[PSX] [EN/ES/IT] Ace Combat 3 electrosphere - the new fan translation from LWT

[Infrid]

Over the past few years, we have been working on modifying and translating the original Japanese version of Ace Combat 3: electrosphere for the PlayStation. The translation patch will be available in 🇺🇸 English, 🇪🇸 Castilian Spanish and 🇮🇹 Italian.

To accomplish this, we have been working hard on the original scripts, digging deep into the game's lore. We modified the graphics data by reverse-engineering the code to understand the formats and algorithms used in the game.

This is a patch made for fans, by fans. We plan to publish our tools and share our knowledge to put anyone in a position to be able to edit the game to create their own patches. This is a non-profit effort, we do not accept any donations and we do not endorse piracy, so please do not ask for download links.

There is still no exact release date. As of now, dialogues have been completely translated and inserted into the game, however, some other things are still not complete yet.

The final patch will only be available once it's complete.

For this announcement we have prepared a trailer, you can watch it here in 🇺🇸 English, but is also available in 🇪🇸 Castilian Spanish and 🇮🇹 Italian at our YouTube channel.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Brm2LvBt5o

We have also recorded some gameplay:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IK128plMS98


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dR_7OM-ZWsw

Credits have been fully translated too, here's a peek of the English version


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6Eoql_VmK0

This fan translation has been possible by (as 24/11/2021)

• Japanese-to-English translation: Yarghenforgen
  
• English-to-Castilian Spanish translation: IlDucci
  
• English-to-Italian translation: Aeolus097, Orientalcomputer_1, Infrid
  
• Graphic Editing: Azu Crepuscular, IlDucci
  
• Programming and romhacking: SolidSnake11, Infrid
  
• Coordination: Infrid
  

You can follow the development at our website

https://loadwordteam.com

Tio Victor and tradusquare.es for Spanish speakers

https://tiovictor.romhackhispano.org/ace-combat-3/

https://tradusquare.es

[reyvgm]

Hey, congrats!

I was just about to play the current translation, but I'd rather wait for yours then if it's going to be better.

By the way, is there any way you could provide me with the font you used for the credits? I've been looking for one like that for a while now.

[Infrid]

I am glad you like the font, I spent an enormous amount of time on that

I cannot publish the font now, not because of jealousy, but because you need the tool for using it and we'll make that available in the future.

We made the font and the tool for handling lots of details, like the kerning, in typography you need special care when pair of letter like To/oj/...are needed.

But I can definitely tell you the process we used to create it, open gimp/Photoshop/whatever and try to write the text at very small size. Usually modern fonts have a bitmap version embedded, this means they stop to be vectorial at some point.

I believe Segoe UI is like that, try it!

Also we need to manually adjust the colours to properly fit the palette there. Is more complex that what looks.

[haggers]

This looks great, can't wait!

[reyvgm]

I am glad you like the font, I spent an enormous amount of time on that

I cannot publish the font now, not because of jealousy, but because you need the tool for using it and we'll make that available in the future.

We made the font and the tool for handling lots of details, like the kerning, in typography you need special care when pair of letter like To/oj/...are needed.

But I can definitely tell you the process we used to create it, open gimp/Photoshop/whatever and try to write the text at very small size. Usually modern fonts have a bitmap version embedded, this means they stop to be vectorial at some point.

I believe Segoe UI is like that, try it!

Also we need to manually adjust the colours to properly fit the palette there. Is more complex that what looks.

Thanks for the reply. So what you're saying is that you don't have the font in a bitmap file or even a windows font file, but that it's embedded in the tool you're using? I understand now.

Thanks for telling me the name of the font, I'll try that.

But still, it's best to just wait for your finished product then!

[Infrid]

Get ready, the Italian patch will be published this year!



For the English and Spanish patch you have to wait a bit more!

[MD_Prometh]

An updated version of the patch is always welcome. The only thing I do have reservations about is the subtitle size for the cutscenes? On my 21 inch moniter, I can barely read it, so it'd be nice if you can make the subtitle size just a bit bigger if possible.

[Infrid]

this is going to be a new patch, not an update

anyway we are forced to use that font size, every dialogue is written to fit into that space. Increasing would be impossibile without rewriting the lines.

Anyway the Italian patch is out, you can download it here

https://loadwordteam.com/projects/la-patch-in-italiano-per-ace-combat-3/

We are working now on the English and Spanish version

[voodoo]

Hi, i've downloaded the italian patch and applied on the jap iso of the game.
In the emulator it runs very well!!!

However... when i've checked the modified game isos with ECCRegen.exe, it detects many ecc errors on both discs.

When i've mastered the isos on phisical cds, the burning program has detected these errors too after the masterization, in the copy veryfing phase.

So, i've started the game with the copied cd in the drive to see if the emulator can start it, and works too without problems.

My question is: these cds can be started in a real console playstation 1 too (modified to read copied discs, of course), or the ecc errors needs to be fixed before the masterization? (in the manual to apply the patch this problem is not explained)

Thanks for the answer, and congrats again for the great work!!!

[MD_Prometh]

I meant more for the FMV cutscenes with the black bars. The subtitle font during the codec stuff where the characters are talking to each other looks ok to me.

[Infrid]

Thank you voodoo for your kind words!

Our building process creates an ISO like the original tool used at Sony for mastering media, this tool doesn't create ecc data for str files (basically full motion videos). That data should be fixed by the burner, anyway we tested the patch on real hardware too (scph1001 and scph102) and it was fine from start to finish. The disc you burnt should be fine, in case you can fix with ECCRegen.exe and let us know. We could fix the ECC in our building pipeline if this causes troubles

I meant more for the FMV cutscenes with the black bars. The subtitle font during the codec stuff where the characters are talking to each other looks ok to me.

radio and FMVs uses the same font size, only the colours are different. Do you find the contrast too low on FMV?

[MD_Prometh]

I'm not referring to the in-mission radio stuff, I think that looks fine, I was referring to this.

https://imgur.com/a/U9bb0xl I think this looks fine, perfectly legible. That said, it could be slightly bigger without having to rewrite given that there is a fair amount of space in the text box.

https://imgur.com/a/uwuBVbd I think this looks a bit too small for my eyes. It'd be nice if the subs for FMVs could be have the size increased to be more legible.

Looking forward to the finished English release of the patch either way

[Infrid]

got it! thank you for the images, in those parts the game loads images with the text on it. Usually those images are not that big, the space is quite small in VRAM even if we make the row bigger, we could try some workaround but would require time for research and implementation.

The English patch is almost done but some real life commitments are holding it

Meanwhile we got some good testers ready to play the game and make sure everything is fine before the release.


January 22, 2022, 07:30:05 PM - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)
here what I mean, see the text in the vram? we could even get the row bigger but the space is very tiny and there is no room for bigger text

https://imgur.com/a/ZSmRSnv

we could hack the game and check what are the areas in VRAM safe to overwrite, but this is not trivial...

[Infrid]

We inserted all the English texts into the game, right now our testers are playing it and making sure everything works correctly and is fully playable.

stay tuned

[gsifdgs]

I have a question, Is it possible for your hacking team to inject or change analog movement? Ace combat 3 analog stick acts like a dpad but ace combat 2 have the true analog movement. What I mean is when holding analog stick diagonally in ace combat 3 doesn't do anything, plane only goes left/right or up/down unfortunately not both, but ace combat 2 does that, so my question is, is it possible for your team to inject or change to ace combat 3's analog controls to ace combat 2 like analog controls? I understand that this is only a translation job, but if it's possible on someway or another, that way game would be more comfortable to play! Thanks for this project by the way!

[niuus]

We inserted all the English texts into the game, right now our testers are playing it and making sure everything works correctly and is fully playable.

stay tuned

This is great. 

[yuyu19790520]

Hello, Infrid! I'm Yuyu from China. Can you provide some game cracking tools? I also want to sinicize "Ace Combat 3" for many years...

[Infrid]

A little update, the patch has been tested and reviewed, we are taking time to fix the font and we'll plan a release.

I have a question, Is it possible for your hacking team to inject or change analog movement? Ace combat 3 analog stick acts like a dpad but ace combat 2 have the true analog movement. What I mean is when holding analog stick diagonally in ace combat 3 doesn't do anything, plane only goes left/right or up/down unfortunately not both, but ace combat 2 does that, so my question is, is it possible for your team to inject or change to ace combat 3's analog controls to ace combat 2 like analog controls? I understand that this is only a translation job, but if it's possible on someway or another, that way game would be more comfortable to play! Thanks for this project by the way!

This change would be very complex and time consuming, we work on this project on our spare time and I prefer to complete the translation first

Hello, Infrid! I'm Yuyu from China. Can you provide some game cracking tools? I also want to sinicize "Ace Combat 3" for many years...

Hi Yuyu, I am not sure what do you mean by "cracking tools", I plan to release the tools in the future but none of them is capable to crack any protection!

[gsifdgs]

This change would be very complex and time consuming, we work on this project on our spare time and I prefer to complete the translation first

I understand 👍. I know this is just a translation project, I just wanted to ask, if your team have a spare time after translation to check it. I have doubts that it will work or not, but I heard pal copy of ace combat 3 had a better analog system so I thought maybe it's possible to change analog input? So I don't expect it to get fully fixed but again if your team have a time to check the controls after translation done even if it's not fixable, I would be happy just to learn the results. I won't hold my breath for it to fix but thanks again for all the works!

[yuyu19790520]

Hi Yuyu, I am not sure what do you mean by "cracking tools", I plan to release the tools in the future but none of them is capable to crack any protection!

I don't know this game compressed? I just want to be able to extract the script.