Xanadu I and II - General Translation Project(s) Thread

SamIAm · 03/06/2016, 08:39 PM

QuoteHow many voice actors do you need.

Assuming we don't get several super-talents who can convincingly pull off multiple characters, probably about 30.

There are actually about 50 different characters in the games if you include all the bit-parts, but I think we're going to be able to recycle some voices without anyone noticing.

When it comes to casting, I'll be looking for four things, in descending order of importance:
1. That you can pull off a voice that fits the character.
2. That you can act.
3. That your recording quality isn't terrible.
4. That you can accurately check to see whether your take of a line fits the prescribed time, and otherwise export it according to the criteria I set.

This is still weeks away, though, so sit tight.

technozombie · 03/09/2016, 06:40 PM

I've always wanted to try voice acting, although I don't think I'll be good at it. I would like to try something where I would have to "change" my voice like trying to sound like an old man or something.

SamIAm · 03/10/2016, 03:19 AM

Chapter 8 is about 40% tested.

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

This week, I've been sinking huge amounts of time into something that I always knew was going to need it. In Xanadu 2, the "Prologue" that you can choose to view as you start a new game is not a typical cutscene, but is rather the normal game engine on auto-pilot with every line of dialogue being voiced via redbook audio while simultaneously being printed in ordinary text boxes.

What's challenging about translating this is that first of all, the game engine and the CD audio never really check to see where the other one is; they just start at the same time and depend on everything going smoothly. The text boxes have delay variables at the end of them, denoted in frames, and when the game counts off the delay, the next text box is loaded. But there are lots of other factors involved:

1. Both the Japanese and the English translation print at one character per frame. If the Japanese text box has 20 characters and the corresponding English text box has 35 characters, then you need to subtract 15 frames from the delay variable.
2. Many names in the Japanese version are printed using an alternate font that takes one frame to turn on, and one frame to turn off. The English names are not.
3. If you split one text box into two text boxes, you have to factor in six* frames to the English frame count total for the transition.
4. Wrapping to another line takes a frame by itself, except in certain complicated circumstances.
5. For some reason, the original game has lots of delay variables paired. Sometimes, it's necessary when the delay is greater than 255 frames, but often, that's not the case. Instead of one variable with a value of 120, it will have two with values of 60 each. And guess what? The game takes one frame to begin counting down a delay variable, so if you want to use one variable instead of two (which is easier, because you're recalculating all the delay variables to match the English anyway), then you need to add one extra frame. I actually said to hell with it and started splitting my recalculated variables.

There are dozens and dozens of text boxes worth of lines, and just figuring all this crap out took hours. I've done a lot of the recalculating now, but it will still be hours of exhausting work more to get everything truly synced up, which it needs to be. You might not think it's such a big deal if the timing gets off by a frame or two, but since the game and the CD are running separately, little mistakes can compound. It would be very easy for the audio and the text boxes to be de-synced by a half-second by the end, and if all the mistakes are little, it will be very difficult to pinpoint where things got off track.

I'm probably going to have to record footage via Mednafen of the original and the translation, and carefully check one box at a time whether everything is synced. It's a damn mess.

The only bright side is, if we're paying this much attention, it actually won't be that hard to clean up little mistakes that Falcom themselves made. Some of the sound effects are ever-so-slightly not in sync, and I'll be able to improve their timing.

So yeah, that's what I'm doing with myself this week.

*I still have to verify this.

Johnpv · 03/10/2016, 07:14 AM

Holy shit, that you're taking the time to do that, and do it right, is INSANELY impressive.

esteban · 03/10/2016, 09:24 PM

Sam: INSANITY!

SamIAm · 03/12/2016, 09:38 PM

It's starting to work! Ha ha ha ha!!

There's some variable that I haven't been able to pin down which is causing some English text boxes to hang around for a few frames longer than they should, but that's OK. I made a video rip of the Japanese game and used VirtualDub to count the frames between each and every text box, recording the results along the way, and now, I'm going through an English video rip and doing corrections. Add a frame here, subtract a frame there...I've already got the first few scenes lining up with the original Japanese exactly. And I do mean exactly.

There is one more variable that's a minor pain to deal with right now, and also has the potential to bother us again later. Elmer went all out and has a great new compression scheme working in the game that gives me all the space I'll need for text; however, the amount of time it takes the CPU to move around and decompress things has changed. For example, in this prologue, there's a moment when the characters enter a castle, the screen fades to black, and a new block of data is loaded behind the scenes before the castle interior fades in. In the translated game, this transition is taking an extra several frames. For the player, this is only another tenth of a second or so of waiting, but for me, this is another delay that needs to be factored in.

The reason why this might bother us again later is that we're using Mednafen to test all this stuff, and there's a chance that real hardware might take a significantly different amount of time to decompress stuff. Fortunately, there aren't that many transitions where things are loaded like this, and if we're only off by a frame or two each time, it won't be a big deal. However, this is why it's important to be diligent everywhere else. If, toward the end of the scene, we've drifted five frames off, it's not really a problem. If we're drifted twenty or thirty, on the other hand, our translation will look like crap.

Part of me is eager to get this done and get back to editing. Another part of me, though, is happy for the chance to take a break from dealing with words and spend some time playing with my calculator.

SamIAm · 03/17/2016, 06:18 AM

The first pass of Xanadu 1 is now done all the way through Chapter 8!

Although my job will be busy through the rest of the month, I am going to attempt to get the rest of the game done before April, or at least to reach Chapter 10.

In other news, the Xanadu 2 prologue text boxes are now fully synced to the voices. There's some kind of factor going on which I don't quite understand that's causing tiny shifts in the real delays of each text box. In the end, when they're all played, the last box will finish within one or two frames of where the last box in the original game finished. However, if I locate which box(es) are off and correct them, it can give rise to desyncronizations in other places. Anyway, these differences are literally imperceptible, and the game functions just fine. Editing will be a bit more of a pain, but we'll get through it.

I'm going to keep taking my time putting the dub scripts together. It will definitely pay off if I make them as good as I can before opening auditions and beginning recording/mixing. If you want to try out, it's probably a good idea to start checking back here around mid-April.

elmer · 03/17/2016, 11:19 PM

Quote from: SamIAm on 03/17/2016, 06:18 AMThe first pass of Xanadu 1 is now done all the way through Chapter 8!
...
I'm going to keep taking my time putting the dub scripts together. It will definitely pay off if I make them as good as I can before opening auditions and beginning recording/mixing. If you want to try out, it's probably a good idea to start checking back here around mid-April.

We're really getting there! It's just one heck of a long-slow-and-detailed job.

Vimtoman · 03/19/2016, 09:24 AM

Guy's you are the Elite.

wyndcrosser · 03/27/2016, 12:03 AM

congrats Sam. Very interested in this, I played it previously all the way through, but it was difficult with my limited japanese lol

SamIAm · 03/29/2016, 10:42 AM

Update time.

Chapter 9 of Xanadu 1 is finished, except for literally two or three text boxes that sit behind a weird bug that elmer will hopefully have worked out soon. It happens at a moment when the game does something that it never does anywhere else, so it's neither terribly surprising nor worrying that the same bug will pop up elsewhere.

I have spent the last several days doing pre-production work for the dub. Primarily, this means setting up project files in Audacity with the background music and sound effects totally mixed in, and the positions of every spoken line marked so that when I get actual takes from people, I can very quickly copy/paste them in and produce previews within minutes. I'll need another week or two to finish this process. The real objective is to make it so that I can immediately have all the actors hear what they sound like together, and do retakes to improve the overall performance while their interest is fresh.

I'm also working on doing a complete test-dub using my own voice. It's pretty embarrassing listening to the playback, but it's also teaching me a lot. The English lines are all measured so that they'll fit in the same slot of time as the original Japanese lines, being neither longer nor shorter. However, if I were to just leave it at that, it would lead to another problem: the pauses between the lines would be the same as the original Japanese, and that leads to some unnatural sounding exchanges in places. It's one of those differences between languages that's easy to overlook. Anyway, by putting my own voice in there, it's really easy to hear when the English actually needs to end a half-second earlier or later than the Japanese, and noting that in the script ahead of time is going to save the actors a lot of trouble.

I didn't do either of the above-mentioned steps when I made the first Xanadu II dub five years ago. I was in some kind of big hurry back then. When I finally got everyone's takes in, I had to start on the mixing from square one, which lead to sloppiness, and also to delays that made some people start to lose interest. Also, when playing back the results, even though (most) people had done a really good job following the target-time numbers after every line in the script, the pauses in between certain lines were strange, and I knew it was going to need some major reworking.

Of course, the old project began its first major stall around that time, so I never quite got around to it.

Anyway, it really makes me wonder how professional dubbing studios handle this sort of thing. It seems like if you didn't want a product that sounds totally weird and detached from the video, you would have no choice but to go through these steps before declaring your script finished and bringing in actors. However, it's all very time-consuming, and it would have been relatively difficult with 20+ year old technology. If I had to guess, I'd say they probably print off lots of copies of the draft-scripts, get a few people to sit around a TV or a projector, then repeat the video footage over and over with the sound off, with people test-reading the lines to each other in real time and making notes.

I could be wrong, though.

elmer · 03/29/2016, 04:41 PM

Quote from: SamIAm on 03/29/2016, 10:42 AMChapter 9 of Xanadu 1 is finished, except for literally two or three text boxes that sit behind a weird bug that elmer will hopefully have worked out soon. It happens at a moment when the game does something that it never does anywhere else, so it's neither terribly surprising nor worrying that the same bug will pop up elsewhere.

Found it! Thanks for the savestates!

I tell you guys ... without Mednafen, this translation would never have been done, at least by me, and possibly by anyone-else either.

Anyway ... that one particular piece of assembly-code in the script is directly calling some cursor-display code at the lowest-level, rather than using the game-code's cursor-flashing routines (that have been patched for the new font code).

It's an easy fix ... I just need to add another special-case-command to the script-compiler to fix this one specific script-chunk.

While I'm doing it ... I should probably scan all the other script-chunks in Xanadu 1 and Xanadu 2 and see if this new patch needs to be applied anywhere else.

QuoteIf I had to guess, I'd say they probably print off lots of copies of the draft-scripts, get a few people to sit around a TV or a projector, then repeated the video footage over and over with the sound off, with people test-reading the lines to each other in real time and making notes.

Yep ... I think that's what normally happens. AFAIK the actors get to watch the video, and hear the foreign audio on their headphones (if they want), all while recording the dub.

This would all be in a studio, with an engineer there to politely point out if the actor has mistimed their lines.

You might think about making videos of everything available to the folks that are doing the dub, complete with timestamps for every line that they're supposed to do.

But that would be a crazy amount of work!

spenoza · 03/29/2016, 10:38 PM

We're all about the crazy, 'round these parts.

SamIAm · 03/29/2016, 11:59 PM

QuoteFound it! Thanks for the savestates!

Woo hoo!

There might-just-might be something similar in the next chapter, so I'm glad that was apparently not too terribly complicated.

QuoteYep ... I think that's what normally happens. AFAIK the actors get to watch the video, and hear the foreign audio on their headphones (if they want), all while recording the dub.

This would all be in a studio, with an engineer there to politely point out if the actor has mistimed their lines.

I mean before the actors come in, though. How do the writers get the script to the final draft? I assume they can't be re-writing too much on the fly during recording, or else it would get sloppy and/or they would have to start paying lots of money to the actors just for sitting around.

It's amazing how sensitive the timing can be. When you've got two seconds for a line and no leeway to go over, you have to test it... and in order to test it properly, you need to see how it fits with the lines around it.

Maybe one person could do it alone, but I imagine that it would work better if you had two or three "testers" watching short clips on loop and reading the dialogues out loud to each other.

QuoteYou might think about making videos of everything available to the folks that are doing the dub, complete with timestamps for every line that they're supposed to do.

But that would be a crazy amount of work!

Ha ha...that would be a a breeze compared to the other steps I've gone through so far.

But my real plan is to just give everyone a youtube link with timestamps to each individual scene, rather than each individual line. They're all short enough that I don't think people will have a lot of trouble finding where their lines are supposed to go.

SamIAm · 03/30/2016, 02:33 AM

By the way, one thing that might be fun for people on this forum would be to help me make background chatter for a couple of the tracks. Off the top of my head, I'm going to need:

- People cowering as the sky turns black and everyone loses the ability to use magic
- People cheering for Areios as he comes home
- People cheering for Areios as he prepares to leave on a sea voyage

Even if you're shy to try out for a more major part, this could be a neat way to get your voice in the translation. It's kind of like being an extra in a movie. The volume of your voice would be turned way down and have lots of other voices layered around it, but it would be there.

Post in this thread to let me know if you're interested. I could probably use 10-15 of you, and if I can't get any women directly through this, I hope you won't mind recruiting your wives/girlfriends/landladies/whoever to join in. It will all be really simple stuff, like "Bon voyage!" "Welcome home!" and "What's going on!?"

You wouldn't need a great mic, but you would need a minimal level of quality, and you would also need to convincingly shout. You might alarm your neighbors while recording.

If you plan on trying out for a real part, you can still join in. However, if you wind up getting a real part, don't be too surprised if I have to basically bury your background chatter to keep people from recognizing that it's the same voice.

Don't be shy - I'm going to join in, too!

seieienbu · 03/30/2016, 04:03 AM

I'd be happy to at least be a cowering peasant; the thought suits me just fine!

ashrion · 03/30/2016, 05:26 AM

Sorry my bad english.
I complete many rpg pc engine in Japanese, when they went on sale, gulliver boy, xanadu2, ys1-2-3-4, xak1-2-3 fray, alnan, cosmic fantasy 4 part 1 and 2, tengai kabuki, but there are some that without the language are impossible, xanadu1, tengaimakyo, anearth. I will often I started, but I get stuck.

In xanadu1, i arrival 6 stage, and the game is one the best rpg all rpg of 16 bits (and the most fucker)... and 32 bits... I hope could complete the translation and after 22 years to complete game, I would be thrilled.
Thank you.

SamIAm · 03/30/2016, 07:01 AM

I really appreciate that you took the time to write a nice message.

Chapter 6 is not very simple, and Chapter 7 is even worse. Hopefully, understanding the language and having a good English guide will make the game much more enjoyable.

Please tell me your opinion of the game again after you try it in English!

LentFilms · 03/30/2016, 07:15 AM

I'd be happy to do some background voices, I have a Snowball mic so hopefully my audio quality should be adequate.

Johnpv · 03/30/2016, 08:27 AM

I'm in to do some background voice(s), kind of tempted to try out for a bigger roll too!

SamIAm · 04/04/2016, 08:16 AM

The first test-play-edit of Xanadu 1 is complete. Today, I started on Xanadu 2.

Later, I'll go back to Xanadu 1 for another pass, and that should be the last one that involves any major editing. I'm anticipating that the early chapters will need more work, in part because my first drafts of those were rougher in the first place, and in part because I didn't play-test those quite as thoroughly. Call me lazy, but at the time, I hadn't refined my process to be as efficient, and there was just so much left to do that I had to go fast to keep up my morale.

Anyway, after the next round, I'll do another quick pass with some playtesters to nab typos and get feedback, and that should be it.

Xanadu 2 is so much smaller than Xanadu 1, I'm hoping I can get a first pass of it done within a month.

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

Oh, and I'll have some background-chatter lines written up soon. Right now, I have a few days off work in a row, and I'm using that to really focus on play-testing.

poponon · 04/04/2016, 03:02 PM

I'll volunteer for some background sounds. I hope my mic quality is good enough! It'd be so awesome to have some contribution to this project. Really really really really appreciate all your guys dedication and expertise.

deubeul · 04/04/2016, 05:51 PM

Is there a french character in the game?

elmer · 04/04/2016, 06:59 PM

Quote from: deubeul on 04/04/2016, 05:51 PMIs there a french character in the game?

Was this what you had in mind?

Sorry, I know that's a terribly stereotyped joke ... but I love the movie anyway!

P.S. I'm still hoping that someone from the French PC Engine forums will eventually show some interest in doing a French version of Zeroigar!

TurboXray · 04/04/2016, 09:47 PM

Quote from: SamIAm on 04/04/2016, 08:16 AMThe first test-play-edit of Xanadu 1 is complete. Today, I started on Xanadu 2.

Wow, you guys got a lot done!

deubeul · 04/05/2016, 07:12 PM

Quote from: elmer on 04/04/2016, 06:59 PM
Quote from: deubeul on 04/04/2016, 05:51 PMIs there a french character in the game?
Was this what you had in mind?
Sorry, I know that's a terribly stereotyped joke ... but I love the movie anyway!

Lol, I was more asking Sam if he needed a french accent dubber, but thanks for the reminder and the good laugh

Quote from: elmer on 04/04/2016, 06:59 PMP.S. I'm still hoping that someone from the French PC Engine forums will eventually show some interest in doing a French version of Zeroigar!

If you only need someone to translate the script to french, and if there's no hacking involved, I'd love to do it!

elmer · 04/05/2016, 08:21 PM

Quote from: TurboXray on 04/04/2016, 09:47 PM
Quote from: SamIAm on 04/04/2016, 08:16 AMThe first test-play-edit of Xanadu 1 is complete. Today, I started on Xanadu 2.
Wow, you guys got a lot done!

Well, SamIAm has, he deserves the credit ... I've been twiddling-my-thumbs for a while, now!

Quote from: deubeul on 04/05/2016, 07:12 PMLol, I was more asking Sam if he needed a french accent dubber, but thanks for the reminder and the good laugh

I'm glad that you didn't take offense.

The British and the French have been poking fun at each other for hundreds of years (punctuated by the occasional war).

Quote from: deubeul on 04/05/2016, 07:12 PM
Quote from: elmer on 04/04/2016, 06:59 PMP.S. I'm still hoping that someone from the French PC Engine forums will eventually show some interest in doing a French version of Zeroigar!
If you only need someone to translate the script to french, and if there's no hacking involved, I'd love to do it!

The Zeroigar translation patch ships with the entire in-game text as editable text files, and with exactly the same tools that SamIAm used to insert the text into the game for testing.

The video subtitles are also supplied in the form that was created by MP2Conv tool that we've talked about in the PC-FX Homebrew thread ... and the tool to merge them into the game is also supplied.

That was a deliberate decision by both SamIAm and myself in order to make it easy for people to "play" with the translation itself and to encourage people to get into "translating" a game.

If you're really interested, then we should move the discussion to the Zeroigar thread, or open a new one.

Tolvatar · 04/06/2016, 10:47 AM

Dragon Slayer II - Xanadu it´s one of my favourite game on the MSX.
But i never play it on the PC Engine cause the language barrier.
Perhaps it´s time to play it soon.

CrackTiger · 04/06/2016, 01:45 PM

Quote from: Tolvatar on 04/06/2016, 10:47 AMDragon Slayer II - Xanadu it´s one of my favourite game on the MSX.
But i never play it on the PC Engine cause the language barrier.
Perhaps it´s time to play it soon.

That game is not on PC Engine.

Checkout youtube videos to see what The Legend of Xanadu series is like.

elmer · 04/06/2016, 10:40 PM

Quote from: guest on 04/06/2016, 01:45 PMThat game is not on PC Engine.

Checkout youtube videos to see what The Legend of Xanadu series is like.

Yep, Falcom and their confusing naming.

"Legend of Xanadu" 1 & 2 are the last 2 games in the Dragon Slayer series ... basically numbers 8 & 9.

They're exclusive to the PCE (well ... except for the PCE-emulation Windows release in 2003, and the more-recent PCE-emulation Virtual Console release).

Tolvatar · 04/07/2016, 05:40 AM

Ups, i´m sorry.
I thought it was a remake like Xak I+II or YS 1, 2 & 3
I love Dragon Slayer series. I have more desire to play this games now.

SamIAm · 04/11/2016, 09:00 AM

Update:

Xanadu 2 play-testing is done through Chapter 2 now. That means three out of eight chapters are finished.

Keep in mind, however, that the next two chapters are basically the largest in the game. Chapter 4 is probably the size of two smaller chapters put together.

Also, the pre-production mixing for the dub is coming along nicely. Elmer and I will hopefully be able to do some testing of the ADPCM-based audio within the real game itself very soon.

sanjo · 04/12/2016, 03:24 AM

Great! you know, one of the main reasons why I want to buy a PC-Engine DUO is because of this series!

SamIAm · 04/14/2016, 07:54 PM

The pre-production work on the dub is almost done. There are only sound effects to get in there now. Luckily, there are lots of places where I can get the sounds out of the original audio and seamlessly splice it with the new audio (and in fact, I've already done this).

Anyway, this is what one of about 35 Audacity project files looks like.

There's BGM from the soundtrack, the original Japanese audio for comparison (to be muted later), and then each character's line set up as its own track, with numbers corresponding to the line numbering in the script. The audio you see in each character-line track is white noise filler, placed exactly where it needs to go and occupying exactly as much time as the original Japanese.

Dropping in English lines that people send will literally be as simple as double-click/Ctrl+V for each one, and this will be very useful for showing people how their takes are mixing very quickly, ideally encouraging them to do retakes before they lose interest.

elmer · 04/14/2016, 08:21 PM

Quote from: SamIAm on 04/14/2016, 07:54 PMThe pre-production work on the dub is almost done. There are only sound effects to get in there now. Luckily, there are lots of places where I can get the sounds out of the original audio and seamlessly splice it with the new audio (and in fact, I've already done this).

Excellent!

But now I'm struggling to get my side of things done and catch up!

SamIAm · 04/14/2016, 11:19 PM

Say, if anyone here happens to be aware of any sites that host lots of classic early 90's anime sound effects, please let me know. Xanadu 1 in particular is full of effects that sound like they came from some generic reel.

There are a lot of magical-energy sounds that really ought to come from an "authentic" source.

NightWolve · 04/14/2016, 11:23 PM

Quote from: SamIAm on 04/14/2016, 07:54 PMAnyway, this is what one of about 35 Audacity project files looks like. There's BGM from the soundtrack, the original Japanese audio for comparison (to be muted later), and then each character's line set up as its own track, with numbers corresponding to the line numbering in the script. The audio you see in each character-line track is white noise filler, placed exactly where it needs to go and occupying exactly as much time as the original Japanese.

Yeah, looks like Audacity is pretty powerful for freeware. I didn't realize its mixing features were as instant as opening another audio file via drag'n'drop.

ParanoiaDragon · 04/15/2016, 02:07 AM

Hmmm, sound effects, that's definitely one of the things I've always worried about when it comes to dubbing games. I've never personally found any resource for these sounds, but, I've always wanted one, even for my music. I feel like Telenet used a lot of the same generic anime sounds that I so love.

elmer · 04/15/2016, 09:59 AM

Quote from: ParanoiaDragon on 04/15/2016, 02:07 AMI've never personally found any resource for these sounds, but, I've always wanted one, even for my music.

I suspect that you really mean "free" resource ... but just-in-case you're willing to actually spend money ...

https://www.sound-ideas.com/Collection/47/2/0/Comedy-and-Cartoon-Sound-Effects

SamIAm · 04/16/2016, 06:31 AM

/NeededSFX.wav

In this one clip are all of the very "anime" sound effects that I'm going to have some trouble locating. If you know where I can get clean, reasonably high quality sounds that are similar, please tell me.

LentFilms · 04/16/2016, 02:23 PM

I did some random Googling and found a site that I think has what you are looking for. It is call Sound Effect Lab and a lot of the stuff sounds like it came straight from a 90s anime, especially in the "Battle" and "Cartoon/Production" tabs. It appears to all be free as well so I hope that helps.

ParanoiaDragon · 04/17/2016, 12:46 AM

Quote from: elmer on 04/15/2016, 09:59 AM
Quote from: ParanoiaDragon on 04/15/2016, 02:07 AMI've never personally found any resource for these sounds, but, I've always wanted one, even for my music.
I suspect that you really mean "free" resource ... but just-in-case you're willing to actually spend money ...

https://www.sound-ideas.com/Collection/47/2/0/Comedy-and-Cartoon-Sound-Effects

Holy hell, those are some expensive sound effects! Cool though, it's got Hanna Barbera. It's funny, for the most part, I'm not a Hanna Barbera fan, but I've always loved their sound effects! Man, they got Looney Tunes & Tom & Jerry, that's awesome!

SamIAm · 04/17/2016, 06:10 AM

Quote from: LentFilms on 04/16/2016, 02:23 PMI did some random Googling and found a site that I think has what you are looking for. It is call Sound Effect Lab and a lot of the stuff sounds like it came straight from a 90s anime, especially in the "Battle" and "Cartoon/Production" tabs. It appears to all be free as well so I hope that helps.

Sadly, they don't have quite the sounds I'm looking for.

But thanks for the link anyway.

SamIAm · 04/20/2016, 09:40 PM

I finished test-playing Chapter 3 of Xanadu 2 this morning. That puts us over the 50% mark for the game as a whole.

The sound effects for the dub are coming right along. It's a slog - the amount of time I've spent listening to hundreds of 1-second clips back-to-back is starting to get ridiculous - but progress is happening. There are three tracks from Xanadu 1 that have more sound effects in them than any others by far, and they're all done.

Sit tight for the dub to begin. I want quality over speed, and that means it's just going to take time.

BigusSchmuck · 04/21/2016, 08:59 AM

Quote from: SamIAm on 04/20/2016, 09:40 PMI finished test-playing Chapter 3 of Xanadu 2 this morning. That puts us over the 50% mark for the game as a whole.

The sound effects for the dub are coming right along. It's a slog - the amount of time I've spent listening to hundreds of 1-second clips back-to-back is starting to get ridiculous - but progress is happening. There are three tracks from Xanadu 1 that have more sound effects in them than any others by far, and they're all done.

Sit tight for the dub to begin. I want quality over speed, and that means it's just going to take time.

Take all the time you need. If you need some help beta testing please let me know and I'll take some time off work to do it.

jtucci31 · 04/21/2016, 03:58 PM

Damn I really wish I had some decent recording equipment to get my voice in these games. But just hearing it in English alone is fine by me! Thanks for constantly updating this thread, it's a real treat to see it inch closer and closer. I cannot wait until this is finally finished and your work can be admired!

SamIAm · 04/30/2016, 09:09 AM

I suppose I should hit you guys with an update.

Chapter 4 of Xanadu 2, the largest one in that game, is now fully play-test-edited. Chapter 5 is smaller than average, and 6 and 7 are tiny, so we're really getting near the finish line for that one. Since I have some time off work (Golden Week in Japan), I'm going to try to get Chapter 5 done within the next few days.

As for the dub, the sound effects are all lined up and mixed in for both games, though there are a few that are going to need work. It's all minor stuff. The project files are fully built up and organized, and all-told, it represents over a month of hard work.

I'm still test-reading and editing the dub script. That went on the back burner for a while, but it's about ready to get first priority.

Generally, I'm pleased with the results of things. Also, Xanadu 2 is one gorgeous PCE game.

esteban · 04/30/2016, 10:21 AM

Hoffman!

^ I tried typing "Goddamn!" and autocorrect fixed it.

HOFFMAN! That is great news.

spenoza · 04/30/2016, 05:44 PM

Hoffman! That sounds like some kind of obscure British euphemism. I like it!

SamIAm · 05/02/2016, 09:03 AM

Got Chapter 5 done.

It's nice when I have enough free time to work on this for a good couple of days straight.