Zill O'll infinite plus english translation

[Mugi]

I can do a bug report about it on ppsspp forums but that's practically what i can do to it. I've already went through tons of settings configurations trying to get it to work but what i wrote on the above post is more or less what it is.

I know it would make things easier but i really have enough work hacking the game itself already and trying to debug the emulator on top of that isn't going to help me get it done.
I'll contact the devs though, and see what they have to say.

[SCO]

I opened a bug report:
https://github.com/hrydgard/ppsspp/issues/9574

the color issue is (probably) a known issue with a possible workaround, but for the black screen, they need someone with the game willing to help debug to step forward.

If the black screen exists on the original game on ppsspp ofc, not the translated version only

It shouldn't be too hard to find one volunteer with the game willing even if Mugi doesn't have the time.

[Mugi]

I opened a bug report:
https://github.com/hrydgard/ppsspp/issues/9574

the color issue is (probably) a known issue with a possible workaround, but for the black screen, they need someone with the game willing to help debug to step forward.

If the black screen exists on the original game on ppsspp ofc, not the translated version only

It shouldn't be too hard to find one volunteer with the game willing even if Mugi doesn't have the time.

it blackscreens on both versions, and the workaround for the color glow is to set the rendering mode to unbuffered, which then breaks the save/load menu.

i can provide a save file right where the blackscreening can be replicated if need be.

[Tom]

I couldn't find a "Vulcan" option, but I found a Direct3D9 option, and that seemed to prevent the game from going solid black, even with bats on the screen. (Or maybe I just got lucky. Even without the option set, sometimes I would get lucky...)

By the way, here's a video showing part of one of the intros to the game, with the current WIP English script. The recording is not exactly high quality, but it should be exciting to see the game running in English nonetheless.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHf_4_ryy-A

[Mugi]

i recorded a clip demonstrating the bug using openGL as rendering backend.

the video has no audio in it to show, but the game does continue running normally after the battle, it will simply stay permanently blackscreened though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFC35rkJSC4

with vulcan, this entire blinking/blackscreening simply doesnt happen, only noticeable thing is that when encountering "little vampire" the character and the enemy models momentarily blink, and after that it works as intented (no flickering happens during the battle, only on the field.)

edit: okay, i tested it a little more and with D3D9 like tom said, the blackscreening doesnt seem to happen (or if it does it's significanly more rare occasions, i only tested twice.) but it appears to cause all sorts of other graphical issues such as attack effects on battle not working correcly (not gamebreaking but looks retarded.) and the whole screen distortion that makes the font look like crap and such.

on D3D11, the blackscreening also doesnt happen, instead encountering a little vampire simply crashes the ppsspp completely causing it to close itself.


i read the bug report that SCO issued, and there was a suggestion that the glow is caused by using too high rendering resolutions, which is not the case because i NEVER run the emulator in any other mode aside 1x scaling, 1x window size, and all postprocessing disabled. for development purposes it is essential to me that the game looks exactly like it does on real hardware during tests.

[Tom]

There's a workaround for the artifacts caused by D3D9, though.

Hit F11 to swap in/out of full screen. Seems to clear any artifacts right up.

[Mugi]

There's a workaround for the artifacts caused by D3D9, though.

Hit F11 to swap in/out of full screen. Seems to clear any artifacts right up.

appears to work..... until you go to the next screen and have the game redraw a lovely glow on the bottom and right of the screen again

now, the problem i have with D3D9 is basically this.



what really needs to get solved is the fact that the save/load menu isnt working with unbuffered rendering because using it solves majority of the issues the game has right there.

also, on an unrelated note, I have planned things for this patch if and when it once upon a time is complete/near completion, and one of those plans is to create an optional kit to replace the game's soundtrack with the original midi-goodness of the ps1 version.

as of couple days ago, i succesfully dumped 64 tracks out of the ps1 game and going through the audio container of the psp version, there is 130 files in it (each track twice, a full, and a short, looped copy) so as of now it appears that this will be possible to do too and i will convert a track or 2 to test it out sometime in the near future.

[Tom]

Would it also be possible to include the extended PS1 intro?

[Mugi]

Would it also be possible to include the extended PS1 intro?

it would, but seeing that the ps1 video resolution is a bit smaller it would propably look pretty goofy. Can try though.

Edit: just to let you guys know, since we started this now, im building myself a debug setup for ppsspp and will attempt to solve this along with the developers, hopefully in the future we'll see a fix applied that will make zill o'll fully functional with ppsspp.

naturally all this is off the development time of the patch itself, but i guess that cant be helped.
April 11, 2017, 10:45:15 AM - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)
Let there be light!

retro audio patch test, first implementation.

https://youtu.be/Db2DBBL_EGc

[Mugi]

AAAAAnd it's done!!!!!111oneeleven

after a week of crying and fighting with soundforge about loop points, all 60 tracks of the game have been patched to their ps1 equivalents!

This mod will be optional treat for those who wish to use it with the english patch when it once upon a time releases!

enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3I3WXw4vhLA

[Cargodin]

AAAAAnd it's done!!!!!111oneeleven

after a week of crying and fighting with soundforge about loop points, all 60 tracks of the game have been patched to their ps1 equivalents!

Wowza, that turned out super well! I sat down at one point and compared some of the tracks between the original and the port together and it's going to be so hard to just play one version of the game now. Thank you for doing this! 

[Mugi]

Well, the project is now officially cancelled.
Long story, which i cant be arsed to type out loud.

Thanks everyone for the attention and my sincere apologies for not completing it.

[Lentfilms]

Wow
Sorry to hear that the project is canceled and I hope that everything is okay.

[elmer]

Well, the project is now officially cancelled.
Long story, which i cant be arsed to type out loud.

Well, apart from the amusement of your choice-of-words making it sound like you're a fellow Brit ...

... I'm really sorry to hear that. I've enjoyed reading your posts in this thread and watching the progress.

Whatever has happened, I hope that you'll eventually choose to continue working on translations at some point in the future.

Thanks for all your work on this game!

[Tom]

It warrants some explanation -

I'm the reason he canceled the project, though Mugi, I'm not sure why you would cancel it outright. I believe you can find a different translator. Long story short, Mugi and I just had creative differences... Now here's the long version:

Mugi is the biggest fan of Zill O'll I know, but he has a much different vision for how Zill O'll should be. He prefers a translation to include stuff like honorifics, names spelled like the artbooks list them, characters referencing themselves in the third person... A straight translation, even if it comes off as odd. I'm of the exact opposite mentality. I try to smooth things out, change weird spellings, and drop any honorifics. It wasn't bound to go well.

I should clarify that most of these things weren't exactly deal-breakers to Mugi. He was trying to be flexible about it since he didn't have much choice; nobody else had offered to help in years... But I knew that if I continued working on it, it wouldn't provide him with the best possible experience. I don't feel that my work is the sort of quality that would mesh with his vision. I don't want to provide a translation that's "better than nothing." I wanted to make a translation that could be really appreciated.

It all came to a head when Mugi saw how I translated カルラ. I had written Karla, even though the instruction manual, artbooks, etc. all list her name as Karula in English. I thought it sounded too Engrishy, so I changed it. That's just how I work. I put natural English first. Mugi confided to me (not in malice, but in good faith) that this sort of loose attitude about spelling was cringey... It really depressed me.

He was willing to live with Karla, if I insisted upon it... But I would hate to imagine that Mugi, the biggest fan of Zill O'll, would be unhappy with my translation, so I wanted him to just find a translator with a more... "By the Books" attitude about translation. I am honestly surprised he would cancel the entire project outright, though. He asked me to delete all of the files related to the project. (He said that he doubts that I will - but I will, but first I would like him to clarify that still has the files. I don't want to delete them right now if they're the only working copy in existence.) I just think it'd be a crying shame to delete everything for such a trivial reason. I certainly hope that he himself hasn't deleted HIS files. It'd be a serious loss.

Even after I had made the decision to stop working on it, I still made the effort of pooling together the text I had done, doing one more edit, and then I sent it to Mugi (with the hopes that it could help him with the hacking and make a somewhat more enticing appeal to find a new translator). I had hope that this translation would be finished the way Mugi had intended. I really believe that he should uncancel the project.

[Bonesy]

so basically mugi wants tv-nihon-tachi tier translation? ugh

[rainponcho]

Wow.

All I can say from experience is: Yes, it's a fully believable story. What I refer to as "pure blood" fans. They live and breathe the material so it does hold much higher meaning for them than say a junkie novice like me.
(actually, I knew a Japanese translator who thought the way pretty much exactly how Mugi does; the project hacker, not being me, did not approve and atomic f-bombed it).


If there is small room for "negotiation" or "compromise", have two scripts? Mugi's official version - the series canonical and original intent. Faithful and untouched by outsiders.

And a completely separate unofficial unsupported add-on addendum patch that has Tom's script - modernized with creative liberties at play; maybe tools could privately be given to Tom to do this portion on his own. It's extra work but sometimes it's worth it or a "necessary evil" to others.

[Mugi]

errrr.... apparently the edit post button doesnt work as intended lol

so here's the post i wrote before it started screwing up at edits
----------------------------------------------

I told tom that the choice of how he wishes to translate the script is ultimately his, as he is the translator working on it, and merely offered my point of view on the matter, which (aside the fact that i really chose to use bad wording to bring it out.) was simply that. a point of view.

Yes, i dont like the idea of renaming karula to karla, she is one of the most iconic characters of the game, and I think her name should be kept as it is. I do point out at this point though, that counting together every single thing that was changed from how i initially laid it out, this particular one was the only thing i pointed out i did not agree with, and even so, I did tell Tom that if he still insists on changing it after hearing my opinion, then he simply should.

im not hung up on any specific style of how this game should be translated (or localized, or whatever you wish to call it) i simply have my own preference which ultimately tends to be very accurate, at the cost of being a little engrishy from some points (such as names.) you can call it weeabooism or call me an asshole over it all you want people, but that's how i like my games.

the misunderstanding here is mostly boiling down to the fact that apparently I managed to convince Tom that i wouldn't enjoy the way he writes things or that i'd just somehow consider it on "only better than nothing" which simply isn't true.

Either way, since Tom doesn't wish to continue it, then that's the end of the story. the project is dead.

I've spent enough time on this game already, and really dont feeling getting a 3rd round of false hope of getting to ever play it.
if someone wishes to continue, be my guest, but dont ask me to be involved in it.


the material regarding zill and it's hacking is still safe, im not masochistic enough to actually destroy that amount of work.
I'll decide what to do with it later on.
As of this moment we are still working on hacking the game with Binaryfail. The script engine still needs it's gender variable, and the game UI has a nice pile of bugs left on it.
afterall, hacking is what we do. That's what got me started to begin with.

but even if i do eventually reopen the project, it wont be in a while for sure.

[mikeprado30]

I hope this one would be reopened in a not far away future.

Thanks for all your work, guys! 

[Tom]

Rainponcho, I must say, that thought DID pop into my head at one point... After all, Mugi made a PS1 music option for the patch. Why not make other versions of the script? The problem is, making two versions of a script is not that easy... And I can't overstate the scale of the script. It's huge and very open-ended. It would essentially mean translating and formatting pretty much the entire game twice... Who would do that other version of the script? Me? It would be hard for somebody who doesn't know Japanese to do that appropriately.

If Karla/Karula was the only thing that really bothered Mugi (though I'm sure that there would have been other things that bothered him), here's what I would have done in his position... I would have just accepted the script, and secretly edited a separate version just for myself. Mugi said that he was working on the game for himself, not for other people... So I'm surprised he didn't just do that. I work on translations because I want to share the games I translate with the rest of the world... He could have let me do my thing, and he could have personally edited that version of the game to make his own version, while at the same time letting me share the version that I wanted to share with others. Seems like the best solution to me.

That said, it's hard to work on a project when you know that your work is making the biggest fan cringe. I also felt depressed and guilty when I saw that he had given up on the project because of me. I felt like I was caught between a rock and a hard place. When I decided to give up on the project, I did it with good intentions - to give him the chance to get the version of the script that he really wants... But then he started saying, if I don't do it, the project is dead... It felt like an odd ultimatum... "Either do it in a way that I don't like, or I won't do it at all."

But Mugi, I'm glad to hear that you're going to continue the hacking work. If you're still going to work on hacking it, then to me, that's saying it's not really canceled. And what a relief that is to hear! The work you've done on the game is absolutely beautiful. I don't see why you should not reopen the project immediately, because the sooner it gets worked on, the better.