As I mentioned in my, I've been working on translating Magical School Lunar! I've also been working on translating Silver Star Story!
I'm planning on using the original translation from the PS1 version, including WD's English dub; I'll also be providing an option to play with Xseed's dub. I'll be releasing patches for both the original release and the MPEG version. Progress has been very good so far! Here's where I'm at:.
95% of both English dubs have been retimed to the FMVs for both the releases. I've written a tool to redub the FMVs from the original release. Script format is partially reverse-engineered; I'm able to insert new text, and understand most of the control codes. In-game voice format is understood, and I'm able to insert new voices. New font, created by a friend; it updates the English PS1 font with the higher-quality shading the Saturn version uses for its text.
Here's a sample screenshot of where I'm! The punctuation is currently wrong, but it gives you a good idea of where things are.
And here's a video showing the original release's FMVs dubbed in English (with no in-game text or voices): Here's an incomplete TODO list:. Finish writing my font-generation tool. Adjust the spacing between letters in dialogue to match the English version; the Japanese version uses wider spacing. Identify and translate the menu text and graphics.
Decide what to do with the few FMVs which have issues with the WD dub. Come up with a workflow to insert the full script in both games' maps. FAQ: Q: Why bother when the PS1 version is in English? A: A few reasons!. The MPEG version has much better FMVs!. The graphics are better in a few places.
The music is different. I'm a Saturn fangirl, and I want to be able to play all three Lunar games in English on the same system! Q: Will you translate the VCD version? I'm planning on releasing patches for both versions, so the six other people with VCD cards have something to look forward to. Q: Will anything in this patch be different from the PS1 version?
A: A few things, mostly technical:. A few FMVs, including the opening song and Luna's boat theme, will have better-quality music than they did in the PS1 version. I'm using the soundtrack CD as a source, so those scenes can have stereo, CD-quality music.
The in-game voices will be slightly lower quality. I plan on restoring the hints to the Vane dungeon puzzle, which Working Designs removed, and using the fancy special characters that exist in the font for it. I won't be using any of the gameplay changes Working Designs made. All of the gameplay, including the difficulty level and chest placement, will be the same as in the Japanese versions. I won't be using the visual edits Working Designs made to the FMVs. This means that the flashback cutscenes late in the game won't be sepia-toned.
Q: Will anything in this patch be different from the normal, unpatched Saturn version? A: Aside from text, I might be able to improve the quality of the audio in the FMVs in the original release. There will be extra room on the disc, and there's room within the bitrate budget for higher-quality audio.
Q: Wait, what's this about problematic FMVs? A: Working Designs altered the lengths of several cutscenes. In some cases they repeated shots over again to add room for more dialogue; in one scene they actually slowed down the entire FMV by about 10 or 15% to increase the length and add room for more dialogue.
Grandia Sega Saturn English Patch
I'm not sure how I'll handle this yet; I don't want to trim down dialogue if I don't have to, but reediting and reencoding the cutscenes might be hard. There's also one cutscene where the audio lines up, but a shot was zoomed in to mask the fact that the voice acting doesn't match up well with the lip movements. Not sure how I'll handle that either. Tea wrote: Q: Wait, what's this about problematic FMVs?
Q: Working Designs altered the lengths of several cutscenes. In some cases they repeated shots over again to add room for more dialogue; in one scene they actually slowed down the entire FMV by about 10 or 15% to increase the length and add room for more dialogue. I know I noticed that WD altered the opening sequence, since I watched the Saturn version enough to commit it to memory, (effects of years of anticipation and being a teenager I guess, ) but I never noticed other alterations! I would love to know more about them if you have a chance. Shiva Indis wrote:I know I noticed that WD altered the opening sequence, since I watched the Saturn version enough to commit it to memory, (effects of years of anticipation and being a teenager I guess, ) but I never noticed other alterations! I would love to know more about them if you have a chance. Here's a list of what I can remember:.
AN004, the party meeting Quark - The final two shots of Quark speaking were repeated in order to fit in more dialogue. AN011, the party meeting Royce - The entire video was slowed down in order to fit in more dialogue. AN014, Ghaleon speaking in his office - Ghaleon's lip flaps from 0:16 onward were looped an extra eight seconds in order to fit in more dialogue. In addition, the intro was given a creepy distorted clock ticking sound; the original scene didn't have a creepy ambiance. AN019, Lemia speaking - Lemia's lip flaps from 0:19 onward were looped an extra three seconds in order to fit in more dialogue. AN021, Magic Emperor Ghaleon intro - Ghaleon's mask's glowing is extended by an extra six seconds in order to fit in more dialogue.
AN031, Alex's nightmare - The audio track is completely different. It stays longer at a black screen at the beginning, before the fade-in, in order to accommodate the different intro. I handled this one by fading into the audio a bit later. AN040 and another scene I can't remember right now, flashbacks of Dyne and Althena: Fully sepia-toned in the WD dub, with no colour. In the Japanese and Xseed versions, these are sepia-tinted with desaturated colours to obtain a nostalgic look without fully removing all colour. AN049, Alex rescuing Luna - The second half of one shot of Luna was turned into a new shot by zooming in further so that Luna's mouth can't be seen.
This hides the fact that the English dub doesn't match the lip movements. The audio for most of the party member bromides is different, since the Japanese versions were based on character omake songs that weren't dubbed. The biggest change is that Luna's bromides are clips from the boat song, while WD's dub uses simpler clips of Luna singing. These are pretty pervasive! I feel like I should have noticed that the WD version has full-on sepia, but nope, didn't catch it.
Grandia Saturn English Patch
I do remember the some of the audio stuff - never could quite decide how I felt about Ghaleon's ticking clock. (Is it too on-the-nose, or is it just the accent that scene needed?
) Your workaround for the changes in the nightmare scene sounds like a good solution. Many of the changes seem minor, but clearly headache-inducing for the project.
Especially when the extended part isn't at the end of the video! Speaking of which, I have an idea for AN021. Maybe it's too drastic. If the looped frames are in all that silence that WD filled with Ghaleon monologing, maybe just cut the voice out of that part? Many of the changes seem minor, but clearly headache-inducing for the project.
Especially when the extended part isn't at the end of the video! Speaking of which, I have an idea for AN021. Maybe it's too drastic.
If the looped frames are in all that silence that WD filled with Ghaleon monologing, maybe just cut the voice out of that part? Yeah, at this point I basically have two options, both of which are a bit painful:. Trim some dialogue from the WD dub so it matches the timing of the Japanese video. Find a way to reencode video for both versions of the game so that I can create new video with timing that matches the dialogue. With the second option, at least I can use the PC version's FMVs to have have a high enough quality to work from - but coming up with the tooling to reencode compatible FMVs for both versions of the game would be a total pain. Sonic# 'Than seyde Merlion, 'Whethir lyke ye bettir the swerde othir the scawberde?'
'I lyke bettir the swerde,' seyde Arthure. 'Ye ar the more unwyse, for the scawberde ys worth ten of the swerde; for whyles ye have the scawberde uppon you, ye shall lose no blood, be ye never so sore wounded. Therefore kepe well the scawberde allweyes with you.'
- Le Morte Darthur, Sir Thomas Malory 'Just as you touch the energy of every life form you meet, so, too, will will their energy strengthen you. Fail to live up to your potential, and you will never win. ' - The Old Man at the End of Time.
This is extraordinary. There's a lot of dedication going on here.
I always knew there were a good chunk of technical changes in relation to the PS1 release but it's good to see them explained and how you'll work around them. Are you planning on any work outside of LUNAR for the Sega Saturn? I'm not super obsessive with the Saturn but years and years ago around the turn of the 21st century I discovered imports and since then I've been importing Saturn titles periodically when I find them cheap.
I've amassed a small collection of mostly visual novels (Sakura Taisen, El Hazard, TokiMemo, those sorts of things) that were released during that time. I don't think a lot of people realize it but Japan got many MANY more Saturn titles released domestically than were released in the United States. It'd be fantastic to see someone finally translate something like Tokemeki Memorial or some of the other obscure shovel-ware visual novels into English considering the Saturn did these sort of titles fairly well for the time. I remember back in the day for TokiMemo in particular I had a notebook I had to piece together to actually play the game as I wasn't able to read Japanese that well.
Made some more progress in the last bit! I've been working on FMV tooling on and off for a few months now, and it's finally paying off. I've been adding support for creating Saturn FMVs to an open source program called FFmpeg; it's basically the video swiss army knife, with support for a huge number of formats, and it's used by a ton of other tools.
FFmpeg has had support for decoding Saturn FMVs, and encoding the video codec that the Lunar games use, but it doesn't support actually putting it all together into a Saturn-playable format. I've been writing what's called a 'muxer' - something which takes separate audio and video streams, and combines them together into a full video file. My goals for this are:. Support taking the original video as-is, and adding new audio to it.
While I already had my own tool to do this, FFmpeg will be a lot more flexible and will let me do things like use higher-quality audio than the original game had. Support encoding brand-new video. This would be useful to do things like add subtitles to MSL, and to create new videos for SSS which match the timing from the English PS1 version. The first of these now works perfectly! The second is still in-progress because FFmpeg's Cinepak encoder isn't 100% compatible with the Saturn yet, but I'm looking into fixing that as a followup.
My muxer is complete now, so I've submitted it to FFmpeg and I'm hoping it'll get accepted. The Cinepak encoding is still in kind of a weird state. My first experiment didn't go so well: Silver Star Story crashed while decoding the first frame! Doesn't look so good, huh? I eventually realized that FFmpeg's default Cinepak settings are a bit different from all of the Saturn videos I've seen, and so it wasn't going to be compatible.
I tested setting one option to match what I've seen in Saturn videos, and got a bit further: SSS got about two frames in before crashing this time. I'm going to experiment with a few encoding settings to see if I can find something that's compatible. If not, I'll examine the qualities of Saturn Cinepak movies a bit more closely and figure out what's different, then look at adding an option to FFmpeg that'll make its Cinepak encoding Saturn-compatible.
I've made a bit more progress, but I'm not there yet. I took a look at the source code to AVItoSaturn, which is the only Saturn community tool I know of that produces Saturn-playable Cinepak videos. Unfortunately, it turns out it doesn't actually have a Cinepak encoder at all; it uses the builtin Windows encoder, and just tweaks the packet header to make it look like the Saturn is expecting. That's basically the same as what I do in my own muxer, so it didn't give me much extra information - except that it means the Saturn.can. play back standard Cinepak, so the FFmpeg encoder is probably fixable.
On the advice of someone who has some Cinepak experience, I tried forcing V4 encoding only - and it worked! I also tried V1 encoding only, and that worked too. So I suppose something is buggy about how it divides the frame between V1 and V4 vectors. At least that gives me a bit of a hint as to what's wrong.
To test, I've been encoding the Sonic Mania intro and replacing the Silver Star Story intro with it. If it plays back without crashing, I count that as a success.
The V4-only version looks beautiful, but it takes up an absurdly high bitrate. The fact it works at all, though, I'll take as a win, and I'll try to figure out what to do from here.
I own the Saturn version and it's the only version I own. I've seen the PS1 ver. And I'll have to take people's word for it when it comes to the framerate. There are a few things I did notice, where the Saturn version had special effects in tiles and flooring, a swirly flat plane instead of 3D waves for the ocean, clouds where there were none in the PSX version.
But at the same time, you're going to be casting a lot of magic in the game and the PSX ver. Looks much better in this department. The spell animations for Grandia on the Saturn are a bit awkward looking. There is also a Japanese Grandia PSX version, so the Saturn doesn't quite get away with claiming superiority over the voice acting either. I have somewhat fond memories of Grandia on PS1, it's a nice game but the experience was a bit disappointing after all the hype thrown around by magazine and sega fans. The English voice acting is absolutely dreadful btw, thankfully you don't have to subject yourself to that anymore, there's a patch that will replace the english voices with the japanese ones, if you're interested in playing the PS1 port. Graphically I remember seeing some comparison pictures and the battle scenery in the Saturn version is of much higher resolution, probably the most egregious difference.
My take: If you want to play the game in English: PSX If you do not have an English preference: Saturn Saturn version was vastly superior. Ground Textures, higher frames, more background animation, missing backgrounds all together in the PSX version, some things aren't animated in the PSX version (they said due to lack of processing power), colors are better in the SS version, and load times are better in the SS version (though emulation could actually make load times faster in the PSX version now). The audio in the SS version is better. That being said the PSX has actually shadows, horrible dubbing, and a mediocre translation.
Still the differences aren't enough to play the game in any language you aren't fluent in.
I agree that it would be a lot of work, but it would be a lot easier to take the PSX version's text and put it into the Saturn's version. That would be relatively easy. You wouldn't need a translator; probably only one or two programmers could do it alone.
If I knew anything about Saturn coding, I would start the project in an instant! But, since I don't, that's probably not a fair thing to say.
That being said, does anybody know where I can find some tutorials on Saturn coding? I'm willing to learn.
Marurun wrote:romhacking.net also has lots of information on hacking/translating. They also have individuals who might be able to be recruited.
If you just copy the PSX text then you're still suffering a poor translation, though. It's not all about the translation though the Sega Saturn version of the game was also much better graphically. I would LOVE to see this happen, but I think the biggest problem will be getting people to do so much work for a translation that already exists on another platform.
Ben wrote:See, I'm torn on that, if I go by my inclination I'd love to do that, but if no one uses the translation to make a patch I don't know that it's a really good use of my time if the goal here is to keep the Saturn alive and provide a way for people to play new games (where just a GameFAQs.txt translation at least would let someone play a game like Snatcher). I'll keep it in mind though, since both of those Lunar games are two of my all time favorites and I HATE the Working Designs translation with all of their inserted pop culture references. I would play a patched Grandia. And Lunar, as well. I detest bad or stilted translations, and much rather play a patched version of the superior Saturn version than the official PS1 version. Since those exist, though, it might mean that it's lower on the pile, but hey, FFIV got a retranslation. I'm playing through the Saturn version of Grandia for the Summer Challenge, and this game is insanely text heavy.
I'm sure a lot of people would enjoy a translation of it, but it's not a one person job without being able to dump the text. Not only do I have the JPN Grandia, I also have the Grandia Digital Museum release and two JPN game guide books for Grandia.
I would be more than happy to share some of this material with someone reliable. The real problem with Saturn translations isn't the translation work itself, but with first finding someone who can locate, decrypt, and dump the script from the game, and then finding someone who can hack it back into an ISO of the game by way of a patch and otherwise, which is really the only way to go. Translation guides on GameFaqs are really a non-starter for most folks for anything text-heavy like an RPG, even people like me with some Japanese language capability. Spartiti per pianoforte da scaricare. I did better playing Grandia on my own limited abilities than I did with the existing partial translation FAQ out there.
The PS translation of Grandia is indeed a bit disappointing, though the voice work is what really sinks it. Grandia and Shining Force III are really the holy grails of Saturn fan translation, and Shining Force III is humming along nicely. It's playable, but there's still lots of editing and revision being done. Grandia has some technical hurdles to translation. Would be great to have the text in English but keep the fantastic JPN voice acting. As for other translation candidates.
Another vote for Assault Suits Leynos 2. I found the game really hard until I figured out which play style and weapons worked for me. The copy of the game I have includes a foldout weapon/equipment list, which would greatly help in translating the game. The dialogue and mission briefings are good to have, but the weapon information and menu stuff is more critical to actual gameplay. GameFaqs already provide enough info to know what the goals of each mission are. A dark-horse candidate that BEGS for translation is Tengai Makyo IV: The Apocalypse. It is set in a version of the US that's as mangled as the Jipang in some of the earlier titles.
I have a JPN guide book to go with my copy of this game as well. I really think this is the game that most needs English translation at this time, especially in the hands of someone who is capable with humor and levity. Some lesser-known JPN titles might still be good to consider, because with a translation people might want to try them out.
They may not look awesome enough at first or be approachable enough to folks without language capability, but making them approachable could turn that around. Some candidates in this category would be: Terra Phantastica Riglord Saga 2 Blue Breaker (RPG with dating sim elements WHAT?) Sakura Taisen Sakura Taisen II I'll revisit this thread again once I'm home so I can peruse my collection. Although my Japanese skills are only just now approaching conversational, come August of next year I will most likely be moving there to work, which I expect to mean an exponential increase in efficiency. Along with a Bachelor's Degree in English Writing approaching its completion, I've taken multiple courses in Japanese to English translation and linguistics, as well as helped write shorts for Nickelodeon and Sesame Street (including contributing to the compositing and video effects of these in AfterEffects), as well as a pilot for the original incarnation of Kinect TV (it was very well-received - unfortunately it got shuffled off the table during the structural transition from 360 to One. As in the people who were moving toward approving the pitch were moved elsewhere in the company, and those who took their place didn't know the pitch existed. I'm becoming increasingly drawn to translation work, as it encompasses just about the entirety of my interests. So the only thing I'm lacking to be an effective contributor is complete fluency in the target language, but that's being remedied.
If a Racketboy translation group gets off the ground, I will gladly do everything I can to promote and contribute. For now though, I wanted to see if these considerations for a translation team are still going on in PM's, or if it's been largely dropped. A few suggestions: if you guys are dead-set on the Sega Saturn, you might want to start out by assisting a project already in progress in order to help yourselves come to grips with the process by working with those who've already had experience. For instance, the Saturn translation of Policenauts mentioned in the OP seems to be going very well - that could be a great reason to contribute for the same reason you thought it would be a poor reason: As far as Saturn games, I would suggest starting out with a playable, action-oriented game to begin with, such as Assault Suit Leynos 2 as mentioned, though in my opinion, I think that Princess Crown would be the best option at the moment. Vanillaware has become a big cult name amongst even the Kotaku crowd these days, yet it has never received an English translation. Starting with a Saturn translation, it could generate a lot of attention and excitement which would only be spread as another team would likely use the groundwork laid to make a PSP port. I would suggest staying in this realm for awhile until everyone's comfortable.
Nanatsu Kaze no Shima Monogatari is a great game from the fan-favorite Enix that's been featured on Hardcore Gaming 101 and even a few mainstream sites before - minimalistic in some regards, but dependent on enough Japanese knowledge to understand the menus. Could be a great game in terms of balancing required coding/translating mastery with the perceived sophistication of the title. From there, a more ambitious title such as Sakura Wars would be a great way to generate attention from a sizeable cross-section of otaku and Sega fanatics, but only if the team really gels and gets serious. Another great option just starting out, purely for attention's sake, would be translating the 'Segata Sanshiro Serious Game'. A lesser effort due to the brevity of the game, but a huge cult character which would generate attention, and easily nab a few quick and dirty articles from Destructoid or what have you. Other great, highly visible projects outside of the Saturn include: What's Shenmue? Phantasy Star + FM Synth (the original translation was poor to begin with) Surging Aura (one of the most oft-requested Mega Drive translations) Less visible, but extremely worthy projects: Napple Tale (this one's fascinating - a game released in 2000, notable for being created by an entirely female team, as well as featuring a soundtrack composed by Seatbelts/Cowboy Bebop notable Yoko Kanno.
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The title is not currently well-known, but a good translation and lots of promotion could generate a ton of attention based on the game's merits) Roommania #203 Dream Studio Lack of Love (minimal effort required; one of the most charming games of all time) Rent-A-Hero No. 1 (already has an official translation for the Xbox that was leaked a couple years back, though that's an unfortunate console given that it is still not emulated, and its primary fan base is not as concerned with the character known by cult Sega fanatics as the best fighter in Fighters Megamix. Minimal translation effort; great coding experience) The Hybrid Front (probably has the most impressive soundtrack on the Mega Drive, next to Bare Knuckle 3) Another thought: since Dreamcast programming is much easier than Saturn and it has a more active scene, it might be a better idea to translate Sakura Wars through the Dreamcast port if the group ever reaches that level.
Just dropping a line to say that I personally haven't been involved in any PM chat and don't know if this has actually evolved into something, but I would be interested in lending a hand to something like this. I'm pretty good with sifting through code (I wouldn't want to be in charge of it but I can help), and I can translate text well. Only Japanese to English, but I assume that's the idea here. I don't really even care what the project is, I just enjoy messing with Japanese text. But the more interested in the game I am, the more I'll work.
I would definitely put some hours into Assault Suit Leynos 2 and could probably translate all the menus rather quickly.
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