21

Gaming Discussion / Re: Undertale

« on: December 11, 2015, 10:36:51 am »

From what I hear, many people like Undertale for its witty writing rather than its gameplay (and also because its a lot like Earthbound). The game's writing is basically like Japan's visual novel genre where you're decisions affect the dialogue ever so slightly and effect which ending you get. If you hate a lot of story and play RPGs for their gameplay, this game is not for you. You only have one party member to my knowledge and this makes the battling monotonous when the bullet hell segments lose their novelty. Of course this is my experience.

I was initially dissuaded from buying the game because the bullet hell battling system seemed like it didn't really fit, but after watching a friend play the game, I decided to buy it and play through it myself. It turned out that the battle system had significantly more depth to it. It's not just bullet hell as the battle system changes very significantly depending on the enemy you're fighting. There are platforming, shmup, and rhythm segments as well. The battle system is also used for narrative purposes during some fights.

So I disagree, the gameplay is fantastic and the battle mechanics never lost their novelty on my first play through.The gameplay is definitely different though from your average RPG where the "gameplay" usually ranges from mindless grinding for experience to moderately interesting tactical decisions during battle.

Writing is a lot more subjective though. I personally found the slapstick and meta humor extremely funny but felt that some of the inside jokes were unnecessary or out of place. In particular, references to otaku culture appeared pretty often which I felt detracted from the game.

22

Newcomer's Board / Re: Different ways of storing text in a game file?

« on: December 11, 2015, 01:59:14 am »

I took a look at the binary file and saw there were a lot of repeated values. For example, at 0x2B7E, the four bytes "7F 3F BE FE" are repeated 12 times. Most forms of compression shouldn't produce repeated values like this so I'm guessing the data probably isn't compressed.

Do you know approximately how many characters there should be in this file (i.e. can you write down all the dialog that should be in this binary file)? If the characters are encoded as 16-bit characters, then there should be about 10,000 characters in the file. If you find significantly more than 10,000 characters that correspond to this file, then it's almost certainly compressed and if you find significantly less, then either you forgot to account control codes or there is data in the file besides text.

23

Newcomer's Board / Re: Different ways of storing text in a game file?

« on: December 10, 2015, 02:21:12 am »

Shift-JIS was my first thought too. I'm not too familiar with hacking PC games, but it's also possible that the text is compressed, in which case relative search wouldn't work.

Could you post a link to one of the BIN files as an example?

24

Gaming Discussion / Re: Extending the lives of games

« on: December 07, 2015, 10:15:50 pm »

I don't know, Phoenix Wright games are more or less "one time games" (Even if I replayed them and I still had fun), but I recommend them.

I don't think the Phoenix Wright games are "one time games". They're interactive novels and I'd argue that good novels in general are worth rereading. It's just that you probably won't reread them immediately after you finish.

As far as extending the lives of games, self-imposed challenges are a fun to do when replaying a video game. For example, I'm currently attempting a 1% run of Metroid Fusion, where I try to beat the game without getting any energy or missile tanks (except for one nearly unavoidable missile tank).

25

Personal Projects / Re: [GBA] Magical Vacation English Translation

« on: December 04, 2015, 11:56:12 pm »

Thanks everyone for the positive responses! I'll keep the post updated with major milestones. 

Does it suffer from the same sort of long-windedness that most RPGs of the mid-2000s suffered from? It seems like every game from that era had swathes of unneeded text and pointless conversations in an attempt to either pad out the gameplay or just fill space.

The story isn't very deep so arguably, most of the conversations are "pointless", but most of the dialogue and characters in the game are surreal in an Alice in Wonderland sort of fashion and has a distinct charm to it. Also, none of the locations / dungeons are very long and overstay their welcome in my opinion.

26

Personal Projects / [GBA] Magical Vacation English Translation

« on: December 04, 2015, 05:50:12 am »

Magical Vacation is the first RPG that Brownie Brown (now known as 1-UP Studio) of Mother 3 fame worked on. It had a spiritual successor, Magical Starsign, on the NDS that was localized but unfortunately Magical Vacation never managed to leave Japan. I'm now currently working on translating it into English.

The game is currently fully translated into English and in a playable state. There are numerous graphical glitches / spacing issues that still need to be addressed before I publicly release the patch on June 10th, 2016.

Here are some (outdated) screenshots:

         
         

I hope there are people interested in playing this RPG as it has some gorgeous graphics, an interesting battle system, and colorful dialogue and names!

27

ROM Hacking Discussion / Re: Can someone explain me how to find and modify a GBA pointer to autoboot a game?

« on: December 02, 2015, 08:36:11 pm »

Yep, they did use bank switching and an analysis of them was done about a month ago: https://mgba.io/2015/10/20/dumping-the-undumped/

28

ROM Hacking Discussion / Re: Screenshots

« on: November 23, 2015, 04:32:18 am »

Menu text for Magical Vacation. Decided to go with a fixed-width font for convenience and because I think it looks decent in the menu.

[Spoiler:]

29

Script Help and Language Discussion / Re: Character Recognition & A Few Translating Problems

« on: November 16, 2015, 07:12:35 pm »

Okay, just some more kanji checking and a little recognition. Sorry for the bad scan quality, but that's as good as it gets. Tried my best at recognising everything myself but there's always stuff I can't properly make out, or I just want to make sure is correct. Anyhow, I'll drop the images and text below. Most of it is just checking, but there's also a little recognition. Thanks, guys. I really appreciate you helping me out.

Page 9 Check 1
...事精は分かった

Spoiler:

This should be ...事情は分かった。


Page 9 Check 2
燈とエヴアは運をこじ闇けろ

Spoiler:

This should be 燈とエヴァは道をこじ開けろ


Page 9 Check 3
私が*を務める

Spoiler:

This should be 私が殿を務める


Page 11 Check
大変だったんですって

Spoiler:

This is correct.


Page 12 Check 1
一つの*でやろうとするから

Spoiler:

This should be 一つの国でやろうとするから


Page 12 Check 2
事がデカくなるし*する*が出て来るんです

Spoiler:

This should be 事がデカくなるし敵対する国が出て来るんです


Page 16 Check 1
進化の後指を知りたがっている金は 大勢いる

Spoiler:

This should be 進化の技術を知りたがっている金は大勢いる


Page 16 Check 2
エンジンだけドイツ製の超不客船

Spoiler:

This should be エンジンだけドイツ製の超不審船


Page 16 Check 3
中に*っているのは...

Spoiler:

This should be 中に乗っているのは...

Out of curiosity, are you running these images through OCR?

30

Script Help and Language Discussion / Re: Summon Night Swordcraft Story 3 Lottery Minigame Translation

« on: November 10, 2015, 06:16:31 pm »

Main screen:
ゲーム説明: Explanation (of the game)
福引きで運試しをしよう！: Try your luck with the lottery!
出た玉に応じて景品がもらえるよ。: You will receive prizes that depend on the ball that comes out.

Second screen:
残り９８回: 98 tries remaining

Third screen:
よ～い:Ready...

Fourth screen
開始！！: Start!!

Fifth screen
特賞: Special prize (or Grand Prize)

The remaining ones are 2nd place prize, 3rd place prize, 4th place prize, 5th place prize.

Looking forward to the translation being finished! 

31

Script Help and Language Discussion / Re: Character Recognition & A Few Translating Problems

« on: November 05, 2015, 03:36:37 pm »

First image:
ようこそ熊と魔法の国
『張君シーランド』
２６０２年閉鎖。
札幌駅から伸びる
直通のモノレールは
今も張君市民の足として
稼働している。

ゆかいなマスコットキャラクター

甘いマスクのメロンくん
メロンくんの彼女というか
色々あったメロンメちゃん

2nd image:
１度の変態につき
ボール３～４個吸わなきゃ
いけないので
時間がかかる。

あ。。。ちょっとハネ生えてきた。。。
がんばってアレックス。。。

ゼー　ゼー

3rd image:
。。。オレの棒を吸えば
エキスが出て来て
HENTAIできる。。。

32

ROM Hacking Discussion / Re: Screenshots

« on: October 27, 2015, 12:32:02 am »

^Nice looking game! Look forward in playing your translation of it.

About the headers, if its preexisting in the game, they are fine. But can also change it since its, yeah, not good to the eyes esp. for "bira" (is it the game's currency".

I found that the cat ppl are called "nyamnelt". I hope you keep it as it is.

Thanks! The headers were Japanese in the original game, and were also pretty hard to read I think:

The cat people are actually called "Felin"s in official English localization of the sequel and I'm going to try to keep the translation as consistent with the sequel's as possible.

I wonder if making the headers a little thicker would help. That would probably make them significantly easier to read. Good on you for doing this game! I've always been hoping someone would. Keep it up!

The problem I'm facing is that the text can be at most 6 pixels tall before it spills into the box below, so I can't really increase the size of the headers.

33

ROM Hacking Discussion / Re: Screenshots

« on: October 25, 2015, 09:48:18 pm »

I'm currently translating Magical Vacation since I really enjoyed the sequel, Magical Starsign.



So far, I've hacked the header text in the menu and got a vwf mostly working. The last couple characters from the previous dialogue box spill over into the next one though, as you can see in the third screen shot. Also, each line needs to be indented a couple pixels more to the right.

Any thoughts on how the menu headers look? I'm thinking of redoing them since they look pretty hard to read.