Castlevania II (Simon's Quest) - Multilingual enhancement

[Bregalad]

The comparison between Urdu and Arabic is like the comparison between Italian and French.  Very very few similarities and almost entirely different.

Italian and french are very close languages in absolutely every way possible. I never ever studied any italian but I can understand like half of the language easily.

[tryphon]

I agree. Even Spanish is not so close. That said, I can't understand when an Italian is speaking to me. Unless I watch at his hands of course, but it doesn't count

[obscurumlux01]

You may likely understand a lot of it due to conjugates and conjuctions being similar between the two languages.
It works that way with Urdu/Arabic but it is still very difficult to find people who understand both.

So I decided to try my hand at a few of the non-spoilerific phrases in Romanized Urdu.  I realized just what dilemma a translator faces now.  >_<

English Retranslation - And then descends a horrible night
Urdu - Hamare uparh dahrnaa ka raaht aatah hai
Rough Meaning - Upon us a fearful night comes; I really had to think hard about the meaning of 'horrible' in this context to put the word for 'fear' instead of 'bad/terrible'.

English Retranslation - The morning sun has vanquished the horrible night
Urdu - Dihn ka dooph zubarh dahst dahrnaa ka raaht ko hutkai hai
Rough Meaning - Light of Day (Sunlight) forcefully pushes away the fearful night; I'll have to confirm the 'hutkai' part since that may be Punjabi instead of pure Urdu.

So yeah this is a lot tougher than I thought it would be.  O_O

I'll edit this post later with the non-spoilerific stuff and then send any spoiler stuff via PM.

[ninn]

... Someone by that name also offered to do ... translation in June 2014, but they never replied after I sent the initial instructions...

Hi Bisqwit!

Absolutely great romhack, - the best I've ever seen.

Looks like there is no german branch planned.
Would you mind sending me some initial instructions, maybe I will pass your QA. 

I completely read all your re-transaltion documents in full and with passion.

will send you a pm too.

Have a nice day,
thanks a lot for that awesome patch,
ninn
October 30, 2015, 08:23:58 AM - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)
not sure if this is known,

played the hell out of the game yesterday.
Did the first mansion, and stumbled across the chain whip vendor later. Did not had enough hearts to buy it, so I went to collect some.

After a horrible night i went back to the vendor, but i could not buy that whip. 
I alwys got a buzzing sound.
Tried that several times, no luck ... was not able to buy the desired whip.

then, i found out, that I already have that chain whip in my whip browser.
and the morning star.
and the flame whip.


no idea what happened there.
I still had my hearts left.

checked some save games, and on my second save game i had all whips, on the first game I did not have them.

I am confused now, and will try to reproduce the issue tonight. I blame another patch, that I used AFTER the mmc3 conversion, instead of before.

[ninn]

I am so waiting for a reply ... 

many wait.
much despair.
so translate!

[Bisqwit]

Ninn, I have now addressed your request in e-mail. Sorry for taking such long time.

The Spanish translation project was also pushed a bit forward. The delay was entirely my fault.

[Rodimus Primal]

I've been playing an old version for a while and I think its well done. Last night I downloaded the current version with the standard Day/Night transition instead of the new way. I love the prologue. It adds so much to the game, but I'm curious if you were going add music to it. It would only add to the experience.

[Bisqwit]

It adds so much to the game, but I'm curious if you were going add music to it. It would only add to the experience.

That has indeed been a backburner plan for a long time.  Unfortunately I haven't had much inspiration and talent at developing such a soundtrack to it myself, and the few submissions I have received (almost all by chpexo) haven't quite felt satisfactory enough.

[Chpexo]

.

[Vanya]

I still still think a placeholder track would be better than empty air.

[SunGodPortal]

The Konami style seems rather tough especially for this game since it's arguably one of the best OSTs on the NES.

Probably a stylistic thing. I tried to write some music for Chillyfeez FF4 hack and it became difficult and depressing because I had taken on a project that was unfortunately not close enough to my own personal style. It also didn't help that I was in one of those periods where I was thinking "Do I even want to play music anymore?" and at the time, the answer felt like a "no". I love black metal and baroque, so I guess it goes without saying that my style is better suited for Konami than Square.

[Chpexo]

.

[SunGodPortal]

Interesting. A lot of Square's music has a classical music influence, Uematsu comes to mind but his style has later matured.

True, but even though I can hear some Bach in a few of his works, I def hear more of a romantic/classical-era vibe than a baroque vibe. He's more Beethoven than he is Scarlatti.

Baroque is the main ingredient in the best Castlevania soundtracks. For sure. Just for example, I bet if you told someone that this song was in a Castlevania game they might believe you:

Jean-Philippe Rameau - Les Cyclopes

Awesome stuff. Dracula would approve.

[tryphon]

And if you listen to Igorrr's version, you'll be thinking it's taken from the game (or from some hidden boss with perruque in Street Fighter) 

[Bisqwit]

I still still think a placeholder track would be better than empty air.

The reason I'm against that idea is the way that workarounds, placeholders and other crutches tend to stick and become "the" thing.


Also, the bass part in that Les Cyclopes is awesome. I didn't know there are that old songs that have such a thing.

[SunGodPortal]

Also, the bass part in that Les Cyclopes is awesome. I didn't know there are that old songs that have such a thing.

I love how some of that old baroque music has like 3-4 parts written for just two hands. It's weird how that stuff was so complex (music from the 1600-1700's, remember) that nearly everything that came after it was, in a way, a devolution. I guess you could say that it took music 300 years to get as dumb as it is these days. LOL Castlevania Legends probably has the most baroque sounding music in a CV game. So many of those songs have 3 totally different melodies going on at one time. Lots of people seem to hate that one but it's probably just too much information for them to process. I can see how it would confuse most people though. Hell, even I found it confusing at first and I was already listening to prog and jazz by the time I discovered the CV Legends soundtrack.

Anyway, hail Castlevania and hail baroque-era keyboardists!

[Rodimus Primal]

Les Cyclopes does sound awesome if used for Castlevania. I was also thinking maybe taking a page from Mega Man 2, being that the ending theme to Mega Man 1 is used as the opening prologue to Mega Man 2.

Using this, maybe extending it : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6YasIkNH00

[Bisqwit]

It's weird how that stuff was so complex (music from the 1600-1700's, remember) that nearly everything that came after it was, in a way, a devolution.

I marvel these old-time composers for creating such complicated melodies indeed, how they can have multiple themes running simultaneously yet in harmony. It's not like there aren't any modern composers doing the equivalent though.
But they didn't even have modern computerized tools of recording and replaying and editing for previewing how things work in combination.

[SunGodPortal]

It's not like there aren't any modern composers doing the equivalent though.

True, but unfortunately most of the music currently being made is the absolute lowest-common denominator in all respects. Anything outside that is relegated to a niche.

But they didn't even have modern computerized tools of recording and replaying and editing for previewing how things work in combination.

When you study music that much you can write it with just a pen and paper and already know what it sounds like. That's why Beethoven, for example was able to continue to write music after he went deaf. It's sad to think that he never had the pleasure of listening to some of the pieces he wrote later in life.

[Bisqwit]

When you study music that much you can write it with just a pen and paper and already know what it sounds like.

As a programmer I guess the closest thing I can think of that resembles that, is how I can write code on paper, and I already know what it does and how it behaves without running it. And the code can even look more beautiful than what it achieves. As a person who can only decode sheet music one symbol at time, like doing archaeology with a tea spoon, I can only presume that how I think about code is something similar to how good composers work with sheet music.