Tomato Adventure (GBA) translation/tools

[[Unknown]]

I've created some tools to make a decent fan translation of Tomato Adventure more realistic:

https://github.com/unknownbrackets/tomatotrans

The previous tools available had pretty limited lengths for text.  See README.md for details.

It sounds like there's a few people who've created a translated script already, but I don't have my hands on it yet.  The goal of this project is a fan translation to English, and perhaps other languages (if there's sufficient interest.)

Some screenshots/gifs of initial progress here:
https://imgur.com/a/87pmUQm

So far, the hack covers all the crucial bits:

* VWF for everywhere (I think?), initial support from an anonymous contributor
* Name length increased from 4 to 7 (but also max 5 tiles)
* Item, enemy, etc. names can be longer (as long as they fit on the screen)
* Insertion only affects script pointers
* Image insertion (there are only a few images with text on them that I can find)

If anyone is interested, it'd be great to hear feedback on:

1. The logo - any ideas on how the English logo could look (font, letter color/arrangement/etc.)?  The gear in the center is used for animations, want to keep it.... maybe near the "t"?

2. Is there any interest in non-English (including interest to actually translate, not just wanting it to exist)?  It would not be hard to make additional characters available, the encoding is already multibyte.  Character names might be tricky.

3. The game has a scripting language (actually like 3) which I had to get a half decent understanding of to extract battle messages and correct dialog pointers.  I could create tools to customize, but not sure if anyone is actually interested in using them.

4. I've wondered if a shorter 8x8 font (so there's actually dedicated space for the descenders), but I'm not sure if that would make it more readable or less.  The p's and q's aren't that bad really...

5. Any ideas on appropriate fonts or styling for the defeat screen would be nice.  I'm not that aesthetically inclined, but the "GAME OVER" says "Impact" to me.

Any other feedback would be appreciated too.

Also, while doing this I created an LZ77 compressor that seems perfectly BIOS compatible but compresses better than other tools I found.  Could separate it out if there's interest (currently in inserter/lz77.cpp.)

-[Unknown]

[PowerPanda]

Just wanted to say Thank You for taking this on. For those that don't know, Tomato Adventure is the game that convinced Nintendo to let AlphaDream do Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga. I've wanted to play it for a long time.

I'll take a look at the title screen and see if I can find a good font to use for in-game dialogue and the game over screen. Impact doesn't seem right for me, so I'll see what else could work.
July 06, 2020, 02:17:43 PM - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)
I think that "Showcard Gothic" is the right direction for your title screen. If possible, the gear needs to go over one of the Os, and not over the top of "Adventure". The gear that is used in the logo is different than the one that is used in the animation (smaller, different position), so if you can edit that one, the rest of the title animation should be fine. Here is a mockup I did.



For the Game Over Screen, Impact is potentially fine, but you might want to stylize it with something like Bahaus.

[[Unknown]]

That looks pretty good, thanks.  That font does seem to match the style of the Japanese font well.

The white gear is a "slot" that the real, yellow gear pops in and out of during the animation.  It's actually the same size, though.  The sprite can be edited, although I haven't dug into how the animation is handled yet.

If it's moved, might be better for it to be on one of the lower letters (D, U, or R - maybe?)  At the end of the intro it slides left and right and slots in.  Might have to move Aresa and other things for it to make sense being higher up.

And when the animation restarts (idle too long on the title screen) it will pop downward, so there it's also more straightforward if it's only translated horizontally (don't have to make it move faster or make that segment last longer.)

-[Unknown]

[ArkthePieKing]

Oh dunk, this is REALLY exciting for me. I've always wanted to try this game, I can't wait to follow your progress on this!

[julayla]

Oh wow. Finally, this game is gonna get a great translation it deserves. I can't wait to play it

[IAmCaptPlanet]

neat neat neat, looking forward to this one!!!

[ifightdragons]

Really looking forward to this.

Have you got a time estimate or goal for when you want to be finished?

[Cralex]

I've wanted to add this game to my collection for some time now. Good luck!

[[Unknown]]

Glad there's interest.

Estimates are hard to give with hobby projects, but:

* The tools are in a decent place, though may require bugfixes here and there and thus require testing.
* There's still a lot of text to translate, edit, test, etc.

We're still talking some time before a translation is released.  The game is still largely untranslated, but now names of things don't have to be "WndBath" and etc.

Right now I've been going through the game a bit just to check if there's other text or images that need updating.

-[Unknown]
July 15, 2020, 01:08:02 AM - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)
I asked someone to try making a logo, taking into account the limited palette (128 colors), original style, and gear animation.  Does anyone have any feedback opinions on these?

https://imgur.com/a/7nZcqFt

More concerned about the beveling and letters, layout, etc.  Or just overall what looks good.  Note that B and C don't have shadows - just trying to get feedback.

Also: I found a silly bug in the longer name handling when you name either of the last two characters, but it's fixed now.

-[Unknown]

[PowerPanda]

I like Logo A better than Logo B. It looks good in the animation too.

[julayla]

I pick the Logo A one as well

[VicVergil]

2. Is there any interest in non-English (including interest to actually translate, not just wanting it to exist)?  It would not be hard to make additional characters available, the encoding is already multibyte.  Character names might be tricky.

4. I've wondered if a shorter 8x8 font (so there's actually dedicated space for the descenders), but I'm not sure if that would make it more readable or less.  The p's and q's aren't that bad really...

5. Any ideas on appropriate fonts or styling for the defeat screen would be nice.  I'm not that aesthetically inclined, but the "GAME OVER" says "Impact" to me.

Any other feedback would be appreciated too.

Also, while doing this I created an LZ77 compressor that seems perfectly BIOS compatible but compresses better than other tools I found.  Could separate it out if there's interest (currently in inserter/lz77.cpp.)

-[Unknown]

2. Adding and supporting the basic European set, if only for a fully featured naming screen, would be nice. That would provide the base for future translations to follow.
4. That's the same font from Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga. It's more authentic for sure and fits a lot of information onscreen...
5. Impact is horrible, moreso for low res graphics. There's some reuploads of official FontWorks fonts used in Nintendo games on deviantart that you can look up, the comment sections often have interesting links...

A translator for the game was here in the Help Request subforum that had most of the game translated, if you need his help.
Reading up on this project was interesting to say the least. It seems that the VWF was supposedly an unused feature? How much of that is correct?

[[Unknown]]

European set (i.e. ISO 8859-15) shouldn't be a problem.  The naming screen is easy to map to any character set - it's just defined as a list of characters and tile references.  Modifiers could be trickier.

That said, doing that would mean sacrificing Japanese characters right now.

The original game did have part of a VWF.  Specifically:

* Dialog text (8x12 font) was already implemented, but had a width table of all the same value.  This, and updating the font, was fixed by the anonymous contributor.

* Dialog text centering still had to be fixed to account for the width table.

* Menu text (8x8 font) was partially implemented.  It looked like they'd originally attempted to implement, but either realized it required more changes elsewhere (it did) or was buggy and didn't need to be fixed for the JP release.  Mainly it didn't blend characters correctly, and was disabled by forcing the width table to always look up the same character's width.

* Menu text is also generally (but not always) fixed width, and spaces are used to clear old text.  So if you were looking at different items, the spaces at the end of descriptions would erase previous descriptions.  All these places had to be separated so there's a "clear width" and a "string length".

* Some text was embedded into structs or stored in RAM with limited space, although this was limited.

But yes, most of the mechanics for VWF were already there, so this was not all that complicated in general.  The game even loads a word with only the lower 2 bytes used for length and height of menu text, so it was easy to use the third byte for clear width.

-[Unknown]

[julayla]

To be honest, this hidden gem deserves a translation. I just hope the translation will be good and worth it.

[Mattiac]

Unknown-san, thank you for your efforts with Tomato Adventure! You have taken a look at Mato-san's tools, right?

1. Showcard Gothic is a suitable font, but I think it would be really cool to have a custom font on the title screen. Maybe I can hire someone via Fiverr to create a custom font for the title screen if you want... I think that the logo should have the same colors as the original logo. There isn't a "G" in the game's title unfortunately, so I don't know where to place the gear, but I want to keep it animated.

2. Yes, I'm from Sweden, but I'm very good at Swedish. We use the three extra characters å, ä and ö (ÅÄÖ). Although I need to finish my studies before I have the time to translate to my native language. I asked Japan's ambassador here in Sweden if he wanted to translate the game, but no reply like expected.

3. Scripting languages does have their benefits, don't they?

4. I wholeheartedly think that you should use the nice font from the great game Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga.

5. This font would be perfect for the GAME OVER screen and perhaps even for the title screen: http://www.dafont.com/electroharmonix.font

[ProstatePunch]

Logo A does look very nice, but for some reason Logo C keeps drawing me back... Maybe it's the aspect ratio?  Maybe its the gear in the "o".

[binarck]

A = It is good. Maybe a bit thick. Not sure if drop shadows is bit distracting.
B = Clean and visually easy to identify every letter and pixel.
C = Interesting but too crowded? Same size letters is a bit turning me off.

Guess I'll lean towards B but only when going through all 3 like a slideshow. A is my runner-up.

Maybe a font between size A/B would fit my senses. I'm still unsure about the shadow.

[[Unknown]]

Thanks for the feedback.

Here's a new version of the logo, somewhat between A and B:
https://imgur.com/a/VFnSCWY

Personally I think it's a good combination of the good points of A and B.  The designer took into account the feedback here.

I think Electroharmonix is an interesting font, but it gives off a different feel than I think the title has.  The font above is Gamejot (and has been customized) which is a free (not open source) font.

There's a good place for a G with a gear - the Gimica card back:
https://github.com/unknownbrackets/tomatotrans/blob/master/images/gimica_card_jpn.png
(the text is just "Gimica".)

These tools are based on Mato/Tomato's initial tools.

Just for some other updates:

I've come across and patched a bug in the game which corrupted the long names.  So far everything seems to work well through Tartar Valley up to Soy City, at least.

The Gimica (card game) tutorial text is now properly translatable and can be made longer as well.

The text shown during Sofubii's "Awesome" or "Cool" sequence is now properly translatable too.

MiYakuGaming has contributed some translations for battle messages.  Hoping we can work that together with the script Demille was working on.

-[Unknown]

[binarck]

Here's a new version of the logo, somewhat between A and B:
https://imgur.com/a/VFnSCWY

Personally I think it's a good combination of the good points of A and B.  The designer took into account the feedback here.

It hits the highlights of previous work, and retains the clarity plus stands out in a bold, fasionable way.

Strong nod to the original Japan logo, with a good touch of balance. Passes my "living room" test.


Agreed. Nice approval to the designer.

[zik999]

Whoop, subscribed to this thread. Hope you will succeed, I really want to play this game.