[SunGodPortal]

Hold shift and then press down or right.

Oh man. Thanks. That SO much better.

[Grimoire LD]

Change of pace, hmm? No matter, this was an interesting era before the entire "cute=profitable" became full swing with the myriad amount of Touhou-esque games. So playing through this could be an interesting experience. I'm looking forward to the progress made on this!

[Zynk]

@OP I'm surprised you did not do one of the 3 games you mentioned and chose my personal pick. 

I believe ACC only has kanas and less or no(?) kanjis since it may be targeted for younger players. Are the texts compressed; have you made a .tbl file yet?

[SunGodPortal]

Change of pace, hmm? No matter, this was an interesting era before the entire "cute=profitable" became full swing with the myriad amount of Touhou-esque games. So playing through this could be an interesting experience. I'm looking forward to the progress made on this!

@OP I'm surprised you did not do one of the 3 games you mentioned and chose my personal pick. 

Yeah I think I was being a bit timid at first, but after you mentioned Cha Cha I remembered how badly I wanted to see it translated. After I started looking into it, it was pretty obvious what my choice was going to be.

As Chpexo mentioned earlier and from what you can see below, this game had an interesting and charming variety of fonts. There's the normal font, some roman characters, a bold font, silly little things like the heart, note and paw. Then you have those weird sickly looking chars on the end there. I'm guessing those are for when someone is hurt or embarrassed. Hehehe

I believe ACC only has kanas and less or no(?) kanjis since it may be targeted for younger players.

Unfortunately no. Have a look:



I believe that's all of them though. Maybe 370. Most of the text is kana but then there's sprinkles of kanji everywhere. Not sure what I'm going to do about that nightmare. LOL I was expecting there to also be a lot of graphics that would need translation (like signs and stuff) but surprisingly there only appear to be a handful of such items and they've pretty much just got hiragana (rock n roll).

Are the texts compressed; have you made a .tbl file yet?

By text, do you mean like the script itself? If so, I haven't gotten that far yet. The old thread from 2006 that I linked to earlier mention some kind of text compression but I now know that the graphics themselves are not. Just a little unorthodox: 16x14...?!? The smaller font for the menus was 8x8 though.

No, I haven't gotten to the table yet. I'm still wondering what the best method would be to accomodate for the yet to be identified kanji.

[KingMike]

No, I haven't gotten to the table yet. I'm still wondering what the best method would be to accomodate for the yet to be identified kanji.

Make an ID request in the Script forum. People usually answer those.

As to why cannibalizing fonts (aside from the obvious statement that if the font does not contain the characters you need):
Japanese text (especially if it uses kanji) is often 2 bytes per character. That is a waste of space for most European languages which can fit in 1 byte, so it is ideal to ASM hack the routine to 1 byte. Though you could probably modify such a routine to detect if certain characters are in the translation range and use 1 or 2 bytes appropriately, that is usually avoided due to extra work that, in the end once everything is translated, would be unused. I only really bothered putting that in for a game when it was needed to avoid crashing.
(of course for 2-byte formatting, you would need to give control codes 1-byte codes as well)
Also, Japanese fonts tend to be 12 or 16 pixels wide, which is also wider than needed for western languages, causing a shortage of screen space for translated text. It is recommended at least hack them down to 8 wide.

[Gideon Zhi]

Also, Japanese fonts tend to be 12 or 16 pixels wide, which is also wider than needed for western languages, causing a shortage of screen space for translated text. It is recommended at least hack them down to 8 wide.

This is the biggest reason. For games that have plenty of space and either an 8x8 font or a proportional font that at maximum size matches the original font's dimensions it's feasible, but you're otherwise talking about having two separate text routines in place, and even then if you want the Japanese and the English to appear dynamically with each other you'll need a dedicated command to say "Print English!" or "Print Japanese!" at the start of each string. You can assume Japanese by default and simplify a bit, but it's still a pain in the ass.

[SunGodPortal]

Make an ID request in the Script forum. People usually answer those.

Ok. I'll do that once I have a little bit of progress to show off. I don't want anyone to do any work** until they can be at least somewhat confident that I'm not a flake and that their efforts will not be in vain.

**Well, very much work.

Japanese text (especially if it uses kanji) is often 2 bytes per character. That is a waste of space for most European languages which can fit in 1 byte, so it is ideal to ASM hack the routine to 1 byte. Though you could probably modify such a routine to detect if certain characters are in the translation range and use 1 or 2 bytes appropriately, that is usually avoided due to extra work that, in the end once everything is translated, would be unused. I only really bothered putting that in for a game when it was needed to avoid crashing. (of course for 2-byte formatting, you would need to give control codes 1-byte codes as well)

At first I was concerned about this aspect because I assumed it would limit me to 255 characters. The only reason that would matter is because I will likely be using 3-4 distinct fonts. As was mentioned earlier, this game has a number of different fonts that are used for extra expression and I don't want that aspect to get lost in the translation. But even with (for example) 4 complete fonts in both upper and lower case (which may actually be more than I would need) I'd still have room for at least 40 additional characters (assuming I understand how this works).

This is the biggest reason. For games that have plenty of space and either an 8x8 font or a proportional font that at maximum size matches the original font's dimensions it's feasible, but you're otherwise talking about having two separate text routines in place, and even then if you want the Japanese and the English to appear dynamically with each other you'll need a dedicated command to say "Print English!" or "Print Japanese!" at the start of each string. You can assume Japanese by default and simplify a bit, but it's still a pain in the ass.

Noted.

[SunGodPortal]

**Update**

I got my table set up for the main dialogue and I'm now in the process of deciphering the game's dialogue comands. Since Akazukin ChaCha has so many different fonts for kana/numbers/ABCs/additional characters like paws and hearts and a good number of kanji I was worried that this would be a nightmare. Luckily, it's not too complicated. *sigh of relief*

I did this just so I'd have some progress to show:


At first, I attempted to make a table for the menu font but had absolutely no success on that front. I initially wondered if it was simply because I didn't know what I was doing, but I'm now convinced that the menu text is handled in a completely different fashion than the dialogue text. Bummer. At the moment, I don't yet have the skills to figure that one out so I guess it can wait for later.

I still have a number of things that will need to be done before a project page would be appropriate, but when the time comes I'll make one. Judging from the comments so far it appears that at least a few of you would like to see this game playable in english.

**Question**
Is there a way that I can get the dialogue code that isn't text to display as hex instead of being incorrectly displayed as kana? It also does this with kanji (which I haven't made a table for yet). Would that be as simple as just making additions to my table file or would that need to be in a separate table since all entries in the existing table are only 1-byte a-piece? Does that even matter? I only assume it does because of some of the options listed in the program I'm using (CT2).

Just to be clear, here's the type of stuff I'm working with:
the regular dialogue characters are simply 00-FC.
additional characters: FD00-FEF1
C0 = space

And here's the dialogue commands I've noticed so far:
FF = seems to preceed all commands other than those for loading kanji
01 = line break
00 = end message
13 = turn off bold font
14 = turn on bold font
16 = return to title screen (after completion of an episode)
18 = 2 choices
19 = 3 choices
20 = big speech bubble
21 = small speech bubble
22 = very small speech bubble
23 = small exclamation
24 = very small exclamation
25 = big exclamation
26 = very big speech bubble
27 = big thought bubble
0C0B = play "aquired something good" jingle

That's what I've got so far. Feels like a good start.

Also, I gotta find a better hex editor with table support. Crystal Tile 2 REALLY sucks at this. There are times I will search for stuff that I KNOW is in the ROM and it will turn up nothing. Plus it doesn't seem to display more than one character per table entry ie: "paw" becomes "p". The interface is kinda weird too. LOL I've only been using it because HxD (which I LOVE) doesn't appear to load tables. I tried Winhex but couldn't figure out HOW to load my table. Also, no other graphics editor seems to handle the weird font graphics properly like CT2. I'll give it that much. heh

[Chpexo]

.

[SunGodPortal]

You create your own tables in windhex32 if you're having trouble importing.

Hmm. I'm trying it but for some reason it acts like it can't read my table file. I can't see any reason for it to do that since CT2 didn't have a problem with it (other than entries with more than one character and the weird stuff like hearts). If I have to remake my table file from scratch I'm not going to be too happy about that.

[Zynk]

Did you create your table file on WindHex or a pre-made table from Crystal Tile?

WindHex's search feature sometimes doesn't work properly, try looking for common words or find 2 hex values ; you know the ctrl+f for text, ctrl+h for hex, ctrl+k for kana, (ctrl+g for offsets)

[SunGodPortal]

Did you create your table file on WindHex or a pre-made table from Crystal Tile?

WindHex's search feature sometimes doesn't work properly, try looking for common words or find 2 hex values ; you know the ctrl+f for text, ctrl+h for hex, ctrl+k for kana, (ctrl+g for offsets)

I made my table in notepad, then changed the file extension to tbl after I was done. It worked in CT2. I've been experimenting with script entries for the past day to learn what all of the dialogue commands are. I know where the script is too (maybe even all of it). I opened WindHex, loaded my ROM, loaded my table and went to where the dialogue is located in the ROM but it just isn't showing anything in the column to the right.

EDIT: I like how easy it is to change the window style and size in this game. Just change one byte. It's also nice that when I had a rather large text bubble pop up that was too big to fit on the screen properly (from where the character was standing) the game automatically moved the camera angle over just a bit to make sure the end of it didn't get chopped off. How nice.

[Zynk]

I opened WindHex, loaded my ROM, loaded my table and went to where the dialogue is located in the ROM but it just isn't showing anything in the column to the right.

Try pressing ctrl+D (it toggles the display on the right column), if you loaded a kana table you should be able to see kanas.
Also press Tab to switch left column to right column input.

EDIT: I like how easy it is to change the window style and size in this game. Just change one byte. It's also nice that when I had a rather large text bubble pop up that was too big to fit on the screen properly (from where the character was standing) the game automatically moved the camera angle over just a bit to make sure the end of it didn't get chopped off. How nice.

Neat find! But does it just changes the balloon size and not the length of character input?

[SunGodPortal]

Try pressing ctrl+D (it toggles the display on the right column), if you loaded a kana table you should be able to see kanas.
Also press Tab to switch left column to right column input.

Hmm. I wish I could get this to work. It looks like it could be a very useful program. If I can't figure out how to get my existing table to work with it I'll try out the built in table maker.

Neat find! But does it just changes the balloon size and not the length of character input?

Balloon size and character input. The characters are pretty big though. With the size of the font, I think 32 is probably the max amount of characters that can fit in the largest bubble. Something will def have to be done about that. It seems that learning how to implement some sort of VWF routine is inevitable.

*other dialogue related remarks*
The use of multiple fonts for expressive purposes is something I'd like to retain in the translation. With the existing set up, I guess I could techincally have up to 765 characters to choose from. I'm pretty jazzed about that.

From what I can tell there appears to be about 150KB of dialogue in it's hex form.

[KingMike]

As to your trouble loading a table in WindHex, if it's a Japanese table are, are you saving in Shift-JIS?
Despite WindHex' option "Display as Unicode" it actually only supports SJIS.

[Zynk]

I made my table in notepad, then changed the file extension to tbl after I was done. It worked in CT2.

Maybe you should create a NEW table file on WindHex.

[SunGodPortal]

As to your trouble loading a table in WindHex, if it's a Japanese table are, are you saving in Shift-JIS?
Despite WindHex' option "Display as Unicode" it actually only supports SJIS.

Awesome. That turned out to be the problem. I just opened my table up in a program that could save in that format, did so and it worked.

Maybe you should create a NEW table file on WindHex.

I did get the old table file to work but it appears that it still needs a few tweeks. Some of the odd characters I included were not supported so I'll have to redo about 10-20 or so entries. That's still way better than having to remake the whole thing. At least with this program, if I have to just spell out what it is (like "paw") it will actually display the whole thing instead of just "p" like CT was doing.

Rock n roll.

[Seihen]

Just to be clear, here's the type of stuff I'm working with:
the regular dialogue characters are simply 00-FC.
FD = load a character from kanji table 1
FE = load a character from kanji table 2
C0 = space

I'm not 100% sure I understand what you're saying here. Are you sure that it's not just counting straight up and, rather than going between one kanji table and another, that it's not all one big table?

Ex. (Using the alphabet to make it easier to read)

FD00 = a
FD01 = b
~
FDFF = Q
FE00 = R
FE01 = S
~
FEFF = Z

One game I was translating did that. The kanji table was large, so it started from 0800 and went to 09FF or something like that. But it was natural progression and not two tables.

[SunGodPortal]

I'm not 100% sure I understand what you're saying here. Are you sure that it's not just counting straight up and, rather than going between one kanji table and another, that it's not all one big table?

Ex. (Using the alphabet to make it easier to read)

FD00 = a
FD01 = b
~
FDFF = Q
FE00 = R
FE01 = S
~
FEFF = Z

One game I was translating did that. The kanji table was large, so it started from 0800 and went to 09FF or something like that. But it was natural progression and not two tables.

Hmm. I guess it can be seen as just one big table (or is, actually). I was looking at it as two tables because it could be divided into two 16x16 squares. Plus, the first 8 rows are not even kanji, but instead hiragana that has been stylized to look all scribbly to indicate various things that such a thing could imply (embarrassment, a talking frog, etc.), so I guess "kanji table" isn't 100% accurate. LOL Now that you point it out I suppose a more accurate description would be "additional characters: FD00-FEF1". I updated the list in case I get hit by a train or a plane crashes on my head, disabling me from finishing this game.

EDIT: I used WindHex a little more last night after extending my table to include all of the kanji and some of the dialogue codes and it was awesome.