop-shadow for comparison.

It's interesting to note the huge effect that having the drop-shadow has upon the eye's perception of the colors in the subtitle text.

With the drop-shadow, the orange colors look much darker and more saturated, even though they are exactly the same RGB values as the orange colors in the original Japanese text.

The eye really has a hard time resolving single-pixel-wide text on a similar brightness background.

That's why we went to such lengths to darken the message box backgrounds and add the drop-shadow to the in-game text in Xanadu 2.

But ... in this case, it's not really critical that you can clearly read the subtitle text on this screen, because you get to see it clearly and read it on a black background before the landscape fades in.

In some ways, that makes the subtitle seem to fade away into the background as the landscape fades in, and perhaps that's what Falcom wanted. This is the only time in the game that the subtitle is used. The graphics for it are in the game's Main Menu, but Falcom chose not to actually display them.

[johnnykonami]

The top part (logo) looks great.  I agree about the subtitle being a little hard to read, it's acceptable though.  Could you post a quick screenshot of the same in Japanese for comparison's sake?

[SamIAm]

I think we need another CRT test. 

[JoshTurboTrollX]

I'm not ashamed to be openly drooling on my PC monitor! 

Great work as always!

[elmer]

Could you post a quick screenshot of the same in Japanese for comparison's sake?

OK, I've updated the earlier post with the Japanese screenshot.

[esteban]

Call me crazy, but the Anglicized Title Screen (ATS) is actually SUPERIOR to the original.

No joke.

ATS > Original

[elmer]

I'm not ashamed to be openly drooling on my PC monitor! 

Call me crazy, but the Anglicized Title Screen (ATS) is actually SUPERIOR to the original.

I agree with both you guys, I think that Phase's logo looks absolutely wonderful on the screen. 

I can't think of any professional game artist BITD that would have come up with anything that fits there better.

************

I've done some tweaking to the drop-shadow on the subtitle text to make a little bit easier to read, but more importantly, have changed the color of it so that it's not pure-black anymore and so doesn't look quite so jarring.

I think that this is looking better.