Tengai Makyou Zero translation project

[VicVergil]

All that aside, I don't understand why you'd say that I have no reason to be disappointed, and that it's my fault for talking to the "wrong person." I've already said why I was disappointed, and it was nothing to do with spreading the word on youtube, or people finding out about the translation.

I am disappointed because a fan of the series no longer really cares about the series enough to play it after all these years... I translated this for the fans, but as time passes, the interest fades. That's natural, and it's depressing.

I'm certainly not blaming you for how you feel disappointed about this incident. It's perfectly natural to feel let down in this situation.

As far as I'm concerned, this dismissal of years of thankless labor is really uncool and chances are this person wasn't that much of an invested fan in the first place if he didn't even bother trying it for half an hour or so as it's served to him on a platter of gold. He definitely could have handled this with more tact. But I'd rather not discuss this further... I'll just say it's unfortunate you had to be put in this situation, and how your motivation and perception of your work's worth was affected by this.

My point is that taking this particular youtuber or fan's disinterest as the norm and telling yourself that your work will go unappreciated by everyone on the internet is a huge leap of logic. It's a very anticipated release, even today. One recent SNES emulator release on the 3DS a few weeks ago had a major update solely about adding support to Tengai Makyou Zero in anticipation of the coming translation.

[Tom]

I never said that it would "go unappreciated by everyone on the internet." I'm not sure where you got that idea.

I've already explained why I was disappointed.

Burnt Lasagna understands.

[Lentfilms]

After reading Burnt Lasagna's comment I think I understand where you are coming from now Tom. Funnily enough, I had a similar experience when Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright was finally released in the US. That title was my dream game back when I had just finished High School but when the game finally came out I had graduated from College at that point. I still liked the game but I kept thinking the whole time I played it that my experience would have been better if I had played the game back when I was still super passionate about the series.

I guess time moves on but, like Burnt said, I'm sure there will be a group of new fans that will discover Zero and have the experience we can't. Either way I am still excited for this translation all these years later and I look forward to playing it, so hang in there Tom

[mikeprado30]

Surely I understand your feelings about so many people interested in the game but with not enough interest to play it.

At least this one WON'T be my case, I can assure you 

I have been waiting this one since DeJap's times and now we are SO CLOSE to get it released! 

And I think that I'm not alone in starting the game and to live this amazing story, and maybe in a future to share this passion with my children 

So don't feel bad, my friend.  You'll see this game will be enjoyed by so many people 

Thanks once again for all your great effort to you, Doug, DDS and FlashPV, indeed one of the most amazing teams on the ROM Translating history (at least for myself  ).

Hoping to get it released before Easter 

[Tom]

Mikeprado30: Originally, I would have thought that an Easter release would be possible, but with the lack of progress in the last month, we'll be lucky if even beta testing begins on Easter. The good news is that with all of the testing work I've already done (with quick hacks by DDS), the beta testing process should be much smoother than it would have been otherwise.

[mikeprado30]

Well, no matter if it's released after Easter.  I'll play it till the end anyways, count with it.  And also I'll spread the word about this title among my friends' circle 

And I'll be awaiting for the next TM games to be released also in English!

[Tom]

If the graphics take much longer to insert/extract, I might just have to end up giving the beta testers a version with incomplete graphics so they can at least look for typos.

I'd hate to do that, but really it might be better than the absolute lack of progress that's happening right now.

[varikares]

I think you should wait for dougrpg to finish before beta testing

you'd just have to retest after the graphics are finished anyway

[patuli]

A real shame that progress become stagnant, after been almost done, however I been waiting to play this, since I saw and add in club nintendo Mexico.
So even If you guys need another year, i'm sure will try it!
in the mean time, since sd2snes will never add support for it anyway, I need to find a way to connect my pc to and old crt tv with s video.

[deubeul]

Maybe HCG is not that much intersted because it's a spin-off.

Or maybe he is just not interested in beta testing, he just wants to play the game without looking for typos, or that sort of stuff.

Or maybe he just lost passion, as it often happens when a passion becomes your job.

[Tom]

Varikares: I guess I won't let testing begin ahead of time. Just a shame that the project has to be stalled where it is, considering how much work has been put into it thus far.

Patuli: We don't need another year to finish it. It's 99.9% done. It could be ready for testing in one to three days, max. Extraction, editing, insertion... When will that happen? I don't know. It's not up to me.

I've worked on the project practically every day since the team was formed here on this message board.

Today, I will begin working on other projects. I wanted to be focused on this until the end, but there's not really all that much I can do at this point.

Here is my twitter account if you want to follow me. I changed my twitter channel name just now, since I'll work on some other retro game stuff.

https://twitter.com/RetroTranslator

[VicVergil]

If I may ask, which graphics are not inserted yet, and how important they are?

[Tom]

That's a hard question to answer.

DougRPG has sent two graphics roms. The last one he sent had the end-game stuff, and the first one that he sent had graphics inserted up to the second nation in the game, but he said that he was going to redo some of his old work to make it conform to some new standard (since the first way that he was inserting before had some sort of issue). He said he was planning to "work backwards." So I have two graphics roms from him, some with certain graphics missing, and another with different graphics missing.

All of the graphics are important, but I suppose the most crucial graphics for the storyline would have to be located in the fourth nation in the game. Those aren't inserted in any of the versions he sent me, though he has pictures on his twitter account of those working in the game. He just never sent them.

The most important graphics to me (and to Cargodin, the packaging editor) would have to be some of the festival signs, and two signs in the third nation in the game, because I need to take English screenshots of those for the manual. (The English packaging and manual is complete, aside from four screenshots that currently show Japanese on the signs. I need those signs inserted so that I can take the last remaining pictures for the manual. It's the only thing stopping the manual from being fully ready for checking/release.)

Basically, once the graphics get hacked, the manual's done AND testing begins. It's just a matter of waiting until that happens. I've sent e-mails, but that's all I can do. Until there's progress with the graphics, my hands are tied, so I'm moving on to other projects.

[VicVergil]

Oh.  I should have known. Right till the very end, the one thing that caused the most problems for translation projects of this game has been the graphical compression. Well, at least the menus are translated now finally so that's a relief.

From what you described, even testing the game as it is right now isn't very wise considering the reinserted recompressed graphics might overwrite something in the game and cause problems. You can't do more than testing the text formatting at this rate :/

[mikeprado30]

What in Earth happened with DougRPG?  I'm really worried about him, cause also he has so many time without posting any update at Twitter 

I hope he's well.

[Tom]

Ghanmi: Originally, there were problems with the game due to the graphics, yes. (One shop's inventory got all screwed up.) But DDStranslation and DougRPG met up and established what caused it. I believe they settled on a solution, defined the parameters clearly so nothing would interfere with anything.

I think text typos and formatting are also important, so I considered starting testing for that alone, at least, and just let the testers play the game a second time when the graphics are done. (After all, proper testing deserves more than one playthrough.)

Mikeprado30: Personal life and work is definitely the reason. I'm sure he's busy. I just wish he could afford to spend even one hour in a week on this project, but it's not up to me. Most of my e-mails are going unanswered now, so whatever it is, it must be pretty serious, because at the start, he made brisk progress with extraction and insertion every day, sometimes multiple times a day.

[Panzer88]

@Tom I'll always be thankful for the work you've all done on this, I've been following it on multiple message boards for years and eagerly await when I can play it and understand the text. I'm also looking forward to future tengai makyo games, not necessarily from you but eventually. I've started learning some Japanese myself. Thanks for the hard work you've done. There are so many unknown gems out there. I love the games from Pandora's Box like Arabian Nights that I hadn't heard of or played until I did in 2013 and absolutely loved it. It made me feel like it was 1995 again and was truly magical. I'm sure people also feel like this about books, it's an incredible experience and something I cherish when I'm fortunate enough to experience.

[Tom]

You're welcome, I guess! I just wish you could play it! (It feels kind of odd to say "you're welcome" when I haven't given anything yet.)

Earlier today, I got an e-mail from Doug that said he's working on it and he'll send progress later. We'll see if that's true. I really want something to be done this weekend. Even if it's just the festival graphics being integrated, so the manual can be completed.

The last three graphics should be easy to reach. I've sent detailed explanations, save files, save states, to no avail. I hope it gets done. At this point, I don't know what else to do but wait.

[mikeprado30]

Well, those are good news, Tom.  I trust he'll be reaching soon the rest of the work.  He did a great advancement and surely he'll finish his part 

[Panzer88]

We are coming in the home stretch now. I can understand Tom's eagerness / anxiousness to get to the finish line as he has put so much work and time into this. I'm eager also but after waiting this long am content be patient just a little longer as these things take time and everyone is working on this for free. We really owe you all a large debt of gratitude. Godspeed!