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

[SamIAm]

Note: Don't anyone go getting any bright ideas and contacting Falcom now. They might give us a Cease-and-Desist order.

True Puffer: What we are doing is ethically in the grey-area as it is. Accepting money without official authorization is a big step toward the darker end of the spectrum, and it's not something I care to do. Thanks for your enthusiasm and all, but frankly, just seeing this topic come up makes me nervous and uncomfortable.

[True Puffer]

Ok guys i will cease and desist. I will be watching your progress.

[NightWolve]

Note: Don't anyone go getting any bright ideas and contacting Falcom now. They might give us a Cease-and-Desist order.

Honestly, I would never worry about that in the context of these old PC Engine Xanadu games. Plus, with their US partner XSEED Games snagging unlicensed fan translations for the Ys games, shady as it was, they're kind of essentially neutralized if you ask me. Business is tough, PC gaming market crashed in Japan, they lost their distribution partner hence why they no longer make many PC games and switched to consoles to save themselves, etc. It's so doubtful they would ever want the bad PR of this in the face of fans and have extra cash for paying lawyers to punish something that in no way affects their current business!

I actually worried about that with Ys: Oath in Felghana which is partly why I scared pirates away by playing to their crazy paranoias about me at one point (they accused me of patch viruses to stop their pirating), but you see the BIG difference, it was a newly released modern PC game at the time and we could've released the English patch ONE MONTH later after it was published in Japan, so I purposely delayed the project for another year and a half (we moved too fast)!

But yeah, if you really have this fear, I will safely say I'm 100% sure there's nothing to worry about here. The president of Falcom already knows about our fan translations on their games, FYI, if you're curious:

http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/ysinterviews/ysinterviews.htm

JS: English speaking fans are so passionate they've made unofficial translations of Ys - what does Falcom think of this?

TK: We're really honored that people are interested in the Ys world so much. However, at the same time we always felt guilty for not being able to bring an official product to their hands. We're very pleased that after a long time we were finally able to bring over an official English version for this audience.

Falcom is "honored" that we hacked away at their games.

I will be watching your progress.

Why did that sound a little creepy to me ?

[technozombie]

Lol to get back on topic, the translation is looking beautiful. I can't wait to give this game a playthrough.


Oh yeah, on the subject of Earthbound Zero, that wasn't even a fan translation. It was a leaked prototype already translated by Nintendo. It can hardly be used as a success story for geting fan translated games published. I'm certain the sales of EB on Wii/Wiiu had a much bigger impact on the releasing of EBZ than a ROM floating around the internet or a few repro carts.

[Vimtoman]

Just caught up on the pr0gress on this translation.
Well done guy's

[SamIAm]

Good news, everyone. The Xanadu II translation is now ready for play-testing. 

The primary reason why this happened so quickly, of course, is that the translation was done a long time ago. However, I owe a lot to elmer for writing up some code to automate the copy/pasting from the old dump to the new dump. I'd have been searching->copying->pasting for weeks if it weren't for that. Once the automated copying did its thing, though, all I had to do was go through and do a little extra massaging to make sure everything was fitting like it needs to. There were a couple little spots that hadn't been dumped before, but those didn't take long to get done, either.

Of course, it also helps that Xanadu II has less than half as much text as Xanadu I.

Besides play-testing, the big thing that remains to do on my end is the dub. On elmer's, it's primarily hacking in the graphics and getting ADPCM tools ready. Anyway, big progress is happening every week, so hopefully these things will start coming together soon!

[seieienbu]

Good news, everyone. The Xanadu II translation is now ready for play-testing. 

!!!

...seriously, this is the best news.

[technozombie]

Definitely awesome news. Can't wait.

[elmer]

Woohoo!!! 

But ...

Besides play-testing, the big thing that remains to do on my end is the dub. On elmer's, it's primarily hacking in the graphics and getting ADPCM tools ready. Anyway, big progress is happening every week, so hopefully these things will start coming together soon!

That was incredibly quick. OMG ... I've got to get off my lazy butt and get more stuff done! 

[SamIAm]

The Xanadu I cutscene draft script has advanced from "at least we have something in English" to "we could use this now if we needed to".

In order to make a good dub script, you really have to carefully measure how long each Japanese line is, then test-read each English line to see if it can fit in the same amount of time. Adjusting your reading speed and adding sighs, laughs, pauses etc. can help, but some lines simply have to be either cut down or padded out for them to work.

Once you've done that, you need to go back and re-read all the lines focusing more on whether they sound good, all the while re-testing for length anytime you make a significant change. Since you're doing everything out loud, working on a dub script gets tiring faster than when you're editing something that's only going to appear as text.

If I wanted to rush, I think we could start recruiting for the dub in just a couple of weeks. However, elmer and I have been putting a lot of work to make this whole translation look as good as we can, and I'd hate for this one part to be so rough around the edges that it distracts from everything else. A fan-dub is going to have a bit of an amateur feel to it no matter what, but I definitely think that putting in the time to double and triple check everything before we start asking people to record is going to pay off down the line. It just means you'll have to wait a few more weeks before we release this.

I'm honestly considering making a full test-dub consisting only of me reading every line, just so it'll be easier to judge what's working and what's not. That would be interesting. 

I kind of expect that when we get people to agree to play parts for us, they'll be really enthusiastic for a week or two, and then they'll start falling off the radar. When we do start asking people for recordings, I want to be able to spend all my time on helping them get the best takes they can while they're interested, rather than asking them to wait while I re-write something that isn't working so well.

------

By the way, I'm still play-testing Chapter 7 of Xanadu I. I have a day off tomorrow, and I'm going to try to finish it all then.   

[deubeul]

I don't know how long it took to dub Ys4, but if you can reach the same quality for the Xanadus, take the time you want! And that's anti-dub, pro-subtitles guy's  words.

[NightWolve]

Subtitles are just too tough in games like these, easier to simply find/replace APDCM voice-acting clips... If anybody could ever do it if they put their mind to it, it'd be elmer though. But, given he's already mentioned how tight memory is, and that's the same thing Neill Corlett told me about Ys IV 12 years ago, it's likely impossible, not without perhaps using a hacked system card with a flashcart that allows reads/writes as was talked about around here in the past.

[seieienbu]

If I wanted to rush, I think we could start recruiting for the dub in just a couple of weeks. However, elmer and I have been putting a lot of work to make this whole translation look as good as we can, and I'd hate for this one part to be so rough around the edges that it distracts from everything else. A fan-dub is going to have a bit of an amateur feel to it no matter what, but I definitely think that putting in the time to double and triple check everything before we start asking people to record is going to pay off down the line. It just means you'll have to wait a few more weeks before we release this.

As eager to play this in English as I am (and I'm sure everyone else is too), I'd much rather wait for a final, well-polished, professional seeming finished product.  There's no need to rush whatsoever.  I'd much rather this continues as the current pace; stuff is being accomplished fairly rapidly, yes, but the attention to detail and the level of perfectionism is what makes me excited most about this project.

Glad to hear about chapter 7 play through, too.

[Dicer]

Excellent progress as always and when it comes time around for voices, please allow some submissions, I'd love to voice something even minor, just to be a part of this, these are games I've wanted in English since release, second only to the FEOE titles, which you guys should totally tackle next


Keep up the amazing work...

[deubeul]

Subtitles are just too tough in games like these...

Yes, I'm aware of that..

What I tried to say is that as a subtitle elitist, Ys4 dub's quality totally changed my mind.

Now I'm all for a Xanadu dub, all my doubts and disapointment disappeared!

... the FEOE titles, which you guys should totally tackle next

Keep up the amazing work...

That would be a dream come true