Tengai Makyou Zero translation project

[elmer]

It's a little sad that only these side-games in the series have been translated. (Well, Zero was intended to be a reboot rather than a side-game, but you know what I mean...) I hope to translate Ziria next, even if it's not the most interesting game in the series. (I have already translated a portion of it, actually.)

It would be lovely to see more PC Engine translations! 

Some time ago I stumbled on this Ziria translation topic on the PC Engine FX forums:
...
Not sure if the project is still active.

I've poked SamIAm (the translator on that project), and he'll respond here if he wishes to.

But my personal take on it is (which you should take with a grain-of-salt) ... EsperKnight is too busy working in real-life to do translations anymore, and SamIAm passed all of the work that he'd done to Tom ages ago, deciding that Tom has a much-greater passion for this particular series of games, and is the better guy to work on them (as most folks here know, this kind of translation takes a lot of hard work, and a passion for the game in order to sustain the desire to do that work).

<edit>

Sorry, Tom, I misread the thread on PCEFX and got it the wrong way around! 

When it comes to DS/GC/PS2/PSN ports of Manjimaru, I can't approve of the censored versions at all. Certainly subtitles can be hacked into the PC Engine release? The smart thing to do would be to extract the subs from the DS release, translate those, and then have the hacker add them to the uncensored PC Engine release.

It's a nice thought ... but may well not be practical if you wish to end up with a translation that plays on original hardware.

SamIAm and I have considered exactly that question when it comes to the "Legend of Xanadu" translations.

In your case ... if you're only translating Ziria, and not Manjimaru, then you can base your translation on the CD (not SuperCD) version, and at-least have lots of memory free to implement both the translations and the subtitles.

BUT ... that doesn't mean that you'll have free VRAM or text/sprites that you can use to display those subtitles.

One possibility would be to use the extra VDP in the SuperGrafx to display the subtitles ... but that would 1) limit the hardware that could run the game, and 2) may not be *practical* anyway.

I was researching how to implement SuperGrafx subtitles in the Legend of Xanadu games, but found that there was one particular hardware difference between the 2 machines that Falcom were relying on, that would make SuperGrafx subtitles look bad (without scene-by-scene checking and modification of the original graphics).

You may (or may not) hit the same issue with Ziria/Manjumaru.

Either way ... it's going to be a lot more "fun" for your hacker(s) in getting a translation working on the PC Engine, since we're not able to just increase the program/data RAM space for the game, in the way that your hackers are doing with the SNES ROM.

Well ... unless you wish to target the Turbo Everdrive v2, in which case, you really don't have any practical limit to the expansion.

Whatever you do ... good luck!

It would be really nice to see more PC Engine games translated, especially in this year, the 30th Anniversary of the console. 

[Merr Man]

Tom:

I will admit that I've never played a patched ROM on a DS, but it is impossible for my computer to emulate PS2 and GC games appropriately enough, and don't get me started on PC-Engine CD emulation, whereas it is a lot easier to emulate a DS game. Still, if you can get one version of the game translated, than that would be very beneficial to the community. Forgot about the PSP release, your intentions with that actually sound very lovely, so I apologize for my lack of foresight.

Interesting about the manuals, will you translate them as they are, or include readmes with the written content?

That interpretation of Kabuki is something I remember hearing about him a lot. During that era there were plenty of player representative and vanilla protagonists, that it sounds refreshing to play as someone so human, to put it in a way. Kind of reminds me of the "hero" from Lufia: The Legend Returns.

Carry on!

[Cargodin]

I agree that it wouldnt be ideal or the ultimate experience to play the NDS version, but as a matter of availability I dont see the harm in doing it anyway, no? I just know people with carts may want to play it on the go without resorting to a word document in the side. Still, if anything can be uncensored I'd be most excited to see how that panned out. If someone is willing to make the ds patch, why cut out the ds players who have also waitdd 25 years for the game because of a few missing(although agreeably very important) sprites?

I dont have any of my books near me atm, but if I remember properly, there is a grave you can find in Apocalypse that says something like P.H. (or H.P.) Dacha along with some Pink Floyd member and other fun stuff like that, but thats the closest to an in-game cameo or reference to him I can think of. I think it was during the whole Reaper segment.

Sherry Earps/Ace is fun too as he is also based on a real person along with the Clanton brothers now 3 Clinton brothers. Wyatt Earps is a furthermore mentioned by name in the game in one of Ace's equip descriptions. There are a couple real-life characters theown into the story, so its interesting that there wasnt more Chada in proper this time around...as he semi-counts as a real person in this scenario.

[Tom]

Elmer, what's this about Esperknight being too busy to work on games anymore? He's the one I was doing Ziria with! And he still has my Devil Children: Ice Book translation, too! :O I'd better contact him this weekend.

I also didn't know that there were PC Engine technical limitations that absolutely prevented subtitles from being added.

If that's the case, I would recommend adding the uncensored rom to the PSP collection, and then maybe finding out if there's a way to provide subtitles through the PSP's additional capabilities. I'm sure the PSP can get around the PC Engine's limitations.

The manuals and packaging for Zero will be provided through edited image files, not just a text file.

Tengai Makyou usually has good protagonists. The worst ones in the series are the silent protagonists, in Oriental Blue, TM3: Namida, and (unfortunately) TM Zero. Of the silent protagonists, though, Zero's "Higan" is the most expressive. He is also the most fun to roleplay, as he can "misbehave" if you're so inclined.

As for the censored DS version, I think there needs to be a concerted, serious attempt to release the game in its uncensored state before "settling with" a DS version. And as I said before, my computer is not powerful enough to emulate the DS, and I don't have a flash cart. I can emulate PC Engine (Admittedly, it was a pain...) I can emulate the PSP... And I can run patched ISOs.

For me, the DS version won't even be playable in English... And as it's censored, I have no desire to see it put as the basis for the English translation. (The sad thing is, I used to own the DS version, but it was stolen from me years ago... Well, the cart was. I just have an empty case and manual now.)

[Cargodin]

I like the idea of the psp release being as complete as possible, first and foremost.

Esper might have some experience finagling inside of the iso to see just how the games were inserted(if not just censored roms mashed through an emulator, although Im of the impression thats how the Galaxy Fraulein Yuna collection was compiled). I think Esper was the one who put the bug in my head about subtitles being a difficult beast as he mentioned should SamIam complete anything then it would have been in a side document as a necessity. Still, take it with a grain of salt as that convo was ages ago, my memory is jank and he could have bewer ideas now. Still, Even by fancy slideshow standards, some of the effects used like, say, in the intro to Kabukiden would have reared shaky results were kabuki play dialogues hamfisted over it all.

If anything, Ziria is the most expressive of the protags by a large margin. Rizing is pretty quiet himself although you do get a good profile of him in the few speaking roles he has that he is the just and determined type, even if at nothing else he wants to protect his 12 year-old(if that. Yumemi is the one pushing things). Suffers from the same issue Namida does although Namida is stronger on pushing the romance in the story but its kinda...okay, but why for a hot part of the game.

Back to the DS version though, I dont see it as a matter of settling. If anything I would rather see the psp stuff done first and the DS version  could come out later, like dessert.

Dang, for someone to steal that cart. My condolences. 

[Tom]

Thinking back on Ziria, it occurred to me how similar Zero is to Ziria.

Think about it...

"A boy from the once mighty Fire Clan, after being raised in small town by his grandfather, teams up with a small, but powerful girl and an older, blue-haired member of the Fire Clan to take down an ancient evil."

It describes both Ziria and Zero, even though the personalities involved are quite different. I know Zero is supposed to be a reboot and all, but it never really hit me how similar the games are until today.

[Cargodin]

Thinking back on Ziria, it occurred to me how similar Zero is to Ziria.

Think about it...

"A boy from the once mighty Fire Clan, after being raised in small town by his grandfather, teams up with a small, but powerful girl and an older, blue-haired member of the Fire Clan to take down an ancient evil."

It describes both Ziria and Zero, even though the personalities involved are quite different. I know Zero is supposed to be a reboot and all, but it never really hit me how similar the games are until today.

That really is pretty curious. I wonder if that was deliberate or not, but it's interesting to see the same premise go in two very different directions. I don't remember where I read this, so do correct me if I'm wrong, but the idea behind Zero was the devs' lament over their kids playing Final Fantasy more as it was on the ever-popular SNES; is that true? If it is, then maybe it was on purpose.

[elmer]

I will admit that I've never played a patched ROM on a DS, but it is impossible for my computer to emulate PS2 and GC games appropriately enough, and don't get me started on PC-Engine CD emulation, whereas it is a lot easier to emulate a DS game.

I'm not sure what the problem is that you're having with getting PC Engine CD games to run.

The resource requirements on your PC should be less than a DS (just one 7MHz 6502-variant, vs two ARM processors at 33MHz and 66MHz).

Some time ago emulators required that you use a physical CD, which *was* a total PITA, but these days, you can just use a .cue/.bin image of a CD and have it run perfectly.

The process is pretty simple ...
1) Download Mednafen (the most-accurate PCE emulator)
2) Download a copy of the Super System Card (preferably the Japanese version), and put it in the Mednafen/firmware directory as SYSCARD3.PCE
3) Download a PCE game in .cue/.bin format, of use NightWolve's TurboRIP to create an image from your own CD copy of the game.
4) Drag-n-drop the .cue file on the Mednafen .exe (executable).

It should fire straight up.

Mednafen's debugger is pretty-awesome for hacking.

Elmer, what's this about Esperknight being too busy to work on games anymore? He's the one I was doing Ziria with! And he still has my Devil Children: Ice Book translation, too! :O

I'm just judging by a bunch of emails that I traded with him back in early-to-mid 2015 when I took over the Zeroigar project, and then the Legend of Xanadu project, both of which were stalled.

It sounded like he was *very* busy at work at the time.

I also hacked a VWF font into Team Innocent for him, since that was supposed to be the last roadblock on TI, which was apparently 100% translated and insertable (but with display overruns), and fixed a lip-sync problem with the English text, too ... and then nothing has happened on that project in the year-plus since that was sent to him.

Perhaps he's just been busy with other translation projects, but I suspect that he may have got caught up in work, family, and "real-life" (tm).

I'd better contact him this weekend.

That might be a good idea.

I also didn't know that there were PC Engine technical limitations that absolutely prevented subtitles from being added.

It may well be *possible*, it entirely depends upon what the developers are doing in the game.

But it's not *likely*.

With only 1 VDP layer, we don't have the luxury of just enabling an unused layer for the subtitles, and it's not a bitmapped screen like the PSP/PS1/etc where you just need to render some extra text to the screen buffer.

If that's the case, I would recommend adding the uncensored rom to the PSP collection, and then maybe finding out if there's a way to provide subtitles through the PSP's additional capabilities. I'm sure the PSP can get around the PC Engine's limitations.

It depends on how the PSP subtitles are implemented, and having someone hack that system.

Or, since you're presumably running on a hacked PSP anyway, you could just use the subtitling system that's built into Mednafen (precisely for this purpose), and have your game run on any hacked console or R-Pi hardware that can run Mednafen (or RetroArch presumably).

It's trivial to get Mednafen to support extra CD RAM, too, which would also make the hacking easier.

It just depends whether you want to run on original hardware, or not.

I can emulate PC Engine (Admittedly, it was a pain...) I can emulate the PSP... And I can run patched ISOs.

Well, hopefully you'll find the current-state of PCE CD emulation much easier to use these days.

My 8-year-old PC doesn't have a problem with it!

[Pennywise]

Well, between work and family, there's very little time for this hobby, but Esperknight also has a lot of projects, which doesn't help.

He's very much active though as I've seen his progress on other games, but he could probably use the help of an additional programmer to get things done.

[Nightcrawler]

Nightcrawaler, could you check that again?
...
Are you talking about these 00h-0fh:8000h-FFFFh and 80h-8fh:8000h-FFFFh?

Thanks for looking at the current SNES9x code. The expanded space would have been accessible at 90-9F:8000-FFFF. It would have been half accessible via the 8000-FFFF range which was the drawback of it. All of my work was done about 5 years ago now and I haven't touched my cart since. I can see that the current SNES9x source you posted doesn't map this region which kills much of that sail wind now. You're obviously content with what you're doing, and I'm not interested in further revisiting that project in more detail at this point. So, we can put it to bed. I do still hope to see available ways to play on the hardware, as well as a selection of emulators when the project is released however it is achieved though!

I'm sorry for stirring things up. I have that pesky FEOZ cart that keeps eying me from the shelf that needs a finished English conversion. I've been too close to the action on this project for too many years. I got started while aiding in some of the early ZSNES graphics pack capture work, and then when DeJap was on the case, and then transitions after that. So occasionally, many years worth of closet mothballs burst out at times. Carry on.

[DougRPG]

You're obviously content with what you're doing, and I'm not interested in further revisiting that project in more detail at this point.

I'm not content about not being directly compatible with all emulators, don't take me wrong, I'm only saying this is necessary. The first hacking and expansion was made by LostTemplar, Byuu also suggested this expansion, and I think DdsTranslation also agree with that. If you have a better solution please share what you know with us.
I'm hacking the graphics, so the impact of a new mapping is very little. DdsTranslation can talk more about that, because he is doing the main hacking, but I think a new mapping that resolve all compatibility problem won't be a dead sentence to him.
But after studying the game I can say with 99,9% certainty that there is no solution you can give to us to resolve these emulator compatibility problems. The only solution is keeping the game size to 1MB and add a super compression method. But even so I don't think it will be enough. And with expansion you need new emulator versions.
I know you are a much more experienced romhacker than me, but there are no secrets here. If you want to study the game more deeply you'll realize the need for expansion and the emulator compatibility problem.
Like we can see, in the Snes9x code there is no mapping to a second megabyte. And if you think about it, 90-9f is a bad choice to put an extra megabyte.

About the hacking I was the guy who tried to bring you to this project several times. I don't know if you didn't see the messages (look the first messages in this topic), or was busy working in Glory of Heracles 4. But then DdsTranslation shows up and now he is doing an amazing job with the game. Seems that this project was made for him. He is resolving several problems very quickly and with a very high quality. I'm doing my best to do a good work too. FlashPV is doing the graphics editions and he is also doing an amazing job.
Tom is the project leader and his translation is just amazing. I could not find any errors so far. I think it's the best translation I've ever seen.

You know a lot about romhacking (one of the best), so share with us your suggestions. You said you have some old notes about this game, so please check them to see if something is worth.

I have that pesky FEOZ cart that keeps eying me from the shelf that needs a finished English conversion.

If you want to put the translation in your Feoez cartridge then you can do that, no problem. The expansion will not prevent that.

I've been too close to the action on this project for too many years. I got started while aiding in some of the early ZSNES graphics pack capture work, and then when DeJap was on the case, and then transitions after that. So occasionally, many years worth of closet mothballs burst out at times. Carry on.

I know, but this project was left in oblivion for more than a decade. LostTemplar, Byuu and Tom was the guys who brought life again to this project, then the project paused for some more years. Now me, DdsTranslation and FlashPV were invited by Tom to work on the project, and I think this time is sure that the project will be released.

It's only possible because several people worked hard in the past, since Dejap's time.

[Hiei-]

From DDS :

Modified the date entry format to be consistent with in-game, added meridiem text to time, and also increased limit on birthday year.



Small fix to display "Uncountable" when you have over 9,999,999 ryo. You can have up to 16,777,215 ryo but the game only displays 7 digits.



Fixed a bug on the Equipment screen so the equipped items' names wouldn't get overwritten while scrolling through the item list.

[SamIAm]

Hi Tom. I hope your TM Zero translation is going well.

I didn't get a significant percentage of the Ziria script done. When I picked it up, I was mostly just hoping to breathe a little life into the PCE translation scene, but then elmer came along to help with other PCE (and PC-FX) projects that were a higher priority for me. If and when the time comes that you feel like doing it, I think the best thing would be for you to pick up right where you left off and forget about anything I did.

By all means, be the Tengai Makyou guy. While I would actually be interested in doing Manjimaru if there's a hacker that's up for it and you're not available, I've got plenty of other interesting things to look at. If one person translated the entire series, well, that would be very cool indeed. 

I've poked SamIAm (the translator on that project), and he'll respond here if he wishes to.

But my personal take on it is (which you should take with a grain-of-salt) ... EsperKnight is too busy working in real-life to do translations anymore, and SamIAm passed all of the work that he'd done to Tom ages ago, deciding that Tom has a much-greater passion for this particular series of games, and is the better guy to work on them (as most folks here know, this kind of translation takes a lot of hard work, and a passion for the game in order to sustain the desire to do that work).

Ah...you seem to be a little confused. 

Tom was the original translator of Ziria, and it was actually his partially completed script that Esperknight sent to me. I think this was during a time when Tom was at-large and a translator was needed. Now that Tom is back, though, Ziria is all his if he wants it, as is all of the translation credit.

[PunkFrog]

I think this is the last major SNES RPG that still needs a translation. Or am I wrong?

[SamIAm]

I suppose that would depend on your definition of "major".

Big budget? Big cart size? Big sales? Big reputation?

Tengai Makyou Zero might be at the top of the list in one or all of these categories, but it's definitely not the only one in any of them. Daikaijuu Monogatari 2 and Bakumatsu Korinden Oni 1 and 2 come to mind pretty quickly. I'm sure there are plenty more.

[Tom]

Wow, I'm sad to hear that Esperknight shipped along my WIP script without giving me a heads up. The only reason I haven't pushed forward with it more at this point is that his plate was already full, so I was afraid of it sitting unhacked. I still have every intention of translating Ziria. It's not all that big of a script, so it's certainly doable.

I'll get things straightened out and then move forward with my other projects. I've been going all-out with Zero these days. There's still a lot to iron out, and then the manual too. (Mostly tedious stuff.) Once Zero's done, I'm going to be jumping between a few projects.

Formatting DQM 1&2
Formatting another "secret" game that's been on the backburner.
Translating Zill O'll PSP
Translating Ziria. (Certainly Manjimaru is better than Ziria, but I think Ziria should be released before Manjimaru... Of course I'd like to do all of them, SamIam! My dream is to make that PSP collection, after all! One step at a time!)

There is one other major SNES RPG that I want to get translated eventually. Not exactly a high priority, but it would be: Last Bible 3. I'm up for working on it with ddstranslation, whenever he'd like to, if he would like to. But he's got other things on his plate on the moment, and so do I, so it's not a high priority at the moment. It might not be major to most people, but it's major to me!

Another "when I get around to it" plan of mine is to take another look at the Oriental Blue script. I've spent a lot of time formatting TM Zero's script to get everything "just right" and make it very easy to read. (Ditto for DQM1&2's script.) I'd like to do the same for Oriental Blue eventually. I tried replaying it, and it's just too messy for me now.

[elmer]

Well, between work and family, there's very little time for this hobby, but Esperknight also has a lot of projects, which doesn't help.

He's very much active though as I've seen his progress on other games, but he could probably use the help of an additional programmer to get things done.

It's good to know that he's still active and managing to find some time to keep working on translations.

I'll keep on the lookout for any new news that gets posted on the progress of those translations.

While I would actually be interested in doing Manjimaru if there's a hacker that's up for it and you're not available, I've got plenty of other interesting things to look at.

I suspect that the PCE community can keep you busy. 

Ah...you seem to be a little confused. 

Tom was the original translator of Ziria, and it was actually his partially completed script that Esperknight sent to me.

Whoops, my bad! 

I misunderstood the sequence of events that you talked about in the thread on PCEFX.

Sorry, Tom ... I've edited the earlier post to correct it.

Wow, I'm sad to hear that Esperknight shipped along my WIP script without giving me a heads up. The only reason I haven't pushed forward with it more at this point is that his plate was already full, so I was afraid of it sitting unhacked. I still have every intention of translating Ziria. It's not all that big of a script, so it's certainly doable.

It's great to see the amazing progress that you and the team have made in TM Zero in the last few weeks, and I hope that you'll get the chance to finish off Ziria, and work on Manjimaru.

[SamIAm]

Wow, I'm sad to hear that Esperknight shipped along my WIP script without giving me a heads up. The only reason I haven't pushed forward with it more at this point is that his plate was already full, so I was afraid of it sitting unhacked. I still have every intention of translating Ziria. It's not all that big of a script, so it's certainly doable.

While I'd hate for this to needlessly turn into drama, I should point out in Esperknight's defense that he at least told me that he tried to contact you about this. He didn't take passing along someone else's script lightly, that's for sure. Anyway, please don't let this sour your relationship with him.

[Tom]

While I'd hate for this to needlessly turn into drama, I should point out in Esperknight's defense that he at least told me that he tried to contact you about this. He didn't take passing along someone else's script lightly, that's for sure. Anyway, please don't let this sour your relationship with him.

I've known Esperknight for way too long to let something like that sour anything! Ha ha! Water under the bridge. I'm just disappointed. That's all.

Back on track...

Today, ddstranslation, DougRPG, FlashPV and I are going to have our first Tengai Makyou Zero hacking team get-together to settle some stuff regarding battle menu graphics. (The battle menu stuff is something that's going to require collaboration between all four of us. The rest of the work can largely be done independently.) Once this work is done, the battle strategy menu can be fully hacked, and the battle screens will be next!

On the formatting and graphics side, the fourth nation is nearly fully formatted AND nearly all of the graphics up to that point are done! Still a lot more to do, but progress is progress!

[Kallisto]

I think this is the last major SNES RPG that still needs a translation. Or am I wrong?

There is still plenty that need to be translated like the Albert Odyssey series, and quite a few other titles, the problem is that Translator either disappear or gave up on them, and some of the abandoned project files can be found here if someone is willing to pickup where they left off. There is also the case of ongoing projects that fall under certain translating groups like Dynamic Designs that are still working on projects like Aretha, etc. What needs to be done is getting some fresh hackers since the original gang on RMN are hitting a point in their life where things are getting a bit busy.