Xanadu II Translation Development Blog

[Bonknuts]

Here's pic of what 16bit wave files look like in PCE sprite format:


 It's very distinct.


 About 99.99999% of PCE game have junk interleaved between the data in the ISO tracks. Sometimes it's other games, or wave files, or even dev stuff (one game has the full source code to it in there along with developers notes, etc). Basically, whatever was on the harddrive at the time got copied into the ISO track.

[Bonknuts]

Here's the link: http://pcedev.net/utils/tmod2_pce_support.zip
If you run it under dosbox, you'll need to set the memory to 64megs. Under XP, I was able to open files as well as 500megs. Under dosbox though, I think my limit was 200-300 megs before the app reported that it ran out of memory. It can have up to 7 files open at once. There's not readme file, so you have to click the "?" icon for how to use the features.

 At some point, I'm going to remake this util in windows (using SDL, with my own internal GUI support). Once you get to know your way around it, it has some really useful functionality.  I'll add more view features though (and control of bitplane orders).

[elmer]

Here's the link: http://pcedev.net/utils/tmod2_pce_support.zip

Thanks for the instructions and the link to the plugins ... I was just going to ask you for that! 

[Bonknuts]

Hmm. I think I'm missing the DM files in the module folder of that zip file. I'll re-upload a new zip later. Dave Shadoff's site might have the full version as well.

[NightWolve]

They're all there, unless you added 'em by the time I looked at it. So tmod with David's PCE plugin is still useful after all these years, huh ? Would've thought something more powerful and Windows-based would've come along by now.

Well, actually, in that vain, FYI, but I found the YYCHR apps are pretty good replacements, though they're developed by Japanese fans. You can still work 'em pretty good as the menus are all English. See if any of these can work for you:

http://www45.atwiki.jp/yychr/
http://www45.atwiki.jp/yychr/pages/23.html
http://www.geocities.jp/yy_6502/yychr/yy-chr20120407.zip

And:

http://www.geocities.jp/yy_6502/
http://www.geocities.jp/yy_6502/yychr/yychr_net.zip

[elmer]

Time for another update!

The script-assembler is coming along nicely, with around 2,500 lines of C code written so far.

At this point the scripts for both Xanadu 2 and Xanadu 1 are assembling, and the assembler's output is being verified as identical to the original contents of the scripts in the DATA_CHUNKs.

It's not all being tested, yet ... there's still a lot left to do!

But it's all working well enough to do a simple test (using the ugly 12x12 System Card font) and to hack in some SJIS-encoded English text into both games.

That means ...
[ul][li]Decompressing the original META_BLOCK from the CD into it's dozens of DATA_CHUNKS.[/li][li]Assembling each of the script files for that META_BLOCK and overwriting the original script data.[/li][li]Recompressing all the DATA_CHUNKSs (FALCOM2 format for Xanadu2, FALCOM1 format for Xanadu 1).[/li][li]Writing the new META_BLOCK out to the CD image.[/li][/ul]
Here are the modified scripts for each of the games, the translator just adds the new English text underneath the original Japanese text.

When SamIAm gets these, he'll just do the same and then add/remove any extra "_eol()" end-of-line commands to make things look pretty on the screen.

For Xanadu 1 ...

.scriptB35F:
  _set_pen6_then_call_then_eol( .scriptBA2F )
  {うおーっ、船だあっ！！}
  [Xanadu]
  _eol()
  {商人が来たーッ！！}
  [1 Test]
  _wait_for_keypress_then_clear()
  _set_pen6_then_call_then_eol( .scriptBA38 )
  {ポルダ村なんかに負けるか！}
  [Hello,]
  _eol()
  {こっちが先に取り引きするぞっ！！}
  [World! OK]
  _wait_for_keypress_then_end()





For Xanadu 2 ...

.scriptAB88:
  _modify_script_variable( $01, $10 )
  _enable_8x12_font()
  _set_pen_then_call_then_eol( orange, .scriptAE05 )
  _disable_8x12_font()
  {アリオスさま。いよいよですな。}
  [Xanadu2]
  _wait_for_keypress_then_clear()
  _modify_script_variable( $00, $11 )
  _enable_8x12_font()
  _set_pen_then_call_then_eol( orange, .script9EB7 )
  _disable_8x12_font()
  {うん。}
  _eol()
  {もうすぐリュコスの向かった新大陸か。}
  [Test String]
  _wait_for_keypress_then_clear()

[seieienbu]

I love seeing English words in those text boxes. 

[Dicer]

I love seeing English words in those text boxes.

Ditto!

[elmer]

I love seeing English words in those text boxes.

Ditto!

Sorry, guys, I know that it's pretty underwhelming after nearly 3 months, but this is one complex swine of a game to hack!

I was going nuts, doing all this work with nothing visible to see ... and so felt the need to get something on the screen, even if it's only a "nasty" hack.  :oops:

The whole issue of "motivation" when the task is seeming really, really tough is definitely something to "blog" about at some point.

I only recently read the whole thread from SamIAm & EsperKnight's original attempt to get the game translated, and it was heartbreaking to see how happy everyone was ... and then how it just fizzled out and died.

It's easy (for me, now) to see why poor EsperKnight ran into problems, and why his approach was doomed; and it's taken a long time to do it all "properly" so that I can have some confidence that the technical issues are solved.

I can only imagine just how frustrated and de-motivated EsperKnight must have felt, to have put in all the hard work that he did, only to see everything start to break when SamIAm's translated scripts were first being re-inserted into Xanadu 2. 

***********************

As for this hack ... I'm happy to say that the script-assembler is now approx 3,000 lines of C code, and is verified to be compiling the original scripts with 100% accuracy, including all the script parameters and address fix-ups. 

I'm confident enough that I've passed the first set of Xanadu 1 scripts on to SamIAm for translation.

[Bonknuts]

Nice! Also, my condolences to your free time and sanity

[elmer]

OK, continued on from the main Xanadu translation thread ...

I'm guessing that the outlined font was their "default" because dynamically making the ROM font "bold" and giving it an outline is a pretty-damned-clever programming effect (IMHO).

Does anyone know of another PCE CD game that does that with the ROM font?

I seem to recall a couple of other late gen games that might have done that.

I'd love to know what the games are so that I can check them out.

I've really not seen Xanadu 1's "bold" font effect done this well before.

It's not a simple pixel-doubling, because it actually keeps some of the details in the font that that would overwrite.

It's almost like they specifically detecting on-off-on pixel patterns and making sure that the "off" is preserved.

It's cool (IMHO). I was amazed at how well their algorithm coped with the narrower English font.

The programmer screwed-up the black outline pass after that ... but that should be easy to fix.

[NightWolve]

OK, continued on from the main Xanadu translation thread ...

Oh wow, you got a font hack going already! MUCH BETTER!

Reminds me, nully once made this post that SamIAm+Bonknuts=:
http://www.pcenginefx.com/forums/index.php?topic=9456.msg368540#msg368540

But, he was wrong, not the first time either!

SamIAm + elmer =

[Bonknuts]

Finally! I can't retire from all things translations. I've waited so long... ;_; ... . .


f(x)=SamIam^3 + 2^elmer...

f'(xanadu)=3SamIam^2 + (2^elmer)*ln(2)..

[NightWolve]

 

[dshadoff]

I'm guessing that the outlined font was their "default" because dynamically making the ROM font "bold" and giving it an outline is a pretty-damned-clever programming effect (IMHO).

Does anyone know of another PCE CD game that does that with the ROM font?

I seem to recall a couple of other late gen games that might have done that.

I'd love to know what the games are so that I can check them out.

I've really not seen Xanadu 1's "bold" font effect done this well before.

Well, later games did a bunch of things with fonts:

- Koei (and others) made their own font instead of using system font

- lots of games started using multiple different fonts in different spots

- hang-shadows were used in lots of games, but not necessarily on all text (Tokimeki Memorial seems to have this).  This is done by taking the orginal font, shifting it right one pix and down one pix, and printing it in black. Then white (or whatever color) on top of that, without shift.  All on transparent background, so both the black and foreground colors are apparent.

- I think Riverhill (Gunbuster) might have just doen a bold effect on some text by shifting right and blending.

- several companies all added large amounts of text as graphics splashes instead of font/text.