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

[SkyeWelse]

Congratulations Elmer and SamIAm! Looks like the project is coming along very well and I'm happy to hear that the first draft of the script it finished.

Is an English dub project already open for this?

-Thomas

[esteban]

UTTERLY
MAGNIFICENT
PROGRESS

(UMP)

[SamIAm]

Is an English dub project already open for this?

Not just yet, I'm afraid. Depending on how many people are capable of doing multiple parts, we're going to need anywhere from thirty to fifty actors total to pull this off. That's going to be incredibly time consuming to deal with, and I am going to need everything in place...from a finalized script to ready-to-bake audio mixes...before I open those floodgates.

I'm basically going to do the Xanadu II dub over again, as well.

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In other news, I have play-tested Chapter 6 about two-thirds of the way through. Unlike Chapter 4, this one is very pleasantly simple and centralized. Chapters 8 and 9 are just like it, and Chapter 10 and 11 have little text to them at all, so once again, Chapter 7 will be the big challenge to get through. If I'm lucky, we'll have that one done by the end of the month.

Also, I spent some time today looking at Xanadu II. It has next to nothing to do with the first game in terms of story, but the introductory scenes still refer to it a lot. As much as I hate to admit it, I made a good few incorrect assumptions about the story of the first game when I wrote this stuff five years ago, and I've had to work at fixing problems related to that in the script.

Perhaps it's not surprising, but doing Xanadu I first really was the proper way to go. Now everything will be nice and consistent...although I can already tell that whoever wrote Xanadu I didn't write Xanadu II. That's kind of good, though; Xanadu II will be a fresh experience both to work on and to play.

[SamIAm]

Xanadu II is moving forward fast. And when I say fast, I mean that I got the entire prologue chapter smoothed over in the new script dump and ready for play-testing in one day. 

The other chapters are all a lot bigger, but still, this is some damn fine progress. I'll try to get chapters 1 and 2 done by the end of the month. IIRC, Chapter 4 is the big fat one in Xanadu II.

Anyway, I'd put money on being able to have this ready for play-testing by the end of March. 

[SamIAm]

I've waited five years to see this.


Once again, please don't share this link. It's very much a work in progress.

The back story is that after the first game, Areios*  spent three years going all around the land of Ishtaria helping people get their lives back together. While he was busy doing that, a new continent was discovered, and one of Areios's friends and former party members from the first game, Lykos, sailed off to investigate it. When Areios returns to the capital city and learns that Lykos has been gone longer than planned, he decides to set out after him. The prologue you see here is Areios and his right-hand man Daimos aboard a ship approaching the new continent.

*We've decided to switch to name spellings we found in official Falcom materials.

I decided not to talk to all the sailors, but all of their lines are working fine and looking good. They actually change what they say frequently. A lot of little things are different if you talk to Daimos again directly after getting all the equipment from the treasure chests.

[ginoscope]

Very impressive good work guys and thanks for sharing the video.

Are you actually testing on real hardware when you do your play-testing?  I liked the blue font when he marked the map.  I been playing through Dragon Slayer and they used a similar green font to emphasize actions the characters were doing.

[Necromancer]

That is so frickin' awesome. 

[MNKyDeth]

Wasn't sure if I was watching some sort of pron or a game.

But both seem to excite me in interesting ways.

[deubeul]

C'est magnifique 

[LentFilms]

Wow, seeing the Xanadu II footage is really throwing me for a loop. Congratulations you guys, it has been a long time coming.

[NightWolve]

I've waited five years to see this.

Once again, please don't share this link. It's very much a work in progress.

Bah, I wanted to share it...

So, I noticed, do you like the idea of showing the character's name once in a text box on the first line, and if they have a lot more to say, excluding the name thereafter ? I saw it was being done with the navigator's text.

I really think I'll have to do that for Emerald Dragon to compress text blocks enough to fit them back in place. Seems like a simple enough idea to go with. Games like Ys IV never even showed anybody's name, the whole textbox was always dedicated to text, so that style varies.

EDIT: Yeah, confirmed, you're already doing what I was thinking of doing too for ED. Show the character's name once, any more text, skip the name, but if it's somebody else's turn to speak, you show the name again to make that clear, and exclude it if they have more to say on that turn. Repeat. This might be all the space-saving tricks needed in ED's case.

[elmer]

So, I noticed, do you like the idea of showing the character's name once in a text box on the first line, and if they have a lot more to say, excluding the name thereafter ? I saw it was being done with the navigator's text.

That's just how Falcom have done it in the game ... I'm not sure if it's a specifically-considered decision to do it that way on SamIAm's part.

We have pretty-much-complete control over the script language at this point, so it's trivial to split text boxes and make new ones, and to add/remove the speaker's name however SamIAm desires.

[NightWolve]

Aaah, that was their style already. Well, it might just save enough space in ED's case cause they're printing the name and linefeed character every time, so done deal.

[SamIAm]

Very impressive good work guys and thanks for sharing the video.

Are you actually testing on real hardware when you do your play-testing?

Thanks!

I don't use real hardware at the moment because I'm always fixing things and checking them as I go. That entails essentially building a new CD image every time I want to see a change. An emulator is the clear best choice for this phase.

A real hardware test will happen eventually, though, and I'm confident it will work.

Bah, I wanted to share it...

Soon, don't worry. And thanks for wanting to spread the word!

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Chapter 6 of X1 is fully play-tested now.

There's one important conversation near the end that I'll probably want to tweak a bit more, but anyway, the big stuff that needed fixing is fixed. 

It's hard to choose, but Chapter 6 might be my favorite one in the game.

[nectarsis]

VERY cool can't wait to see more