Author
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Topic: Article on translation hacking (Read 1142 times)
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filler
Jr. Member
Gender: 
Posts: 55
Bastich!
Location: Somewhere in space (USA)
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You
mean... he had like REM coding statements which talked about such
things? I've never heard of that before, but that is fascinating. I
mean, that's probably one of the most interesting things I've heard in
a long while! Almost like hidden treasure for people to discover...
Care to elaborate? Have other games had this?
Yeah,
pretty much like that. I can post a little of it if you'd like. The
stuff in Lady Sword is the only stuff of it's kind that I have seen. A
portion of it contains a series of dated entries, while there is some
other stuff that's just isolated ramblings amongst the script. That
sort of thing is not common, but as others have said, there are a
number of games containing unused text. I know Disnesquick mentioned a
debugging room of some sort in Energy Breaker that let you play as
various other main characters aside from the one in the game. I think
the assumption was that they were considering creating a multiple
storyline game and gave up. Perhaps Disnesquick or Satsu could
elaborate as I'm only recalling from some message board posts that I
can no longer find. I've also heard of programmers reusing large
portions of code from previous games, to the point that sections of
script from one game are left over in another but I can't confirm that
one either. Maybe someone else can. |
Nirvana
may be the final object of attainment, but at the moment, it is
difficult to reach. This, the practical and realistic aim is
compassion, a warm heart, serving other people, helping others,
respecting others, being less selfish. - Dalai Lama
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D
Sr. Member
Gender:
Posts: 397
Annoying Grammar Nazi
Location: Xicheng, Beijing, China
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Langrisser I contains a section of script used for an alternate
character creation quiz never included in the game. I believe the same
text is also found in Langrisser I&II PSX and in Dramatic Edition
on Saturn.
Welcome to Masaya World!
My name is O. You've been invited
into Masaya's holy garden.<>
It felt like mastering this game
took forever, didn't it?<>
I've been waiting around for a
hellla long time for someone
with your guts to show up.<>
In order to see whether you can
save this world or note, I have
some questions for you.<>
So anyway, Ledin, please try to
answer them.<>
Masaya
was notorious for this kind of thing. If you play any of their CD
games, they usually include an \OMAKE\ folder or LZH file containing
all kinds of diaries and more. Langrisser III's disk had character
diaries telling more info about the characters never used in the game,
Langrisser IV's had a parody dialogue spoofing Evangelion and also two
short stories telling about Wiler and Ranford's times at the Military
Academy, and also how Gizarof came to King Cleoness's service. I
believe all the games except Langrisser I&II had diaries
chronicling the work of the programmers and the story developers.
This
kind of material is more often included in extra files tossed in on CD
games than it is included in-game. It probably turns up in-game in
these older cartridge systems since there was no other way to include
it when you're dealing with a single binary chip instead of something
with a file system.
I can also tell you C&E's Beggar Prince
which is being released by SuperFighterTeam has a lot of unused
dialogue. More than any game I've ever seen. It has entire subquests
dummied out of the game. DeathAdder found some of them by visiting
every single location in the game after every event using a map hack so
he could walk over water and mountains to reach areas way before
they're ever accessible.
You may also want to try and hunt down
Mana Sword. I'm still unclear how exactly he added Shinon back into
Romancing SaGa 3. Shinon is Julien's hometown and the only time it is
ever seen is in the first scene of the game (unless you start with
Mikhail or Katrina). I'm curious whether he actually created all the
characters occupying the new Shinon on his own, or if he just
re-enabled something that the programmers had locked out.
Also,
Emerald Dragon has all the code and text for a "debug" menu no one has
learned how to activate. It seems like it would be part of the regular
menu. If I recall correctly, in the old PC ones, there's actually and
empty option spot in the bottom right of the menu ... |
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mil
Newbie
Posts: 19
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3)
Apart from translating games from Japanese to English, what other
languages are worked on by such communities? In various ROM archives,
I’ve seen unofficial Dutch, French, and German translations. Are these
groups very active?
I was actually very surprised to learn
that there are Russian translations going on for Blue Garnet, Dangel,
and Gunblaze. These are all PC-98 games. It’s one thing to
hear that a translation other than English is going to be done on a
game, quite another to hear that the game isn’t already in English, and
baffling to hear that it’s for a system that has hardly any English
translations let alone zero Russian translations. Here’s
al32gabby ‘s site and here’s the translation page.
Unless you’re near Russia, these pages are going to take awhile to load
(about 10 seconds or more). The small translation flash
slideshows take almost fifteen minutes to load (you have to refresh the
page around every 30% or the progress will stop). I would be able to
say more if I could find a reliable Russian to English online
translator.
Also,
Emerald Dragon has all the code and text for a "debug" menu no one has
learned how to activate. It seems like it would be part of the regular
menu. If I recall correctly, in the old PC ones, there's actually and
empty option spot in the bottom right of the menu ...
That
makes sense. Die Bahnwelt has an accessible debug menu. It
also has two places that I know of you can’t reach without the saves
already provided with the disk on this site.
One is a boss trial area and the other is some chest with what seems to
be a GLODIA congratulations letter and two choices at the end of it,
neither of which appear to change anything.
There
are also a lot of old gems on PC-98, X68000, and FM-TOWNS. To name a
few, Emerald Dragon (the real one), Vain Dream, Die Bahnwelt, Elthlead,
Lagoon (trust me, you want to play the X68000 one before you say it
sucks, the SNES port was terrible), Xak (the original), Fray, Alshark,
Amaranth III, IV and KH, Dead Force, the Agalta series, Legend of
Heroes III ...
Thanks for the recommendations. Now I don’t have to make a thread about it.
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D
Sr. Member
Gender:
Posts: 397
Annoying Grammar Nazi
Location: Xicheng, Beijing, China
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Eien: Biggest difference is you do not swing to attack. It's an
attack/defend mode like in Hydlide. You push the button to arm
yourself, then charge enemies like in Ys. This is how the game was
designed, which is why you have zero damn swinging range. They changed
it in SNES to try and make it a Zelda clone. |
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KaOSoFt
Newbie
Posts: 7
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3)
Apart from translating games from Japanese to English, what other
languages are worked on by such communities? In various ROM archives,
I’ve seen unofficial Dutch, French, and German translations. Are these
groups very active? My friend, you forgot to mention two of the biggest/most active translation communities: Spanish and Brazilian.
Even
though there was a spanish translation of Tales of Phantasia, for
example, it's quality wasn't the best, and it even had a game-freezing
bug. But a guy from our community wasn't happy for that crappy
job done to such nice game, so he decided to work on it, and he indeed
did an awesome job. The same guy did work (we are speaking mainly
hacking-wise here) on the Seiken Densetsu 3 translation that was just
released yesterday. Professional stuff in all senses. Some
minor bugs (like in the inventory menu) present in the english version
have even been fixed. Some "INN"s and all "PUB"s were translated
into their respective spanish term: "Posada" (due to lenght not all of
these were translated totally) and "BAR", respectively.
There
are people working on great games: Clock Tower (SNES), Madou
Monogatari, Treasure Hunter G, Tales of Eternia, Final Fantasy Tactics,
Phantasy Star (only III is missing a proper translation), Secret of
Mana (already done, just working on a VWF at the moment) and many, many
more.
With this I'm just giving proof of spanish community activity. We are stronger than ever, and we hope to keep going.
Good luck with your article.
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Kitsune Sniper
Sr. Member
Posts: 283
Location: Somewhere in Mexicoland
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3)
Apart from translating games from Japanese to English, what other
languages are worked on by such communities? In various ROM archives,
I’ve seen unofficial Dutch, French, and German translations. Are these
groups very active? My friend, you forgot to mention two of the biggest/most active translation communities: Spanish and Brazilian. Even
though there was a spanish translation of Tales of Phantasia, for
example, it's quality wasn't the best, and it even had a game-freezing
bug. But a guy from our community wasn't happy for that crappy
job done to such nice game, so he decided to work on it, and he indeed
did an awesome job. The same guy did work (we are speaking mainly
hacking-wise here) on the Seiken Densetsu 3 translation that was just
released yesterday. Professional stuff in all senses. Some
minor bugs (like in the inventory menu) present in the english version
have even been fixed. Some "INN"s and all "PUB"s were translated
into their respective spanish term: "Posada" (due to lenght not all of
these were translated totally) and "BAR", respectively. There
are people working on great games: Clock Tower (SNES), Madou
Monogatari, Treasure Hunter G, Tales of Eternia, Final Fantasy Tactics,
Phantasy Star (only III is missing a proper translation), Secret of
Mana (already done, just working on a VWF at the moment) and many, many
more. With this I'm just giving proof of spanish community activity. We are stronger than ever, and we hope to keep going. Good luck with your article.
... I mentioned the Spanish scene a few pages back. 
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D
Sr. Member
Gender:
Posts: 397
Annoying Grammar Nazi
Location: Xicheng, Beijing, China
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To echo what half the readers said: who would want to hire someone who uses MySpace?
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byuu
Newbie
Posts: 45
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Or LiveJournal? Come on, you were asking for that one.
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