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

[TailChao]

The only exception to that is going to be trying to implement a drop-shadow on the font in Xanadu 2 ... and that's because in-my-experience it is really important to have good contrast between the font and the background when displaying a single-pixel-width line on a CRT TV at 256-wide resolution.

At least the resolution is 256 pixels wide and not 320. Also the typeface isn't RED
NTSC artifacing is great until it isn't.

[elmer]

At least the resolution is 256 pixels wide and not 320. Also the typeface isn't RED
NTSC artifacing is great until it isn't.

Hahaha! The joys of "safe colors" and "border zones" and the different bandwidths for luma vs chroma that nobody has to bother about anymore! 

Yep, I always go for 2-pixel-wide stems on fonts at 320-resolution ... but we can get away with 1-pixel wide stems here in the Xanadu games (and most other PCE games).

I used an editor to mock-up a couple of variations to see what they'd look like ...


Default ...




With drop-shadow ...




With drop-shadow & old-style "i" and "l" ...




I definitely prefer the drop-shadow, and I also prefer the old-style "i" & "l" if we're going to leave the font-width as it is.

If I can switch to a variable-width font later on, then I'll probably want to go back to the sans-serif "i" & "l".

What do other people think?

[elmer]

Xanadu I is huge, you guys.

Hahaha ... I can tell ... I keep on having to increase the amount of memory that I'm allocating for all the extra English text in the script chunks! 

Great job! 

[Dicer]

Def like the drop shadow action...

[seieienbu]

I like the old style 'i' and 'l' more.  Feet on the letters just make it more pleasant to read.

[SkyeWelse]

Just checking it to see the progress and it really looks like it is coming along nicely! Looking forward to finally being able to understand and enjoy these titles. I'm a huge Xanadu series fan.

Btw, if you do happen to do a dub for the games, I'd be interested in auditioning for a part, though I am afraid I don't know the characters well enough yet. I did Lefance in the Ys IV dub.

-Thomas

[johnnykonami]

Drop shadows definitely, I like either version of the letters but I'm leaning more towards the sans-serif ones.  Definitely looking really great no matter what you go with.

[SamIAm]

I finished preview-playing Chapter 6 today and got about 5% of the translation done. I'd like to have it at 100% and proofread within ten days.

Also, I tested a Xanadu I build on real hardware through composite video on a 29 inch HD-CRT. In short, both the fat and skinny fonts look fine, and shouldn't need any drop-shadow. There's a small chance the skinny font would be hard to read on tiny/cheapo/ancient SD-CRTs, but the low composite video signal quality itself should not cause any readability problems.

[Necromancer]

What do other people think?

The drop shadow would be my preference, but really they all look good and are easy to read.

[elmer]

I finished preview-playing Chapter 6 today and got about 5% of the translation done. I'd like to have it at 100% and proofread within ten days.

Excellent! 

Also, I tested a Xanadu I build on real hardware through composite video on a 29 inch HD-CRT. In short, both the fat and skinny fonts look fine, and shouldn't need any drop-shadow. There's a small chance the skinny font would be hard to read on tiny/cheapo/ancient SD-CRTs, but the low composite video signal quality itself should not cause any readability problems.

I agree, Xanadu 1 definitely doesn't need the drop-shadows ... the text is already on a dark and non-patterned background, so the contrast is already perfect. You wouldn't even be able to see a drop-shadow against those backgrounds.

It's only Xanadu 2 that needs (IMHO) a drop-shadow, which is because the text is displayed on top of those blue or brown textured patterns. The drop-shadow helps to visually pull the text off that backdrop (on a high-resolution display) and gives the lousy NTSC composite signal time to cleanly display the 1-pixel text stem (on a lower-resolution TV display).

We used 1-pixel text (in the 5x12 speech font) in Zeroigar, and it's the standard width for the PCE's System Card font.

AFAIK it just normally gets displayed on a single-color backdrop, or with a drop-shadow if it's on top of a "busy" backdrop.

I'm sure that people here can happily point out plenty examples that contradict that statement, but I'd still personally like to see that drop-shadow in Xanadu 2. 

[deubeul]

The way you guys are working and thinking on that translation is fantastic. I think everybody here would have been content with a averagely correct translation of the Xanadus but you're going to offer us an over-polished one, that even a big editor wouldn't have done. That's amazing.

[incrediblehark]

Very excited to see both of these games translated! Falcom is one of the best, and from what I played stumbling thorough Xanadu 1 with no functioning use of the Japanese language I still had a great time. Will be 100x better when I can understand it!

[SamIAm]

Chapter 6 is 50% done.

Thanks to elmer's spectacular hacking work, I was able to use an easy toolchain and a fully working inserter to play-test-edit the prologue chapter for a stupid amount of time today. All kinds of little problems related to my end cropped up. There were typos, formatting errors, a few contextual mistakes, and lots of lines that just plain didn't work well and needed tweaking. I don't know how many lines I edited, but it was several dozen at least, I'm sure.

I have a workflow down a little bit, and I'm pretty sure I made fewer dumb mistakes as I went into later chapters, but this editing process will be very time consuming nonetheless. I'll probably have to spend up to 10 hours on each chapter for one really good play-test-edit, and I'll probably want to do up to three of those for each of the twelve chapters before we're done.

This prologue chapter works a whole lot better now, but it doesn't sing yet. I want to get it there.

[MNKyDeth]

Every time I click on this thread I get so excited. Always wanting to know what was said for the next little tidbit of info you guys give out.

Then I see other people post and I don't see anything new, kinda like this post I just typed and I get let down because it wasn't new info. lol

Anyways, I can't wait for this. I love old RPG's especially ones I can understand.

[SamIAm]

I play-tested through the first part of Chapter 1 (not to be confused with the Prologue) this morning, and my guess about getting my bearings and doing less dumb stuff from one chapter to the next seems to be right so far. What I saw still needed some touching up, but on the whole, things were functioning at a higher level and needed less reworking.

If I'm lucky, my drafts of Chapters 3 and beyond will be even closer to the mark.

Now back to work on Chapter 6! I want it finished and proofread within a week!