Saturn Translation Project

[3703]

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[Ben]

My NTSC-J Saturn is the only console set up under my TV. Would love to see this get off the ground.

I have to be honest and say I wasn't really planning on posting at racketboy again, but I saw you bumped this and thought I'd give this thread some closure. I was able to get some very good help from #yabause on Freenode, the developers of Yabause know this stuff inside and out. Anyway, I saved a conversation I had with CyberWarriorX, which I will paste here:

<CyberWarriorX> Well, it's hard to give a one size fits all instructions
<CyberWarriorX> It really depends on your luck
<CyberWarriorX> Like if you're lucky it's storing text in shift-jis, or some kind of extended ascii
<CyberWarriorX> More likely it's stored in some custom format to save on space
<CyberWarriorX> So you'll need to do a relative search
<CyberWarriorX> Yabause has a relative search function built in if you need it

<CyberWarriorX> Yeah, I mean for a first project it's not something I'd tackle
<CyberWarriorX> But anyways, what you could try is first get a ram dump
<CyberWarriorX> Then load it up in a text editor or hex editor
<CyberWarriorX> And see if you can see any useful strings
<CyberWarriorX> If you find nothing, that's when you have to use a relative searcher
<Ben32x> Right, got it. I have found some guides for identifying shift-jis, maybe I will get lucky.
<CyberWarriorX> Most romhacking documents assume 1 byte per text relative search. You likely want to use 2-byte relative search.
<CyberWarriorX> err 1 byte per character sorry
<CyberWarriorX> Most romhacking documents assume 1 byte per text relative search. You likely want to use 2-byte relative search.
<CyberWarriorX> err 1 byte per character sorry
<CyberWarriorX> Also, if you using relative search make sure you use katakana/hiragana
<CyberWarriorX> The kanji may not be in a normal order
<CyberWarriorX> But katakana/hiragana pretty much always is

I have managed to start pulling text from Devil Summoner after getting his help, and using the Yabause emulator. The issue I had before was that dumping the entire iso gave me an unmanagable amount of code, that I didn't know how to parse down. So what I am I doing is a ram dump from Yabause, which will limit the amount of lines I need to dig through with my hex editor (so you can just fire up the game, bring up the menu for example, do a ram dump, and bam you have narrowed the code for the menu text down vastly). In terms of finding the strings you are looking for, you will have to google guides on extended ascii and shift-jis, there are a ton of them out there. The other issue is that some text is compressed, and managing to extract it without some coding background is a pretty big job, something I'm not up to anyway. So, if you go to translate a game and narrow your search down using the ram dump, but can't find strings of shift-jis or extended ascii/via relative search, your text is probably compressed. In which case you will need to learn about coding or pick a different game. No clue when I'll get done with this, but I feel like once I knock out one game I will be able to do more at a quicker pace, hopefully anyway.

[Original_Name]

Hey everyone, I promised this months ago, but life as well as issues with the forum timing me out got in the way. I've transcribed the scrolling text from the intro movie for easy reference if and when we get around to translating Assault Suit Leynos 2. From here I'll start doing the same for menu text, mission briefing text, dialog text, and the ending text.

A.D.2120

人口増加による
食糧難が深刻化

植民地間で
テラフォーム紛争勃発

コロニーサイド、
移住計画案 自紙撤回



A.D.2121

コロニー[RIF] 独立宣言



A.D.2122

各地で領土問題による
紛争が多発

各国の崩壊、分裂進む



A.D.2123

ゼネス連邦首相暗殺

サンラール、ゼネス連邦、
全面戦争へ突入



A.D.2124

そして現在……

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

For a quick and dirty run-down, in 2120 population growth lead to mass food shortages. Among the colonies, a dispute over "Terraform" broke out. On the colony side, their immigration papers start to be revoked. In 2121, the [RIF] Colony drafted their declaration of independence. In 2122, resultant territorial disputes caused conflicts everywhere, causing the nation to collapse and divisions to deepen. In 2123, the prime minister of the "Zenesu" (I believe this is meant to translate to "Zenith") Federation is assassinated. The Zenith and "Sanraaru" (trying to figure out loan word this is meant to be) Federations rush to all out-war. 2124: "And now..."

This is extremely rough, and it's a bit tricky due to the grammatical sparsity and lack of contextual clues -- I'll work on it and try to get opinions from people (including those of you on the boards who are better at Japanese than I), and turn it into something solid as I go along. The opening cutscene would be extremely easy to edit into English given that all the CG video is exclusively on the left side of the screen, and all of the scrolling text is on the right side on a black background. All we would need to do this effectively is take the video file, edit a black bar on the right side of the screen, and insert our own English scrolling text over it. Of course, I could imagine that even extracting the video could be difficult knowing how Saturn programming can be.

Anyway, I'll try to keep at it over the next couple of weeks and at least get the translation portion started, even if my Japanese skills are only serviceable. It's just about initiative.

[Original_Name]

Ben,

I'd love to be more of a help to you in your endeavors, but unfortunately I'm just not yet at the level that I could begin to take on such sizeable games with multiple language branches and so on. Maybe after a couple more years of studying and then teaching abroad I'll be able to help on this side of the scene.

I was considering your initial post, though -- about the best way to go about providing a translation for future coders to patch into games if they have the interest. It's my personal inclination that in the case of an RPG or adventure game which offers narrative trees and real-time exploration elements, the optimal method for preserving this for a team of coders would be to get at least one to dump all of the dialogue and cut-scene elements for you so that you can be sure that you've translated everything that the game has to offer (which will make things easier for everyone down the line). From there, I would try to create an FAQ similar to this one -- utterly complete. Compare this to, say, the English translation FAQs of Grandia on the Saturn... tons of details missing, no notes added for dialogue paired with objects that you can inspect or side-character conversation. It gets what you need to follow the story, but no more.

Obviously, playing through the game slowly and deliberately with pad, paper, and screenshots, and going back to old saves to replay parts with branching dialogue will get you most of the way to a translation, but the most considerate strategy to help future coders patch the entire game would be to comprehensively translate all of the text, preferably in the order that they are listed in the original code, with as many notes on the original file names and locations as possible.

[As a side-note, with a translation of Sakura Taisen that complete in existence for more than 15 years it's pretty incredible that folks have mostly finished Shining Force III Episodes 2 and 3 and Dragon Force II translations from scratch, but no one has entered that comprehensive script into Sakura Taisen's word bubbles. Obviously this stuff is never easy, but surely it's no more difficult than starting a translation from scratch (although I suppose those teams did have some elements to work with from those games' English first chapters).]

[Original_Name]

Select Set Up Disk text:

起動するディスクを選んで下さい

[Please select a disk to launch]

Mission 1 preliminary text:

俺たちの最初の仕事は森林地帯に
潜んでいる敵遊撃部隊を一掃する
事だ。 情報によると大した敵はい
ないらしい。

ま、久しぶりの実戦だからな、 肩
慣らしにはもってこいだぜ。

Rough: Our first job is to wipe out the enemy guerilla forces lurking in the woodlands. According to our data, there does not seem to be many enemies.

Also, because of the long period without actual fighting, this is ideal for a warm-up.

Mission 1:

森林地帯潜んでいる敵残存兵力を一掃せよ

Rough: You must wipe out the wipe out the enemy forces remaining in the woodlands.

[marurun]

I suggest throwing a PM his way (he'll get an email to the account he registered with) just to let him know what you're up to with the other thread. If he's interested he'll check in. If not, ah well.

[dogman91]

My biggest draw is the sheer number of Saturn RPGs/Strat-RPGs that were exclusive to the Saturn or the JP versions of some games that seem to be superior than their PSX counterparts.

Exactly this. So many games I'm holding off on because the Saturn version is apparently superior (ex. Grandia, Langrisser series, etc. etc.).

[Original_Name]

My biggest draw is the sheer number of Saturn RPGs/Strat-RPGs that were exclusive to the Saturn or the JP versions of some games that seem to be superior than their PSX counterparts.

Exactly this. So many games I'm holding off on because the Saturn version is apparently superior (ex. Grandia, Langrisser series, etc. etc.).

Personally, I think that Princess Crown and Sakura Taisen would be the most strategical and fruitful games to tackle in the Sega Saturn's library. With the success of Vanillaware's recent output, Princess Crown has a massive built-in fanbase who are just waiting for an English patch -- the original translation group would get extra notoriety in the likely event that the same translation was inserted into a PSP patch. Furthermore, there is a wealth of material to speed along the translation process. Sakura Taisen is one of the most massive properties in all of gaming to have never made it out of Japan (in any meaningful capacity), which has fans in the English-speaking world who would go crazy for an accessible translation. Given the fact that the otaku crowd would be the main ones eating it up, taking the easy route and keeping the Japanese voices intact would be seen as a positive for most anyway. Hell, the entire script has received multiple translations, so all the translation part of the team would need to do is their own research and editing. Although it would be a much better idea to patch the Dreamcast version, due to the console's much simpler architecture and more widespread cult status.

Don't get me wrong, I've gotten to the point where I actually disagree with the popular notion that a Grandia patch for the Saturn would be a waste of time, Langrisser V is still itching for a translation and it would already have its English-speaking fans due to the Langrisser IV patch for PlayStation, and Tengai Makyou IV could definitely stand out in the current retro scene where titles like Earthbound and the Parodius series have a wider draw than ever before. But starting up a Princess Crown or Sakura Taisen translation would grab the attention of major gaming news outlets, and possibly even a large team with considerable programming talent. That's how a group could expand to tackle those more niche titles on such a challenging system.