Got a PC-FXGA? Please help us out.

[SamIAm]

If you have one of these things, or if you know someone who does, please take a look at this and consider helping us out.

As you can see from a few topics down, I have translated all of the dialogue from the PC-FX game "Zeroigar". Most of this comes from MPEG movies that play in between each stage of the game. As part of a full-on fan-translation, it would be an amazing thing to get subtitles working and displaying on real hardware for these movies, and one idea about how to do this is to hard-code them. We could do it as simply as ripping each video to a lossless AVI, applying subtitles (again losslessly) with VirtualDub, re-encoding the videos to the PC-FX format, and overwriting the originals with them in the game.

The most difficult step in this is re-encoding the videos to the PC-FX format. This is because we have no utility to do so, and until recently, we weren't aware of any publicly existing. However, after reading around the Japanese internet, it looks like the GMAKER software package that came with the PC-FXGA has just such a program in it.

If you happen to have GMAKER, please consider helping our project by sending us this utility. In the DOS/Windows version, the key file is MPCONV2.EXE, although there may be supporting files necessary to use it.

Even if you are using the PC-98 version, we still might get something out of it, so don't hesitate to send the utility if you feel so inclined.

Send me a PM if you would like to help out. Having this utility would give a significant boost not only to this project, but to all PC-FX translation efforts.

Thanks!

[incrediblehark]

do you need the hardware too or just the software?

[SamIAm]

Just the software, I think.

That is unless the software won't run without the hardware present, but I don't know why it would be that way. The MPEG encoder especially shouldn't need it, and should be a fairly simple little piece of software.

(Note: If anyone wants to just share an image of the entire gamemaker disc, that would be perfectly fine and useful as well, and maybe easier for everyone.  )

[Arkhan]

SamIam, I have all of the software.  I can e-mail it when I get home if noone else that has it gives it to you first.

OldRover probably has it too.

[SamIAm]

That would be awesome. If it's not too much trouble, please do send it to me. samuel dot innes at gmail should do the trick.

Esperknight is already talking about making a converter to get the PC-FX video cleanly into AVI format. He'll be pleased to get his hands on GMAKER, definitely.

Thank you!!

[incrediblehark]

Glad to see you're getting a hook up Any progress in PC-FX development is definitely appreciated!

[Arkhan]

sent it.  Sure hope gmail can cope with a 20something meggerbyte file.

[SamIAm]

All right, I got it! Thank you, thank you, thank you!

I'm almost finished making a subtitles file to use with VirtualDub for hardcoding. I've done some editing, and things are lookng good. The encoding program in the GMAKER package appears to work, too!

Now the only problem is getting a proper rip of the videos. Esperknight and Ryphecha, the author of Mednafen, pointed me in the direction of some old tools made in Japan to run on a PC-98 or a Windows 95 system, and they should work, but I'm having compatibility issues. It makes me wish I was back home in Montana with my Pentium Pro system.

Of course, Esperknight would need to help me not only with getting the re-encoded videos back into the game, but with changing the in-game Japanese text to English. There's barely any of that and I can't imagine it's got a weird compression scheme happening or anything. Hopefully that's right. Anyway, I hope Esperknight doesn't mind.

If any aspiring PC-FX hackers want to see if they can crack this game themselves, by all means, give it a shot.

[Arkhan]

Try using DOSBox?

[SamIAm]

You know, I tried that, but I'm afraid it just isn't working. Even after enabling MSCDEX.exe, it's just not finding my CD-ROM drives, real or virtual. I think Ryphecha might have gotten it to work before, so I'll see what she says.

EDIT: Crud, I think the tool was designed to run on a PC-98 running DOS or Windows. That's probably the source of my problems. Time to try finding a pirated version of Windows 95 to run on a PC-98 emulator!  Actually, I think getting an old version of DOS may be quicker. Hmm...

Anyway, I finished making the subtitles file for VirtualDub. With a little luck, the hacking will be easy and this can can get done soon.

[Arkhan]

IIRC, Rypecha has a PC-98 sitting at her house. 

She was dicking with this stuff when I first started poking around. 

[SamIAm]

Well, that explains a lot.

On a related note, I sure wish the Japanese were as progressive about sharing old junky software as we are in the west. 

[Arkhan]

they are.

you just can't find it because they hate round eye.

[SamIAm]

So that's it. I knew I was doing something wrong.

fakeedit: maybe FreeDOS and a PC-98 emulator will do the trick. It's worth a shot.

[KiddoCabbusses]

When you're done all this, can you make a bit of a guide on it so others could theoretically try it with other projects? Quite a large amount of the PC-FX games, well, practically need this.

... and then there are the ones that could only really be translated with a dub track. Whoah nelly, those'll be a doozy.