[hairy_hen]

I wasn't planning on making any updates until I'd finished my playthrough, but I spotted a few text formatting errors that bugged me just enough to want to do something about them right away.  These tended to be cases where a line would reach the right edge of the text box, and FF3usME didn't always represent the line breaks the way they actually appeared while playing.  I went through the whole script and adjusted the formatting of anything that looked like it could potentially be an issue, so hopefully I got them all.  Minor errors and inconsistencies in the spell and item descriptions (such as Mute vs Silence) have also been corrected.

I also took the opportunity to improve the dialog a little bit more.  Some of Ultros' lines in the opera battle sounded strange, and I realized that was because I'd never actually done anything with them.  Whenever there are weird-sounding lines like that, it's generally a sign that they were initially translated without context, causing them to end up sounding oddly disconnected from the rest of the dialog.  His speech in this scene makes more sense now, although it is still quirky due to the comical nature of it.

Version 1.2.1 has been approved and is available for download.  I also wrote a news article for the project to try to boost its visibility, although it isn't up yet.  In it I emphasized the story-driven nature of the script rewrite, and while I don't know how broad an appeal the project really has from that angle, I wanted to explain my motivations for doing it and the reasons I felt it was worthwhile.


As far as the game's difficulty balance is concerned... that is part of what I was referring to earlier.  I have a few ideas on how to tweak things to prevent the balance from falling apart, and I might end up trying to implement them at some point in the future.  This wouldn't be anything drastic like some other projects have tried to do, just adjusting anything that is too overpowered in order to restore a fair challenge to places where it is lacking.  I agree with Chicken Knife that the cohesion of the story does start to fall in the second half.  It is quite noticeable that 75% of FF6's dialog takes place in the first half of the game, and the remainder is more a series of disconnected vignettes that doesn't have much resemblance to the tightly-focused plot that marked the earlier scenes.  Nonetheless it is still a great story, and of course I'd hardly have spent so much time working on it if I hadn't liked it as much as I did. 

[Chicken Knife]

I wasn't planning on making any updates until I'd finished my playthrough, but I spotted a few text formatting errors that bugged me just enough to want to do something about them right away.  These tended to be cases where a line would reach the right edge of the text box, and FF3usME didn't always represent the line breaks the way they actually appeared while playing.  I went through the whole script and adjusted the formatting of anything that looked like it could potentially be an issue, so hopefully I got them all.  Minor errors and inconsistencies in the spell and item descriptions (such as Mute vs Silence) have also been corrected.

I also took the opportunity to improve the dialog a little bit more.  Some of Ultros' lines in the opera battle sounded strange, and I realized that was because I'd never actually done anything with them.  Whenever there are weird-sounding lines like that, it's generally a sign that they were initially translated without context, causing them to end up sounding oddly disconnected from the rest of the dialog.  His speech in this scene makes more sense now, although it is still quirky due to the comical nature of it.

Version 1.2.1 has been approved and is available for download.  I also wrote a news article for the project to try to boost its visibility, although it isn't up yet.  In it I emphasized the story-driven nature of the script rewrite, and while I don't know how broad an appeal the project really has from that angle, I wanted to explain my motivations for doing it and the reasons I felt it was worthwhile.


As far as the game's difficulty balance is concerned... that is part of what I was referring to earlier.  I have a few ideas on how to tweak things to prevent the balance from falling apart, and I might end up trying to implement them at some point in the future.  This wouldn't be anything drastic like some other projects have tried to do, just adjusting anything that is too overpowered in order to restore a fair challenge to places where it is lacking.  I agree with Chicken Knife that the cohesion of the story does start to fall in the second half.  It is quite noticeable that 75% of FF6's dialog takes place in the first half of the game, and the remainder is more a series of disconnected vignettes that doesn't have much resemblance to the tightly-focused plot that marked the earlier scenes.  Nonetheless it is still a great story, and of course I'd hardly have spent so much time working on it if I hadn't liked it as much as I did. 

Of course your playthrough would result more in a continuation of the refinement process than actually enjoying it like a player. And that will still happen on the second play, and the third play, etc... I've had players on my relocalizations who have given some feedback here and there, but as the author, I think you see so much more than any other player would. Also, you mentioned that you get a sense of when something sounds off and you kinda know there must be something missed in the translation. That's so true. I've encountered so many lines in the dragon quest games where not only the original localization did it weird, my partner that spearheads the translation did it the same weird way, and I have to stop and say no... we're missing something. Let's go to the native speakers, etc. I'd say 90 percent of the time when I had that feeling there was more to the story. Usually those issues result from Japanese expressions that translate in a literal way where the straight rendering kinda works in English but not really. You have to understand the essence of the expression to be accurate. I say keep trusting your instincts with this stuff. And I don't think any translator is perfect. Tomato, as great as he is, has probably made mistakes like anyone else. It's amazing how many problems non-Japanese speakers like us can actually root out by simply pulling at those loose threads.

The other thing I wanted to say: big yes to you working on a highly conservative set of balancing tweaks. While I don't think the act 2 story issues can be fixed, I definitely think the gamemplay can be reigned in in a highly conservative fashion just by balancing out the power of end game equipment, abilities or tweaking the formulas. I do think character level has far too great of a role in damage output compared to FF5 where the impact of character level was much more muted. However, I'd imagine that would be a very difficult fix compared to tweaking equipment, spells and abilities. I agree that enemies should be left alone and the focus should be on the characters. This should all be an optional patch of course. I'd love to help brainstorm and test these kind of things if you're looking for help. I'd say FF6 is one of the two rpgs that could benefit most from this kind of reigning in--with Chrono Trigger being the other (where you max out everybody's magic defense with no effort at all leaving enemy spells from even Lavos doing 20-30 damage a pop.) And yes, I know there have been hard mode patches with massive overhauls of basically everything, but those drastic measures don't really interest me. I want the same core game but with the egregious problems corrected.

[hairy_hen]

I've made two more updates as additional minor issues became apparent while playing.  The pointers for a few of Strago's Lore descriptions seemed to have been set incorrectly, causing their text in the menu to appear glitchy.  I also found a problem in the script for the scene where Edgar and Relm first meet.  After he asks how old she is, she is supposed to say, "You're weird.  I'm going on ahead," and then leave.  But since I inadvertently typed this part into the wrong caption, she then incorrectly said another unrelated line after this, causing the flow of the dialog to be a bit messed up.

After figuring out which caption her response was actually meant to be in, I went back and replayed that section again to make sure the dialog happened in the right order, and it did.  So anyone who is currently playing this will need to obtain version 1.2.3 in order to see this conversation happen the way it's supposed to.

I didn't mention this before, but in v1.2 I decided to change Bushido back to SwdTech.  There were two reasons for this: the first is that in real life "Bushido" actually referred to a samurai code of conduct, not to a fighting style; and the second is that the Japanese term for Cyan's techniques is roughly something like "Deathblow Sword".  With only seven letters available in the menu screen, SwdTech is at least somewhat closer to this, if not exact.  When new attacks are learned at level up, I changed the somewhat vague "Mastered a new technique" message to say, "Mastered a new SwordTech!"

Currently I'm almost ready to go to the Enchanted Continent, as the Japanese version names it, although since that's one of the toughest parts of the game I'm not sure if my characters are leveled up enough for it.  I've done little in the way of grinding because I find that kind of tedious, and its end result is almost always to make things too easy, but we'll see.  I'll be on the lookout for anything else that needs fixing, but of course I live in hope that there won't be anything urgent.

[vivify93]

Hey hairy_hen, what other authors' patches did you use in FFVI Retranslated? Your documentation is kind of sparse and doesn't seem to include that. (It's been a while since I've last looked into your readme, so please forgive me if you've updated it with that info by now.)

[hairy_hen]

In a recent update I added a document listing the patches I used and everyone who contributed to them.  I'd neglected to include that information before, so I added it to the download once I realized I hadn't done it.

The included patches are:
1) C.V. Reynolds' bug fix compilation (C-Dude's condensed version)
2) Restored Ability Names (update by Silent Enigma)
3) vivify93's uncensored graphics compilation
4) B-button Dash by Master ZED
5) Blitz screen names by Leet Sketcher
6) Mini-map upgrade by Madsuir
7) Y-equip Relics (update by Subtraction)
Gil battle fix by svenge


My somewhat under-leveled party just barely managed to scrape through the Enchanted Continent, so now I'm starting the second half.  Man, the story sure takes a turn for the dismal in this part...

[Chronosplit]

In a recent update I added a document listing the patches I used and everyone who contributed to them.  I'd neglected to include that information before, so I added it to the download once I realized I hadn't done it.

The included patches are:
1) C.V. Reynolds' bug fix compilation (C-Dude's condensed version)
2) Restored Ability Names (update by Silent Enigma)
3) vivify93's uncensored graphics compilation
4) B-button Dash by Master ZED
5) Blitz screen names by Leet Sketcher
6) Mini-map upgrade by Madsuir
7) Y-equip Relics (update by Subtraction)
Gil battle fix by svenge

Wow.  That list alone is reason for me to dig into this as soon as possible.  This is exactly what I had in mind for anything I ever wanted to do to FFVI.  It's great how that now, what was 100 patches to be added before starting is now about 5 or 8.

Does this mean the uncensored graphics patch works without reverting Petty Sign Fix in C.V. Reynolds' compilation?  I had once made an anti-patch for that, believing that it needed to be reverted before editing pub signs.

[Masaru]

In a recent update I added a document listing the patches I used and everyone who contributed to them.  I'd neglected to include that information before, so I added it to the download once I realized I hadn't done it.

The included patches are:
1) C.V. Reynolds' bug fix compilation (C-Dude's condensed version)
2) Restored Ability Names (update by Silent Enigma)
3) vivify93's uncensored graphics compilation
4) B-button Dash by Master ZED
5) Blitz screen names by Leet Sketcher
6) Mini-map upgrade by Madsuir
7) Y-equip Relics (update by Subtraction)
Gil battle fix by svenge


My somewhat under-leveled party just barely managed to scrape through the Enchanted Continent, so now I'm starting the second half.  Man, the story sure takes a turn for the dismal in this part...

Is there a patch that removes the mini-map upgrade?

[vivify93]

In a recent update I added a document listing the patches I used and everyone who contributed to them.  I'd neglected to include that information before, so I added it to the download once I realized I hadn't done it.

The included patches are:
1) C.V. Reynolds' bug fix compilation (C-Dude's condensed version)
2) Restored Ability Names (update by Silent Enigma)
3) vivify93's uncensored graphics compilation
4) B-button Dash by Master ZED
5) Blitz screen names by Leet Sketcher
6) Mini-map upgrade by Madsuir
7) Y-equip Relics (update by Subtraction)
8 ) Gil battle fix by svenge

Thanks for letting me know! It looks like we had the exact same philosophy for making an FFVI mod. Good job!

There's actually a utility that will let you fully edit battle system messages, if you want: FF6Tools (I think you may have used it?)

https://www.ff6hacking.com/wiki/doku.php?id=utility

This way, you can edit the gil message yourself, as well as elemental weaknesses, etc.

And there's an addendum fix to B Button Dash (B and C versions) by SilentEnigma. It fixes the "sliding dash" issue. https://www.ff6hacking.com/forums/thread-3140-post-37589.html#pid37589

[hairy_hen]

@Chronosplit: The version of the bug fix compilation I used is one that contains only the battle code fixes.  C-Dude was able to extract the portions of the compilation from banks C0 to C3 and leave the rest out, which turned out to be perfect for this project because the full compilation includes some things that were causing the rom to become corrupted after editing in FF3usME, resulting in freezing and/or garbled text.  In addition to solving those problems, C-Dude's condensed patch also eliminated any potential conflicts with the uncensored graphics.  It does mean that some bugs that occur outside of battle will still be present here, but I may look into adding fixes for them in the future if it seems necessary.

@Masaru: Madsiur included anti-patches in his upload for the mini-map hack, so removing it should be a simple matter.  Use the no-header version since this project is made without one.  I've been including checksum repair in my patches, so making changes will cause the rom's checksum to become invalid, but it can be fixed easily using IpsAndSum.

@vivify93: I'll have to check out ff6tools again.  I tried an early version a while ago since I'm on OS X and it was initially made for Macs, but since I was primarily focused on editing the script and FF3usME allows for importing and exporting them as text files, I found it easier to do the writing that way.  I've been running it with a demo version of Windows in a virtual machine and just reinstalling after the trial period runs out; the only thing that was initially tricky was finding the right versions of the .dll files that FF3usME needs to run.  Everything else was done using a hex editor, but of course on anything with pointers you're limited to the space the original file used.

[vivify93]

The online version should transcend OS, at least as far as I'm aware. That's what I used to edit the battle system messages, at least.

[Piotyr]

As far as sword tech goes have you thought of just Deathblow? Just a suggestion for an alternative both work.

[hairy_hen]

I did think about ways to shorten it, but with a seven letter limit in the menu it seemed like anything I could come up with would just result in awkward abbreviations.  “Deathblow Sword” is only a rough translation anyway, not really an exact one, so I’m not sure if it would be better even if it did fit.  Japanese stuff can string words together convincingly in ways that English can’t really emulate, so there’s inevitably going to be some level of weirdness about trying to render it more exactly.

You’d also have to do something with Blitzes, too; the original name for them is roughly something like “Certain Kill Technique”, which is also not the easiest idea to convey in so little space.

[mkwong98]

“Certain Kill Technique” is just a generic Japanese term commonly used to represent special moves and the original name for SwordTech is “Certain Kill Technique” with "Technique” replaced with "Sword". So the "Certain Kill" part of the name is generic and doesn't have to be translated literally. Also the "Sword" part of the name is referring to an attack with a sword instead of the sword itself so you can replace it with "Slice", "Cut", "Slash" etc.

[Spooniest]

I'm aware that Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions already used "Iaido" as a sort of spellcasting that may or may not break the katana in question (it was translated rather sloppily as "Draw Out" in the original text for PS1), but "Iaido" is to Samurai what the "Quick Draw" is to an Old West Gunslinger.

"Iaijitsu" is the skill of drawing out a sword, killing someone, and putting it back. "Iaido" is literally "The Way of Drawing a Sword Quick."

Seems to fit, for me, and in fact that's what it's called in Stand Guard.

[Heaven Piercing Man]

Kenjutsu? Kendo?

[mkwong98]

If you use the pronunciation of other Japanese terms as the translation of this Japanese term, why not just use the pronunciation of this Japanese term?

[Spooniest]

If you use the pronunciation of other Japanese terms as the translation of this Japanese term, why not just use the pronunciation of this Japanese term?

Because "Iaido" is only 5 letters

[PowerPanda]

@Masaru: Madsiur included anti-patches in his upload for the mini-map hack, so removing it should be a simple matter.  Use the no-header version since this project is made without one.  I've been including checksum repair in my patches, so making changes will cause the rom's checksum to become invalid, but it can be fixed easily using IpsAndSum.

Be careful with this. The compression for the minimaps uses some sort of sorcery, and none of the available tools can re-compress the minimaps effectively enough to fit in their original spot. If you are planning to do ANY sort of editing of locations, Madsiur's patch is pretty much required.

Also, it's way better.

[Spooniest]

Streaming live at Twitch backslash Nandemoyasan.

Mature (lol) audiences only, because I drinksmokeswear.

[hairy_hen]

Made another update to correct some more things I found while playing.  The first was the "incoherent Gungho dialog", in which Gungho addresses Strago as if he's there even if he isn't in your party.  Apparently someone made a bug fix for this, thinking the game incorrectly called the wrong dialog captions, but it turns out this is not the case: it was actually just a series of mistranslations that caused Gungho's lines to be written incorrectly.

The Japanese lines don't have a subject, and can therefore use the same captions regardless of whether Strago is in the party or not, but the SNES version incorrectly added the subject "you", creating an error where there wasn't one originally.  (This shows once again the perils of having to translate without context.)  I also updated the surrounding dialog to more closely reflect the tone of the original: Gungho comes across as being more of an aggressive jerk, and Strago is more awkward and embarrassed about never finding Hidon.

The other fix was to Shadow's dialog when he rejoins you in the second half.  The SNES version makes it sound like he's going to stay at the colosseum, even though he doesn't do that; but really he's agreeing to join so that he can do more fighting.  Later on I'll go over the script again to see if there are any other mistranslations that haven't been corrected yet, though if there are I expect they're mostly hiding away in lines that are rarely seen while playing.


I caught the tail end of Spooniest's live stream.  It's a bit surreal seeing my writing on someone else's screen, but I was glad to see he was having a good time with it.  I also liked seeing it played with scanlines.  I've been playing everything on a real console via an SD2SNES, and have two CRT's (one of which I rescued from being sent to the landfill a few months ago) in addition to a Framemeister.  I never liked the harsh pixelated look of the raw output, and certainly no one ever saw the games look like that back then, so it's been great to be able to play with the analog goodness intact.  A well-programmed CRT shader does wonders for the look of the games if emulating, too.