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

[pixeljunkie]

I am beginning to get a feel for how long it's going to take to translate Xanadu I. The prologue strikes me as having a little more text than the average chapter, of which there are 12 in total. Assuming that's true, I expect it to take around 80-100 hours to work up a full first draft.

This is a really fun game to work on, though. The locations are all so unique and developed. In the prologue chapter, for example, there are two villages on an island that each make their own wines, and they're rivals. A drama unfolds involving the two mayors and two lead winemakers of both towns as well as the aristocrats who have come to vacation in a private, out of the way mansion. There's a cave with an ancient monster in the mix, too.

The next chapter is totally different. It happens in a port town run by a corrupt businessman who over-taxes a nearby community of old farmers. A thief, who eventually joins your party, plays a Robin-Hood role between them. After many events, you get a ship to sail around a mountain range to a town that's been destroyed by monsters, where important discoveries are made.

Each of the 12 chapters is unique like this. Every one has a set-up entirely its own, full of characters with developed and important identities. I think people will enjoy experiencing this in English.

I put in a couple hours today. I'll try to post every time I make progress!

This made my heart rate increase dramatically - thanks for the update!

[elmer]

I am beginning to get a feel for how long it's going to take to translate Xanadu I. The prologue strikes me as having a little more text than the average chapter, of which there are 12 in total. Assuming that's true, I expect it to take around 80-100 hours to work up a full first draft.

Excellent news! I'm really looking forward to actually seeing the story. 

The technical side of getting the scripts to insert is finally done now ... and most-importantly, the insertion doesn't break anything! 

[elmer]

Here's the first dialog for Xanadu 2 (still using the ugly 12x12 ROM font, for now) ...

[elmer]

And here's the first dialog for Xanadu 1 ...

[johnnykonami]

Noice!  Looks really good so far!

[ParanoiaDragon]

That font, ATM, isn't looking ugly to me, but I think that may be do to the excitement of seeing it in English!  I can read, I can read!!!!!!!!!!!!

[NightWolve]

That's the default S-JIS 16x16 font from the System Card. This is the problem with most PC Engine games and why not they're fan-translated, beyond the space issues for English text, because that's usually the only font you can use by default without a sophisticated font hack which very few people interested in the system are capable of doing... He's basically just testing insertion presently and will hack an 8x12 font or whatever down the road.

[Bonknuts]

This is glorious!

[jtucci31]

I don't give a shit what the font looks like, if it's in English it looks good to me! 

[dshadoff]

Note that Xanadau 2 is using the system font, undoctored.
Xanadu 1 is doing some sort of shift technique to make it seem more bold.

I think it's ironic that we all think of replacing the font in the game because the system font is bad in so many ways (not least of which is that it isn't consistent as to where the baseline of the font is)...

...But nobody ever talks of creating a patch to make the system font nicer, to ameliorate the appearance.   

-Dave

[NightWolve]

Since the choices offered by the system card are 8x8 or 16x16, and patching it would only be good for an emulator, that would be why. I guess nowadays with a writable Turbo Everdrive V2, you could start talking about taking the System Card 3 ROM and altering the English tiles at its S-JIS area for use on real NEC hardware, but even so, 16x16 is still gonna be an ugly spaced out font for English. I guess you could patch a dual tile system though and it'd work out if you have large enough text blocks and can compress your new text. But nonetheless, none of that is desirable, tying a fan translation patch to a patched system ROM and then a flash cart for use on real NEC hardware.

[elmer]

He's basically just testing insertion presently and will hack an 8x12 font or whatever down the road.

Yep, you're spot on! 

The font hack is now my top priority, because it's just not possible to get a decent idea of the space used by the translated text, either in memory or on-screen, until I get that done.

I think it's ironic that we all think of replacing the font in the game because the system font is bad in so many ways (not least of which is that it isn't consistent as to where the baseline of the font is)...

...But nobody ever talks of creating a patch to make the system font nicer, to ameliorate the appearance.   

I'm going to agree with NightWolve here ... even if we could replace the System Card font (which isn't really practical), then a better-looking 12x12 or 16x16 English font is still lousy for translations. An 8x12 or 6x12 font is what's needed.

Even better, is just to have more RAM so that you can do whatever you like, and have plenty of room to easily hack in a new font-printing routine.

IMHO, TheOldMan absolutely hit-the-nail-on-the-head with his System Card Dreams thread.

If someone could manufacture and sell a card with 512KB of RAM, that would really help.

I know for sure that it would make my life easier with the Xanadus ... and it may yet still turn out to be "required" in order to get everything working.

We've got that capability with the TED v2, and also with TailChao's CD Stupid Card.

I'd like to think that there's room for a cheaper solution than the TED v2, and for one that is going to be more generally-available than the CD Stupid Card.

TheOldMan and I seem to have different ideas of what an affordable-and-practical card might be ... but at-the-end-of-the-day, ALL of the current and proposed cards provide a nice-and-simple 512KB of RAM for translators.

[TheOldMan]

TheOldMan and I seem to have different ideas of what an affordable-and-practical card might be ... but at-the-end-of-the-day, ALL of the current and proposed cards provide a nice-and-simple 512KB of RAM for translators.

.....At the end of the day, I want to be able to pick up an empty pcb, add rom/ram as requested, flash the rom, pack it in a carrier and send it out.
That way, I only need 1 card blank for production, and I don't have to worry about over-buying boards.

[elmer]

He's basically just testing insertion presently and will hack an 8x12 font or whatever down the road.

It looks like the road wasn't that long! 

It's nice to be able to get a lot more text on each "page" of the dialog.

I personally prefer the clean font on the blue background rather than the outlined font on the transparent background, but it's selectable from the game's pause menu.

Which version do you all like better?

[SamIAm]

8x12 is plenty for things on my end. That allows for 84 characters per box, some of which of course we lose when we put too-long words one line down, but which generally is sufficient to write the equivalent of one full Japanese text box.

There's still more work to do behind the scenes, but things are really coming along now.

PS: I worked on the text some more today.