@GTV reviews the Cosmic Fantasy 1-2 Switch collection by Edia, provides examples of the poor English editing/localization work. It's much worse for CF1. Rated "D" for disappointment, finding that TurboGrafx CF2 is better & while CF1's the real draw, Edia screwed it up...
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Translated games?

Started by elmer, 04/03/2015, 02:02 PM

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elmer

My PC-FX has finally arrived, so it's time to ask ... are there fan translations available for any of the existing games?

If not ... what do you think is the reason ...
  • Too few PC-FX fans?
  • Translators too busy with the PCE?
  • Some critical tools missing?
  • No games worth translating?

NecroPhile

There's a translation for Pia Carrot and a couple others in the works.

As for why there's not more, I'd guess it's because it's a niche system that few people own and because so much of story lines unfold in fmv, and I assume it's a shit ton more work to subtitle or redub them.
Ultimate Forum Bully/Thief/Saboteur/Clone Warrior! BURN IN HELL NECROPHUCK!!!

elmer

Quote from: guest on 04/03/2015, 03:23 PMThere's a translation for Pia Carrot and a couple others in the works.
Thanks, I'll hunt for it.

QuoteAs for why there's not more, I'd guess it's because it's a niche system that few people own and because so much of story lines unfold in fmv, and I assume it's a shit ton more work to subtitle or redub them.
Duh, silly me ... FMV ... yeah, that would makes a lot sense.

In some ways that's actually easier because it could all be done in After Effects without any messing around with the game code itself ... but you'd need to know where every video started/ended, and you'd need to compress it to exactly the same size (or less) ... and you'd need the compression tools.

... Actually, that could be a real PITA to do!  :-k

BTW ... are there any PC-FX video compression/decompression tools out there?

Arkhan Asylum

Pia Carrot is translated, but, it's a titty game, so I mean

if you're not interested in being senpai and talking to all the girls, there isn't a point to it.

You can just google the titties and call it a day. 

The big reason it's not translated more heavily is basically that about 12 people worldwide even care about the machine beyond simply YouTubing their collection for street cred.

There's about 4.5 action games on the machine:

Ruruli Ra Rura
Zenki
Zeroigar
Chipchan Kick
Nirgends (this is the half point)

I guess you could count the wrestling/FMV fighting games, and Baseball too.   The baseball game is pretty good. 

I am not sure if there are any video compression tools floating around.   I thought the thing just did straight forward JPEG run length compression, so you could probably just diddle it yourself or find any other compression tool out there really. 

This "max-level forum psycho" (:lol:) destroyed TWO PC Engine groups in rage: one by Aaron Lambert on Facebook "Because Chris 'Shadowland' Runyon!," then the other by Aaron Nanto "Because Le NightWolve!" Him and PCE Aarons don't have a good track record together... Both times he blamed the Aarons in a "Look-what-you-made-us-do?!" manner, never himself nor his deranged, destructive, toxic turbo troll gang!

NecroPhile

Quote from: elmer on 04/03/2015, 03:35 PMThanks, I'll hunt for it.
http://projects.mattsmessyroom.com/welcometopiacarrot/

There's links along the side for Team Innocent and Ah! My Goddess projects too.

Quote from: elmer on 04/03/2015, 03:35 PMBTW ... are there any PC-FX video compression/decompression tools out there?
Check with filler and/or samiam.  I recall one or the other (or both) talking about reinserting videos before.
Ultimate Forum Bully/Thief/Saboteur/Clone Warrior! BURN IN HELL NECROPHUCK!!!

Arkhan Asylum

shit I keep forgetting about Team Innocent's translation thing.

That's one of the better PCFX games out there.
This "max-level forum psycho" (:lol:) destroyed TWO PC Engine groups in rage: one by Aaron Lambert on Facebook "Because Chris 'Shadowland' Runyon!," then the other by Aaron Nanto "Because Le NightWolve!" Him and PCE Aarons don't have a good track record together... Both times he blamed the Aarons in a "Look-what-you-made-us-do?!" manner, never himself nor his deranged, destructive, toxic turbo troll gang!

Filler

Quote from: guest on 04/03/2015, 04:13 PMThe big reason it's not translated more heavily is basically that about 12 people worldwide even care about the machine beyond simply YouTubing their collection for street cred.
I loled so hard at this. :D As for Pia Carrot, it's the journey man, not the destination.

BTW: I think SamIAm and EsperKnight are the ones that made it somewhere with the video dumping and reinsertion.

elmer

Quote from: guest on 04/03/2015, 04:30 PMhttp://projects.mattsmessyroom.com/welcometopiacarrot/

There's links along the side for Team Innocent and Ah! My Goddess projects too.
Thanks! Looks like EsperKnight and Filler are still out there actively fighting to bring the system's games to non-Japanese-speakers like me.

I can probably live without Pia Carrot, but I'd love to be able to play Team Innocent ... I like sci-fi RPGs.

NightWolve

#8
The PC-FX - Game Sack on first PCFX translation

Game Sack Joe said it best with regards to the first ever fan translation project for the PC-FX in terms of "priorities." :P

I did once consider Miraculum myself but back when I was really active there was no PCFX emulator. There is one now which is essential for fan projects but I can't ever see myself ever regaining interest for the platform, so all yours along with EsperKnight. ;)

Anyway, Arkhan mostly answered your main question properly.

SamIAm

Esperknight and I were doing Zeroigar together.

We got the video extracted from the game, hard-subbed, re-encoded and re-inserted, functioning completely in the game. We have all the text ripped from the game. The only trouble is getting it reinserted and displaying nicely. Esperknight, the hacker, has kind of left things off there.

elmer, if you want to finish that off, please let me know!

elmer

Quote from: NightWolve on 04/03/2015, 09:27 PMGame Sack Joe said it best with regards to the first ever fan translation project for the PC-FX in terms of "priorities." :P
Haha ... yeah, funny that!

QuoteAnyway, Arkhan mostly answered your main question properly.
Yep ... just a really minority platform. I'm still curious to see what it can do, though.

Thanks for everyone's help.  :)

Arkhan Asylum

It can do quite a bit really, but FMV fapping was the rage at the time.  Kind of like how Sega CD was pretty much a platform for dumbass looking FMV games, and about 6 really cool action games.

Something like Flashback/Out of this World on PC-FX would be pretty good. 

Those kinds of game would be good on PCE too.  We basically only got Prince of Persia in terms of "realistic" platformer, or whatever you call those kinds of games where you have to stop and climb, and get running momentum and all of that.

or games like Time Gal/Sewer Shark.

You'd just y'know, need an expert animator for that crap.
This "max-level forum psycho" (:lol:) destroyed TWO PC Engine groups in rage: one by Aaron Lambert on Facebook "Because Chris 'Shadowland' Runyon!," then the other by Aaron Nanto "Because Le NightWolve!" Him and PCE Aarons don't have a good track record together... Both times he blamed the Aarons in a "Look-what-you-made-us-do?!" manner, never himself nor his deranged, destructive, toxic turbo troll gang!

elmer

Quote from: guest on 04/04/2015, 06:14 PMIt can do quite a bit really, but FMV fapping was the rage at the time.  Kind of like how Sega CD was pretty much a platform for dumbass looking FMV games, and about 6 really cool action games.
You really don't want to get me to vent on the awful Sega CD!

QuoteYou'd just y'know, need an expert animator for that crap.
And that's the big problem ... good ones have always been rare, and finding one these days that's willing to work on one of these old less-popular systems ...  [-o<

Arkhan Asylum

That's why it sort of sucks, the games that would really be "PC-FX games" are such a pain in the ass to actually make.

I personally would only want to do a PC-FX game if I can find someone willing to draw / animate some actual cartoon nonsense. 


Maybe I will just one day repurpose La Blue Girl clips.
This "max-level forum psycho" (:lol:) destroyed TWO PC Engine groups in rage: one by Aaron Lambert on Facebook "Because Chris 'Shadowland' Runyon!," then the other by Aaron Nanto "Because Le NightWolve!" Him and PCE Aarons don't have a good track record together... Both times he blamed the Aarons in a "Look-what-you-made-us-do?!" manner, never himself nor his deranged, destructive, toxic turbo troll gang!

elmer

Quote from: guest on 04/05/2015, 05:44 AMI personally would only want to do a PC-FX game if I can find someone willing to draw / animate some actual cartoon nonsense. 

Maybe I will just one day repurpose La Blue Girl clips.
Ah, so you'd actually want to do the anime cutscenes??? They're pretty much what I want to avoid in games!  :wink:

It seems to me that game creators realized sometime in the 6th-generation that in-game cutscenes (with real game assets) were more immersive than video cutscenes (looking nothing like the in-game characters).

That could just be because the 6th-generation technology was the first to make in-game cutscenes possible ... but I'm not convinced. I honestly prefer the 4th-gen story-telling techniques to just ripping the player away into a full screen FMV.

If you want to go with the anime, then I guess that re-purposing (i.e. copying) it from a TV show, or just generating something by mechanima from a modern game series would be the most-realistic options.

Arkhan Asylum

I was always a big fan of the RPGs that cut to anime scenes, because you're usually some little stumpy sprite version of the anime character on the box.

This "max-level forum psycho" (:lol:) destroyed TWO PC Engine groups in rage: one by Aaron Lambert on Facebook "Because Chris 'Shadowland' Runyon!," then the other by Aaron Nanto "Because Le NightWolve!" Him and PCE Aarons don't have a good track record together... Both times he blamed the Aarons in a "Look-what-you-made-us-do?!" manner, never himself nor his deranged, destructive, toxic turbo troll gang!

Aggie Tsubi

If it was just about the titties, there are other PC-FX hentai titles that could've been translated, but I assume Pia Carrot specifically was done because it's genuinely a nice little dating sim, better than most dating sims, in my opinion. (Heck, better than tons of galge, period, although it's got nothing on, say, Key's games, but those came out a decade later after the genre evolved a lot.) Even if the sexual content was all removed, it'd still be well worth playing (although I would argue that some of the stories wouldn't be as effective, since the sex actually plays a worthwhile role in how they're written).

16bitgium

I'd be interested in translating Last imperial prince.... My japanese is far from perfect, but I studied it at Uni for two years and with a dictionary I might be able to pull it off (in a couple of years time :) ).

But I was wondering if there is a sort of guide on how to go about translating games (in general) and maybe a toolset for how to extract the text from the games? Is there also a faq how to set up GCC for the PCFX and where can you download these?

NightWolve

#18
Quote from: 16bitgium on 05/04/2015, 03:03 AMBut I was wondering if there is a sort of guide on how to go about translating games (in general) and maybe a toolset for how to extract the text from the games? Is there also a faq how to set up GCC for the PCFX and where can you download these?
A fan translator that I used to work with on Ys games was a "hack" (and a cheat as well as I found later!) that was translation software dependent on Jim Breen's WWWJDIC. Not a "real" translator in other words. Here's the link for that:

http://www.edrdg.org/cgi-bin/wwwjdic/wwwjdic?9T

Every S-JIS Japanese string had to be converted to Unicode encoding for him and copied/pasted into that "Text Glossing" text box for processing - sometimes that led to "guesslations" on his part. Also, he couldn't handle images until the text was drawn out of them with something like Japanese IME Pad and then processed with WWWJDIC as usual.

So, I think that would give you the dictionary support you need. It doesn't try to form a translation like http://translate.google.com does, it breaks a Japanese sentence down into definitions and you have to understand enough of the result to make sense of it.

As for script extraction and guides, that all depends on the game, finding a good programmer, etc. There's never one magical guide out there that you can use to jump right in. It's a slow process. I hate to share it, but yeah, I guess the best centralized place to get started is www.romhacking.net. There ya go.

elmer

#19
Quote from: 16bitgium on 05/04/2015, 03:03 AMI'd be interested in translating Last imperial prince.... My japanese is far from perfect, but I studied it at Uni for two years and with a dictionary I might be able to pull it off (in a couple of years time :) ).

But I was wondering if there is a sort of guide on how to go about translating games (in general) and maybe a toolset for how to extract the text from the games? Is there also a faq how to set up GCC for the PCFX and where can you download these?
There are 2 basic tasks in translating games ...
  • Translating each piece of text that you find from Japanese to English.
  • Making the game display your English text.

The first task can be handled by anyone with a knowledge of Japanese, and you can probably find a few people here that would help out if you can get the text into an editable file.

The second task is (IMHO) where you'll probably have more trouble.

You MAY find that Last Imperial Prince stores all of it's text as shift-jis encoded strings
... and you MAY find a tool that will scan an ISO image and tell you where potential text strings are
... and you MAY find another tool to replace those strings with your new English ones.

You can probably find some tools like that on romhacking.net (don't know, didn't look).

That's the simplest form of hacking that can be done with off-the-shelf tools, and it's very limited.

The chance that you can replace any reasonably interesting Japanese text with a decent English translation that fits into exactly the same number of double-byte encoded English glyphs is ... remote.

If you're really, really lucky, then the game's text printing code might accept single-byte ascii characters as well as double-byte kanji, but that's not common because the game's original programmer is unlikely to have needed that capability.

If you are that lucky, then fitting twice as many English characters in the same memory space as kanji may give you enough translation space to do a good job, as long as the game will display them.

Anything more complex than that is going to need a competent programmer who is familiar with V810 assembly language (or is willing to learn it), and is interested enough in the project to spend weeks/months of their time digging into the game and trying to figure out what is going on.

Do you have those skills? Do you know someone that does?

P.S.

Notepad++ on Windows can convert text files between shift-jis and unicode for editing.