MagicEngine

[SamIAm]

Greetings all. I am aware that there is a translation board on this website, but it is both at the bottom of the forum list and completely dead, so I would like to post this here. Moderators, if you wish to move the topic, by all means do so.

Anyway, here is copy of an ad I just placed on romhacking.net. Some folks here might be interested and able to lend me a hand. If so, please drop me a line at samuelthebold@gmail.com.

Also, just to be clear, I am only looking for technical assistance; I will deal with the translating by myself. Thank you!

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I would like to translate the game "Emerald Dragon" for the PC Engine CD. I can provide Japanese-Engish translations for all text and voice acting in the game. However, I have no ability to hack the game, and am looking for someone who would be willing to do that work entirely. I can help make a font table for dumping the script, but thats about it.

I am a Japanese major at the University of Montana with over 4 years of studying the language under my belt. I am currently in Japan on a 1 year exchange. I feel confident in my ability to translate this game, and I have an English-speaking Japanese girlfriend who thinks this is cool and would be happy to help me. I did attempt to translate Fire Emblem 3 for SNES over 2 years ago, but I had neither the proficiency in Japanese or the the interest in the game to carry it out. Conditions are better now, and I think this could turn out to be a great translation.

Personally, I don't wish to deal with replacing the Japanese voice-acting in the game with English voice acting. In other words, I think this project should focus strictly on the text in this game. Most scenes with audio dialogue also have text boxes, so it should work out well enough. For the cut scenes, I think we could just make a supplementary faq. If other people can take care of re-dubbing the voices, then great, I'll still translate, but I am in no position to put any more effort than that into such an undertaking.

Finally, I really should say that I do not want to work on the SNES version of this game. I haven't played it much, but as much as I have seen, I can't imagine it being anywhere near as cool as the PC Engine CD version.

Thanks!

[Keranu]

Nice to know you would be interested in doing that. However the harder people to find for translation projects are the programmers . A lot are unwilling to do that and our main PCE translator (Nighwolve) is out of the translation scene now. I hope you do find someone to help you though! I would love to play the game in English.
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LaZer Dorks

[sabre470]

Are you sure Nightwolve is out of the scene?

See link

http://nick.serveblog.net/forums/index.php?topic=45

Or is there 2 Nightwolve

For technical help I'd happy to have a look on how to hack Emerald Dragon but if it requires some serious hacking like for Y's 4 it's beyond my skills. Though I could use some help on my Akazukin Cha Cha translation on the PC-FX I still don't have a lot of time to spend on that thing at the moment too much work.

Sabre

[David Shadoff]

Hi,

I'm really happy to see your interest in this game, because this was a project I also wanted to do.

There is good news and bad news about it:
Bad: The script is compressed
Good: The compression is similar to that of Ys 4, which was decoded and used
Bad: I didn't completely solve this compression due to lack of time to spend on it
Good: I do have starting code, and I did get to a point where I found the first batch of text, so if I worked with another hacker, I'm sure we could extract the script bit by bit
Bad: The script is stored in blocks, which I didn't find all of.
Good: The blocks appear to have a similar format to each other, so it might not be so bad, once I (and/or somebody else) spend some time on it.

Bad: The script is pretty big, and this would be a fairly major undertaking with months of effort. At the time, there weren't any translators interested in this script, so I didn't focus too deeply on it at the time.

Script reinsertion is also pretty time-consuming, but for me, "in for a penny, in for a pound"... just don't expect same-day service.

The difficulty I have seen with many translation projects is that the translator either overestimates his ability or underestimates the amount of commitment a big project takes. This isn't too bad, if there is sharing of information and partially-completed work, because somebody else can always complete a half-done project (but if this sharing doesn't occur, all that happens is that the game never gets translated).

From your description, you're in a better position than most translators (skills-wise), so it sounds good.

Have you tried to translate, say, the opening cinema scene ?
I'll email you directly with my contact info.

Meanwhile, any other hackers want to assist ? It's easier if we divide the tasks...

[Keranu]

Nice to hear that news, I certainly hope you guys can work something out here! We could really use another PCE translation team.
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LaZer Dorks

[Tomaitheous]

Man, I wish I could of help! I have knowledge of PCE assembly and hardware specific programming, but have no experience of hacking, shift-JIS, or compression schemes.

If this took years, it'd still be worth the wait
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www.pcedev.net

[stevek666]

Good luck, you have my best wishes on this project .

If (when) you dump the script and translate it into English, I would be more than willing to copy-edit the text and help naturalize the prose / dialogue.

It will probably be a very long time until a complete, raw English script is available, but that in itself would be a huge accomplishment!

[SamIAm]

David, I sent you an email.

Everyone else, thanks for your support. I'm short on time now, but I'll let you know as soon as things happen.

[Paranoia Dragon]

I'll say, that if & when somebody does a redubbing, I'm here for any voices, & even noises, or whatever. Call me an amateur Frank Welker......if you don't know who that is, well, he just does stuf for EVERYTHING, whether it be actual voice acting(like say, Megatron & Soundwave from TF's) to noises for the Simpsons, & many other shows. I'm not saying I'm up to his quality, but, I deffinitly have talent, no doubt.
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Sentience is the right of all freedom beings?

[SamIAm]

Thanks for the offer Paranoia Dragon, but it looks like any audio editing is outside the scope of the project as it stands.

But for those of you who are wondering what is going on with the translation, I am pleased to report that the good Mr. Shadoff has succedded in dumping parts of the script, and as soon as we clean it up a bit, I'm going to dive in and start translating. I'll leave it to David to provide any details, but it's going to be a while before we get any script back into the game. However, things are moving along at a very healthy pace. I can't wait to show everyone something!

[stevek666]

[Keranu]

Terriffic! I will pray to you guys every day if you succeed!
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LaZer Dorks

[Tomaitheous]

That is awesome Will you guys have a progress site up soon?
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www.pcedev.net

[David Shadoff]

Yes, as Sam mentioned, I found a huge amount of the compressed script and it seems that I was able to successfully extract it. I have also found bits and pieces of uncompressed text, but that seems to be regarding the Memory Base 128 and other backup stuff. I don't know if I have extracted it all, but it's over 2MB of text (although I think there is likely to be a fair bit of duplication in there).

It's going to be a while before any further progress is worth mentioning though - as it stands, the script is huge and I need to make a tool to keep track of all the text, both for managing duplicate strings (if any), and also for when it comes time to reinsert. I also have to write a compresser and an inserter, and various bits and pieces....

But first, I think I need to make sure I understand all the special formatting codes that are used in the text, and verify that English text can be displayed properly.

As for the dub, I offer the same thing that I offered for the Ys 4 translation project:
Thanks to the ADPCM tools that I wrote, and the work of an intrepid Japanese hacker, I have extracted all of the ADPCM audio clips, and can reinsert new ones. However, somebody else will have to translate, record, mix, and edit the alternate voicing. I would also want to ensure that the "dub" patch and the "text" patch be packaged separately, as many people may only want the text patch (but of course, both could be applied if you wanted them).

But maybe we should continue this thread in the Translation patches area.
I will re-post this messgae there.

[Paranoia Dragon]

Hmm, I can't recall, is all the VA'ing in ADPCM? Or is there any redbook, cuz if there is redbook, that could be a problem, in that, we don't have the original music that might be in the background during the talking. I know Justus, was using music from the Perfect Collections for the Ys 4 dub, minus 1 song, the ending credits, that wasn't on the collection for some strange reason, so he was going to maybe recompose it. Actually, I could probably do the same, as long as I found the right sounds, since my equipment is all Roland, which is what they used, though, I'm nowhere near as good as Justus IMO.

Anyways, if we do, do a dub, I hope it's all ADPCM. Otherwise, leaving some spots untranslated might be wierd.
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Sentience is the right of all freedom beings?