Castlevania II (Simon's Quest) - Multilingual enhancement

[Bisqwit]

Should be fixed now. Thanks for the reports.

[hackbar]

There's still some bugs around the load game screen.

1. The music stalls when hitting start on the title menu.
2. The load screen has the first save data attop of the screen for a few frames.
3. There's tile garbage after loading a game.

video: https://youtu.be/Dnpuv6sbx6Y

2_12_0_1-ntsc-m1MwmFrUSp0

[Greyfield]

Just wanted to drop in to say thanks for making this awesome patch.  Simon's quest was my first CV game, and despite being challenging, requiring a call to the Nintendo Power help line to figure out the red crystal, and receiving a lot of modern hate, it holds a special place in my heart.  This really breathes some new life in it for me, especially now that my kids will soon be old enough to start retro gaming.

Do you know if this patch is compatible with the false floors annoyance removal patch?  That's pretty much the only other patch I could see installing, as it's kinda a grossly unfair part of the game in my opinion.  Truth be told, I'd actually prefer to make my own floors patch using the old tile editor, changing the appearance of the false floors just slightly so attentive players could spot the difference without trial and error, but alas, that requires old VB6 libraries that aren't available in Windows 10.

[Bisqwit]

Do you know if this patch is compatible with the false floors annoyance removal patch?

I provide absolutely no support for patches made by others, at least as long as I don't know what they are made of.

There's still some bugs around the load game screen.

1. The music stalls when hitting start on the title menu.
2. The load screen has the first save data attop of the screen for a few frames.
3. There's tile garbage after loading a game.

#1) Aesthetic issue. Won't address.
#2) I think this is a regression, but it still is only an aesthetic issue. If I figure it out, I will fix it.
#3) I did not see evidence of this in the linked video.

[Greyfield]

Thanks for the reply, Bisquit, I totally understand.  This actually inspired me to learn the very first basics of tile and sprite editing, and I uploaded a hack that edits the the tiles associated with false floors and breakable blocks a few days ago, now posted at https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/5361/.

As far as I can tell from my digging around with the sprites in a ROM patched with your re-translation and the tiles I edited, it seems totally compatible (i.e. you didn't move the sprite and tile locations).  Thanks again for taking all the time to work on your hack, it's really great stuff.

[Hydef]

Hi, thank you for this awesome patch.

One question for you Bisqwit - the Vending Machine website seems to be a little bugged with the "Fade palettes on day/night time transitions" section. If you choose simply No: The day/night transition message boxes return, with the new translations as intended. However, if I also enable the "Keep campy day/night texts unmodified" option, the patch that is created has no transition messages at all and does the default Fade Palette transition.

If it's helpful, the filename for the generated patch with options as described is cv2eng-2_12_0_1-ntsc-stm10mwfmFruSd6p0.ips

I tried with both Firefox and Chrome to make sure it wasn't some kind of browser issue.

Thanks again for your great work on this. I find those old transition messages part of the original's charm so I'd love to be able to incorporate them back into this excellent mod.

[hunterob]

Hi, thank you for this awesome patch.

One question for you Bisqwit - the Vending Machine website seems to be a little bugged with the "Fade palettes on day/night time transitions" section. If you choose simply No: The day/night transition message boxes return, with the new translations as intended. However, if I also enable the "Keep campy day/night texts unmodified" option, the patch that is created has no transition messages at all and does the default Fade Palette transition.

If it's helpful, the filename for the generated patch with options as described is cv2eng-2_12_0_1-ntsc-stm10mwfmFruSd6p0.ips

I tried with both Firefox and Chrome to make sure it wasn't some kind of browser issue.

Thanks again for your great work on this. I find those old transition messages part of the original's charm so I'd love to be able to incorporate them back into this excellent mod.

I second this. If it's not a horrible night to have a curse, it's not quite Simon's Quest in my view.

[caikelm]

Dude this is literally the definitive version of Simon's Quest! I'm actually having fun with the game, that was just inconceivable to me some years ago.
What blew my mind was the vending machine system. It's just amazing! I wish more hacks would do something like that, having multiple options and combinations to create the perfect game for everyone.

I do have some suggenstions, though.

Could you please make the hack credits on the title screen be optional? I feel like it kinda breaks the "illusion" and reminds me right away that this is a hack.
Also, I wish there was an option to disable the "being knocked down from stairs" BUT without the "jumping down from stairs" to keep it consistent with Castlevania and Castlevania III

Anyways, this already the absolute best way to play this game. I don't think I will ever play the vanilla version again :v
Keep up the amazing work!

[akmodan]

Fade palettes on day/night time transitions:


The old transition screen option with texts is no longer available. No matter how many options I click I can't download the patch that keeps this feature as it was traditionally

[Ziggy587]

Hey Bisqwit. Just wanted to say a big THANK YOU for making such an awesome hack!

I just recently played through version 2.12.0.1 in English with the default settings. I also applied the block replacer hack found here, specifically the compatible "conspicuous" version. It played great on my Everdrive N8 with version 1.24 firmware. The only minor thing is that sometimes the arrows that select "save" and "cancel" on the save and load screens are sometimes missing or a bit glitchy. It only happens sometimes. I'm playing on a stock NTSC front loader NES on a CRT. Other than that, it played perfectly. Thank you so much for this!

I did have a question regarding the MMC3 version. Are there any known issues with it? I was thinking about putting this on a cart, and it seems like the MMC3 version would be easier than the MMC4 due to the availability of what's out there. So I tested the MMC3 version. Again, English with all default settings using the same setup as above, but I'm having issues with it. It randomly glitches out, and can either freeze or reset to the title screen. I thought maybe the block replacer hack was conflicting, since it only stated it was compatible with the MMC4 version, so I tested it without the block replacer hack applied and I'm getting the same issues. I also tested the MMC3 version (again, with and without the block replacer hack) on my NES PowerPak and was having the same issues.

[JGalaxy]

Hi, first want to thanks the author of this translation/hack, playing the game like this is almost a dream come true!  Simon's Quest has always been a favourite of mine despite being doubly confusing playing the already cryptic English version in a country where we spoke Spanish , who knows, maybe that added to its mystery and charm, but I always wondered how the game would have been if it had been properly translated 

The only issue I have is that the Spanish translation must have been from someone from another part of the world as some expressions, and specially some words would never be used here... Now I was going to actually just retouch the translation myself, and this patch actually inspired me to look up how to hack a nes game's assets, and whereas I can access the original game's text, I can't seem to figure how to do it with the patched version...  With Fceux I access the tile sheet, get the positions for the characters, make the table file, load it... but hardly any text becomes apparent (only the names of the whips for some reason).

Am I doing anything fundamentally wrong or does the patch have some compression/encryption scrambling? I really wanted to fully localise this terrific version for our region, so any further help and info would be greatly appreciated! 

Thanks again in advance!

[Mandrasx]

Think I found a bug with the patch customizer

2.12.0.1, English with all defaults except:

"Additional functions in stairs" : no
"Pallet slip when day / night changes" : no

This gives the expected (retranslated) transition message.

But with this additional option:

"Use unique text in the transition message" : yes (checkmark)

There is no transition message at all (was expecting the vanilla "horrible night for a curse" line).

[Bisqwit]

"Use unique text in the transition message" : yes (checkmark)

I can't find that option on the vending machine.
Can you please hit the big green "PAGE LANGUAGE — Click to choose English" button instead of using an in-browser translation tool, and repost the means to reproduce the problem you are experiencing? This is so that were are on the same page on what you mean.

[Mandrasx]

Oh... sorry I was using Google translate:

------

2.12.0.1, English with all defaults except:

"Stair Features" : no
"Fade palettes on day/night time transitions:" : no
"Keep campy day/night texts unmodified" : yes (checkmark)

...there is no transition text at all (as if both were set to "no"). I am assuming this is supposed to display the corny "horrible night for a curse" original text.

With just:

"Stair Features" : no
"Fade palettes on day/night time transitions:" : no

there is a transition message as expected using the re-localized text.

[Bisqwit]

...there is no transition text at all (as if both were set to "no"). I am assuming this is supposed to display the corny "horrible night for a curse" original text.

Report confirmed. The vending machine backend mistakenly re-enabled fader when the campy option was selected. This has now been fixed. Thanks for the report!

Fade palettes on day/night time transitions:
The old transition screen option with texts is no longer available. No matter how many options I click I can't download the patch that keeps this feature as it was traditionally

Also fixes this.

One question for you Bisqwit - the Vending Machine website seems to be a little bugged with the "Fade palettes on day/night time transitions" section. If you choose simply No: The day/night transition message boxes return, with the new translations as intended. However, if I also enable the "Keep campy day/night texts unmodified" option, the patch that is created has no transition messages at all and does the default Fade Palette transition.

And this.

[Mandrasx]

Oh nice, didn't see others had reported it. Lucky me, I only had to wait 10 minutes for a fix.

[Bisqwit]

Hi, first want to thanks the author of this translation/hack, playing the game like this is almost a dream come true!  Simon's Quest has always been a favourite of mine despite being doubly confusing playing the already cryptic English version in a country where we spoke Spanish , who knows, maybe that added to its mystery and charm, but I always wondered how the game would have been if it had been properly translated 

The only issue I have is that the Spanish translation must have been from someone from another part of the world as some expressions, and specially some words would never be used here... Now I was going to actually just retouch the translation myself, and this patch actually inspired me to look up how to hack a nes game's assets, and whereas I can access the original game's text, I can't seem to figure how to do it with the patched version...  With Fceux I access the tile sheet, get the positions for the characters, make the table file, load it... but hardly any text becomes apparent (only the names of the whips for some reason).

Am I doing anything fundamentally wrong or does the patch have some compression/encryption scrambling? I really wanted to fully localise this terrific version for our region, so any further help and info would be greatly appreciated! 

Yes, the patch does do a minimal amount of both compression and encryption. The compression is using a feature already built into the game (which the NAR/PAL releases did not utilize) — this is almost absolutely necessary to save bytes in the valuable common ROM bank — and the encryption is just a whimsical shuffle of the character mapping, that I re-randomize in every release just to make things interesting for reverse engineers. There is also a new compression algorithm that I wrote for graphics data, and some strings are stored in reverse order to make the code that extracts them a couple bytes smaller, but this is irrelevant to dialog text.

My deep apologies if you feel that the Spanish translation is not up to the standards you wish for. I am unfortunately unqualified to judge the translation quality in languages that I don't speak. Your best choice is to send feedback and change requests on the Spanish translation to the translator himself. If I understand correctly, he also reads this thread. But since it has already been a long time, you can also reach him by e-mail: Shadow 333 <shadow_one666@hotmail.com> . I appreciate it if you cc me in the discussion, so I can keep tabs on the progress (I can use a machine translator to read it).

[ShadowOne333]

Yes, the patch does do a minimal amount of both compression and encryption. The compression is using a feature already built into the game (which the NAR/PAL releases did not utilize) — this is almost absolutely necessary to save bytes in the valuable common ROM bank — and the encryption is just a whimsical shuffle of the character mapping, that I re-randomize in every release just to make things interesting for reverse engineers. There is also a new compression algorithm that I wrote for graphics data, and some strings are stored in reverse order to make the code that extracts them a couple bytes smaller, but this is irrelevant to dialog text.

My deep apologies if you feel that the Spanish translation is not up to the standards you wish for. I am unfortunately unqualified to judge the translation quality in languages that I don't speak. Your best choice is to send feedback and change requests on the Spanish translation to the translator himself. If I understand correctly, he also reads this thread. But since it has already been a long time, you can also reach him by e-mail: Shadow 333 <shadow_one666@hotmail.com> . I appreciate it if you cc me in the discussion, so I can keep tabs on the progress (I can use a machine translator to read it).

I was wondering when something like this might pop up, it was bound to happen.
What JGalaxy is referring to is not a problem of quality per-se, but rather differences in the language from country to country.
I stumbled upon this issue as well with my EarthBound Spanish translation, though for that one, @josete2k took what I had and reworked it for Spain's audiences.

The changes in localizations or translations usually are not that different in America, given how most translation stuff for most media (games and movies) is handled either in Mexico for all Latin America, or Argentina (most of the time).
However, the differences in speech patterns, grammatics and coloquial terms take a dramatic shift when seen from a Spain citizen's eyes. The Spanish spoken and written between Mexico and Spain is vastly different, and that's what he is referring to.

I might not be of much help here, since I am not a native Spanish (Spain) speaker, but rather Mexican, which explains the points he makes about some words or expressions being odd to him. I'd suggest, perhaps if possible, to work with JGalaxy with the translation assets we worked on for the Spanish translation, so that hopefully he can make a Spanish (Europe) version of it with some tweaks to certain words or verbs (since the conjugation of even those varies between continents).

Still though, I'm happy to lend a hand if needed, so I'm open for suggestions or such that might pop up.

PS: Once @JGalaxy gets my email, I ask to please edit the post to remove the email from the post @Bisqwit. Nothing personal, just want to avoid it falling into more spammers than I already have.

[Bisqwit]

Version 2.12.1 has been released.
https://bisqwit.iki.fi/cv2fin/

Bugfixes:
— Rendering of comma and period has been fixed. I had neglected to notice that the dialog assembler code assumes hardcoded positions for these symbols. As a consequence, pauses in dialog rendering wrongly occurred when rendering particular random letters.
— The prologue does not appear to crash anymore. Let me know if you still find problems. I did not change anything...

Changes:
— Internal changes: Improved substring compression.
— Code generators updated for new version of PHP.


Version 2.12.1.1 has been released.
https://bisqwit.iki.fi/cv2fin/

Bugfixes:
— If you somehow manage to acquire the cross without acquiring any body parts or crystals, the cross is no longer an unselectable item. This bugfix also freed two bytes of ROM space, and made relocatable 21 bytes in the common bank, which is always helpful.

Changes:

Features:
— New feature: You can now punch Dracula! It is now possible to permanently toss away any item in the inventory, except clues, the silk bag, or hearts. The primary use for this is to add a whipless challenge mode (toss away all your whips), leaving you with only your fists. It also aids in testing. This feature is automatically selected if multiple whips support is added. Press A+B+Select while on item menu, to toss away the item pointed by the cursor. Tossing a crystal downgrades it.

[Ok Impala!]

I encountered a bug in version 2.12.1 . When saving on the inventory screen using select the game will crash in Mesen. It will give an error message saying the game has crashed and throw you back to the title screen. After that the intro story scene is completely messed up. Also, when you start the game without a savefile and chose "load game" the game will reset and when you start the game after that, the graphics in the first town are messed up.

Some other thing I don't understand. The clock in the inventory screen seems to go way too fast. I played for about an hour, but now it says I played for four hours. 

I used the default settings for the patch on the recommended ROM. Played the game in Mesen v0.9.9. I also tested in FCEUX, the same results.