[SNES] Hajimari no Mori Translation

[jaggie]

Hello!

I've been working on a translation for Hajimari no Mori and I wanted to share my progress with you.

I sure many of you are familiar with the game, but for those who aren't, this is a game that came late in the SNES life and was released exclusevly with the Ninentdo Power Cartidge service in Japan.
It's an adventure game that has been correctly compared with the "Boku no Natsuyasumi" series.

I'll track my progress here, any feedback is welcome 

Progress:

• Translation - The games is divided into 6 days/chapters, The translation for the 1st day is complete.
• Hacking/Technical side - Got complete control of the text menus and dialog insertion. Still got some problems with the intro graphics but I'll get back to it eventually
• Text Updated/Inserted - Got half of the text of the 1st chapter inserted into the game.
  

Screenshots:

Next Steps:
When the first day is completly finished, I intend to make a patch so it can be tested and reviewed by anyone interested.

Jaggie

[bxbcore]

Wow! That's really exciting! Unfortunately all of your screenshots are showing broken images. Still, great news for a cool game on the SNES.

[akualung]

The snes is my favorite system for rpgs and story based games in general, so I wish you best of luck with this project! I'll look forward to any update.

[jaggie]

Wow! That's really exciting! Unfortunately all of your screenshots are showing broken images. Still, great news for a cool game on the SNES.

Thanks for commenting about the broken images, updated with new links, hopefully their showing up now 

The snes is my favorite system for rpgs and story based games in general, so I wish you best of luck with this project! I'll look forward to any update.

Thank you!
Will keep you updated on the progress 

[MD_Prometh]

Never heard of this game before, but it looks very interesting. Will keep an eye on it.

I'd like to provide some feedback on the translated screenshots you shared if that's OK.

I noticed that the choice options in the first and third pic are all currently lower case, do you plan to make the first letter of each choice uppercase? Just seems logical to me.

Oh and for the fourth screenshot, I'd personally change "Uuaa" to an alternative like "Wow" or "Amazing". Japanese is a heavily interpretive language, so in localisation projects for video games and anime, it's often about trying to find an equivalent that matches the intention of the original creators and writers, which can be tricky for specific things that don't have an equivalent in another language. Just my two cents on what I think would flow better.

Also, are you experimenting with different fonts and text sizes? Just curious.

Looking forward to seeing the translation develop.

[jaggie]

Never heard of this game before, but it looks very interesting. Will keep an eye on it.

I'd like to provide some feedback on the translated screenshots you shared if that's OK.

I noticed that the choice options in the first and third pic are all currently lower case, do you plan to make the first letter of each choice uppercase? Just seems logical to me.

Oh and for the fourth screenshot, I'd personally change "Uuaa" to an alternative like "Wow" or "Amazing". Japanese is a heavily interpretive language, so in localisation projects for video games and anime, it's often about trying to find an equivalent that matches the intention of the original creators and writers, which can be tricky for specific things that don't have an equivalent in another language. Just my two cents on what I think would flow better.

Also, are you experimenting with different fonts and text sizes? Just curious.

Looking forward to seeing the translation develop.

Thanks for the feedback 
About the capital letters, yeah, I agree, will change that.

About the fonts, the game already had a Roman alphabet integrated with a defined font size within the code, I'm using that.

About the translation, yeah it is tricky indeed, and in this case you have to take into account the size of the box the text is showing so it doesn't cut midword and the limited data space you have to insert the new text into the game.
Anyhow, I want to make a patch when the first chapter is finished so I can get feedback about the translation and would be happy to have your input then about the whole thing. 

[ScissorsBeatsKonan]

Hi! Very glad I checked this. I wanted to translate this game over a year ago but couldn't find a programmer but you seem like you know what to do. I would gladly help you translate if you would like!

[VicVergil]

RAM
0542   Column in Pixels
057E   Temp Buffer for 0542
0566   Column number (useless?)
05E6   Currently processed text character

ROM
Rendering problems
C02437 ADC #$0030 (once each other character, so 50% of the times)
c04EB8 LDA #$0030 (always?)
For the 1-byte hack
C04ECF LDA #$0002 (adds 2 bytes to the text pointer, 05E6)


Game renders 12 pixel wide glyphs, monospaced. To achieve this with 8x8 tiles, it renders two characters each time. The first character will have its first 8px as a tile, then the next 4px and the first 4px from the second character as a second tile, and the last 4px from the last character as a third tile.

If you change C02437 ADC #$0030 to C02437 ADC #$0010, it will be rendered as 8 pixel wide glyphs monospaced, which would fit much longer sentences onscreen, but it will skip every second character. A better solution would be then to use it instead as a hook somewhere else in the ROM and add DEC $E6 twice (or once if you decide to implement a 1-byte hack, something you might not need if you just relocate all the text to a new empty bank and update the text pointer routine (also relying on 05E6) to pull text from there instead.)

[Tomodachi]

Thanks for the feedback 
About the capital letters, yeah, I agree, will change that.

About the fonts, the game already had a Roman alphabet integrated with a defined font size within the code, I'm using that.

About the translation, yeah it is tricky indeed, and in this case you have to take into account the size of the box the text is showing so it doesn't cut midword and the limited data space you have to insert the new text into the game.
Anyhow, I want to make a patch when the first chapter is finished so I can get feedback about the translation and would be happy to have your input then about the whole thing. 

Please don't change "Uuaa" into anything else, it's cuter and have more soul.