Tales of Innocence (DS) Translation

Many of you may remember last year when I was involved in a project to translate Tales of Phantasia PSX into English.  It was quite well received and we really thank everyone that supported us.  Since then, I've been keeping busy, though not with any public projects. Well, it's been a long time coming, but I'm happy to announce that Kingcom (KC) and I have begun work on a project to translate Tales of Innocence for the DS into English.

Tales fans have been patiently waiting and hoping for an official announcement for ToI, but sadly, it looks like that day may never come. We believe that Tales of Innocence had all the makings to be a big success outside of Japan. However, with the development of newer games (including the upcoming Tales of Hearts for the DS) and the localization staff already working on Tales of Symphonia’s spinoff sequel and Tales of Vesperia, we believe it is unlikely that Tales of Innocence will ever see the light of day.

Our project officially began on June 9th, so at the time of this thread's creation, we're a little less than two weeks into the project.  We have made significant progress already on both the hacking and translation fronts. The menu is approximately 50% translated.  Artes and their descriptions have been completed, the bulk of the remaining translation for the menu are the items.  ToI stores a lot of information as menu data, so menu translation is progressing more slowly than might be common for RPG translations.

Tales of Innocence includes many of the features of more recent console Tales games, so fans both old and new are sure to find something to enjoy.  The battle system is full 3D, modeled after Abyss' free running system on the PS2.  Unlike the previous Tales entry on the DS, Innocence also includes a fair amount of voiced dialogue and skits.  Perhaps the most important thing to mention is that unlike Tales of the Tempest, Tales of Innocence is actually a good game.

Our translation is being tested on both emulators (primarily no$gba) and on real hardware using flash carts, so rest assured that it will work on any setup (though the speed at which it will run is highly dependent upon your own machine).

As with Tales of Phantasia, updates will always be provided on my translation blog first. The link will always be provided in my signature, but here it is for those who have sigs disabled.



The original announcement screens are featured below.


And here are some original shots that haven't yet been posted anywhere else.


Thanks for your support and we hope to hear some feedback!

With the astounding speed and quality of you're last translation; great things, and short production time will most likely be on the forefront of everyone's mind when they see this project. (But since this isn't a PSX project Gemini isn't a part of it, and the DS is still relatively untouched with fan translations, and hacks, I can see this being a groundbreaking project that could start a flood of other DS translations.)

I foresee much 'Whats you're progress?/When will this be released?' nagging.



Also will you be releasing patches through out the project process, or keep it all under wraps until and after α/β testing?


Good luck, I started playing this in Japanese a few months ago, and haven't been able to make much progress.
Like the small font also.
_

"When will this be released?" questions are a part of any romhacking project, so it's not like it will be anything we're not used to.  There were two other projects in the past (one is still ongoing) that were in the habit of releasing partial menu patches, but that's not our policy.  We intend to release a single complete v1.0 patch after we've had ample time to give it a good internal alpha test and then a good beta test.  Kingcom and I are both fans of the game and have some perfectionist tendencies, so we wouldn't be comfortable releasing something that we still consider a work in progress.  Our hope is that we won't keep waiting people too long, so even without incremental releases, nobody should suffer from the wait.

Hurray! Expecting another quality release from Absolute Zero.

I foresee much 'Whats you're progress?/When will this be released?' nagging.

It's more like 'Omg, plz give us a beta patch' from gbatemp naggers

Most of you will probably remember the selector Gemini wrote for Tales of Phantasia, that allowed you to choose between translated and romanized ability names.
Well,  I picked that idea up and refined it! Now you can choose between using the official names Namco uses in US localizations, faithful translations of the original names, and, of course, just the romanization of those. It also includes some item names like Gummi/Gel.

And best of all: You can select it in the options menu, and it's stored along your other save data, permanently, and separate for every file!

^ Now THAT is a good idea...can't really do too much more to get those naming convention boogers off your behind.

That's incredible. O_O;

That's incredible. O_O;

I agree!

And best of all: You can select it in the options menu, and it's stored along your other save data, permanently, and separate for every file!

That's pretty cool. I implemented that in my ToP PSX project a few months ago in almost exactly the same manner, though it only affects arte names.

Only question: "Gummi"? Shouldn't it be "Gel", to match the official localizations?

IIRC, Absolute Zero's ToP was the one to stick to the original text, and Cless prefers consistancy with official translations.

Now you can choose between using the official names Namco uses in US localizations, faithful translations of the original names, and, of course, just the romanization of those. It also includes some item names like Gummi/Gel.

Already covered...

Looking awesome. I still wonder why they never give the DS "Tales of" games a chance in the US

I'm definitely looking forward to this. Throughhim is becoming one of my favorite translators, and KC does some excellent work. ^.^

~DS

Absolutely farking brilliant!