[Tom]

I appreciate the link to the program, but the problem isn't so much getting the text to fit in the window. It's that the game sometimes ties lines together in unpredictable ways... By the way, the "solution" that I came up with to make all of the item acquisition text take up the same length isn't going to work, because with the updated way the game displays the items, the amount of linebreaks in those strings is variable... Therefore, unfortunately, I think that character will have to retain that one, slightly awkward line... It's some consolation that the character IS supposed to be a little "off" in that moment. (I won't say anything more than that.) Good luck trying to find which line I'm talking about.

I'm so glad that DDStrans updated the secret PLGS event so English speakers will have the chance to see it... (It was an event that only happens during extremely short periods of time in early 1996, and then never happens again.) It is an event that most Japanese players never saw... And most likely, English speaking players will also never see. I still haven't decided how we'll reveal the secret event. Maybe I'll put it on the details page of a youtube video, or have DDStrans and DougRPG tweet about it before it happens! Only a dedicated few will see it! 

[Blackiris]

Or you could include a hint in the manual. 

[Merr Man]

That secret sounds so neat, you translators have all the fun!

Just don't spoil too much of it, make it very, very cryptic or in the form of a riddle.

[Tom]

Or you could include a hint in the manual. 

It's a good idea, but... Well, the event only happens for a very short period of time, and then it never happens again. The manual needs to be timeless, I think... People would feel bad if they found out about it in the manual, but realized they were too late.

That secret sounds so neat, you translators have all the fun!

Just don't spoil too much of it, make it very, very cryptic or in the form of a riddle.

The secret will be meaningless to nearly everyone playing this translation, so don't get your hopes up too much about it. It is rather hard to be cryptic about how to trigger it, because accessing the event requires the player to visit a very specific place at a very specific time during a very specific span of dates. It's possible, though not likely, that people playing the translation will stumble into this event and not even know that they saw anything special.

---

I finished adding colors to all of the in-script icons like music notes and hearts, and fixed the formatting to account for extra spaces that were needed to do this properly. I also finished changing the item acquisition messages to make proper article distinctions between the/a/an/(nothing) and to not always have the item name be displayed in caps.

I also finished incorporating all of the date/time/ordinal number tags into the script just now.

My current to-do list:

1. formatting festival/optional text (more work than it sounds)
2. reviewing battle feed window text in-game

After I finish #1, I'll do one more playthough to make sure none of my edits broke anything (and do #2 while I'm at it...), and then, provided all of the graphics are incorporated, testing can begin.

[mikeprado30]

IT'S COMING NEAR!!!

That's really amazing, guys, thanks a lot, sincerely, THANKS A LOT!!!

I'd offer myself as a tester, but my very limited time doesn't allow me to help at least with that 

But don't hesitate about that: this contribution may seem small, but BELIEVE ME, for the hordes of people awaiting for more than a decade this title to be translated into English (since DeJap's effort or even before a few ones) is one of the most worthy and awaited news we have been looking someone bring forth into reality.  And all of you, Tom, DDS, FlashPV and DougRPG, your nicknames will be in a very special place in my heart, reserved for the people whom got those gems for the English-speaking people (well, I'm Costa Rican and English is not my native language, but I understand it very good) just for the sake of bring the majority of people the chance of knowing those gems.

MY ETERNAL RESPECT GOES FOR YOU ALL!!! 

[Tom]

You're very welcome, Mike!

Hopefully, by the time everybody's done with their work, there won't be much left for the testers to do. So even if you can't help with testing, that's fine. This isn't a game to rush through, anyway. If you take your time and play through it slowly, you'll enjoy it more.

DougRPG is cranking out the graphics now, and FlashPV is blowing through them all as soon as they come in. The graphics in the fourth nation of the game have been completed, and the fifth nation in the game is nearly complete. Even some of the in battle effects have been uncovered. I think that there are only two more in-battle graphics that need to be triggered and extracted. I'd estimate that the game is about 80-85 percent complete in terms of its graphics. 95% complete in terms of its hacking, and maybe 95% complete in terms of its formatting.

At the moment, I'm taking a break from a button-mashing mini-game at a festival that I swear must have been programmed for Meijin Takahashi. I need a break! And I'm not even at the final round!

[KingMike]

At the moment, I'm taking a break from a button-mashing mini-game at a festival that I swear must have been programmed for Meijin Takahashi. I need a break! And I'm not even at the final round!

About Takahashi's famous button-mashing skills... it's pretty amazing, but AGDQ has shocked me that there's people who can do the A Link to the Past walk-over-pits glitch in real-time (60 taps per second). I'd have thought that beyond human possibility (at least I assume they're playing with normal controllers? No turbo allowed there? )

[dejan07]

About Takahashi's famous button-mashing skills... it's pretty amazing, but AGDQ has shocked me that there's people who can do the A Link to the Past walk-over-pits glitch in real-time (60 taps per second). I'd have thought that beyond human possibility (at least I assume they're playing with normal controllers? No turbo allowed there? )

The secret lies in how you hold the controller, you need to put it down on a table but 60 per second is impossible. Mr. Takahashi used this technique:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJ4lmAFB7d4

Another good tip is the right kind of controller. Capcom Street Fighter 2 controller is perfect for this:


Tom, don't overwork yourself man, you might get a blister. Now we know why you will be the last to finish your part on the project.

[Hiei-]

At the moment, I'm taking a break from a button-mashing mini-game at a festival that I swear must have been programmed for Meijin Takahashi. I need a break! And I'm not even at the final round!

Auto-fire?  (except if you really want to beat it the legit way).

[Tom]

I made it to the final round legit, but in the final round, I had no choice but to swallow my pride and use auto-fire turbo! (It was for testing purposes only! I did it so the patch wouldn't be delayed because of personal pride and lackluster button mashing skills. Don't cheat when you play it for real, folks!)

DDStranslation fixed the item acquisition messages so that they'll always fill the window. This helps a lot for formatting, and it means that the one line that concerned me has no issues whatsoever. The side effect is that the game will need another playthrough to fix all of the lines that will have too many newline tags now.

Right now, I just need to finish formatting the optional events.

DougRPG has just moved into extracting the graphics from the sixth nation in the game. There's a handful of signs there, and then... Only four other graphics to translate in the whole game after that. (Two of them being in-battle graphics.)

Recently, he extracted one really HUGE graphic for FlashPV to edit. It's probably the most visually complicated image in the game, and I'm eager to see how it turns out! Once that image is done, I'm sure it'll be smooth sailing for FlashPV! We're all well past 90% complete now. We're in the final stretch!

[ginbunbun]

I made it to the final round legit, but in the final round, I had no choice but to swallow my pride and use auto-fire turbo! (It was for testing purposes only! I did it so the patch wouldn't be delayed because of personal pride and lackluster button mashing skills. Don't cheat when you play it for real, folks!)

DDStranslation fixed the item acquisition messages so that they'll always fill the window. This helps a lot for formatting, and it means that the one line that concerned me has no issues whatsoever. The side effect is that the game will need another playthrough to fix all of the lines that will have too many newline tags now.

Right now, I just need to finish formatting the optional events.

DougRPG has just moved into extracting the graphics from the sixth nation in the game. There's a handful of signs there, and then... Only four other graphics to translate in the whole game after that. (Two of them being in-battle graphics.)

Recently, he extracted one really HUGE graphic for FlashPV to edit. It's probably the most visually complicated image in the game, and I'm eager to see how it turns out! Once that image is done, I'm sure it'll be smooth sailing for FlashPV! We're all well past 90% complete now. We're in the final stretch!

Mother god o.o to say I am excited would be a gross understatement. You and everyone else involved are total badasses there Tom.

[Tom]

I'm just as excited, and grateful to the other guys on the team. Your compliments and enthusiasm mean a lot as well!

Back to formatting festival text!

[midget35]

Tom and team: Please add me to the list of people who are incredibly excited for this release, and grateful for your brilliant work. (What a team!). Are you saying the whole game is 90% complete?

[Tom]

Tom and team: Please add me to the list of people who are incredibly excited for this release, and grateful for your brilliant work. (What a team!). Are you saying the whole game is 90% complete?

I mean the formatting is about 95% complete, the translated graphics are over 90% complete, and the hacking is about 99% complete... When everything gets to 100%, testing can begin... And by testing, I mean typo hunting, pretty much. (My own mistakes largely remain invisible to me.)

As far as I can tell, there is only one glitch that warrants more hacking. If DDStrans can crush that one superficial glitch, his work will be entirely done, short of handling adjustments to the text that I can't integrate myself. He has to encounter the remaining glitch in-game before he can hack it. It happens (every time) during a certain bit of dialogue in the second nation of the game, so it shouldn't take him too long for him to encounter it... (Though that scene is optional, so he could technically miss it if he doesn't backtrack. The same glitch pops up later, too. I should have kept better records of exactly where and when it occurs.) From what I understand, he was waiting until his hacking work was largely done before starting an honest-to-goodness playthrough, as he didn't want to spoil the experience (as much as possible).

DougRPG has a list that explains how to trigger all of the optional graphics. It's easier said than done, though... The process he has to go through is tedious, I'm sure. (I can relate!) It's up to him if he wants to beat the game first before cracking down on the remaining graphics. I'm really eager to discuss the game with him when he's done. I'm glad to hear he's been having fun so far, from what he's told me.

[travel27]

I have heard that that last 1% or so takes longer/is harder than the first 99%, is that true?

[Tom]

There's truth to that. I think it's mainly that the easy issues are done right away. They don't linger until the last minute, so whatever issues are still plaguing a project by the end are relatively formidable tasks.

Also, you have fixes that cause other issues... So stuff you did earlier needs to be redone. Things like that. What you had originally checked off as completed gets brought back to top of the proverbial pile.

I'm dealing with one such issue right now... A bit of a snag regarding items as they appear in the battle feed. I have to do a bit of research to make sure that none of them will break the battle feed window.

If any of them include a line break, it's back to the drawing board, because the battle feed doesn't allow for line breaks. If none of them do, then all it needed was for me to change one word in the translation. (That's already been done.) But either way, it's an issue that I THOUGHT was done, but it turned out that it was not quite done.

It may be solved already, but I have to research enemy item drops to make sure that none of the longer item names (like the royal dragon longsword) are dropped by any enemies. Lot of cross-referencing to do... The GOOD news is that the festival formatting is done, as far as I can tell, and once this item check is complete, I can get back to playing the game. There are only three major PLGS events in the game that I'm not confident about, and maybe a small handful of minor lines that I haven't checked directly. It's possible that all of them work perfectly fine. I just haven't seen them for myself yet.

So yeah, there's truth to the last percent taking longer than the usual one percent.

[dejan07]

If any of them include a line break, it's back to the drawing board, because the battle feed doesn't allow for line breaks. If none of them do, then all it needed was for me to change one word in the translation. (That's already been done.) But either way, it's an issue that I THOUGHT was done, but it turned out that it was not quite done.

I am wondering what will happen if a line break happens during the gameplay? Will the game just crash or will the gamepak catch on fire?

[Tom]

A line break in the battle feed, at best, would cause a dialogue arrow to appear in the battle feed, and require an extra button press to display the second part of the item name.

It might also try to print text outside of the battle feed window.

It might cause weird spillover that lingers on the screen.

It might even cause the game to crash.

But I have good news. It'll never happen. I've gone through all of the enemy drops, and confirmed that none of the items that the enemies drop have names that include newline tags! So, that's been taken care of! Back to playing through the game!

[deubeul]

I lurk every 2-3 month for progress on TMZ, and I find this fresh thread:  Best day of 2017 so far !!!

I first played Manjimaru and FKD BITD and couldn't get very far, but felt in love with the universe and the characters.

I played TM4 when it was released, but had to stop at the end of the first CD because the CD swap trick didn't work for the second disc on my PAL Saturn.

I played through Kabuki Den recently, thanks to the walkthrough, and it was AWESOME!

I dream of playing  Manjimaru before I die.

I just started Oriental Blue, I must be at 2/3 of the game,I'm really enjoying it (despite the lack of goofiness), thanks Tom for the awesome work and for allowing us to play a TM game in english.

The fact that you managed to create a team of talented people, who all made such progress in a short amount of time on TMZ, is already amazing!

And as a cherry on the cake, I saw this:

(In fact, my goal is to translate all of the Tengai Makyou PC Engine releases and put them into the PSP Collection for the ultimate Tengai Makyou experience!)

Holly S...!!!

I registered just to show my support  and to thank Tom and the team for their work and dedication.

There's no words to describe the effect that single sentence had on me.

I know it's not for tomorrow, but Tom, thanks for the little glimmer of hope you lighted.

[Tom]

It's great to meet another dedicated fan of the series. Thanks for posting, deubeul! Hearing from others motivates me to work harder!

I'm very happy with the script so far, but I am working each day to improve the formatting. (It'll be much, much easier to read than Oriental Blue.)

A few days ago, FlashPV finished up the toughest image in the game (barring any insertion issues). There are only a small number of graphics left to translate.

DDStranslation wants to wait until all of the graphics are in before playing through the rest of the game, so I have to get to the third nation to encounter a certain glitch. (I thought it was in the second nation, but it turns out that it's in the third.) I suppose another playthrough won't hurt; more chances to clean up the script, I guess!

Progress on the manual/packaging editing has also been smooth. The manual looks great so far, and I really hope people out there print themselves up a copy.