Un-Worked Designs: Working Designs minus bullshit difficulty (Latest: Lunar 2)

[Reiska]

I'd love some more Working Designs to be restored before that though (despite that I have my own wishlist of games mangled in their balancing by their localizations I'd love to see fixed, like Thousand Arms, Brain Lord, Spike McFang, even the first Monster Land game...)

I had no idea Thousand Arms was fucked with, is it documented anywhere?

I do know Legend of Legaia's US release was made substantially harder, and would love a patch to revert that one.

[Tiny]

Voice redubs are doable considering this was amateur level voice acting back in the day, so I think anyone can pull that off if needed.

If the author is open to it, I'll be happy to contribute VA work - have done so before at a very private level and for work (training videos).

@Piotyr - It's me, Tiny! I heard you were messaging me on my old skype, I no longer use that since I'm in another company! Hope you see this since it was your post that spurred me to finally stop lurking and sign up (also because VA work )

[Supper]

Well, here's Alundra.

Alundra (PlayStation) -- patch v0 (2/9/17)

Should work, but hasn't been tested all the way through. Let me know if anything goes wrong, or if you can verify that the game is completable without issue.
Changes:

Spoiler

* All enemies have their stats restored to what they were in the Japanese version.
* The timing of the disappearing switch puzzle in Elene's dream has been reverted to its original, harder difficulty from the Japanese version.

[close]

Doing back-to-back runs of a game that takes me 30+ hours even with a walkthrough handy is more than I feel up to right now, so I haven't tested this all the way through. The changes here aren't very drastic, though, so I'm fairly confident (let's say Han Solo confident) it'll work. Report any issues and I'll fix them, etc. Also note that unlike previous patches, this one targets the BIN directly instead of requiring it to be split to ISO/WAV -- the patching procedure is basically the same, but check the readme for the updated instructions. All three English-language versions (USA 1.0, USA 1.1, and European) are supported.

About 95% of the time it took to do this hack was spent clearing the Japanese version and checking against a walkthrough to make sure I didn't miss any changes. Ultimately, the only alterations I had to make were a single fileswap and one (1) changed byte in another file, though there are a couple of things that I left as they were. Specifically, the default option on the title screen was changed from "Continue" to "New Game," and the text in the load menu was flagged as non-fast-forwardable. I have no idea why they did this, and I may fix it when I'm feeling more like digging through the game code, but since this doesn't directly impact the gameplay I'm not sweating it for now.

Thanks to Cebix for making the excellent psximager utilities, which made putting together this hack a lot easier.

Right now, I'm feeling strangely inclined to look at Cosmic Fantasy 2, but I do still need to tie up loose ends with Eternal Blue and get moving on Silver Star. We'll see what happens, I guess.

If the author is open to it, I'll be happy to contribute VA work - have done so before at a very private level and for work (training videos).

@Piotyr - It's me, Tiny! I heard you were messaging me on my old skype, I no longer use that since I'm in another company! Hope you see this since it was your post that spurred me to finally stop lurking and sign up (also because VA work )

Thanks, but I'm probably not going to go that road. The PCM files aren't compressed or anything, though, so it wouldn't be very difficult for anyone so inclined to replace the voice acting. (Speaking of which, I only recently found out about the new music WD inserted in the last dungeon of Eternal Blue. Probably not going to bother changing it back, since I've retained other music they added, and because I'm personally a big fan of Bill King's music. Even if the Alundra intro theme he did is supremely unfitting for the soundtrack.)

EDIT: I discovered that most bosses in Exile II were still giving out the EXP and Gold amounts from the US version, so I've made a new version of the patch that fixes the problem. Get it here: http://www.mediafire.com/file/bbn6q2hvydwqdbu/Exile+II+Un-Worked+Design+v1.zip

[KingMike]

I've pretty much decided not to play their translations anymore if WildBill was involved with it in any way, so no, not thankful.

Remembering they did Burning Heroes...
did they at least add a SNICKERS AURA item anywhere? 
(you'd have to be a pretty old and hardcore member to get that, I suppose)

[Midna]

Remembering they did Burning Heroes...
did they at least add a SNICKERS AURA item anywhere? 
(you'd have to be a pretty old and hardcore member to get that, I suppose)

and also it's the light that goku gives off in dragon ball z when he's about to fight and he turns all yellow and rocks float around him and he says uwaaaaaaaaaaaaa for five minutes and then that's when I say YEAH THAT'S GOKU NOW HE'S GONNA KICK SOME ASS NOW CAUSE OF HIS AURA and then I start jumping on my bed and throwing raisinets everywhere cause I love goku cause he can kick ass like that one time where that one alien guy almost killed him but then he said uwaaaaaaaaaaaaa no wait that was when he was almost killed what he really said was uwaaaaaaaaaaaaa and then he made an AURA and then the episode ended



but on the next episode he still had an AURA and rocks were floating and I was like YEAH YEAH and then he shot a beam at the alien guy and he said uwaaaaaaaaaaaaa and then the alien guy was all like OH SHIT and then the episode ended



but on the next episode goku was all like uwaaaaaaaaaaaaa cause of his AURA and then his beam hit the alien guy and he said uwaaaaaaaaaaaaa cause he got hit cause goku's beam was stronger cause of his AURA and then he died and I was all like YEAH YEAH TAKE THAT YOU ALIEN CAUSE GOKU'S THE MAN CAUSE HE KICKED YOUR ASS AND YOU'RE DEAD YOU SON OF A BITCH and then my mommy came in and spanked me so then I threw my raisinets at her and she spanked me again and took away my pokemon cards and it really SUCKS cause I beat up a lot of kids to get that deck and I could kick your ass at pokemon yeah YEAH cause pokemon rules I love koffing the best cause he's got a neat voice cause in the cartoon he says KOFFING and I laugh a lot and fall off my bed and kick and scream and break all my toys until my mommy spanks me cause koffing is so FUCKING funny when he says things and I have all the pokemon games even the stupid picture game but it got broke once when I didn't get my dragon ball z game cause I was at walmart and I said I WANT A DRAGON BALL Z GAME and my mommy said NO MAYBE NEXT TIME and then I stepped on her foot and said NOW BITCH and then she took me outside and spanked me and I was pissed off and I would have kicked her ass but I don't have an AURA so I told her I wished I was goku cause then she would buy me stuff cause I would make rocks float and I would fuck up her car like that and then my mommy's face turned red and she looked so dumb HA HA HA and she drove home and broke my pokemon game but I don't care cause it was the picture game the stupid bitch and then she came back to walmart cause she forgot to pick me up but it's okay since I bought a snickers with the change I found in the parking lot and I was like YEAH I LOVE SNICKERS YEAH YEAH and I tore it into pieces and threw it up in the air and said YEAH I'VE GOT A SNICKERS AURA but there weren't any rocks floating like what goku does so I took another snickers when no one was looking and was gonna use that too but then the first one was gone so I was like FUCK and then my mommy came and she had a goku action figure and said I'M SORRY I GOT UPSET and then I threw my snickers at her FACE.

I like how the readme for their Burning Heroes patch contains a very politely-worded statement that's equivalent to "if you don't like it then do it yourself lol" ("it" in this context possibly meaning inserting alt-right rants the original game writers never intended... Wildbill was involved with this patch, so it's not a huge stretch), like it's something trivial that can be easily done.

[Supper]

If anyone missed my earlier edit, I fixed a minor issue with the Exile II patch. Get the new version here.



Started work on The Silver Star. This game is a lot more primitive than Eternal Blue, which I guess is to be expected. It looks like it doesn't even have a proper scripting system, just chunks of raw 68000 code interspersed with string tables for each submap. I've set up some basic heuristic string detection, as you can see, but this game will most likely require a lot more manual work than Eternal Blue. It'll probably be a while before the patch is ready.

I've also found the enemy stats, which are mercifully in tables rather than being embedded in scripts like in the sequel. Amazingly, the enemies for the first few areas don't seem to have been touched at all, but that's not going to last since the final boss's HP got cranked up by 1000 points.

Aside from that, the Light Barrier's icon had a hexagram pattern changed to a triangle, and the amount of money you donate to shrines was raised from 10s to 100s. Who knows what else'll pop up once I've checked around more.

EDIT: Oh, and I don't know if anyone cares, but I've done writeups on specific changes made in the US versions for everything up to Exile II. Check them out if you're interested:

Lunar: Eternal Blue
Popful Mail
Vay
Exile
Exile II

[noneother]

Remembering they did Burning Heroes...
did they at least add a SNICKERS AURA item anywhere? 
(you'd have to be a pretty old and hardcore member to get that, I suppose)

Burning Heroes was a surprisingly bad game in itself so I didn't play it extensively. I went through one or two of the scenarios but don't remember anything about the translation. I do remember that readme having something in it about how the game would please people of "strong moral fiber" or whatever.

[SC]

Hey Supper, any chance you'd fix Alundra's spanish PAL version?

[Supper]

Hey Supper, any chance you'd fix Alundra's spanish PAL version?

Sure, it should be easy enough. I'll take a look at it (and the Italian version too, I guess) when I get a chance.

[VicVergil]

Sure, it should be easy enough. I'll take a look at it (and the Italian version too, I guess) when I get a chance.

Oh my, seems like each language got its separate disc. Sounds like a logistical nightmare 

Anyways, I have one more interesting example of a good game that was adversely affected by localisation changes: Breath of Fire 4. CUE translated it to Spanish and released the tools to unpack its archive format, but the links are dead and the tools probably lost as it has been a long while. The problem is that some spells are omitted (because the font choice is poor so text would overlap, hence they cut it) and that the cutscene changes omit and alter event scripting, not just text.
Also speaking of Capcom, all their games with PocketStation features disabled (they're often fully translated), and animal cruelty in Megaman Legends since it has associated dialogue changes with NPCs much later in the story that are just inaccessible as a result.

[Supper]

Oh, I should have figured it was a full FIGS conversion. Well, what's a couple extra discs? (other than a patch maintenance headache)

Making steady progress on The Silver Star. I've copied back most of the changed material from the Japanese version and begun the painful process of proofreading the script. I'm also trying to improve the English font to look neater, like I mentioned earlier, and figured I'd see if anyone else has any opinions on my first efforts.



Left is original, right is changed. As you can see, I've shrunk and moved up the capital letters by a pixel so that they have the same baseline as the lower case letters, and also tweaked the letters that looked most awkward to me to try to keep things proportionate. I think it's at least an improvement, though some letters still don't look quite right to me, such as lower case b, c, and d. This isn't my area of expertise; anyone else have any suggestions? In the interest of keeping consistent with the original, I'd prefer to tweak the existing font rather than drop in a new one entirely, though that is an option.

Here's the relevant portion of the full font: original and altered. I'll port this over to Eternal Blue whenever everything's settled (and I've gotten around to writing a compressor for its font format).

[Pennywise]

I don't know if you've considered or looked into it, but a proportional font with kerning would fix the font issues. Ultimately a fixed width font isn't going to be perfect or without some issue.

[Supper]

I don't know if you've considered or looked into it, but a proportional font with kerning would fix the font issues. Ultimately a fixed width font isn't going to be perfect or without some issue.

Not a bad thought, and the way the game buffers text would be fairly conducive to a VWF hack, but if it's just going to be the same old Working Designs script then it's not really worth the effort to me. Would be great for a proper retranslation project, though.

[FlamePurge]

I think the modified font looks fine. It's stylized and attractive.

[Pennywise]

Not a bad thought, and the way the game buffers text would be fairly conducive to a VWF hack, but if it's just going to be the same old Working Designs script then it's not really worth the effort to me. Would be great for a proper retranslation project, though.

That's a good point. I'm of the opinion that if you're going to go through the trouble of retranslating a game, you might as well go all out. That way there's no question as to what the better translation is.

[Asaki]

I think the font looks fine. It's going to "smudge up" a bit on real hardware anyway.

[thainferno305]

Ty homie I'm enjoying ur work -- This portion was removed by a moderator b/c it constituted "work begging" --

[FlamePurge]

I actually couldn't see the entire fonts when I clicked the Imgur links, so I made mirrors.

Before:

After:


Edit - Actually, I can see some very small problems with it.

- ! ? & . , are all going to need to be raised up by one pixel now, as is ¥ if you feel like it.
- You didn't touch the numbers. They'll need to be raised up to meet the lowercase letters' baselines as well.
- Your capital O looks funny at the bottom, like it's got a sharper edge than other letters. Compare it to the uppercase Q, for example. I made a mockup on what I think you should do with it, with the Q next to the O to compare.

[VicVergil]

Supper, before you consider doing any further work on fixing up the Lunar font, take a look at the font they used for Grandia's English PS1 version. It's practically the same, but with the kerning issues fixed. I'll see if I can rip it directly from that version in native resolution without scaling. Your font as it is is fine, well aside from the awful lower-case t.

Spoiler

[close]

Did you find the smaller 8x8 font used in the battle screen for names? I looked in the iso and couldn't find it, unlike the English/JP sets. And what was up with the removed subtitles in the animated cutscenes?

Also, you mentioned modifying the audio is possible in the Sega-CD Lunar games, but how? Information on modding old-school audio isn't exactly abundant online.

That's a good point. I'm of the opinion that if you're going to go through the trouble of retranslating a game, you might as well go all out. That way there's no question as to what the better translation is.

Well, it's technically not a retranslation.
Some of the more glaring annoyances in the text were fixed, but the edits were so far mostly concerned with gameplay aspects.

[Supper]

Supper, before you consider doing any further work on fixing up the Lunar font, take a look at the font they used for Grandia's English PS1 version. It's practically the same, but with the kerning issues fixed. I'll see if I can rip it directly from that version in native resolution without scaling.

Hah, I played Grandia years ago but never noticed that! That would be a nice solution, especially if the Grandia font is still 8x16. Thanks for taking a look, I appreciate it.

Did you find the smaller 8x8 font used in the battle screen for names? I looked in the iso and couldn't find it, unlike the English/JP sets. And what was up with the removed subtitles in the animated cutscenes?

I haven't actually looked for the small font, but it doesn't seem to be in 1bpp or uncompressed format, as you've found. I'll see if I can turn it up later.

I did check on the cutscenes, and the subtitles are basically hardcoded. They aren't formatted as text whatsoever; the game loads the characters it needs and directly writes the tilemaps in a vertical format. I experimented a little and I think that altering them is doable, but it'll take a lot of work. I probably won't bother with them, at least in the initial version of the patch.

Also, you mentioned modifying the audio is possible in the Sega-CD Lunar games, but how? Information on modding old-school audio isn't exactly abundant online.

Well, all I really meant was that the audio itself is uncompressed sign-and-magnitude PCM per the hardware requirements, and obviously you can overwrite that with whatever you want. I don't know how difficult it is to change the length of the data, but I know that in the case of Eternal Blue you can simply copy over the .PCM files from the Japanese version to the US one and it'll work fine. The .PCM files have some additional data in the header that might be loop points, etc., but I haven't looked into that at all.

- ! ? & . , are all going to need to be raised up by one pixel now, as is ¥ if you feel like it.
- You didn't touch the numbers. They'll need to be raised up to meet the lowercase letters' baselines as well.
- Your capital O looks funny at the bottom, like it's got a sharper edge than other letters. Compare it to the uppercase Q, for example. I made a mockup on what I think you should do with it, with the Q next to the O to compare.

Thanks for the mirrors -- didn't realize Imgur redirects direct image links to their own viewer (with its black background).

I worked on the font a bit more after posting that, so the numbers are already fixed. I thought the O was like that to begin with, but yeah, it looks like I c&p'd the wrong row -- fixed!

I tried moving up the punctuation marks earlier, but I think they look better where they are:



(original / shifted up)

Thanks for the help!

Gonna try to finish up with the script corrections tonight (15 maps to go), then fix the handful of remaining gameplay/graphics changes (turns out LunarNET knew a couple things I didn't). After that I'll do a quick test run through the game, and hopefully then it'll be good to go.