[mariosmentor]

Was Hajime directly referenced in the Japanese game?

Sort of. He uses the alias "Lord Kim."

[Tom]

I like the idea of adapting the original DQ hero to face all four directions. Personally, I would love to see the original Japanese Dragon Quest redone, with all its shortcomings, to show the growth of the series from its original form.

You know, I was always baffled by one line in Dragon Warrior 1. A lady said: "No, I have no tomatoes. I have no tomatoes today." I wonder what the line originally said in Japanese, because it kinda came out of nowhere. Maybe one day I'll check, unless someone else here knows... Maybe mariosmentor knows?

[KingMike]

I have specifically checked that. It was the "puffpuff" line.

[Tom]

Thanks for explaining the tomato line! I had a feeling the line was censored.

Speaking of "puff puff," in Japanese, the word is closer to "honk honk." Pafu is the sound of those old horns (or squeaky clown noses).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4maIEWEnsE

This is why the honk-honk sound effect plays in Dragon Quest VIII whenever the skill is used.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTt2HTyQfBA

It's a funny coincidence that "honkers" is slang for boobs. "Puff" doesn't really have any particular innuendo to it, but I guess people like it for nostalgic reasons.

[Choppasmith]

There's a great video here detailing the different Puff Puff scenes and how they were censored/differ between versions including I-IV on the NES

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

[Chicken Knife]

Interesting stuff guys. I knew the word was pafu but I didn't know it exactly meant "honk." Makes it even funnier.

Anyway

I'm trying to think through what the letters QUEST should look like in the title screens. Luckily the first three games all use the same font and the fourth game uses a very simple design so that won't be a challenge. I do find myself struggling with how I should render the letters in QUEST to stylistically match the letters in DRAGON. I've looked through a ton of fonts today and can't find anything equivalent. Since there are about ten million fonts out there, do you guys know of anything that would come close to work off of?

[Choppasmith]

I keep trying to find a font that might be similar to what they use for I-III, but I just can't find anything. I figure there's GOT to be something out there because NP's Startegy Guide seems to use the same font (just a bold thick version of it)

[Chicken Knife]

Maybe the NP artists were excellent copyists? Who knows.

I've been toying around with a design that mimics it, along with nagging an artist friend for help.

Question:

Should we try to make the T look like a sword?

[mariosmentor]

If a swordy T is easy enough to hack in, then by all means, go for it!

[Choppasmith]

Okay good news is : I found the font thanks to Dwaine over at Dragon’s Den.

Bad news is: It’s an expensive “professional” font.

Silver lining: Use this preview page, type out DRAGON QUEST, and then screen cap the preview and use that as your base (make sure it's DT Bold and set the size to 50)

https://www.youworkforthem.com/font/T4717/rustikalis-dt/typetester/

Also, I was originally going to say not to try and make the T into a sword (I feared it would just draw too many comparisons to the real logo) but considering how the T looks here, I’d say go for it.

[Chicken Knife]

Did it. This was an absolutely tremendous help. The only letter design I anticipated correctly was Q.

Big thanks to both you and Dwaine at Dragon's Den. Probably tonight I'll start working on the pixel editing.

With the sword idea, I'm not sure we'd want to go for the angled view like in the Dragon Quest logos since the text doesn't curve. I was thinking of a more straight ahead view of the sword. The problem would be if I had to lower the cross of the T in order to make a stub that indicates the hilt. That might throw off the look and at that point I will just do the T like in this font.
September 06, 2018, 07:05:06 am - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)Also, since QUEST is two characters shorter than WARRIOR, I was thinking of replacing the last two letter spaces with II and III for the second and third games. For the first game, I would probably try to move the DRAGON text one character space to the right and replace the first character space with filler tiles. Good idea?
September 06, 2018, 08:00:32 pm - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)* Update

Guys, I discovered something quite unfortunate when I started work on editing the titles. While Dragon Warrior 2 has every letter in the title represented as a pixel tile so that I can edit them, Dragon Warrior 1 and 3 opted to save data space by duplicating both R's in WARRIOR from the same tile. This obviously presents a major problem for me. I don't know how to overcome it besides someone rewriting the code. This is probably one of the reasons we haven't seen this done already.

I checked the fourth game, and that is like DW2 in the sense that all letters are represented as separate tiles. Even though I could do these two, it simply won't be satisfactory to fix the titles of 2 and 4 but not 1 and 3.

I'm kinda heartbroken right now. 

* Update #2

Rather than sit around depressed, I threw myself into my other project of making the sprites in Dragon Warrior 1 look like those in Dragon Quest 1. It took me hours, but we now have a four direction Dragon Quest 1 hero! Check out the link below for a video of how it looks. I was particularly challenged getting the side view looking right but at this point I'm pretty happy.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/pp1rw43m9b4rnm9/IMG_1820.MOV?dl=0

As you can see, the hero has a tiny head compared to the other NPCs walking around. The heads in early Dragon Quest got bigger with each iteration and since these sprites were designed after DQ3, they clearly don't match the original hero. For a cohesive look, I'm going to have to do this kind of work with all the sprites. Luckily there aren't very many of them.

[Choppasmith]

Also, since QUEST is two characters shorter than WARRIOR, I was thinking of replacing the last two letter spaces with II and III for the second and third games. For the first game, I would probably try to move the DRAGON text one character space to the right and replace the first character space with filler tiles. Good idea?

I had the same idea for II and III too. For the first game I thought starting at the end of Warrior and replacing it with Quest starting at the first R would probably space it out, but would stay centered overall while starting at the beginning of Warrior and dropping the or would make the title look off center.

As for your title screen woes I would talk to abw, he's graciously helped me out in my work for DW1 AND he translated DW into Latin recently with a new title screen to boot! So he'd likely have a good idea on how to fix your title screen woes.

http://www.romhacking.net/translations/3766/

[abw]

Guys, I discovered something quite unfortunate when I started work on editing the titles. While Dragon Warrior 2 has every letter in the title represented as a pixel tile so that I can edit them, Dragon Warrior 1 and 3 opted to save data space by duplicating both R's in WARRIOR from the same tile. This obviously presents a major problem for me. I don't know how to overcome it besides someone rewriting the code. This is probably one of the reasons we haven't seen this done already.

If you're interested in updating the title screen tilemap, I think this post might have what you're looking for .

You know, I was always baffled by one line in Dragon Warrior 1. A lady said: "No, I have no tomatoes. I have no tomatoes today." I wonder what the line originally said in Japanese, because it kinda came out of nowhere.

I have specifically checked that. It was the "puffpuff" line.

Did you also happen to check on the other produce-related line: "Come buy my radishes! They are fresh and cheap. Buy thy radishes today!"? That line's a little bit hilarious, but it also kinda came out of nowhere.

[Chicken Knife]

@choppasmith, thank you for your continuous resourcefulness! I'm honored to have your help on this project.

@abw, thank you for that link! I'm really an infant to romhacking and have only recently done work with drawing and importing tiles. I haven't touched hex editing, repointing, or any of that for which I barely have the vocabulary to describe. So obviously I don't know what to do with the code you isolated to fix my title screen issue.  I plan on learning this all slowly and am grateful to be able to come back to the solution here when I'm ready to understand it. If anyone should desire to implement this in the mean time, I would be delighted to start drawing away. 

[mariosmentor]

Did you also happen to check on the other produce-related line: "Come buy my radishes! They are fresh and cheap. Buy thy radishes today!"? That line's a little bit hilarious, but it also kinda came out of nowhere.

Surprisingly, he's also selling radishes in the JP version. That's just part of the charm behind Dragon Quest; some NPCs just say the most random things.

[Chicken Knife]

Ok, I finished all the frames for the Japanese style DQ1 hero in 4 directions, including the sword and shield animations. I made the decision to show the animated sword and shield together when facing left, which the US sprite does not do. I felt this was necessary based on how the sword motion operates in the Japanese animation. This only causes a problem if the player were to buy a shield before a weapon, resulting in a sword animation when walking left. But really, who ever buys the shield before a weapon? I think the compromise is worthwhile. Take a look. Apologies again for the phone based video. I need to start doing these properly.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/kdnblrjiwapjavk/IMG_1825.MOV?dl=0

I was thinking about the comment Tom made about how the hero should be 4 direction and all the other sprites be original Japanese style. I've heard something like that from others as well. I think I could fairly easily import the two frames of animation from DQJ onto *all* of the US DW townspeople frames, effectively making them slide around like their Japanese counterparts. This would certainly be the purist approach, would minimize my non-native graphics and show closer to the full extent of progress in the series. I might as well just remove the coastline too, I suppose. I also may need to remove the trumpets in the end sequence because the soldiers will be facing forward. As always, let me know any thoughts or ideas.

[abw]

@Chicken Knife: Ah, sorry, I guess I should have added some more explanation. What you have in that post is an Atlas insert script for the title screen data. Most of the title screen is graphics tile IDs and control codes rather than text, so most of the script is operating on bytes (e.g. <$F7>) rather than text. You'll want to look at the "speckled background with DRAGON WARRIOR graphics" section; the bytes there correspond to the tiles available in the PPU viewer while the title screen is being displayed, so $A9 - $AC are the tile IDs for the speckled background, and $74 - $A8 are the tile IDs for the "DRAGON WARRIOR" graphics. If you look closely, you'll see that tiles $85, $86, $9E, and $9F appear twice in the data; those are the top and bottom tiles for the first two "R"s in "WARRIOR". If you change those values to something else, you'll get different tiles displayed instead of the "R".

So, as long as you can redraw the logo to use no more than 53 different 8x8 tiles, you can edit the graphics in the ROM and then update the tilemap to arrange those graphics on the title screen however you like.

Surprisingly, he's also selling radishes in the JP version. That's just part of the charm behind Dragon Quest; some NPCs just say the most random things.

Ha ha, so true. Thanks for checking! With entire towns getting destroyed and the countryside being overrun by the Dragonlord's minions, it's a wonder anybody is able to farm anything at all .

[Chicken Knife]

@ABW, I think I can almost understand those instructions. I'm gonna come back to work on this soon with a fresh, clear head. I really appreciate you taking the time to give these details. Warning in advance, I may be coming back to you repeatedly.

I posted a link for my DW1 graphical patch on the first post on this thread. I'm going to keep all the patches on that first post up to date from now on and not post them elsewhere.

What I did for DW one includes the following:

* Fully animated four way rendition of Japanese DQ1 hero, including 4 direction frames for carrying Gwaelin/Laura. Side walking frames have been slightly tweaked since the video I posted.

*Coastline removed; coastal water tiles now look identical to the Japanese game.

* All other NPC sprites have been reverted to their original forward facing Japanese sprites. While most were fully restored, some conservative edits were necessary to work around the mirrored tile issues that have continued to plague me. Examples include having to remove swords and spears from the soldier types or making the head of the wizard symmetrical. I plan on returning to this for a 100% restoration when my hacking skills improve, but in the mean time I am pleased with the aesthetic and will personally be playing the game in this manner. I promise that all my edits fit in well with the original DQ look.

September 15, 2018, 10:36:49 am - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)Wanted to give a quick update.

Progress has slowed down considerably because I've been spending a lot of time learning how to hex edit and deal with pointers, etc. Shoutout to Choppasmith for passing along a lot of really helpful info.

In the meantime, I've put sleepy's DW text editor to good use and worked through a major script overhaul. My initial thing was just to remove the medieval language with something simple and contemporary. As I went through it to bring certain dialogue closer to the Japanese, I spent a lot of time referencing x_loto's translation faq on gamefaqs.com, as well as fielding a few questions to a Japanese friend of mine. The theme I found was that the original Dragon Warrior translation was pretty literal in most cases, and it was kinda obvious most of the time when things were changed. In the case of most of the obviously localized names like Nester, Wynn, Howard etc I reverted back to the Japanese. If they were on the shorter side, I did a straight conversion like Nester --> Lord Kim. In a couple cases where a name seemed a little long Wynn --> Yoshiriin I just shortened it to Yoshi. I wanted to keep everything easily readable.

I have a couple questions for you guys:

I can't decide what to do with a line in Mercado/Cantlin

"Let's exchange my "Portopia" for your "Dragon Quest"

Portopia was another square enix game in Japan apparently so we've got a cultural reference most readers wouldn't understand. What do you guys think I should do with that line? I really don't want to make a cultural reference here but I could say something like "Let's exchange my copy of Final Fantasy for your Dragon Quest.

Also, as I have been pouring over the text, curiously I don't see any references to the name of the overall land in the Japanese. (Alfegard in Dragon Warrior version). Was there a name of the land? Maybe I have to dig into the Dragon Warrior 2 text to determine it but I'm curious if you guys know.

So in summary, I should have a version up with the new script once I finish editing and re-pointering (a word?) item and monster names to the degree that I need. I'm also feeling like I'll know enough after this to go back to the graphic tiles and completely restore the Japanse sprite models, doing away with my own edits except for the 4 direction hero.

[Choppasmith]

It's Alefgard in Japanese too, it's just the town names that are different.

Note, while you and I are doing different takes on the script. The girl in Rimuldar with the tomatoes line was the original "Puff Puff" line. In the original you could pay 20 coins for a puff puff, since that would require programming I took a cue from DQ Builders which has the SAME NPC (though it's based on the SFC remake/mobile version where she's in Kol instead) where she's in in flashback form and added in an implied decline from the Hero (it's mostly the same dialog from the mobile script too).

https://youtu.be/cbAPvWZhH0c?t=61

EDIT: If you know Japanese, would you like a rip of the Mobile script? I have that too (just beware they really shuffle things up in the remake).

[Cavery210]

I have a couple questions for you guys:

I can't decide what to do with a line in Mercado/Cantlin

"Let's exchange my "Portopia" for your "Dragon Quest"

Portopia was another square enix game in Japan apparently so we've got a cultural reference most readers wouldn't understand. What do you guys think I should do with that line? I really don't want to make a cultural reference here but I could say something like "Let's exchange my copy of Final Fantasy for your Dragon Quest.

Portopia was translated by DVD Translations, but I'm fine with localizing it. Just make sure it's another Enix game.

Also, will Ortega's sprite in Dragon Quest III be the Kandar pallet swap from the Japanese version, or the unique sprite from the English version?