Castlevania II (Simon's Quest) - Multilingual enhancement

[Bisqwit]

Bisquit, one question just out of curiosity, not trying to be nitpicky:

Why replace the "What a horrible night to have a curse" and "The morning sun has vanquished the horrible night" iconic text from the prompt windows?

The default version of the patch does away with these prompt windows alltogether, and instead, palette-crossfades the scene seamlessly without interrupting the game at all. This was found to significantly improve the game experience.
However, even if you choose to retain those message boxes, discarding the palette fader patch option, you'll find the text in those dialog boxes is indeed changed.
That's because my patch aims for accurate and fluent retranslation of the original game, that is Japanese. Retaining particularly campy lines in the USA translation (NAR) is simply not within the project goals. It's not like the NAR version is not available anymore.

[Carnivol]

^After realizing I forgot to (again ) to actually send you the Norwegian draft I whipped together last year after you sent me a reminder a couple of months ago, I finally found an empty timeslot to do a quick skimming through the text before sending it to you now. So check your inbox when you have the time, I suppose.

[Radd]

Bisqwit! Thank you for this wonderful hack! Your work is appreciated! I've been enjoying this on emulator for some time, and decided it was time to make a real cart. Using a TKROM board with WRAM I purchased from Infiniteneslives.com, I wrote a copy of the game and ran into a strange issue. The savestates all start empty when I first load, but all say "Damaged". The game plays fine and even saves just fine.  But when you try to load a save, the arrow to select Load or Cancel randomly disappears. just going by sound you can select Load, and then Yes or No, (again with no arrow). Any thoughts on this one? I know it's an unsupported 3rd party board, but maybe I just need to do something simple. Thanks again for the assistance!

[obscurumlux01]

Bisqwit, just a few thoughts
You are pretty much a legend in programming/hacking/etc in the romhacking community at this point in time.
I'd be fascinated to hear your thoughts on the layout/coding in the Doom 2 and Doom 3 engines (since they are both open-source)
I absolutely loved your series of videos on how scrolling works.  Now I understand why I'd sometimes get 'glitchy' artifacts at the edge of a screen when moving certain ways.
I'm in dumbfounded amazement at how you not only let people choose the patch settings and customize them (by version, feature, and more) but also the format they want to use for the patch.  Holy flipping bananas!  Would be great to get a nice 'making of' video on this and (maybe) source code snippets on how it was done.

Now onto the nitty-gritty
I wanted to know if you were aware of this on the RHDN website.  Specifically the 'removing false floors' one.  Is it possible to put this in as a patch option?  Something like the following which would apply to all false floors and walls in mansions, towns, and the 'overworld'.

-False Floors & Walls?
--Standard (normal false objects blend in like everything else)
--Obvious (false objects have small visible cracks in them)
--Hidden (false objects are invisible so you don't need to throw holy-water every step)

Another requested option would be to put a wall that blocks your way forward until you defeat the bosses of the mansion (Grim Reaper and Camilla).  Perhaps buff the bosses to have 2x as much HP and do 2x as much damage to make them formidable and worthy to battle with.  I realize you aren't into making 'hardtype' patches but I'm hoping this can be an option for your 'improvement' since the bosses in the original are so throwaway.
If you REALLY wanted to be awesome you could also have an option for also making Dracula immune to all damage for 20 seconds after spawning (including garlic and the holy flame/water).  Force people to actually fight the final boss instead of cheesing through it.  Maybe even consider also buffing Dracula to 2x as much Damage & HP as normal and not having him 'freeze' on damage (but keep moving around).

Issues I Found (May possibly be Emulator/Options specific)
NTSC, English, Your Patch v2.9.8.17, MMC4, Yes to everything, FCEUX v2.2.3-3028 (the official/only SVN binary that you can download from their website)
When scrolling horizontally in the woods, the color palatte shifts slightly to a lighter hue before returning to 'normal' once I stop moving.  It is pretty odd (but adds to the creepiness like I am being watched by a sinister evil).
UPDATE:  This happens on NESTopia emulator as well; do not have a way to test on actual hardware unfortunately; the hue-shift happens to the background in the woods, bridge crossings, and basically anywhere that has a 'background'

I also encountered a good deal of slowdown when more than 3 or 4 enemies are on-screen (especially with projectiles on screen as well).  My memory of the original on cartridge is a bit fuzzy so I'm not sure if this is an emulator glitch or if it really worked that way on the original setup.
UPDATE:  This happened on the original; disregard it

Cinematic Prologue activates way too quickly in my opinion; would like for there to be at least a 10 second idle delay on the title screen before it is activated.

Don't worry about breaking compatability with other patches; very rarely can they offer things that you cannot do better

Final thought; would love if anyone was able to compile an updated FCEUX version for both Windows and Linux platforms from their latest SVN and offer up some download links.  Trying to compile it myself has been very challenging.  >_>

[Bisqwit]

You are pretty much a legend in programming/hacking/etc in the romhacking community at this point in time.

I doubt that.

I'd be fascinated to hear your thoughts on the layout/coding in the Doom 2 and Doom 3 engines (since they are both open-source)

Will consider that, thanks.

I absolutely loved your series of videos on how scrolling works.  Now I understand why I'd sometimes get 'glitchy' artifacts at the edge of a screen when moving certain ways.

Did I publish that series somewhere? Hmm. I don't recall publishing it so far. I have provided tidbits of it on a few occassions but not really published it yet.

EDIT: Duh. A couple of posts above from here. Right-o.

I'm in dumbfounded amazement at how you not only let people choose the patch settings and customize them (by version, feature, and more) but also the format they want to use for the patch.  Holy flipping bananas!  Would be great to get a nice 'making of' video on this and (maybe) source code snippets on how it was done.

I have a PHP program that generates the patch. The website runs the PHP program on demand and passes the form fields to it.
The PHP program collects the assembler code, patchlets and stuff, and links them together to produce a modified ROM file. Then the original and modified ROMs are diffed using the patch-generator program (vcdiff, byuu's program, etc) chosen in the form options.

I wanted to know if you were aware of this on the RHDN website.  Specifically the 'removing false floors' one.  Is it possible to put this in as a patch option?  Something like the following which would apply to all false floors and walls in mansions, towns, and the 'overworld'.

It is certainly possible (I believe this is just a CHR-ROM hack), but I question the need.

Another requested option would be to put a wall that blocks your way forward until you defeat the bosses of the mansion (Grim Reaper and Camilla).

And I definitely question the need for this, especially the motivation for it from a retranslation perspective. If the game authors originally wanted to make the bosses into mandatory obstacles, they well could have done so -- considering they were the authors of the original Castlevania as well.
As it stands, you have haunted rooms in a couple of the mansions. The game is more fair in that the door does not lock behind you. You are free to choose exactly how much time you want to spend with the ghosts (death and carmilla). Of course the presentation, and the level of how the haunting envelops and engages the player -- how immersive the game experience is -- could have been done better, but I support the sentiment behind the design choice they made.

Perhaps buff the bosses

Way beyond goals of a retranslations. You're welcome to add/create such a hack yourself.

I realize you aren't into making 'hardtype' patches

That too. I mean, it would be awesome to shift into a different music, maybe darken the palette a bit, have the boss suddenly approach from the shadows while you're still confused and wondering what exactly is going on, and suddenly realizing that the doors just locked behind you, while the music starts blasting seriously stressed out tones -- perhaps evoking the similar feeling as when playing the Phantoon battle in Super Metroid for the very first time -- but that's also way beyond my creative abilities.

When scrolling horizontally in the woods, the color palatte shifts slightly to a lighter hue before returning to 'normal' once I stop moving.  It is pretty odd (but adds to the creepiness like I am being watched by a sinister evil).

That's an issue with your television/monitor. You are playing the game on a screen that has a bad refresh time or has a shadowing effect.

I also encountered a good deal of slowdown when more than 3 or 4 enemies are on-screen (especially with projectiles on screen as well).

The game is indeed very laggy. They didn't do very good job optimizing the game. I have added small improvements here and there when situations have necessitated me to rewrite parts of the game code, but the truth is that the game executes way too many instructions for the slow CPU that it runs on, and there's not much I can do to help it (not that it's my goal either).

Cinematic Prologue activates way too quickly in my opinion; would like for there to be at least a 10 second idle delay on the title screen before it is activated.

I didn't want people to miss it...

[obscurumlux01]

The ability to save and load is fantastic!  Now all we need is the ability to delete save games (and confirm the deletion of course).
I know we can overwrite them but still, one of those things that might make the hack more 'complete' and improved.

[Bisqwit]

The ability to save and load is fantastic!  Now all we need is the ability to delete save games (and confirm the deletion of course).
I know we can overwrite them but still, one of those things that might make the hack more 'complete' and improved.

I don't understand. Why would you need to delete them? It's not like you need to make room for saves of some other game.

But, I agree it would be nice to have. But then it needs more text strings to be translated in the various versions... Hum.

[obscurumlux01]

Someone say 'text strings'?  Ok then.

English - Delete
Finnish - Poistaa
French - Effacer
Filipino - Burahin
Japanese - 削除 (Sakujo)

[Bisqwit]

Someone say 'text strings'?  Ok then.
English - Delete
Finnish - Poistaa
French - Effacer
Filipino - Burahin
Japanese - 削除 (Sakujo)

No, you do not create ROM translations using Google Translate (or similar), unless you want your game to look like an Engrish restaurant menu.


Why? Well, for instance consider Finnish. The first infinitive form of the verb meaning 'to erase' or 'to delete' is "poistaa". You would use this word in contexts like "is it correct to delete a word here?" (onko oikein poistaa sana tästä?)  or "a way to make room is to delete a save" (keino tilan tekemiseksi on poistaa tallennus) or even "do you want to delete the save?" (haluatko poistaa tallennuksen?). However, in contexts like "deleting save..." (tallennus poistetaan), "delete save?" (poistetaanko tallennus?), "delete save" (poista tallennus), "save (was) deleted" (tallennus poistettiin) the first infinitive form is wrong: you will want the indicative form in passive person or imperative form in second person.

Finnish has dozens of different grammatical cases. In English the same verb can be conjugated into like four different forms (delete, deleted, deleting, deletes), each of which covers many of those different use cases. In the bottom of this post there's a small table that shows some examples of different forms of the word meaning "delete" in Finnish.

When you translate it into a different language, you need context to know which form to use, out of the different forms that exist in the target language. A machine translator often fails to make the right choice, and it almost certainly makes the wrong choice if you provide no context whatsoever, but just the word by itself. By luck it may make a right choice if the target language belongs to the same language family as the source language (such as with English and French, which both are Indo-European languages), and has a similarly restricted set of different conjugations, but languages like English, Japanese and Finnish all belong into vastly different language groups.

A short sampling of different conjugations for the word "poistaa" (to delete) in Finnish:
- Poistan: I delete / I am deleting / ... will be deleting
- Poistin: I deleted
- Poistat: You (singular) delete / ... are deleting / ... will be deleting
- Poistit: You (singular) deleted
- Poistatko: Do you (singular) delete? / are you (singular) deleting / will you (singular) delete?
- Poistitko: Did you (singular) delete?
- Poistaa: He/she/it deletes / ... is deleting / ... will be deleting
- Poisti: He/she/it deleted
- Poistamme: We delete / ... are deleting / ... will be deleting
- Poistatte: You (plural) delete / ... are deleting / ... will be deleting
- Poistavat: They delete / ... are deleting / ... will be deleting
- Poistetaan: Deletion is being performed / ... will be performed / is being deleted (anonymous indicative) / will be deleted
- Poistetaan: We delete / ... are deleting / ... will be deleting (colloquial)
- Poistetaanko: is (it) being deleted? / will (it) be deleted?
- Poista: You (singular), delete (imperative)
- Poistakaa: You (plural), delete (imperative)
- Poistakoon: He/she/it ought to delete (imperative)
- Poistaisi: He/she/it would delete
- Poistaisinko: Should/would I delete?
- Poistanee: He/she/it might delete
- Poistanemme: We might delete
- Poistaa: To delete
- Poistaakseni: In order for me to delete
- Poistaakseen: In order for them (both singular and plural) to delete
- Poistaminen: Deletion / the act of deleting
- Poistamisissa: In deletions / in the acts of deleting
- Poistaessani: While I am deleting / while I was deleting / while I will be deleting
- Poistamalla: By deleting
- Poistamassa: (In the midst of) deleting
- Poistamaisillani: (I) about to delete
- Poistamaton: Non-deleted (thing, singular)
- Poistamattomat: Non-deleted (things, plural)
- Poistamatta: Without deleting
- Poistettava: To be deleted / deletable (thing, singular)
- Poistettavat: To be deleted / deletable (things, plural)
- Poistattaa: To have someone delete
- Poistatuttaa: To have someone have someone delete
- Poistatan: I have/am having/will be having someone delete
- Poistatat: You (singular) have/are having/will be having someone delete
- Poistatamme: We have/are having/will be having someone delete
- Poistata: (You, singular), have someone delete (imperative)
- Poistava: (a/the) deleting (thing, singular) (a thing that is capable of deleting or is in the process of deleting something)
- Olen poistava: I am to delete / I will delete (archaic)
- Olin poistava: I was to delete (archaic)
- Poistavat: deleting (things, plural) (things that are capable of deleting or are in the process of deleting something)
- Poistettu: (a/the) deleted (thing, singular)
- On poistettu: Has been deleted (right now we know the deletion was done in the past)
- Oli poistettu: Had been deleted (in the past we knew the deletion was done even earlier in the past)
- Oli poistettama: Was to be deleted (in the past we knew the deletion was yet to happen, archaic)
- Olisi poistettu: Would be/have been deleted
- Poistetut: deleted (things, plural)
- Poistetussa: In a/the deleted (thing)
- Poistetuksi: into (the state of having been) deleted
- Poistanut: (a/the) (thing that has done) deleting
- On poistanut: (he/she/it) has deleted (right now we know the deletion was done in the past)
- Oli poistanut: (he/she/it) had deleted (in the past we knew the deletion was done even earlier in the past)
- Olen poistanut: I have deleted (...)
- Olin poistanut: I had deleted (...)
- Olet poistanut: You (singular) have deleted (...)
- Olit poistanut: You (singular) had deleted (...)
- En poistanut: I did not delete
- Et poistanut: You (singular) did not delete
- En ole poistanut: I have not deleted (right now we know the deletion has not been done in the past)
- En ollut poistanut: I had not deleted (in the past we knew the deletion had not been done even earlier in the past)
- Poistella: To delete randomly/leisurely
- Poistelen: I delete randomly/leisurely / ... am deleting ... / ... will be deleting ...
- Poisto: (a/the) deletion
- Poistot: (the) deletions
- Poistamo: A/the place (usually industrial) where a/the deletion take place
- Poistamossa: In the place ...
- Poistaja: A/the person who performs a/the deletion

Yes, this is a short sampling. The complete list is likely to be infinite because of the way words can be derived in Finnish. And yes, a few of these forms that mean different things are spelled and pronounced identically, meaning that machine translation without context doesn't work correctly the other way either.

[Bregalad]

(such as with English and French, which both are Indo-European languages), and has a similarly restricted set of different conjugations,

French might be similar to english vocabulary wise and even grammar wise as they both belong to the into-european family, however french do not have a similarly restricted set of different conjugations at all.

French has the following simple verb tenses : Présent, Imparfait, Futur, Conditionnel, Passé simple, Subjonctif présent, subjonctif passé, in addition to related composite verb tense which use the verbs equivalent to "be" and "have" exactly like english.

All those 7 simple verb tenses have 6 different declinations for I, you (singular) he/she, we, you (plural), they, and unlike english where a -s is just added for he/she, the orthography of the verb changes completely for all those 6 persons. Add to this a couple of other forms I didn't mention, and the result is that each french verb can thus decline in aproximately 30 variations of itself, unlike English when it's only 4 like you have mentioned. Also, there is much more irregular verbs and irregularity in irregular verbs than there is in English for instance.

[obscurumlux01]

So I did a quick test using Google Translate for a language that I actually know (Urdu) and compared it to how I as a native speaker would translate it.
Romanized, of course.  Not perfect but it works.

Save - Rukko (Keep it safe)
Load - Nikalo (Take it out)
Delete - Khattam (Erase/Remove)

Using the non-conjugated infinitive form (usually a 'command') verb is sufficient for the task.  Perhaps it varies by language but it doesn't hurt.  ^_^

[Bisqwit]

Using the non-conjugated infinitive form (usually a 'command') verb is sufficient for the task.  Perhaps it varies by language but it doesn't hurt.  ^_^

Yes, it varies by language.

In Finnish, the first infinitive form (grammatical basic form) is basically only used when speaking about action in hypothetical contexts. Think "to be or not to be". It is very striking when someone incorrectly uses it. It pops out and distracts significantly like a spellimg errar.

[obscurumlux01]

I understand Bisquit.  But does this apply to all the languages?
I know a bit of Spanish and the 'command' infinitive form of the verbs would also work.
Perhaps Finnish is a unique case since I'm not aware of the nuances of that language.

By the way, if you want a 'Romanized Urdu' language done then let me know.  It would be understandable to most native speakers and they could take up issues with me if they felt it was lacking.  Simon's Quest doesn't have that much dialogue anyways; even when compared to something like Final Fantasy 1 for the NES.

I'd do standard Urdu lettering but I'm not sure you have room in the ROM for arabic-style script/characters.  You'd have to create them by hand and that would be a great deal of trouble for any non-latin lettered language.  Besides, Romanized Urdu will reach a wider audience

[Bregalad]

Perhaps Finnish is a unique case since I'm not aware of the nuances of that language.

Definitely. It appears that Finnish (along with its little brother Estonian) are a very unique pair of languages that do not share anything with all their neighbours - because they are non-indo-european.

[ShadowOne333]

@Bisqwit:
Do you have a spanish translation by now?
If not, send me the english script and I'll be happy to translate it for you.

[Bisqwit]

I'd do standard Urdu lettering but I'm not sure you have room in the ROM for arabic-style script/characters.  You'd have to create them by hand and that would be a great deal of trouble for any non-latin lettered language.  Besides, Romanized Urdu will reach a wider audience

Is there a way at all to do Persian/Arabic in fixed-width letters (and in 8x8 pixel grid)? It would be an interesting challenge to say the least. I would love to try a right-to-left script. If I used a non-latin lettering for the game, I would go with converting all the text into that alphabet, i.e. the item and place names would also have to be spelled in Urdu.  For convenience, because I don't have a right-to-left text editor that works in xterm, the text would probably have to be input in romanized letters, but the insertor would automatically convert it into script. Maybe.

Do you have a spanish translation by now?
If not, send me the english script and I'll be happy to translate it for you.

Are you Pablo Mancilla? Someone by that name also offered to do Spanish translation in June 2014, but they never replied after I sent the initial instructions.
There is one more user who has offered to translate for Spanish, but unfortunately I had to let their offer subside, because based on their initial sample, I was not convinced of the quality they would produce. If they can enlist a proofreader who actually cares for consistency, the option would still be open. This happened in May-June 2014.
Other than that, I don't think I have a Spanish project going on for the game yet. In August 30 last year, when you last talked about it, I actually began the Spanish branch, but looks like absolutely nothing happened after that to it. Please send me an e-mail and I'll direct you with the steps to go forward.


In April 2015, someone offered to do Brazilian Portuguese translation, and they did reply to my initial message, but that's where it has been stuck, with me. My bad.


There was a Dutch translation project going on for Simon's Quest, but the translator who volunteered had to withdraw because of very serious health issues they were dealing with at the same time. Is there someone who would like to pick it up? There's a test translation or two already ready.


In May 2014, someone on the forums offered to do an Iu Mien translation. In retrospect, I had some difficulty correlating this offer and the emails I have, because the emails hardly mentioned the language at all, and the pseudonym they use (KloPp KloPpletON) provides no hint at all. In their case, I sent them the full script files in 14 May 2014, and after that, I sent many emails asking for progress, and they only replied once, saying they are targetting to finish by July 2014. I never heard of them again.

^After realizing I forgot to (again ) to actually send you the Norwegian draft I whipped together last year after you sent me a reminder a couple of months ago, I finally found an empty timeslot to do a quick skimming through the text before sending it to you now. So check your inbox when you have the time, I suppose.

A Norwegian translation project was started with you in May 2014. Yes, I am still to receive my first test script from you.

[obscurumlux01]

It might be easier to do romanized Urdu before worrying over all the work on inserting a custom script and lettering.

But if you feel it is a nice challenge, I won't stop you; only issue is that I'm able to speak Urdu but not read/write it (yeah I know, how horrid) so the 'real' Urdu-lettering translation would need to be something that another person can pick up.  As for Arabic, I know zero.  The comparison between Urdu and Arabic is like the comparison between Italian and French.  Very very few similarities and almost entirely different.

And know what is wierder?  Punjabi is a relative of Hindi and both my parents speak it fluently but they cannot read/write in that language.  Go figure O_o

So basically.  Romanized Urdu would work if you're willing to do so; just standard latin characters and no special stuff needed.  Game has a low-enough text count that it shouldn't take me more than a week (at most) of spare time.

[Bisqwit]

There can't be that many ROM hacks in Urdu language. In my life I've ever only met one person personally who even speaks (and sings) Urdu.
Based on the impression I get from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urdu, Urdu written in Arabic script is the norm and the number of people who can't read it would be the minority. But there is also this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Urdu So I guess you are right.

So basically.  Romanized Urdu would work if you're willing to do so; just standard latin characters and no special stuff needed.  Game has a low-enough text count that it shouldn't take me more than a week (at most) of spare time.

Suppose we would do it properly with all the appropriate dots and bits surrounding the latin letters, how many letters would we need?
On https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uddin_and_Begum_Urdu-Hindustani_Romanization I see several letters are composed by horizontally concatenating several other letters. For a ROM hack where line length limits are an issue, this is not a good idea.

[obscurumlux01]

I'll go through your website (where you listed the clues and such) and start with that to see how long it takes me.
From there, we can proceed with the rest of the script if needed.  I'll basically translate based on the English text (since I can't read Japanese) that you have there.

I'll just use regular latin letters.  No accents or other marks are necessary as most Urdu speakers use Romanized Urdu online without them.  There are entire communities that have sprung up around it and eventually you get used to how people spell things (and how they'd sound).

As for whether it is useful?  It is primarily useful for 2nd-generation people like myself who never got around to learning how to Read/Write it due to the difficulty of the language and the lack of any available formal instruction at the time (plus pre-internet of course).  In fact among my peers in the community, even being able to speak and understand the language is a rarity (which is upsetting for me but somewhat understandable).  Luckily my parents always made an effort to speak to me in Urdu so that I could learn it through context.  As a result though, my vocabulary isn't as prolific as I'd like but it is prolific enough for the purposes of Simon's Quest.

And yeah, if this 'test run' goes well, maybe I can dig into a few other games if there is a demand for these Romanized Urdu translations.  I'll also run my translations past some other native Urdu speakers and make sure it is understandable/comprehendable without the individual phonetic stuff on the letters.

EDIT:  Just found this on you Bisqwit, aka Joel Yliluoma.  I didn't think you'd be the same person but indeed you are.  YOU are the founder of TASVideos and basically the progenitor of the entire Tool-Assisted Speedrun community!  I'm truly honored and honestly had no idea until I looked it up randomly while browsing some TAS videos of Rygar PAL.  My personal challenge is to beat the PAL version but I may have found a way to do so (albeit exploiting glitches).  I guess a glitchless run may also be a possibility since I saw someone else do it.

I was indeed correct in my previous assertion that you'd be a legend in the rom hacking community.  I am truly not worthy.  O_O
If Tomato or DemiForce or others in the RH scene were to personally talk to me I'd probably have my head explode from the awesomeness.  O_O

[Bisqwit]

I'll go through your website (where you listed the clues and such) and start with that to see how long it takes me.
From there, we can proceed with the rest of the script if needed.  I'll basically translate based on the English text (since I can't read Japanese) that you have there.

Don't start translating until you have communicated with me by e-mail. Send me e-mail, and I'll send you an initial task to give you an idea to expect what to come, and to help gauge whether you've got what it takes. --> bisqwit@iki.fi

EDIT:  Just found this on you Bisqwit, aka Joel Yliluoma.  I didn't think you'd be the same person but indeed you are.  YOU are the founder of TASVideos and basically the progenitor of the entire Tool-Assisted Speedrun community!

Yup that's true.

If Tomato or DemiForce or others in the RH scene were to personally talk to me I'd probably have my head explode from the awesomeness.  O_O

I don't think I have ever talked with Tomato directly either, even though I joined DeJap right before it basically ceased.