Marvelous ~ mou hitotsu no takarajima

[tashi]

Hi, I'm translating / hacking the SNES game Marvelous - mou hitotsu no takarajima. I feel like I've made enough progress and can see far enough down the road to merit a thread.

current playtest patch June 2012

This is an incomplete shoddy patch. The dialogue is 98%ish translated, but some UI elements are not translated, some graphics are missing, some line breaks are misplaced and WILL CRASH THE GAME D: You have been warned.

Text wall, hooooooooo!

I'm pretty bad at hacking, but I got a few breaks with this game. Marvelous only has 2 pointers. One is to the RAM location (SA-1 RAM I think...) where it writes a 24bit pointer table. The other pointer is to the start of the dialogue block. I expanded the ROM and repointed so the English script will fit.

I have 1736 2302 2559 2929 strings translated and inserted out of 3075. As I get more lines translated, the going gets a little slower since I have been skipping lines that don't make sense without context. I will start my localization playthrough when I translate as much as possible without context (not to put too much pressure on myself, but probably this week). One unfortunate thing is that the dialogue is jumbled pretty badly. It almost seems like it alternates every other line between different islands... When I've done as much editing and proofreading / playtesting as I can stand, I would really appreciate playtesters. Marvelous is VERY sensitive with text formatting, and will freeze up and crash awfully if a string has 23+ characters, or if a line break is in the wrong place... and there are many branching possibilities, so with one playthrough I won't be able to test all strings.

As far as graphics, I did most of the menu things today but only with moderate success. The problem is that, as you see on the right side on "item" and "teamwork" is that some weird overlay persists, even though I replaced all the relevant graphics I could find... The other graphics problem is that I can't find a way to replace the titlescreen, or the short intro that plays before the title screen. Those are problems for way down the road, I reckon.

Now, I'll leave you with a fish:


*edit: typo!
*edit 2012/3/21 TL progress update. 2302! 75%!
*edit 2012/3/22 TL progress update. 2559! I started my playthrough!
*edit 2012/3/25 TL progress update. 2929! on last chapter ))
*edit 2012/12/15 meh i give up patch link up.

[KiddoCabbusses]

ROM Hack Bugtester for The BS Zelda Homepage community reportng!

I have a SFC Neo Myth currently and may get a sd2snes soon. I'll be able to check your ROM hack for hardware compatibility issues.
With my DVD Recorder I could possibly even make a video log of my bug testing and upload it on Youtube if desired!
Since Marvelous and the BS Marvelous series are tied together, I'll be eager to do work for any project involving the games.

[LostTemplar]

I have a SFC Neo Myth currently and may get a sd2snes soon. I'll be able to check your ROM hack for hardware compatibility issues.

Be aware that Marvelous features a special chip, the SA-1 (same one as Super Mario RPG), and thus won't run on any flash carts that I know of.

[tashi]

KiddoCabbusses, thanks for volunteering! It would be nice if Marvelous ran on real hardware, but I don't know anything about the implications of a game that uses SA-1... so, I dunno if this is super taboo or anything, but that isn't really a priority for me. My priority is "let more people experience the joy of Marvelous"

I would really appreciate the playtesting :>

and I don't want to get hopes up or make promises I won't keep, but I will say that I really like the Marvelous "series" ... all of it.

Everything is proceeding well with the script. TL progress 2302/3075 lines.

[KiddoCabbusses]

Be aware that Marvelous features a special chip, the SA-1 (same one as Super Mario RPG), and thus won't run on any flash carts that I know of.

In that case I'll need to get that sd2snes quicker. I'll get back to everyone on that.

I can always test it in an emulator in the meanwhile, as I doubt we'll have to deeply consider hardware compatibility issues until the BS Marvelous stuff is covered.

[Nightcrawler]

In that case I'll need to get that sd2snes quicker. I'll get back to everyone on that.

That won't help. sd2snes doesn't support the SA-1 either and it has yet to be determined if it ever could.

[tashi]

Oh no, guys! Just as Gideon Zhi prophesied... I started my localization playthrough and.. the horror! The horror!

Item names are limited to 16 characters. That is a lot worse than the 22 per line for normal dialog. Especially since normal dialogue can scroll forever.

Short cutscene text is limited to two lines of 22 characters. Sort of limiting when I'd like to say "This is the girl's tent. Only one boy is allowed to come in at a time."

I can't change the chapter names.

Some riddles / clues are in the form of graphics instead of text. But I can't find them cuz they're compressed.

The biggest show stopper right now, a bug that prevents me from getting anywhere.. is a particular puzzle where you have to rotate this lever thing left and right the correct number of times (like a combination lock).

Code: [Select]

<$FE>リ手順と回数を入力せよ。
[nl3]   ／右1／  ／<$FE>ム[end1]


I tried it in my unedited ROM in Snes9x and BSNES. I redownloaded my ROM and tried again.... I played this game once all the way through without any bugs, so I don't understand how this can be happening... I will try to get other dumps and test them too...

If anyone wants to take a look at any of my problems, I will do whatever I can to help.

*edit btw everything works SUPER GREAT and playable up until that game ruining bug. If you want to play up to that part, I can give you a patch.
*edit: after more testing, I can conclude this is NOT a bug caused by my hack. This bug is in vanilla untouched clean ROMs. I have no idea how I got past this part last year or why I am so unfortunate now :/ most common md5sum is b9b77e5f378b871ece75caba82718a8e but this version doesn't work for me, either.. same bug as in screenshot.

[LostTemplar]

If it helps anybody, I guess this is how it's supposed to look:

[tashi]

Semos almighty! LostTemplar, you've done it!!

I feel like such an idiot. I knew I would when this was resolved. Seeing the correct thing reminded me how to manipulate that dialog.

You push up and down on the blank spots and it fills in left/right and a number of times. Wow. That REALLY could have been better explained. Or explained at all. Wowww. Okay, now that can just be another silly bug that will go in the list of ASM hacks I'm not smart enough to do.

Thanks, LostTemplar.

[SteveMartin]

This is a great game, I remember first discovering it through a bunch of BS Satalleview videos on Nico Nico. Had a great time playing through it all those years ago, so I'm sure everyone will enjoy it when it gets released. Great choice for a project

[tashi]

Except for a few compressed graphics (1 of which is relevant to gameplay but I could work around that if I have to) and an awkward, hard to use menu for one puzzle.... and the outstanding issues (name entry screen, chapter titles..) Chapter 1 is done!! Hurray!

My new goal for myself is to finish my playthrough by March 30 so I can send out a patch and other files to playtesters before I go on vacation for a couple weeks. Fingers crossed.

*edit 2012-3-23  Chapter 2 has been played through and edited accordingly! (one clue was a compressed image..)

*edit 2012-3-24  Chapter 3 has been played through and edited accordingly! (one clue was a compressed image..)

*edit 2012-3-26  Chapter 4 has been played through and edited accordingly! (no compressed graphics! haha!)

[KiddoCabbusses]

Oh gosh, the guy really -is- named Arnold?

You may want to check BS Marvelous - Camp Arnold when you're done anything relevant to him. Feel free to ask me if you need any of the Soundlink videos from NND for reference.

[tashi]

I finished my pass of the game. I didn't find any untranslated strings nor game stopping bugs. I'm sure I didn't catch everything, though. Which is why I'd like to open up playtesting now! I'm sending patches to everyone who has contacted me in regards to playtesting. If anyone would like the patch, let me know in some way.

After staring at the script for so long, it's hard to step out of it and judge it objectively. Also, after playing the game a couple times, it's hard to look at it with a fresh mind and see if the clues and riddles make sense. Right now, there is probably an equal amount of ambiguity to them as there was in the original Japanese, but if people comment that the hints are too obscure, adjustments can be made. I'm mostly expecting things like:

• awkward wording
• awkward animal noises
• awkward spacing/alignment
• unclear hints/clues

But everything is fair game for criticism and comments. Keep in mind, however, I already have the following on my to-do list:

• the "new game" menu isn't done.
• The intro text before the title screen isn't done
• the title screen isn't done.
• the item/teamwork icons looks weird
• the chapter names are in Japanese most of the time (except when loading a save file i think)

[pelham123]

Hi Tashi, sorry it's taken this long to get back to you. Just finished my run through Marvelous with a "Not Quite Marvelous Team" Rating. Have to say, fair play for all your hard work, besides the obviously untranslated graphics, I could see few errors in the script and found the dialogue very entertaining. i had a lot of fun with the game, it deserves the exposure your patch will undoubtedly bring. Now onto the few errors, I may well have just been reading the text wrong, but I'll try my best to describe the scene, as I was unable to take screenshots (sorry!) Story spoilers ahead!

Spoiler:

Just after the battering-ram room, Blue exclaims "If the cops are?", I wasn't really sure what he was alluding to.

During/after the Penguin's courting ritual, the line was "Damn those penguins getting all love dovey!", I think it should have read, "Damn those penguins getting all LOVEY dovey!"

Now, my short term memory isn't what it used to be... As far as i can recall, there's a scene with a cat playing with some yarn, the line reads, "He's playing like some yarn", I think it should have read, "He's playing with some yarn." -- Really sorry for not remembering the specific scenario, I think that might have been a late session that night 

And the last one I spotted was just after opening the large Green Door and encountering the Patchies, they exclaim, "We there was treasure in here so we came in, but then the door closed and we were trapped!", I presume the line was supposed to read, "We thought there was treasure" or, "We knew there was treasure in here..."

Like I said, besides these few minor phrases, the script was a joy to read and the game a joy to play through as a result, can't wait to see the finished patch!

[ChronoMoogle]

Maybe you should consider to contact d4s and svambo to team up. They already finished all of the hacking and only need a translated script. Their current translator is somewhat busy and had no progress for a long time.
Good work so far!

[KiddoCabbusses]

Hi Tashi, sorry it's taken this long to get back to you. Just finished my run through Marvelous with a "Not Quite Marvelous Team" Rating. Have to say, fair play for all your hard work, besides the obviously untranslated graphics, I could see few errors in the script and found the dialogue very entertaining. i had a lot of fun with the game, it deserves the exposure your patch will undoubtedly bring. Now onto the few errors, I may well have just been reading the text wrong, but I'll try my best to describe the scene, as I was unable to take screenshots (sorry!) Story spoilers ahead!

Spoiler:

Just after the battering-ram room, Blue exclaims "If the cops are?", I wasn't really sure what he was alluding to.

During/after the Penguin's courting ritual, the line was "Damn those penguins getting all love dovey!", I think it should have read, "Damn those penguins getting all LOVEY dovey!"

Now, my short term memory isn't what it used to be... As far as i can recall, there's a scene with a cat playing with some yarn, the line reads, "He's playing like some yarn", I think it should have read, "He's playing with some yarn." -- Really sorry for not remembering the specific scenario, I think that might have been a late session that night 

And the last one I spotted was just after opening the large Green Door and encountering the Patchies, they exclaim, "We there was treasure in here so we came in, but then the door closed and we were trapped!", I presume the line was supposed to read, "We thought there was treasure" or, "We knew there was treasure in here..."

Like I said, besides these few minor phrases, the script was a joy to read and the game a joy to play through as a result, can't wait to see the finished patch!

I have yet to find anything glaring, myself, although I'll admit I may not have as careful an eye as to spot ones like this.

So far I've managed to figure everything out without needing to buy any clues from the birds, too.

All in all, very nice.

[tashi]

Thank you everyone for your comments It means a lot to me that you guys are playing and liking this game!

ChronoMoogle, I've been in contact with svambo for a while now. I'm not sure who d4s is...

Grats to pelham123 for "not quite marvelous" and thanks for finding those errors. I'm working on script editing and working with people to get the graphics fixed...

I'm back home for the first time in a while, so the allure of first-world internet, food, video games, and other entertainment is sort of distracting me, but I'll snap out of it soon. There's talk of getting together a proper website with developer interviews and bonus materials. I really want to do this game justice.

[ChronoMoogle]

d4s is the guy who developes the snes port of road blaster right now.
http://dforce3000.de/

He is also known in the romhacking community for his Breath of Fire II Hack and a lot of cracks for HKO games.
However, if you are in contact with Svambo it doesnt matter anyway, since d4s simply passed his work on Marvelous to him.

[Merta]

I saw the help wanted ad for the game around the same day that I would constantly talk about wanting to see this game getting translated into English. This thread proves that the project will indeed be finished in the future, thank you.

[engageridleymfkr]

When's the last time anyone heard from Tashi? I haven't heard from him in about a month, and in one of his e-mails he mentioned something about possibly having to leave America or something?