Any Growlanser translation projects?

[weissvulf]

I noticed that someone translated the script for Growlanser PS1/PSP a few years back, yet I've never seen anyone even considering a translation project for the game. Did I miss a project somewhere? Or maybe there are technical difficulties on the hacking side, or is Growlanser just not that popular? I've never played Growlanser 1 through, but it looks quite impressive. 

[Mugi]

i dont know about the others but the psp growlanser (growlanser IV: Over reloaded)
was released in english as Growlanser Wayfarer of time. Not much point translating it i guess, unless the official release is THAT terrible.

[SCO]

He's talking about Growlanser I. It is actually the release without a english version out of 1, 2, 3 and 4.
1 came out on the psx and psp (not english), 2 and 3 were rereleased on the psx2 (english), 4 with a enhanced version on the psp (english). It's a similar situation to the the duology of persona 2 on the psp (though that's nearly as frustrating, considering the psx versions the missing game has a official translation and the other has a fan translation if you don't like the psp release).

[weissvulf]

Yeah  , it's one of those series where they changed the names for English releases so it gets confusing.

My understanding is this:
Growlanser 1: PS1,PSP ----- Japan only.
Growlanser 2: PS2 --------- USA as 'Generations' part 1
Growlanser 3: PS2 --------- USA as 'Generations' part 2
Growlanser 4: PS2,PSP ----- USA on PSP as 'Wayfarer of Time'
Growlanser 4 Return: PS2 -- Japan Only
Growlanser 5: PS2 --------- USA as 'Heritage of War'
Growlanser 6: PS2 --------- Japan only

Since 'Growlanser 4 Return' is more of an interactive novel, the main titles that never had an English release are 1 and 6. It's the first installment that has a translated script available.

In my experience, the translation is more than half the work. I'm amazed...has no one even looked into this project before?

[Lentfilms]

i dont know about the others but the psp growlanser (growlanser IV: Over reloaded)
was released in english as Growlanser Wayfarer of time. Not much point translating it i guess, unless the official release is THAT terrible.

There are two Growlanser games on the PSP, Wayfarer of Time is a port of the 4th game and was released by Atlus USA (and is very good imo) but weissvulf is talking about the first game that was never officially localized.
Personally I would love to see someone make a patch for the PSP version of Growlanser 1, even if it was a bare-bones release that just contained the translation from the guide made by Borgor. However, I think the guide is for the PSX version of the game and the PSP release contains new story content that would need to be translated.

[Mugi]

i could tke a look i guess but i kinda have 2 psp games on my belt already
taking apart psp games is not really rocket science but the extra crap that comes with properly done translations patches
(VWF, all the text alignment fixes, graphics, whatevers) eats tons of time.

i do remember i took a look at making an undub of the 4th one for psp, and if that game is anything to go by, taking the first one apart shouldn't be much of an effort per-se.

edit: i took a really quick peek of it, and the graphics are .bmp lol, that's not a particular challenge.
the data containers have nicely laid out tables (i swear i saw a nametable somewhere too) but cant really say from the insides until i take the containers apart. Judging from the fact that the game actually contains network modules on it (for god knows what purpose) there's a fairly high chance that the data inside the containers is encrypted (sony likes to require this for content with network capablities)

[Tom]

I'd be up for it after Zill O'll.

Gotta replace the lame PSP intro songs with the superior PS1 songs again too, though!

[Lentfilms]

I would be totally hyped to see you guys work on a Growlanser patch 

Also on the topic of opening videos, Atlus changed the intro animation for Wayfarer of the Time as well, although it was a completely new video instead of just a different song like 1. I always thought it didn't look as nice as the original PS2 opening, certainly not as colorful.

[Mugi]

restoring ps2 videos to psp is easy (they get cropped slightly with the whole aspect ratio thing.) it's far more work to restore ps1 stuff to psp x__x (did that for some stuff in zill )

im not making any form of promises of if i work on anything after uta and zill to be honest.
there is still magna carta portable, and now that they're releasing a remake of the first utawarerumono on vita, i might have to deal with decensoring and whatnot for that too... not to mention i still have to backport the script from uta2 and uta3 to ps3 (fuck you atlus for making it vita/ps4)

[Pennywise]

I recall at least one person attempting to hack Growlanser 1 for the PSX, but obviously they didn't get very far.

Other than that, I think my friend Esperknight might have poked around with the game and made some tools.

[weissvulf]

I recall at least one person attempting to hack Growlanser 1 for the PSX, but obviously they didn't get very far.
Other than that, I think my friend Esperknight might have poked around with the game and made some tools.

Maybe there are technical hurdles. Any chance you have a link to an old thread discussion etc?

there's a fairly high chance that the data inside the containers is encrypted

In such instances, do they usually encrypt everything or just key files/exe etc? Looking at the game in a hex editor, I see a lot of what appears to be non-compressed/non-encrypted image patterns - probably the bmps you mentioned.

I guess it's my personal preference, but I'm amazed that people put so much effort into re-translating and tweaking games that have had multiple English releases, while many gems like Growlanser go completely untranslated. I would rather open a new game-play experience to English speakers than rehash already available content. I've seen great games where you can literally just type English over the Japanese (already support ASCII VWF) that just sit there untranslated.

[mz]

I've seen great games where you can literally just type English over the Japanese (already support ASCII VWF) that just sit there untranslated.

Can you name some examples?

[Mugi]

as for examples, zill o'll is one of those.
the text is encoded into a single byte katakana, but the files support ascii as it is, and the psp version doesnt really contain any form of protections.

as such, that's not how translating a game really works. Sure you can simply just type english text over the japanese with a hex editor into the iso file directly, but if you leave it at that, the quality of the patch will be questionable at best.

i actually did this to zill o'll prior to taking it's filesystem apart to properly work on it, i made a menu translation patch that was literally made by typing english over the japanese on a hex editor into the iso. It was awful, unusable, unplayable, hideous piece of shit i should never have done.

even in the cases where you dont have to do a VWF hack or whatever, there are loads and loads of things that have to be done if you want to get anywhere near acceptable quality of a translated game.

in the case of zill o'll,
- a new font had to be made (the old was awful)
- variable for gender pronouns had to be programmed
- graphical texts had to be translated and redrawn
- menus need to be rearranged to fit english text strings
- the whole text centering routine will either have to be rewritten everywhere or simply ditched (possible in some cases, not in zill o'll)
- im not even starting with how many things i've had to relocate in the ram simply due to memory allocation problems.
the list is endless.

the amount of effort that HAS to be put into the actual code of the game instead of "just typing english over the japanese" is quite a lot of work.
if it was that easy we'd have a lot more games translated than we currently do.

since you said it's that easy, i'd like to see a list of games you have already finished, im expecting it to be quite long, since "it's that easy"

[SCO]

I would be totally hyped to see you guys work on a Growlanser patch 

Also on the topic of opening videos, Atlus changed the intro animation for Wayfarer of the Time as well, although it was a completely new video instead of just a different song like 1. I always thought it didn't look as nice as the original PS2 opening, certainly not as colorful.

They did that a lot with nominally 'enhanced' versions for some reason or other. Probably lost sources for the encoder?

Happens in the remakes of Mana Khemia 1 and 2 on the psp too i think. Speaking of that, Mana Khemia 2 is another 'japan-only enhanced psp game with a ps2 english version'.

edit: i think i remember the reason now, the psp remakes add a female protagonist. Same rationale as persona 3 where it would be ~troublesome~ to remake all the anime FMV so off to visual novel format they went. As it would be expensive to do more for a quick-cash grab, and would necessitate changing stuff anyway (either extra FMVs or have to change them anyway in order to not alienate people that are interested in the new path), they do the minimum of 'reimaginating' the necessary FMVs.

I once joked that Nanashi (the protagonist of SMTIV: Apocalypse) looks like a butch lesbian (one of those asymmetrical haircuts, earring) so they don't have to spend money if they decide to add a female path to the game in a new edition.

[weissvulf]

Can you name some examples?

Two off the top of my head are Hungry Ghosts and Shadow Tower Abyss. I believe I've only seen about 4 titles that seemed to be in this category- I didn't mean to suggest that is was a large number, just that there are some out there. More so in the PSP/PS2 era since SHIFT-JIS seems to have become much more common.

since you said it's that easy, i'd like to see a list of games you have already finished, im expecting it to be quite long, since "it's that easy"

I guess this was addressed to me?   A lot of games are as you describe, but some have built in auto-sizing for text boxes, or an 'always big' frame. That combined with artful translation can sometimes avoid the need for resizing hacks. The game I'm working on now (Asuncia) supported fixed width ASCII. I chose to install a couple variable width fonts to 'prettify' it, but so far I haven't needed to resize any text boxes.

Even if a game doesn't need any hacking, it still requires text translation so I wouldn't call the process 'easy'. My comment just meant that there are SOME 'easy to hack' games are out there. I think most people pick a game they like and rush head-first into translating it. If instead, they searched through Japanese titles for a nice game that required easy/no hacking, we'd see more finished projects.

[Mugi]

i guess so.
but you just make it sound too black and white really.
again, using zill o'll as an example, this game too, resizes it's texboxes per amount of text inserted in it, it also automatically stops for user input and moves to a new box after 3 lines of text. As such, aside cleaning up the box graphic itself, i never messed with it at all.

that however does not include menus. there's lots of menus, theres even more submenus, then there's shop menus, job menus, system menus, upgrade menus and all forms of other lovely menus, which are all void of this lovely autoresize, and are completely broken to hell (not only visually but in terms of code too, due to longer text inputs.)

even as such, another game i worked on, girlfriend of steel 2 for psp, has a static textbox which is at the bottom of the screen and you simply just fill it with text as you please, and the game's script is literally stored as txt files. so you take one, type text, and save. Done
this thing too stored portions of menu selection texts embedded into the code and had to be messed with the hard ways.

i'd be hardpressed to find a game that actually requires nothing else than typing text to produce a proper translation patch.
until i hold one in my hand (or harddrive) i refuse to believe it exists.

at any rate, i think it's pretty obvious that people work and/or try to work on games they like instead of just working on translating a game that they have zero or very minimal interest towards.
Im sure some people are masochistic like that but to be fair, i have better things to do than spend months and months working on translating games just to make other people happy about the fact that i chose to do it.

that is such the case with my own list too. Magna carta is there because the psp version has new content and some bugfixes compared to it's english big brother, along with the fact that the english audio in the ps2 version is terrible.

utawarerumono 2 and 3 on the other hand, are on my list mainly because why not. they represent the other end of the spectrum.
i could just play the ps4 versions, or the vita versions, and if need be just uncensor them and leave it at that, but i happen to own a japanese ps3 version of both, and it endlessly pisses me off that they chose to not localize those at all. Since i can, why would i not ?

at the end of the day, the choice is up to the persons making these patches to work on whatever they wish, they owe nothing to anyone and have no entitlements to work on games solely based on what people want them to work on.

[weissvulf]

I may be in the minority, but translating a game largely ruins it for me. There's no more mystery left. I know every plot path, every nuance. I certainly wouldn't spend months/years translating a game just for my own amusement. I absolutely do my work mainly for others to enjoy.

As such, I'd rather work on titles that never had an English release. Does changing 'pop' to 'beer' or swapping Alucard's sprite with Mario really add much enjoyment to a game?  I'm totally NOT trying to devalue anyone's work, just something I have a hard time understanding. I'm probably just too stupid to get it. I certainly don't think anyone should translate a game they don't like. I just keep finding titles like Grownlanser or Prisoner that look really good yet no one is touching them. 

[Mugi]

for me that's a 2-edged sword, since im completely with you on that one, translating a game WILL ruin it for you.
however... there's cases like what im doing with zill o'll here, the game has been released 3 times, no english release.
it's now 20 years old, and aside saito's attempt to patch the ps2 version there has not even been an attempt to do so.

what can i do, at the risk of having the fun ruined for me, i picked it up, because chances are it never will if i wont.

i could have just released the tools to hack it and sit back to wait, but i guess im too impatient for that.
my saving factor is that i dont translate the text myself, i just hack the game, and insert translated text, but even so, the amount of time
i spend messing with the game while running it using partially english content does take a lot away from eventually playing the finished product.

it's still better than never getting to play it i suppose

either way, getting this thread back on track.

what comes to the insides of growlanser, i really cant say this or that about the insides, im just going by past experience and gut feeling on it, coupled with the fact that i didnt see identifyable text in the files at a quick glance. i know that the filetables of the data containers are plain so the containers themselves are at most employing a compression on a per-file basis, but if you said you saw plain graphic data there, then that might not even be the case.
the lact of visible text for me could just be that it's using UTF-8 which my hex editor doesnt display correctly, or then the text files themselves are just using some kind of potato text encoding. They're hardly tough to figure out in most cases, it's just an extra nuisance.

[Tom]

restoring ps2 videos to psp is easy (they get cropped slightly with the whole aspect ratio thing.) it's far more work to restore ps1 stuff to psp x__x (did that for some stuff in zill )

The nice thing about Growlanser PSP is that the actual videos are unchanged from the PS1 version - all that they changed were the audio. So you wouldn't have to screw around with the aspect ratio, perse. It's just a matter of swapping out the audio behind the video.

[Mugi]

bleh, where's the challenge in that? x.x