Shiren Gaiden: Asuka Kenzan (Dreamcast) - English Translation

[sharksnack]

Hey again, it's time for yet another Mystery Dungeon post!

So the translation side of Shiren 4 Plus (PSP) is finished, which means I've had some free time to look into translating the long-awaited Shiren the Wanderer Side Story game where you play as Asuka instead of Shiren.

It's been about 2 months, and it's at a point where I can show a decent amount of progress.
(File count wise, I'm currently working on the 4th file out of 33 files total)

However, I could really use some help on the text extraction/insertion side of things. Some of the files are a complete mess, and I'm currently unsure if I'll be able to solve them on my own - if interested, please post a reply, or if you prefer Discord, I'm usually around in the Shiren Discord server.

Translated areas:
- Some scrolling messages
- Item names, descriptions
- Character names, descriptions
- Skill names, descriptions
- Writing on blank scroll
- Unidentified item auto-complete
- Some menu options

The font was changed to a custom one (right side) which matches the JP font more closely:

(Changing the font to a VWF is above my skill level for now)

Other screenshots:

[Cris1997XX]

Hell yeah! Can't wait to finally play this on Redream. Having more Shiren titles in English is always amazing, even though they might not be as good as others

[mikeprado30]

Always is a good time to see more love to Shiren!  Good luck in this project, dude!

[Dragoonglue]

Looks nice. Do you also plan to translate the Windows version?

[sharksnack]

I currently don't plan on translating the PC version, not due to a lack of interest, but because I don't know how to access the game's files that contain the text (excluding story text). If someone were to solve that part, I could probably port the Dreamcast version's translation to the PC version.

That said, there is an item name translation available for the PC version - though that's literally all that's translated, so it's not much.

[sharksnack]

It's been a bit, so it's time for an update!

Roughly 10 SSCR.BIN files are finished now, but I unfortunately haven't figured out how to safely expand certain sections within some of the files, so I had to condense the translation a bit more than I would've liked. If I ever do figure it out, I can always go back and fix said files later on... but anyway, that means there are 11 SSCR.BIN files left.

Newly translated areas:
- Traps
- Lots of menu areas
- Some system messages
- Storage NPC dialogue
- More scrolling messages
- In-dungeon ally dialogue
- Some Koppa overworld dialogue

Still quite a ways to go, but the game is looking quite playable even in its current state.

Status screen for example (old screenshot, so area name is in Japanese):


Also working on some textures:

[Red Soul]

You are on a roll, sir/madam!
an impressive number of Shiren projects under your belt, there. Best of luck on all of them.

[sharksnack]

Quick update: Most text aside from story and NPC dialogue is translated now, and I just started working on the story file.
Still a long way to go since there's a ridiculous amount of story + NPC dialogue, but things are looking quite playable now.

Here's part of the intro as a preview:

[Felipefpl]

Kongrats for your work, btw, your font of choice is PERFECT! 

[Bonk]

Looking good!

[sharksnack]

Happy New Year! It's been a couple months, so here's another update.

Bad news - area name textures appear to be compressed, and I currently don't know how to deal with compression at all.
If anyone is interested in helping with compressed textures, please contact me.

Good news - Story + NPC dialogue is close to being translated roughly up to the clearing the 2nd dungeon, which is about 1800 entries out of maybe 8000 ish in this file. Still a long way to go, but I'm thinking about doing a playtest release (basically an alpha version to gather feedback and check for bugs) once I'm confident that everything looks good up to clearing the 2nd dungeon.

Bonus: It looks like the Fay's Puzzle file structure isn't too complicated, so it should theoretically be possible to create a puzzle editor and import custom puzzles into the game. I don't plan to work on it right now, but maybe I'll work on it after the patch is finished.

[Cris1997XX]

Happy New Year! It's been a couple months, so here's another update.

Bad news - area name textures appear to be compressed, and I currently don't know how to deal with compression at all.
If anyone is interested in helping with compressed textures, please contact me.

Good news - Story + NPC dialogue is close to being translated roughly up to the clearing the 2nd dungeon, which is about 1800 entries out of maybe 8000 ish in this file. Still a long way to go, but I'm thinking about doing a playtest release (basically an alpha version to gather feedback and check for bugs) once I'm confident that everything looks good up to clearing the 2nd dungeon.

Bonus: It looks like the Fay's Puzzle file structure isn't too complicated, so it should theoretically be possible to create a puzzle editor and import custom puzzles into the game. I don't plan to work on it right now, but maybe I'll work on it after the patch is finished.

Yeess! We definitely needed good news on this. I hope it will be completed one day

[ProstatePunch]

Happy New Year! It's been a couple months, so here's another update.

Bad news - area name textures appear to be compressed, and I currently don't know how to deal with compression at all.
If anyone is interested in helping with compressed textures, please contact me.

Can you reach out to VincentNL? He's done work on Rent-A-Hero and I think he cracked some of the SEGAGAGA stuff.

[bankbank]

Can you reach out to VincentNL? He's done work on Rent-A-Hero and I think he cracked some of the SEGAGAGA stuff.

VincentNL is one of the most well-informed naomi/DC hackers out there, definitely give them a holler
here's their twitter: https://twitter.com/vincentnl_
their discord: https://discord.gg/mphHcRvDb8
their github: https://github.com/NaomiMod/

[sharksnack]

Sorry for the delayed response, I forget to check this thread every so often.

Thanks for the recommendations to reach out to VincentNL! He's actually the person who taught me how to hack Dreamcast games, starting with teaching me about pointers.

He's been an immense help with this project, including but not limited to:

- Tool to make testing changes easy.
- Font replacement.
- Intro images and other textures.
- Tips on using Ghidra and Cheat Engine.
- Scripts to unpack data.

That said, I also want to announce that a playable demo version of this fan translation patch will be releasing this weekend. It'll only cover the first region of the game, but I'm hoping the demo will get more people interested in the game, which might lead to receiving help on the technical side of the project, including the texture compression issue.

If you're interested in trying it out, check the following teaser video's description this weekend for details + a link.

[Bonk]