Dragon Quest Delocalized Projects

[Chicken Knife]

I would kill for this duder.

I got you. But probably years from now.

I'll run this by a friend of mine who is an English teacher. He's been a helpful resource with things like this.

Ok, had the discussion with my English teacher friend. The question of whether an article is required here comes down to whether hero is seen as a thing or a status in context of the use. The fact he is testing you and then rewarding you with this recognition (and staff) makes me lean toward seeing it as a status in this particular case.

[abw]

I thought I'd resurrect this thread for the purpose of gathering some input on the best approach to an issue that has been bothering me.

In a case like this usually I'd go with option #5 myself: don't worry about the potential problem too much until it becomes an actual problem. Or in other words, make all the script edits you want and then check how much space your new text takes up; if it's <= the original script size (possibly after adjusting the compression based on your new letter frequencies), then you don't have a problem!

However, given the size of the script, how little extra space is already available, and how likely you are to produce a script that is larger than the original, you probably are in trouble .

For the benefit of anybody who's interested, Dragon Warrior IV's script is quite large for a NES game, weighing in at approximately 160 KB uncompressed or 95 KB compressed, so they achieved a compression ratio of nearly 40%, which is about the best you can expect from the usual compression methods on the NES (if you managed to implement LZMA decompression on the NES, you could drop the compressed size down to around 50 KB, but 7-Zip says you would need 18 MB of RAM for decompression, which is about 9000 times more RAM than the console comes with, so... good luck with that!).

That being the case, you might like option #6: convert the game to a different mapper (e.g. MMC5) and then you can expand the ROM to have lots of space.

These options aren't as good, but I'll toss them out here anyway:

7. Write your script to take advantage of the compression. For DW4's Huffman tree, that means spaces and the letter e are your best friends (3 bits), followed by of a/n/o/s/t (4 bits) and then h/i/l/r/u (5 bits), etc.

8. Create free space by optimizing the existing code/data. My experience with the NES Dragon Warrior games has been that they are generally pretty tightly coded, so creating free space in this way would probably be the most work for the least gain.

While I agree with your other two points, I'm not so sure about this one. It's easiest to explain my use of this format with an alternate example:

"Pull Excalibur from the stone, young Arthur, and then, you shall be king."

I'm sure we would agree that adding an article before "king" in that sentence would not improve it. It would take away some of the weight of the kingship if Arthur were to simply become "a king." I think the same can be said for "hero" in the sentence you cited. That all said, I'm open to further discussion on this if you feel it's warranted.

I see where you're trying to go, but the lack of an article in "I will recognize you as hero" definitely feels weird here.

pro tip: with some luck, you can beat the dragon at a much lower level than what most people suggest. I did it at level 10!

After you've finished the game, you might be interested in seeing what's possible with a *lot* of luck.

[Chicken Knife]

For the benefit of anybody who's interested, Dragon Warrior IV's script is quite large for a NES game, weighing in at approximately 160 KB uncompressed or 95 KB compressed

This is what happened when the devs decided to refresh each town's NPC text after milestone events in the plot. Vetting the translation for all this will be.... fun.

That being the case, you might like option #6: convert the game to a different mapper (e.g. MMC5) and then you can expand the ROM to have lots of space.

Can you explain a little more about this? The total existing storage on the MMC1 mapper seemed to be at max for real hardware and numerous emulators, no? If I converted this to MMC5, would that allow me to get a 2048KB ROM size working on any device/emu? Also, you have a sense of where I'm at technically. Do you think that working out that conversion is a bridge I could cross?

Write your script to take advantage of the compression. For DW4's Huffman tree, that means spaces and the letter e are your best friends (3 bits), followed by of a/n/o/s/t (4 bits) and then h/i/l/r/u (5 bits), etc.

I'd sort of rather live with the challenge of writing in a tight, efficient manner than be choosing my words based on their letters.

I see where you're trying to go, but the lack of an article in "I will recognize you as hero" definitely feels weird here.

Regardless of the functional logic, if this is rubbing multiple people wrong, I'll probably just make the tweak. Even the English teacher initially suggested I include the article until we began discussing it further.

[abw]

This is what happened when the devs decided to refresh each town's NPC text after milestone events in the plot. Vetting the translation for all this will be.... fun.

Especially considering how many milestone events there are in this game!

If I converted this to MMC5, would that allow me to get a 2048KB ROM size working on any device/emu?

The MMC1 PRG ROM size tops out at 512KB, but MMC5 can go up to 1024KB, so an extra 512KB of space ought to be more than enough for this project.

Also, you have a sense of where I'm at technically. Do you think that working out that conversion is a bridge I could cross?

I'd say you've done enough by now that you can probably handle this too. Conceptually, the conversion process is fairly simple:

• find all the places where the game interacts with its original mapper
• understand what effect(s) those interactions achieve on the original mapper (NesDev is your friend here)
• figure out how to achieve the same effect(s) on the new mapper (NesDev is your friend here too)
• rewrite the game's code accordingly (MMC1 writes tend to take up more space than MMC5 writes, so space probably won't be an issue)
• if the above steps haven't covered it, make sure you add any mapper initialization code the new mapper needs
• update the iNES header to indicate the new mapper number so that emulators know which mapper they need to emulate
• test

I haven't looked at them myself, but you may be interested in examining Dracula X's MMC1 -> MMC5 conversion hacks for Dragon Warrior, Dragon Warrior II, and Dragon Warrior III, and a little searching should turn up several threads about mapper conversions that might also be helpful reading.

I'd sort of rather live with the challenge of writing in a tight, efficient manner than be choosing my words based on their letters.

Agreed - I only said it was an idea, not a good idea . On a related note, however, you may be interested in lipograms (such as Gadsby) if you haven't encountered them before.

[Chicken Knife]

The MMC1 PRG ROM size tops out at 512KB, but MMC5 can go up to 1024KB, so an extra 512KB of space ought to be more than enough for this project.

Ah, it seems that my wrong information came from this list http://tuxnes.sourceforge.net/nesmapper.txt, when I should have just compared DW4 USA to DW3 USA.

find all the places where the game interacts with its original mapper
understand what effect(s) those interactions achieve on the original mapper (NesDev is your friend here)
figure out how to achieve the same effect(s) on the new mapper (NesDev is your friend here too)
rewrite the game's code accordingly (MMC1 writes tend to take up more space than MMC5 writes, so space probably won't be an issue)
if the above steps haven't covered it, make sure you add any mapper initialization code the new mapper needs
update the iNES header to indicate the new mapper number so that emulators know which mapper they need to emulate
test

This little roadmap is going to be extremely helpful. Thank you.

when I first read this I interpreted it as the sage telling you to go north and west FROM the castle, with a typo. I realised that couldn't be right since the map cuts off before that point, but was still totally stumped as to what was being asked.
I looked at the japanese script and saw your usage of north and west was the same, so I then checked the NOA script and saw they rephrased the dialogue.
NOA wrote it as "Thou may go and search. From Tantegel Castle travel 70 leagues to the south and 40 to the east.", making the hint harder to misinterpret in case the player wasn't paying 100% attention to the phrasing. also of note is their usage of "search", referencing the game command and providing an additional hint.
I get what your script is saying now, but I think NOA had the right idea with this one. this is probably really subjective, but as someone who never played this game before and didn't already know about the item, it threw me for a loop.

@Goznog, as I worked out the implementation of this fix, I remembered the real reason why we left it the way it was in Japan: so that it would match the text given by the Laura's Love item, where Laura provides addressing in that same format to tell you how to get back to her. Neji and I had another debate about it this morning, and we agree that expecting the player to convert the direction formats in order to make use of the Laura's Love assistance is really not a big deal, and a worthwhile exchange for NPC directions that sound halfway sensible.

Btw, I got the below updated. There was a slightly altered line in my Atlas file about having slept well which was easily swapped for the uncensored one.



Thank you for the great review, btw! Will be publishing the update shortly.

[Goznog]

@Goznog, as I worked out the implementation of fixing this, I remembered the real reason why we left it the way it was in Japan: so that it would match the text given by the Laura's Love item, where Laura provides addressing in that same format to tell you how to get back to her. Neji and I had another debate about it this morning, and we agree that expecting the player to convert the direction formats in order to make use of the Laura's Love assistance is really not a big deal, and a worthwhile exchange for NPC directions that sound halfway sensible.

Btw, I got the below implemented. There was a slightly altered line in my Atlas file about having slept well which was easily swapped for the uncensored one.

Thank you for the great review, btw! Will be publishing the update shortly.

awesome! yeah, I noticed it matched up with Laura's voice but I figured the player could suss out what to do anyway. thanks for taking all my feedback into consideration. hopefully I'll get to DQ2 soon

[Chicken Knife]

Update to version 1.14 DQ1-D is live.

On a related note, however, you may be interested in lipograms (such as Gadsby) if you haven't encountered them before.

Btw, I looked into this. Kind of horrifying, kind of amazing. It essentially applies gaming's challenge run concept to a work of writing. I think I'll pass, but this sounds like something that you in particular would enjoy doing.

[lilpuddy31]

Hey Chicken, quick question, do it matter which "revision" of Dragon Warrior 1 is used for your patch?

[Chicken Knife]

Hey Chicken, quick question, do it matter which "revision" of Dragon Warrior 1 is used for your patch?

Nope. The differences between the two versions are tiny, and the patch works with both.

[JPC]

Do you plan to translate the PSX version of DQ4 one day?

[Chicken Knife]

Do you plan to translate the PSX version of DQ4 one day?

https://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php?topic=31357.0

You can read this thread about a current project where I've been chiming in. The main dev is looking to just incorporate the contemporary official script, but my group is willing to potentially piggy back on their technical achievements and create a new translation in the vein of our previous work. We could be working now on the main script now, but they haven't yet gotten a handle on all the various miscellaneous text in menus, prologue, ending, etc, and also markus has expressed severe limitations on his abilities to continue work on this. My technical abilities are really limited to 8 bit / 16 bit systems at this time, so I'm sort of watching and waiting for the project to come to a point of full realization. If it does, and if they are able to provide us with necessary support for their tools, we intend to prioritize our DQ4 PSX translation. There will inevitably be a lot of overlap with the script from the Famicom version which would make our life easier.

[lilpuddy31]

For the love of Holy, please tell me your group will tackle Dragon Quest 1+2 for SNES eventually. Its high time we have a fully functional english translation

[Chicken Knife]

For the love of Holy, please tell me your group will tackle Dragon Quest 1+2 for SNES eventually. Its high time we have a fully functional english translation

Yes. We intend to prioritize those eventually, with respect to our many other real world responsibilities.

While I'm really an original versions guy, I understand that a giant portion of the fan base strongly favors the SNES versions of 1-3. Putting out tight, polished versions of those games with our characteristic approach to faithful translation and our lack of regard for official conventions, I think we will see our share of controversy. Not like with these NES hacks that mostly fly under the radar.

[lilpuddy31]

May I ask, with 1-3 and Monsters completed, what is the next game on the agenda?

[Chicken Knife]

Mostly leaning to DQIV NES, unless the PSX version makes any rapid progress in the next couple months and grabs our attention. There was also some thought of starting DQ Monsters 2, just because that would be a fairly easy project in comparison. We really like Nob Ogasawara's translations in general, so it wouldn't require as heavy editing. But DQIV NES seems like the one I should be doing unless I hit any insurmountable technical roadblocks.

[OldSchoolGamer]

@JPC you should look in Personal Projects....there is a thread already started with Chicken Knife and others working on DQIV PSX which I am very excited and pleased to see as well as support as much s I am able to. I would love to see DQ monsters PSX translated but that we cant always have everything and everything needs to be taken one thing at a time. Also, I amnot sure if you are aware, but DQ 1-3, 5+6 are all fan translated in english and run on SNES hardware very well. I have played DQ1 and I am working my way through DQV(I am at the fairy land as a kid at this moment) and both games read and I feel have very good translations. DQ1 I can say for sure is very faithful to the JP script and I really like that as I prefer the translations to stick to and read as closely to the JP original text as possible. For example, there is no "Dracolord" nonsense the villan is the Dragon King or King Dragon and the "puff-puff"  scene is there and reads faithful to the JP original text. You should give the current translation available a try...you might be surprised.

@Chicken Knife- I wanted to ask you since I learned that my SD2SNES is able to play NES games now with game dependent compatibility...as I would like to try your translations...have you or anyt of your team tested running your DQ 1-4 patched games on a snes via flashcart? I havn't made a compatible patched rom with the emulator yet as I dont want to go through the effort for naught. If you have any information or idea on this I would love to hear it. If not, I will need to wait till I am able to get a sharp twin/everdrive before I can play your translations. I will admit, I MUCH prefer DQ 1-3 on SNES but I also dont mind DQ1-3 on GBC. I am not a big fan of the originals, but as I like and support your work especially as your philosophy on translations and how they should be done matches my feelings and beliefs very closely.
Lastly, I wanted to add, as much as I prefer the PSX DQ monsters to the GBC version, I will give your GBC version a shot soon. I cant ATM as my AGS 001 SP Charger cable broke and I am unable to use the crappy SP(crappy due to condition as well as having a very poor frontlit screen...not crappy as a handheld itself as I love the SP...its my favorite form of GBA hardware). Just wanted to add that.

Thanks

[Seb]

On the topic of potentially working on the Super Famicom games, given that these projects so far have been about proverbially "fighting" the official translations and providing a more faithful alternative, I was curious if Torneko no Daibouken would be worth your consideration, given that it has never gotten an official English release and thus wouldn't exactly fall under the scope of this group.

[Chicken Knife]

@OldSchoolGamer

Thank you for your interest. I haven't done any testing on various specific hardware, but I don't believe that we did anything that would make it specifically not work on real hardware or other means of emulation. I'm sorry that I don't have anything more specific to share. Thank you for wanting to try our projects!

[nejimakipiyo]

On the topic of potentially working on the Super Famicom games, given that these projects so far have been about proverbially "fighting" the official translations and providing a more faithful alternative, I was curious if Torneko no Daibouken would be worth your consideration, given that it has never gotten an official English release and thus wouldn't exactly fall under the scope of this group.

The Torneko spinoffs haven't really sparked interest for us. I saw that someone on Twitter was translating one of them, though, so at least it will be made playable to English-speaking fans. (It's in his pinned tweet.)
https://twitter.com/SamManOfSteel/

[Chicken Knife]

The Torneko spinoffs haven't really sparked interest for us. I saw that someone on Twitter was translating one of them, though, so at least it will be made playable to English-speaking fans. (It's in his pinned tweet.)
https://twitter.com/SamManOfSteel/

To say it another way, we are primarily interested in the direct work of Horii. We think he's a truly brilliant writer and designer, and for me at least, when I play the spin offs where he probably did little more than sit in a few meetings and give high level feedback, I don't get nearly as much out of it. That isn't to say that the world of DQ spin offs isn't pretty high quality in general; I think it is, but I'm looking for that Horii magic. Therefore, DQM 1&2 are really the only two spin offs we are interested in doing in the foreseeable future since those are the only ones where Horii was heavily hands on and personally responsible for the writing.