[DarknessSavior]

I just wanna point out the small pun in the game.

The item 昇龍剣 is pronounced Shouryuuken. Y'know, like Street Fighter? XD

~DS

[goldenband]

I just wanna point out the small pun in the game.

The item 昇龍剣 is pronounced Shouryuuken. Y'know, like Street Fighter? XD

Haha, that's awesome! 

Question: is it at all useful to future translators to have someone doing what I did above, i.e. playing through the game and transcribing (not translating) the Japanese text including kanji?  Or is it a waste of time, better left to an automated (or semi-automated) script dump?

I'll probably do it either way for my own playing purposes, but thought I'd ask.  The way I figure it, if you have some or all of the Japanese-language script ready, then maybe you can find a translator -- and if you have a partial translated script, suddenly the game becomes a more attractive choice for high-level ROM hackers.  But maybe I'm wrong.

[Eien Ni Hen]

Question: is it at all useful to future translators to have someone doing what I did above, i.e. playing through the game and transcribing (not translating) the Japanese text including kanji?  Or is it a waste of time, better left to an automated (or semi-automated) script dump?

Speaking as a translator, it's a pain in the ass to go through and transcribe the text in a game. I did it a few times when I was a newbie, but never again. I personally won't work on a project if the hacker can't get me a script dump. As I see it, if a hacker can't do a script dump, how are they going to handle all of the awful, awful problems that typically crop up with re-inserting the text?

[Klarth]

Speaking as a translator, it's a pain in the ass to go through and transcribe the text in a game. I did it a few times when I was a newbie, but never again. I personally won't work on a project if the hacker can't get me a script dump. As I see it, if a hacker can't do a script dump, how are they going to handle all of the awful, awful problems that typically crop up with re-inserting the text?

I can't reiterate this strongly enough.  If you don't know the text system well enough to get a clean dump, you're going to have huge, unexpected problems getting it back in.  It can range from getting lucky and doing a find and replace for some mislabeled table tokens to doing a manual reformat of the entire translated script.  Especially if you can't program.

[EarlJ]

But the question was more along the lines of 'If there's no hacker giving this a hard look already...'

Transcribing and 'translating' is a pain in the ass (I've done a bit of that myself in the past), and I imagine no one wants to work with that if they can get a decent script dump to go from. But transcribing and getting a half assed translation that way may catch the attention of a knowledgeable hacker exactly because it shows that someone gives enough of a shit about a game that they're willing to put up with that kind of pain in the ass.

On the other hand, it may get more of a 'lol what a maroon' Bugs Bunny style response.

[bLind]

But if you have no desire to do any hacking OR translation yourself (is that correct?), then I think this topic should be closed.

I can help with the text translation, but an English speaking Japanese dude would probably do a better job that me !
The Story is the hardest one to translate corectly, the ingame commands are easier !
Soo... is it any good to make an "on the go" translation as golden said, or it's just useless ?!

[goldenband]

Speaking as a translator, it's a pain in the ass to go through and transcribe the text in a game. I did it a few times when I was a newbie, but never again. I personally won't work on a project if the hacker can't get me a script dump.

Understood, though like EarlJ said, I'm really talking about situations where there isn't a hacker yet.  I wouldn't expect a translator (i.e. someone with real Japanese language skills) to transcribe the game text themselves.

But would someone else's transcription (partial or full) be of interest at all?  Or is it the kind of thing where if a ROM hacker isn't already on board and hasn't already dumped the full script, you're not interested in getting involved?

I guess it all comes down to "If you're interested in playing a game in English, but don't have the hacking skills to do it yourself, how do you help get the ball rolling?  What can you do that would actually be helpful?"  And maybe the answer is "You don't, and nothing."

But I'd like to think that having some part of a translation "in the can" might make a project more attractive to prospective hackers (especially since a lot of projects stall because they don't have a translator on board).  And having a partial transcription would, in turn, give a translator something to begin working on.  And there are a lot of people like me who aren't qualified as translators, but have enough Japanese-language ability to at least make a transcription, look up kanji, and so forth.

Actually, how do script dumpers handle kanji?  I understand how they deal with kana, since that's reasonably standardized.  But if you're dumping a script and don't speak Japanese -- and there's no appropriate pre-existing table file -- wouldn't a transcription be helpful, since you'd be able to just copy the relevant kanji from the transcription into your table (rather than dealing with radical lookup tables or OCR)?  Or is there some newer, shinier way of dealing with it that I don't know about?

[Vehek]

Actually, how do script dumpers handle kanji?  I understand how they deal with kana, since that's reasonably standardized.  But if you're dumping a script and don't speak Japanese -- and there's no appropriate pre-existing table file -- wouldn't a transcription be helpful, since you'd be able to just copy the relevant kanji from the transcription into your table (rather than dealing with radical lookup tables or OCR)?  Or is there some newer, shinier way of dealing with it that I don't know about?

The way I've seen it done here is that they rip the font graphics, getting all the kanji and symbols at once. Then ask people to help identify the kanji. Transcriptions require you to see the line in-game, and you might miss some kanji which only appears in an obscure line.

[Eien Ni Hen]

Understood, though like EarlJ said, I'm really talking about situations where there isn't a hacker yet.  I wouldn't expect a translator (i.e. someone with real Japanese language skills) to transcribe the game text themselves.

But would someone else's transcription (partial or full) be of interest at all?  Or is it the kind of thing where if a ROM hacker isn't already on board and hasn't already dumped the full script, you're not interested in getting involved?

The second thing. 99% of the time I'm not interested in working on a project unless there's a script dump.

And kanji IDing is so much fun. Identifying and typing out kanji until you're half-blind.  (Really though, it's not that bad.)

[RedComet]

^And you're orbiting the wrong topic !

Yes, because I've probably got more experience working with the Genesis than most of the other hackers who hang their hat around here and I've also had this game on my to-do list for years now, so I know more than a little something about it. Clearly, trying to persuade you to spend your time and energy else where on something more productive since you obviously have neither the skill nor the desire to learn how to hack this game properly is the wrong thing to do. I'm just trying to save you a lot of headaches and frustration by telling you that it's not an easy game to hack for a newbie and that you seem to have a lot of misunderstandings about the way the entire process works.

[goldenband]

I've also had this game on my to-do list for years now, so I know more than a little something about it.

Well, if nothing else this thread has shown you that when the day comes that you're ready to start work on NBD, you'll have a lot of people eagerly awaiting the results. 

BTW is your avatar's caption taken from Art of Fighting?  It just reminds me of Jack's victory celebration from that game...

[RedComet]

BTW is your avatar's caption taken from Art of Fighting?  It just reminds me of Jack's victory celebration from that game...

Nah. My avatar is from Theme Hospital when one of the patients has "The Squits". The caption is just something that popped into my head when I saw the patients run to the bathroom in the game. I know. Comedy gold, right?