Zill O'll infinite plus english translation

[Mugi]

I believe I've now achieved enough progress to warrant showing something, so time for a long ass post.
Those of you who happen to have heard of me know that I generally like to mind my own business and my own site is more of a personal archive than something people use to get project updates, but this game totally deserves the attention.

so here goes. Couple weeks back I returned to my unfinished junk folder and zill o'll was just sitting there, with the alpha menu translation patch I made for it few years back.
A machine translation of awful quality, incomplete in every possible way, and broken in more ways than I dare to count. Off to the bin it goes and rework is in place.

what's done?

- entire elf as far as text goes.
- majority of graphics (some have been redone, some imported from ps2 version)
- menu changes to unify the style (a crappy 16x16 texture stretched to hell and back was used for some menus, while others had a nice blue background. they all have a nice blue background now.)
- all playable character names translated, some NPC's such as inn, shopkeeps etc.
- all skill names translated, descriptions exist but not implemented yet.
- all menus, all submenus and battle menu translated.
- basic equipment names translated.
- font completely remade (I implemented 9px tahoma into the game. Not only it is very compact to allow longer strings, it looks pretty good.)
- character portraits have been remastered to an extend (still in progress, screenshots below)

tools:
complete filesystem access - CHECK
script dump/reinsert - CHECK
graphics dump to png<->reinsert - CHECK

ASM:
- majority of existing menu alignment issues caused by new strings are already sorted out.
- system modules have been patched to english text while maintaining the japanese button mapping (O=OK) to keep it consistent with gameplay.

todo:
- couple new stringbuffers for certain strings (screenshots below)
- main script translation.
- find a translator!

pictures:

title screen redone // character creator name input, patched for ASCII // shop labels in towns


general diaoluge box // Weapon shop // blacksmith gear upgrade window


Blacksmith gear rename, patched for ASCII // selling stuff // equipping stuff


gaining a new soul // 256 color full soul render imported from ps2 to replace the 16color ones // soul selection screen


Character status screen (smaller versions of souls seen here, also redone) // skill learning // magic screen


redone combat mode "strike first" // get stuff // get more stuff
combat graphics were redone despite
some of them already being in english
to maintain unified look across all graphics.


FAST BREAK!! // save/load patched to english // main menu.


jobs recruitment at guild office // info window at guild office // job details
the guild menus are one of the last things that still need work, in addition to some string replacement (information) some stings consisting of multiple variables like job descriptions
need to be worked out, and they also need some additional ASM work, since the currently existing stringbuffer is too small for the english strings.


here's what happens when you go past the buffer limit
depending on what missions you take, random text blinks on the screen, until you exit the menu and consequently make the game crash.
a fix for this is rather easy, but takes a bit of work to locate the relevant code, what we are gonna do is simply allocate a static location in the elf to be assigned as a new stringbuffer.
Identical hack was earlier performed on my utawarerumono portable translation project. the elf currently has roughly 2KB of available free space, which according to keikaku should be more than enough for everything I have to implement, and if not, a tool was written which allows psp executables to be disassembled to the ir core components and any section expanded at will was made, so no worries on that sector.



As for what comes to the character avatars and their reworking, generally, what I did was simply gave them a bit of contrast and saturation, along with slight color fixes to give them back the colors
that were washed out by a (very bad quality)conversion to 128-colors.
Exception to this is the hero/heroine portraits that got a bit larger rewqork to give them nice hair colors, and restore eyecolors that were lost.
then there's the lost cases, which I reimported back from ps2 version, but there is not much else i can do for them...
in both versions they are completely awful as far as quality goes, but atleast the ps2 versiosn had colors, whereas the psp versions were completely missing a palette.

psp original on the left
remastered on the right

hero






heroine






random characters




lost cases



tl;dr: hope you nejoyed the ride. I'm not a very talkative person, but I'll attempt to keep you guys up to date!

[aishsha]

Nice work, seriously Wish you all luck wth this one!

[Pennywise]

I love reading through all the work you've done on the game. I hope it inspires others to go to similar lengths.

Incidentally, since you hacked apart the ps2 version, does that mean you can translate that version as well?

[Digitsie]

I'm impressed, especially with the re-coloring/remastering.

Good luck!

[Mugi]

I love reading through all the work you've done on the game. I hope it inspires others to go to similar lengths.

Incidentally, since you hacked apart the ps2 version, does that mean you can translate that version as well?

technically, yes, in practice, not yet.
i currently have no desire for messing with it at least until i get all my existing projects out of the way, so tools were only made for unpacking the files.
however, reversing their functionality to add repack support should be doable.

the tools for the ps2 version along with the tools for the psp version and all existing documentation will be released once the project is complete, as usual with my projects, hoever i am willing to make an exception and spit out the ps2 data if someone has a genuine interest on actually working on the game.

the container format on the ps2 version is still incompletely documented though, while it is enough for extraction and rebuilding, the data contains a section of which's meaning i do not yet know. i believe it's a hashed data section to generate filenames (there is no plain nametable)

the script format is identical between to 2 versions so our text tool is indeed 100% compatible with the ps2 version.

the graphics tools were hastily made just for extraction, and are very incomplete, and incapable of correctly extracting some graphics without additional manual work.
the graphics tool does however contain the most crucial part of itself, the double swizzle protection of the data itself.

working out a 100% compatible tool is simply a matter of refining the tool's source code for all the required hoops.

[Burnt Lasagna]

Even though the PSP version added more content, this game always seemed more appealing as a PS2 game.

Regardless, this is the sauce! I'm glad this game is getting some attention.

[Tom]

I'm interested in helping with this translation. I actually own this version and the PS1 version, but not the PS2 version. I've beaten the PS3 prequel in Japanese, but I'm unfamiliar with how the names were officially translated. Does this hack aim to match up with the PS3 game's English terminology, or are you planning to do your own thing?

[Mugi]

to be completely honest with you, while i did play Trinity, it's been a while and i had kinda completely forgotten it's existence
it never actually occurred to me to use it as a reference. Now that you mentioned it, i will propably replay it and see how it compared to what i currently did.

in general, I dont actually care about the accuracy compared to trinity that much, as it's not directly related to the game itself, whiel some characters do appear in trinity, and it shares elements like the souls and whatnot. For example, I translated the races yesterday and the ones i was unsure about, were translated according to "what felt right."

as an example,

>> text offset = 0x574F
ORI_1541|ダルケニス
NEW_1541|Darkenith

was translated as Darkenis on a guide written by a player, and Darkenith on koei wiki. The text itself reads as "darukenisu" so both could be used, i just picked one im personally more comfortable with.
same hgoes for the lillbees, which is

>> text offset = 0x577E
ORI_1545|リルビー
NEW_1545|Lilbie

reads as "rirubi" and had various more and less acurate translations over the net, such as lillbee, lilbie, lilby, lilleby and all forms like that.

this kinda of things i would propably just leave to the discrection of the translator instead of getting my head over it as my japanese skills are not enough to argue about the accuracy of any of the translations i found for it. As a rule of thumb, if the translator argues that his translation is accurate while mismatching with the "canon" (in this case, trinity.) i would most likely end up using the translators version instead.

what's been done so far is sourced from the official site, artbooks, guide books, koei wiki, and various fan-written game guides combined with common sense and slight use of google translate.
the skills for example, are all listed in the wiki., menus and such were easy enough to translate using a machine translator combined to common sense and such.
Im full well aware that machine translations are the root of all evil so every single piece of text i was even the slightest bit unsure about, has been left untranlated, also, once a translator joins this project, i will first have the translator go though my notes of the executable, and the already translated message segment files. (the text editor was made in a way that the source txt files the translator works with, will always contain both the original japanese text and the translated engish text, so going back to do checks is easy.)
November 27, 2016, 06:35:07 AM - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)

I'm interested in helping with this translation. I actually own this version and the PS1 version, but not the PS2 version. I've beaten the PS3 prequel in Japanese, but I'm unfamiliar with how the names were officially translated. Does this hack aim to match up with the PS3 game's English terminology, or are you planning to do your own thing?

by all means, join my groups unofficially official irc channel #nothinghere @ irc.rizon.net or catch me from the RHDN official irc channel, and we'll talk!

[Tom]

I usually don't match my fan translations with official translations (since a fan translation isn't official anyway), so I'm glad to hear you're okay with doing something original... However, Trinity is directly linked to Zill O'll. In fact, it's a prequel. That's a fact that's a little easier to understand given the game's original Japanese title: Trinity: Zill O'll Zero. Removing the Zero in America was a good idea, since it was the first release in English.

It might be interesting to see how they translated the location names officially, though, as there aren't any English versions listed, at least not in the guidebook that I have for it. (My guide is for the PS1 version.) I am interested in translating it, by the way... I have a lot on my plate at the moment, but if there aren't any other offers, you could send the script my way. It can't put it at the top of my queue, but I might as well make the offer. Take it or leave it.

[Mugi]

I usually don't match my fan translations with official translations (since a fan translation isn't official anyway), so I'm glad to hear you're okay with doing something original... However, Trinity is directly linked to Zill O'll. In fact, it's a prequel. That's a fact that's a little easier to understand given the game's original Japanese title: Trinity: Zill O'll Zero. Removing the Zero in America was a good idea, since it was the first release in English.

It might be interesting to see how they translated the location names officially, though, as there aren't any English versions listed, at least not in the guidebook that I have for it. (My guide is for the PS1 version.) I am interested in translating it, by the way... I have a lot on my plate at the moment, but if there aren't any other offers, you could send the script my way. It can't put it at the top of my queue, but I might as well make the offer. Take it or leave it.

i've been waiting to play this game for 17 years now so you can bet your ass i'll take it !
it pisses me off to no end that no one ever picked this up despite having 2 (!) remakes, and never got an official localization either... always gotta do things myself lol
i will send you a PM with the elf data, and the entire script in a while, just need to do a clean dump first since the current extraction is full of derp i made while testing engine hacks.

[BlackDog61]

Nice project. I appreciate your attention to details.
You've mentioned a tool to handle main executable expansion - would you share more details? (I don't need it right now, but I like to keep up-to-date with my PSP stuff.)

One nitpick (sorry in advance): I see you have a VWF throughout the game... except for the title screen which you redesigned. Would you consider using it there too (for the light-blue Zill O'll at the front)?

Thanks for all your work!

[Tom]

Glad to be of service. It was surprising that they passed on Zill O'll after releasing the prequel. It would have been a real treat for people to play through the prequel and follow it straight up with the main entry.

Don't expect much in December, as I'll be heading off on vacation, but things should pick up in January when I return. (I like to work in big chunks rather than bit by bit.)

By the way, I agree with BlackDog61 that the title of the game looks a little too spaced out if left as-is. Moving the letters closer together might be better.

[Mugi]

Nice project. I appreciate your attention to details.
You've mentioned a tool to handle main executable expansion - would you share more details? (I don't need it right now, but I like to keep up-to-date with my PSP stuff.)

One nitpick (sorry in advance): I see you have a VWF throughout the game... except for the title screen which you redesigned. Would you consider using it there too (for the light-blue Zill O'll at the front)?

Thanks for all your work!

the title screen is as close to a perfect replica of the original as i could do, i simply redid the "push start button" and removed the japanese text from under the "ZILL O'LL INFINITE PLUS" since it said "zill o'll infinite plus" in japanese, and seemed kinda redundant to leave it there. im sorry to dissappoint you but the titlescreen stays as it is.

here's a comparison to the original:



as for the elf expansion, elfhax is a tool written by the programmer of our group, binaryfail. we designed it for the utawarerumono translation project wich required a massive 512KB expansion to fit all the new code and data into the elf. It more or less does what it says.




elfhax is currently not a public tool, but i have considered sharing it's source code once it's intented purpose (the translation of utawarerumono) is done.

[BlackDog61]

the title screen is as close to a perfect replica of the original as i could do, i simply redid the "push start button" and removed the japanese text from under the "ZILL O'LL INFINITE PLUS" since it said "zill o'll infinite plus" in japanese, and seemed kinda redundant to leave it there. im sorry to dissappoint you but the titlescreen stays as it is.

here's a comparison to the original:



as for the elf expansion, elfhax is a tool written by the programmer of our group, binaryfail. we designed it for the utawarerumono translation project wich required a massive 512KB expansion to fit all the new code and data into the elf. It more or less does what it says.

elfhax is currently not a public tool, but i have considered sharing it's source code once it's intented purpose (the translation of utawarerumono) is done.

Thanks for mentioning elfhax. I will keep my fingers crossed it makes it to public stage.

As for the logo, nice changes. You also enhanced the brightness of the "big Z". Allof these changes are welcome, in my opinion. Just to understand each other, we're only talking about bringing the blue text letters closer together - is that what you understood? (I understand it's a lot of work since all hidden pixels have to be redrawn. Like you had to do to remove the Japanese text. But I think it would benefit the screen.) Anyway, what you're already doing for the game is the more important part.

[Mugi]

i stored the remade title screen as a layered .psp so moving elements on it is not all that hard.
i can try and whip up an alternate version just to try it out but in all likelihood, i will propably leave it as it is anyway.




i didnt want to do unnecessary changes to the title screen and the logo as a whole despite my personal opinion of the whole "infinite plus" which i really dont like that much.
the original (ps2 version) title screen looked much nicer. Still though, it is what it is so I decided to replicate it anyway. If i am to start making more changes to it, I'll propably re design it completely though.


on another note, I was working a little more with the avatar images when i ran into this:

which i remastered into this:

however, it would appear that atleast this particular avatar  from the "lost cases" is actually not being used in the game, but instead just left there after it was redone to this:


im basing my assumption to a gameplay video from the ps2 version which shows this particular character, and while the portrait is the "new" nice looking one with the purple hair, the character model itself does indeed have a yellow hair. That's some nice news as those avatars are truly just horrible.

there are similarities between the other lost cases and some of the proper avatars too, i will post comparisons once im done working through all of the existing 115.
December 01, 2016, 09:18:58 AM - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)
It's funny that i always thought working on "normal" graphics was easier than it was to work on messing with those lovely pixelated little sprites because of pixels,
but oh well, this stuff is time consuming

im getting there, 56 out of 115 portraits have been "fixed", here's a few random picks:



along with that, some menu work was done and some graphics poked at that i already did, but seemed to slightly mess up during conversion back to 256 colors, so extra work was put on those.

amongst other things, there is a part that i've been trying to work on and could use a public opinion about.
Those of you who have worked on games containing a similar text, propably have an idea of how much of a pain in the ass they are in reality.

it's about the battle command string that appears at the bottom of the screen and prints out all used commands by party members and enemies.
The japanese word order being different from english, combined with the fact that this thing consists out of a pile of variables which are then thrown together in different configurations depending on the action taken.

so here's 2 possible ways i've came up with so far:


Type 1:

Spoiler

[close]

and
Type 2:

Spoiler

[close]

now, first things first, as the patch is still in early development, absolutely nothing is set in stone, and these are more or less just possibilities.

My personal preference from the two is the type 2 one that forms more sentence type of texts than the normal "action:" log, and with currently exising configurations, it works without any extra ASM hackery to add all kinds of little things to make it flow smooth (i do acknowledge that it's hardly perfect and has room for improvement though.)

the other one is also nice, but as it currently stands, it has several issues., first of all, it completely breaks the main menu attack entry, secondly, since it contains a variable of <playername> that ends with 's, some asm work would be needed to have it differentiate 's and s' for characters whose name ends in s. This is a hack im honestly unsure im capable of pulling off.

technical jargon aside, im more or less posting them up just to get a public opinion of which one would be the preferable way of displaying it.

[Mugi]

just a little heads up.

as far as the translation goes, as the previous posts in the thread reveal, Tom has agreed to work on the script starting at January or so,
so the project will hopefully start getting some real results starting from that.

meanwhile the graphics restoration is more or less complete now, all 115 avatar images have been remastered, and aside
few very minor pieces of graphics that i haven't done yet due to the fact that i cant test them in-game until i play that far, all the other
non-english graphics have been translated and redone when needed.
(some text graphics that were english in the japanese version of the game were redone to maintain unified look)

as far as the code side goes, some more fixes were made to text alignments and whatnots and character creator is more or less fully working now.
tons and tons more little things need adjusting but it's all cosmetic fixes, so aside the actual issue of the job system windows still being a mess, it's just about making it look pretty and getting the
script worked out.

i already finished the battle mode texts earlier but wasnt really happy with the font or the overall look, so i remade them.




inside the spoiler is all the 101 portraits used in game (i didnt include the lost cases as it was indicated that they are not used in-game)

Spoiler

[close]

as for what the portraits look compared to the originals in-game? quite good in my opinion, but everyone be their own judge.

[FlamePurge]

I like the new portraits you've done way better! And I like Type 2 better as a battle action recap text. It reads more naturally.

[Tom]

Your work here is stunning... I'll try to make a script worthy of the effort you've put into this.

[Mugi]

figured i'll write up just a quick update regarding the project and it's current status as it's practically been at silence ever since I started this thread.


here's the current situation:

1) engine hacking is about 80-90% complete (only a handful of issues need resolving exists, and none game breaking, more cosmetic)
2) Translation of actual game script / checking of existing translations has not started unlike previously stated

now for the reasoning, as some of you who actually read through the thread know, Tom has agreed to work on the script and initially assumed that he would start on it around january,
however, he has things to do other than my little project too, and has decided to give some more love to This particular project first.

since im never in a hurry personally, and firmly believing that Tom is the right man for the gigantic task this game's script is, the project is now sitting still until he sees fit to get on to it.

Unless the man himself has anything to add to this, that's about it for the moment.

the project is not dead and will not die, but at the same time it is not being rushed to completion either.  Zill O'll has sat in the library of untranslated awesomeness from 1999 or so, so i wont let a year or 2 ruin it now. Massive effort was put on the initial hacking work, and another set of massive effort will be put into the translation and QC of the patch. rest well those 2 fans this game has, one day™ we will get to play it <3

[Kallisto]

Honestly it is just nice to see both projects being worked on finally after all this time, better late than never..(though don't become vaporware! hehe).