Digimon: Tag Tamers translation (WS) (Download Link on 2nd Page!)

[USC]

Latest Updates (May 2020) in the bottom post
Prologue Video

Hey everyone! This is a project I've been working on and off for a *very* long time. It's basically tracked my improvement as a programmer - from knowing nothing, to now knowing slightly more than nothing. Now that I've strategically applied duct tape to an old editor I built entirely out of duct tape, I can once again work on this translation without corrupting the entire file!

This post is mostly to force me to finish the game this time, but I'm hoping for some useful feedback too if anyone can spare some.

What's been done so far?
-Storyline and Post-Game cutscenes
(Script provided to me long ago for this part, mostly)
-Digimon names
-Items and descriptions
-Attacks and descriptions
-Menus
-Battle and System text
-Dungeon and Village NPCs
-Graphic Compression/Decompression algorithm
-Credits
-DigiCode hints
-WonderWave instructions
-Digimon Bios


What's left to do?
-Credits
-DigiCode hints*
House A & B dialogue, the last of the NPCs
Shop dialogue
-Compressed Graphics: 95%
(Just the title screen)
-Digimon Bios: 100%
-WonderWave and link cable specific text

*Translated but not yet put into the game


How can I help?
Aww, thanks for asking!

1. Recommend a good beginners tutorial on debuggers and breakpoints!
--There's a few issues with formatting that I need to fix, and I don't know where to look in the file. I've heard Mednafen has a good WonderSwan debugger, so I'm hoping I can learn how to use it to solve the problems. If you're curious...

Spoiler

This picture highlights the two biggest issues.

I need to move Digimon names further to the left to fit on-screen (since the longest one is now 16 characters as opposed to 10 in the JPN version). Also, it looks like the data storage is hard-coded to start at certain points, so it overwrites the longer English works. E.g. The start of the HP data is overwriting the last part of "Vacc.", and "Mega" is overwriting the last part of "Magnadramon". Different status screens have different text cut-off points, so I assume there's a definition somewhere in the ROM that I could hex edit to shift the write points over.

[close]

[NH579]

I'm so excited someone is actually translating this!

As for feedback, is there any chance you would be willing to use the Japanese character names instead of the ones from the English anime dubs.
Some of those names are themselves bad translations Saban did back in the 90s and some like Magnadramon (instead of Holydramon) are censored.
It's a small thing, but it's always really bugged me.

Good luck with the project regardless!

[USC]

@NH579: I knew this question was coming. Short Answer: Dub translation will come out first, then original names maybe.
(I use to have a separate file with JPN names and altered dialogue to fit the 18 character line limits (E.g. Taichi is longer than Tai), but it got corrupted and I don't have a recent back-up of it. Once I've released the dub version, I'll try to go back and make an edit with the original names.)

As for current progress, I've started working on the Digimon Bios and the last of the NPC dialogues in House A and House B:

There are 229 Digimon in-game and I've done... 4 bios so far? This'll take a bit.

[Lazermutt4]

The logo could use some work. I think I found a better logo to trace here:
https://fanart.tv/series/72241/digimon-digital-monsters/
(First entry, second row, the one that says "Digimon Adventure 02", just click "Download", no account needed)

I also made a mockup to expand the shield frame in the logo which should help fit the English text in better.

Feel free to use it or not

[USC]

@Lazermutt4: Wow, that's an exact fit for the Japanese title screen - thanks! I'll reach out to the original artist to see if it's cool to use it, but it looks great. Now to start tracing...

Oh, and here's the first screen from the credits that I've starting adding in:


Not the most exciting screenshot, but it actually causes a fun glitch. I'm debating solving it the proper way versus the cop-out way - we'll see which one wins out.
Explanation:

Spoiler

The game has a "DigiCode" font that correlates with the cut-scene font (so the hiragana 'a' matches the Digicode 'a', and so forth). There's a built in English font, but its hex values are larger than the DigiCode font's limit, so it produces garbage output. The credits start as DigiCode and then fades to English, so the first few seconds of the credits display static. The proper way to fix it would be to change the offset so it maps to the English font... OR I could just overwrite the hiragana with English and have the credit font point to that instead of the standard font.

[close]

[USC]

It's been a busy few months for me, but I've got some time over the holidays to get back to work on this.
At the moment I'm plugging away at the Digimon Analyzer Bios, and the fusion messages from Digitamamon (which fortunately is usually the same message with the Digimon's name changed out, so it's tedious but easy).

I also had a brief flashed of insight and hacked a save state so I could add Gold BITs to my file. These could only be earned via Link-Cable battles, making them rather difficult to get now. Here are some screenshots from the stores that only accept Gold BITs as money:
   

Interesting note: The game allocates four bytes to store the value, but only displays up to 999 when the store owner tells you your total. I wonder if that was the limit in the actual game (outside of save state hacking).

[Iredc]

I started working on the Brave Tamer game recently (translated up to the first boss, attacks, some items and the like...). It's awesome to find now that you're working on this game and have almost finished!!
I dont know if it will be useful for you at this point, but theres a German translation of Tag Tamers: http://www.snes-projects.de/filebase/index.php?page=Entry&entryID=486

Theres also this debugging tutorial which I found moderately easy (though I havent accomplished much yet in the debugging department):https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BHYjxsDROn4

By the way, how did you translate the menus text? At least in Brave Tamer they're nowhere to be found. Guess its in compressed images?

Anyway, good luck with this project! 

[USC]

Iredc: Hey, thanks for the links! Yeah, the German translation has been around for a while, and it only covers the intro and some miscellaneous graphics and text. You can understand the battles, but that's about it.

I dug through Brave Tamers at one point, and I think it's the same as Tag and D1 Tamers: Uncompressed graphics followed by an image map, so it knows what order to put the text in. I believe if you open up a graphics editor that supports WonderSwan Color (or Sega Master System/Game Gear, which has the same encoding) and look starting at 20282, you'll find your menus.

Good luck on Brave Tamer as well!

[Iredc]

You were right about the graphics. The menu text was at offset 20200. Its just that it looks quite displaced and unintelligible, so I missed it.
Thank you very much! This saved me a big headache.

[USC]

Iredc: Glad I could help. Let me know if I can provide any other information.

In Tag Tamer news, I've finally finished all 228 Digimon Bio translations and inserted them into the game!
At this point, I just need to finish the last of the Digimon House conversations, created and insert the English title screen, and try to figure out a few display issues and it'll be good to go. Here's hoping.

[USC]

It's been a long time since I've worked on this, but some recent emails for people still interested in the translation have spurred me to pick up Tag Tamers again. I've just finished translating the last Digimon House conversations - to celebrate, I recorded a video of the "prologue" of the game:

Video Link for Prologue

(There's also some short footage demoing basic gameplay from later in the game)

I've upgraded my tools to use the ROM's tilemap to export the compressed backgrounds as actual images, let me edit the entire scene, then import it back and fix the tilemap accordingly. This will allow me to finally translate the title screen (artistic ability aside):


Beyond that, I still need to figure out how to move some of the sprites and change the overwrite limits on some screens to accommodate the longer English names. This is the last major block to release - I'm in the process of mapping out the ROM based on what I already know, so I can narrow down the search space.

[Lazermutt4]

Seeing this thread alive again got me to finally finish up my take on the main logo from like 2 years ago.
Feel free to use or tweak to your liking. Or don't.

[julayla]

Great. To be honest, I wanted to play the translation of the Digimon Wonderswan games for a long time (even though the games have some plot holes from the Anime).

[USC]

Lazermutt4: Wow, that looks great! I actually found out there's an "official" English logo for Season 2 from Toei Animation: http://www.toei-animation-usa.com/images/digimon/TV/digimonAdventure2Logo.jpg

I'm in the process of trying to recreate that graphic for the WonderSwan. If it doesn't end up looking as good as yours, I'll likely end up stealing your work (with credit of course).

julayla: Cool, I'm glad you're interested in the project! I'm hoping to have it finished by the end of summer if not sooner. The main hold-up is the display issues, but I think I'm starting to make headway on those.

[Zdagger67]

great, i just waiting for release your tag tamer translation.
also here a mockup

[USC]

Zdagger67: Nice job with the D-1 Tamers logo! Are you working on that game? I'd been debating (after I finish Tag Tamers) converting my duct-taped program to a clean multi-tool that would allow the translation of all six Ryo-focused Digimon games (Anode/Cathode/Veedramon editions, Tag Tamers, D-1 Tamers, and Brave Tamers).

I'm making some progress on the display issues - I thought the text was sprites, but it's actually foreground tiles that are arranged on a dynamically generated tile map. I can now fix a screen in a save state or memory, but I'm still working on changing the code to do this automatically. At least at the moment, it seems like if I can change a few limits and offsets for the coordinates and memory offsets, the existing engine will work fine.
I may try posting in the help forums and see if anyone can give me some suggestions about how to move forward.

[USC]

Updates:

• Video of layout changes and display fixes
• First 10 Minutes of Storyline

I've finally learned how to use a debugger and fixed many of the problems I created by changing the Digimon names from 10 letters max to 16 letters.

For a side by side comparison of one of the screens:

Original Japanese Screen	Translation	Translation - Cleaned Up

I've also fixed the DigiCode so that it works properly with English letters (it converts from the regular font to the DigiCode using a switch statement in the code, which I'd always suspected but never had a way to confirm).

Question: I have one layout that I know *how* to fix in code, but I'm not sure the best way to do so:


The names under "Dad" and "Mom" can be up to 16 letters long. I can fix the display so they're loaded properly, but I don't know what the layout should look like so everything's on screen. I can move things around as needed. Thoughts? Worst case, I'll fix the display so it loads, and just accept that anything over 12 letters will be cut off.

[ProstatePunch]

Wonderswan love <3 <3 <3

Keep up the good work.

[stratoform]

Oh, that is so much nicer to look at! And still easy to understand quickly. Great work with your starting debugger knowledge!


With the creature bio, maybe ... wish I could draw a mock-up right now to test.
-- Big portrait goes top-right
-- Possible to squish like this on bottom rows? Take up the entire space?
   {Dad}{Class}
   {Mom}{Class}
-- Misc stuff = jigsaw puzzle play with it

[USC]

Stories8106: Thanks for the encouragement! The WonderSwan has a lot of good games but not much interest - hopefully more translations will help change that.

stratoform: I'm glad you liked the layout changes! I'm trying to keep as much of the original artwork visible as possible, but some design changes have to made since the constraints are different.

I think an "L" shaped pattern for the Digimon info like you suggest would work. The Digimon sprite would still cover the last 3-4 letters of longer Digimon names, but those cases will be fairly rare and I think it'll look better than just going off the screen. I'll work on some layouts and see what it looks like. Thanks for the comments!