Linda Cube Again English Translation

[richterwilker]

sorry if I'm doing a dumb question, but this game has some kind of time travel in the plot?

[Arminius]

Hi! Just noticed that this thread was alive again, and while I'm sort of barging in, I thought I'd post.

Play fair, I think Bob's request was pretty obvious. It looks like he's been following this thread for long enough to have seen the OP post by now.

I wish I could post an updated shot, but the current test copy is kind of borderline Eldritch in nature once it gets to the stuff that's been newly translated, and I think I managed to find where I CTRL+Ved in some coding where it didn't belong, so it's most likely something goofy that I did. It's been fixed but not reinserted.

https://doushiuhohtranslations.wordpress.com/category/linda-cubed-again/ Here's a tag on my blog with three of the cutscenes translated. Will post more once I actually have some free time. (Been working on a mural for a coffee shop in town and it's p'much sucked the life out of me.) 

Swarm's text looks much better in-game, for the segments he translated. There wasn't much in the copy I received, but he did have some stuff in Scenario B that saved me an hour or so.
The plotline+cutscenes+anime scenes for Scenario A are 96% done, save for UI, battle and NPC talk (which I dabble in here and there, but haven't dedicated myself to at all). I'm about a third/fourth through Scenario B. I have a good chunk of stuff in the end and some stuff in the beginning. Scenario C is just sidequests, so while I didn't nab the intro for that just yet, I did finish a couple sidequests, namely, Nek and Sachiko's, which is probably the best part of the route, if you ask me (it's the longest one for sure). Just can't dig into C too much until Scenario B is done, since even that Nek+Sachiko sidequest alone made about 12 references to Scenario A. Some don't make any at all. The storylines themselves aren't all that much text actually, so I can't say it's a lot.  Also ignoring most camping segments for now (since Linda and Sachiko both strike conversations with you at times when you choose camp.)

The NPC stuff and other options too are where things get really hairy, so I'm kind of avoiding that mess until I get to it and replay the game in proper. Scenario C is kind of a bitch to play through though, since the text in the dump likes to go in/out of order depending on choices you make. Some decisions and scenes are 1200+ strings away from the fork in the roads they apply to, so simply reading through the text doesn't help unless you know the script like the back of your hand. Gotta play or watch an LP from Niconico to move along. I haven't managed to set up any emulators to play it properly, so while I do have the Playstation copy, there's not too much I can do with it at the moment. The longest chunk of the process is the writing, which I'm just bad at in general. As you can see in the post, I'm not one to mince words, ever. Will most likely need a proofreader once the translation is all done, regardless.

Sorry for the novella, but I thought I'd share so people can get a feel for what's going on. And, hi, by the way. 

Yes someone took it over, THANK YOU!

Whoever touches this translation automatically becomes my hero. Well done, thank you for trying to bring this precious jewel of a game to a western audience. Update as much as you'd like, I sure would like to see every boring detail of it, if it at least brings us closer to the translated game!!

[Helan]

How's going ?????     

[Cargodin]

Hey there, sorry for vanishing. I was recovering from an illness and wasn't really set to do the whole Internet/computer thing for a while. Still, I'm sorry for not really updating for a while even longer than that month.

I took a bit of a break on it. Napple Tale is currently done with its first draft translation and Eien ni Hen  is helping read some of the documents over at her pace.  Slowly working Linda and another project of mine back into my schedule.

sorry if I'm doing a dumb question, but this game has some kind of time travel in the plot?

Yes and no, actually. If you're asking about the different A, B and C routes, those are all alternate timelines. Some characters may be married in one timeline and divorced in another, or a character will be dead in one and alive in the other two and so forth.

Route D is simply a time attack and there is no uber-dedicated storyline in C. It's all just a bunch of sidequests for both random NPCs and characters you met along routes A and B.

C is mostly a really fun departure from the other two, but for all intents and purposes, I believe it to be the canon route of the story, but you won't nearly enjoy the jokes and references or catch the minimum amount of animals in time without playing through Routes A and B first.  You also see some closure for some of the characters that didn't get any in Routes A or B. Plus, there's a difficulty jump in each. If you catch *every* single animal in Route C (which is pretty rough and I don't want to do it again anytime in the near future), you get a special epilogue exclusive to Route C that is really just a bunch of text, but it's really one of the most heartwarming parts of the game and wraps up the game pretty well.

That being said, there are some time travel elements tapped into in the game's universe in each arc, but I can't really go too much into it without spoiling anything.  I hope that answer was as helpful as it was verbose.

[richterwilker]

Thanks for the explanation about the game, Cargodin.
Can i offer myself to playtest when there is some kind of alpha patch?
I want to help more, but i'm no expert in psx rom hacking.

And, out of curiosity, the other project you're working is another translation?
Hope you get better from your illness.

[Cargodin]

Thanks for the explanation about the game, Cargodin.
Can i offer myself to playtest when there is some kind of alpha patch?
I want to help more, but i'm no expert in psx rom hacking.

And, out of curiosity, the other project you're working is another translation?
Hope you get better from your illness.

Thank you very much for the support! We're not quite in a playtesting stage with Linda. There's a lot of roughhousing in the menu interface and the VWF departments. Esper said he managed to make a bit of a breakthrough in Linda, but we're currently circling between four projects together, plus he works with other people as well. In our other project, I may be able to post more as reinsertion for this second project starts pushing forward.

For my second project, the storyline text is done and I'm currently filling in NPC text for that game which on its own is a couple thousand strings maybe(?), plus I finally managed to find a really pesky hidden map file in the newest redump from Esper. When the time is right, I'll post some screenshots for that project either here or in another thread, but not just yet. He sent me a couple test shots tonight and I'm way excited for it though.

Linda has been a bit slow, but we haven't been. (excluding the holiday of course!)

[Bob Liu]

Unfriendly bump. How's it stand? Where are you guys at? 

[Cargodin]

Unfriendly bump. How's it stand? Where are you guys at? 

Sorry for being a bit in the dark. Esper and I were just talking about it today. He's still hammering out the insertion process/bugs. : )

[Arminius]

Sorry for being a bit in the dark. Esper and I were just talking about it today. He's still hammering out the insertion process/bugs. : )

Great to know! Keep up the good work! I'll wait for as long as it takes 

[MeshGearFox]

Hey, just curious, but anyone know what the differences are between the PCE and PSX version's scripts are? I found a script for the PCE version online and the first bit looks really similar, with the exception of button prompts being changed.

[House]

Thank you very much for the support! We're not quite in a playtesting stage with Linda. There's a lot of roughhousing in the menu interface and the VWF departments. Esper said he managed to make a bit of a breakthrough in Linda, but we're currently circling between four projects together, plus he works with other people as well. In our other project, I may be able to post more as reinsertion for this second project starts pushing forward.

For my second project, the storyline text is done and I'm currently filling in NPC text for that game which on its own is a couple thousand strings maybe(?), plus I finally managed to find a really pesky hidden map file in the newest redump from Esper. When the time is right, I'll post some screenshots for that project either here or in another thread, but not just yet. He sent me a couple test shots tonight and I'm way excited for it though.

Linda has been a bit slow, but we haven't been. (excluding the holiday of course!)

Great to see the one of the best nonlinear PS1 RPGs finally being translated. If you are interested in ever translating any other PSX RPG, I strongly recommend Weltorv Estleia which is another very good nonlinear PS1 rpg that was never released outside of Japan, and is probably even more nonlinear than Linda Cube Again. Another good nonlinear one is Zill O'll(but that one has a superior remake of the remake on PSP Zill O'll Infinite Plus which has 53 endings compared to 24 in the PS1 version).
I was always puzzled why japanese never released their nonlinear rpgs outside of Japan and now jrpgs have negative reputation of being all linear.
By the way what tools do you use for translating Linda and inserting text?

http://www.rpgamer.com/games/other/psx/weltorv/weltprev.html
http://www.mobygames.com/game/weltorv-estleia
July 10, 2016, 07:40:10 PM - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)

Hi! Just noticed that this thread was alive again, and while I'm sort of barging in, I thought I'd post.

Play fair, I think Bob's request was pretty obvious. It looks like he's been following this thread for long enough to have seen the OP post by now.

I wish I could post an updated shot, but the current test copy is kind of borderline Eldritch in nature once it gets to the stuff that's been newly translated, and I think I managed to find where I CTRL+Ved in some coding where it didn't belong, so it's most likely something goofy that I did. It's been fixed but not reinserted.

https://doushiuhohtranslations.wordpress.com/category/linda-cubed-again/ Here's a tag on my blog with three of the cutscenes translated. Will post more once I actually have some free time. (Been working on a mural for a coffee shop in town and it's p'much sucked the life out of me.) 

Swarm's text looks much better in-game, for the segments he translated. There wasn't much in the copy I received, but he did have some stuff in Scenario B that saved me an hour or so.
The plotline+cutscenes+anime scenes for Scenario A are 96% done, save for UI, battle and NPC talk (which I dabble in here and there, but haven't dedicated myself to at all). I'm about a third/fourth through Scenario B. I have a good chunk of stuff in the end and some stuff in the beginning. Scenario C is just sidequests, so while I didn't nab the intro for that just yet, I did finish a couple sidequests, namely, Nek and Sachiko's, which is probably the best part of the route, if you ask me (it's the longest one for sure). Just can't dig into C too much until Scenario B is done, since even that Nek+Sachiko sidequest alone made about 12 references to Scenario A. Some don't make any at all. The storylines themselves aren't all that much text actually, so I can't say it's a lot.  Also ignoring most camping segments for now (since Linda and Sachiko both strike conversations with you at times when you choose camp.)

The NPC stuff and other options too are where things get really hairy, so I'm kind of avoiding that mess until I get to it and replay the game in proper. Scenario C is kind of a bitch to play through though, since the text in the dump likes to go in/out of order depending on choices you make. Some decisions and scenes are 1200+ strings away from the fork in the roads they apply to, so simply reading through the text doesn't help unless you know the script like the back of your hand. Gotta play or watch an LP from Niconico to move along. I haven't managed to set up any emulators to play it properly, so while I do have the Playstation copy, there's not too much I can do with it at the moment. The longest chunk of the process is the writing, which I'm just bad at in general. As you can see in the post, I'm not one to mince words, ever. Will most likely need a proofreader once the translation is all done, regardless.

Sorry for the novella, but I thought I'd share so people can get a feel for what's going on. And, hi, by the way. 

Have you tried Retroarch Mednafen or even standalone Mednafen? Linda Cube should work fine on them.

[Cargodin]

I really like muh JRPGs, but to be honest I tend to flinch before non-linear ones. I like linear stuff a lot because it's a lot nicer on the backlog, y'know? (I'm probably one of a few people who actually really appreciated the linearity of FFXIII and Breath of Fire 5:DQ, for instance.) I have a little wishlist of games I'd like to translate myself, and Esper and I tend to toss ideas off eachother. That's really how I even learned of the Yarudora series.

I could only guess the success of FFVII really saved JRPG deliveries in the west, but I'm sure the production values and cinematics and all that yadda yadda trumped the gameplay. As far as Linda is concerned, take this with like 3000 grains of salt, but if I remember reading on Masuda's twitter, he actually mentioned sometime early this year that his team tried bringing Linda westward, but were discouraged because of the imagery of a western figure like Santa stabbing the hell out of people and some such.  But yeah, since I'm not 500% sure what the tweet was or when it showed up on my feed, take it as nothing more than food for thought.

In all, thanks for the interesting posts! Since then, I've managed to get it working well on my PC, only I've...kinda been naughty working on another project. That unnamed project's base translation is VERY close to being finished(2 maps-ish left) before I entrust that script into much better hands than my own. I'm counting chickens as it's a bit early, but while he overlooks that script and makes necessary changes and such, I'll have a chance to really dig into Linda. I've felt a lot of growth since working on this current project that it makes me want to revisit the work I've done on the script.

Esper is behind the reinsertion process. I don't entirely know whose tools he's using or what they're called, and I don't remember how he drilled into the font/vwf mischief. ": )

[Bob Liu]

I'm worried this'll never end up being released.

[Bonesy]

what happens happens it's a free fan project

[Arminius]

Hey just popping up here to show my support and appreciation to you guys who are still translating these... real glad and real proud of ya. Take as long as you can, having this game translated some undefined day is enough to keep me hopeful 

[calypsocameo]

 
Coming each month to check on updates for this game!

We send our henki-dama powers to the team to have courage to carry on!

Can't Wait!

[Cargodin]

Thanks for the support! Sorry for the lack of updates over here. I've been a little more vocal on my blog.

Anyway, I finished translating the storyline for...Abarenbou Princess (as it was easier to work on away from home). It's not Mystery RPG X I've mentioned before in the thread(which is also checked off on my end and is in editing. I'm just THAT much of a busybody), but it was the quicker milestone. There's a big editing process down the line for that (as well as NPCs/UI/text stranded in other documents and formats), but that'll wait. It's my own fault for stabbing at 4 games at once, as I miss working on Linda as much as anyone.

I've posted some screens on my blog as well, but I've decided to try a different method when translating Linda for now and going straight through the...413 files to stab at it manually. It outta serve as a "two birds, one stone" process for me, as I'm both fixing a lot of the formatting issues popping up on my end, but also getting a better look-see at just how the text is sorted and how much I actually have left to do.

[lunarwhale]

I'm happy to hear that it's coming along well enough! I hope that the remaining work goes well, and I'm very excited to see your other projects too!

[Arminius]

Thanks for the support! Sorry for the lack of updates over here. I've been a little more vocal on my blog.

Anyway, I finished translating the storyline for...Abarenbou Princess (as it was easier to work on away from home). It's not Mystery RPG X I've mentioned before in the thread(which is also checked off on my end and is in editing. I'm just THAT much of a busybody), but it was the quicker milestone. There's a big editing process down the line for that (as well as NPCs/UI/text stranded in other documents and formats), but that'll wait. It's my own fault for stabbing at 4 games at once, as I miss working on Linda as much as anyone.

I've posted some screens on my blog as well, but I've decided to try a different method when translating Linda for now and going straight through the...413 files to stab at it manually. It outta serve as a "two birds, one stone" process for me, as I'm both fixing a lot of the formatting issues popping up on my end, but also getting a better look-see at just how the text is sorted and how much I actually have left to do.

I saw your post, seems like that game is giving you a few headaches.. hopefully you've managed to break through some of those in the last few months.. how're things with Linda, any progress? 

[cj iwakura]

I'm worried this'll never end up being released.

Esper's involved. It will be. Just a question of when.