EVO: The Search for a Translation

[KingMike]

I know there's some cult following of the SNES evolutionary action-RPG EVO: The Search for Eden.

Wonder if anybody'd be interested in translating the PC98 original, 46 Okunen Monogatari?
It seems to be a bit more of a turn-based affair, and I believe you can directly distibute Evo points to stats. I would suspect you'd get a bit more freedom than the SNES port, where your choices have specific stat changes.

If anybody is interested, the script is about 170KB of kanji-heavy text.
(heh, over 30KB alone is what looks like some kind of encyclopdia-ish creature info)
At least I think that's all the game text. There's a lot more text in the image files, but I think the rest of the text is from the OS (MS-DOS) stuff, and I don't think it'd really be necessary to translate.

[Iriliane]

When you say kanji-heavy how heavy do you mean? Could you post some samples?

[DarknessSavior]

Actually, a friend of mine and I were talking about EVO recently, and it occured to me to look into the Japanese original on the SNES. I didn't know there was a PC98 version. Very interesting. I hope this goes somewhere, as I'd love to see what it was like. ^_^

~DS

[KingMike]

Alright. Here's an example. (Shift-JIS)
http://kingmike.emuxhaven.net/Misc/okusample.txt

[Eien Ni Hen]

Hell, that doesn't look too kanji heavy.  I'd be happy to help if I weren't still busting my ass on Nadia.

[Tomato]

EVO is one of my favorite games of all time, so hearing about this makes me  I wish I had time to help, but I gotta stop my too-many-projects-at-once-itis.

[Mew seeker]

Just in case anyone want a look, I have a Japanese script (not a text dump) of the Snes game
covering most of the text in the game.

I don't know about the text in the PC98 version,
but in the Snes version, the English text was much closer than I expected to the original,
although you feel more the emotion in the Japanese text.
You feel more guilty in some of the story part and you feel even more
that you're about to get your butt kicked when a female being is angry at you. X D

[Asaki]

Just did a search to see if this existed yet...would love to see this happen, I was a pretty big fan of the SNES sequel.

[Koios]

I'm guessing this project died completely before it started?

It's a great shame, I've tried the game in question and it seems really fun, but I couldn't progress very far given that I had to brute force my way through the menus and had no idea what was going on plot-wise. It'd be awesome to see it get another chance.

[Mew seeker]

Until it happens, you could always use a let's play to guide you or just watch the game :
http://www.nicovideo.jp/mylist/8024496
Since you probably don't have an account there,
use a redirector to view the videos there:
http://mmcafe.com/nico.html

Apparently, you slowly recover HPs outside of battle.
In the cross shaped evolution menu, you put point into stats and when you put enough, you evolve.

[SkyeWelse]

I decided to create an account tonight to express my interest in wanting to see this project happen as well. E.V.O was one of my all time favorite SNES games and I actually just recently discovered that a version exists for the PC-98 that I never knew about. The game is different enough as well to warrant an all new experience for E.V.O fans alike due to it being a turn-based RPG instead of the Action-RPG style of the SNES version. I loved the look and gameplay of the SNES original, but seeing as this gives me another excuse to play it all over again and experience something new, a translation for this game sounds incredibly exciting.

I'm currently swamped with my own projects and such, but I can at least test using real PC-98 hardware as I have two machines, if this project ever gets going again. I don't remember the SNES game having that much text though. I'm not a hacker, but I am a graphics guy should that be needed for this project and I have experience working on Ys: Oath in Felghana's fan-translation patch, Nayuta no Kiseki (Nayuta: Endless Trails) and Wander Wonder. Perhaps if graphics were ever needed I can bring something to the table then.

-Thomas

[kuoushi]

I'm a translator, and I'm interested. I'll PM you more information if you need it, but get back to me when you see this. I can't start IMMEDIATELY but I'd love to work on this.

[hollowaytape]

Hey! I played this game over the summer and loved it. I am messing around with the game files right now, trying to figure out where most of text is hiding. I don't know yet if I am in over my head, but I am definitely interested in helping out on the programming side of things. I'll send PMs to the previous two posters.

-Max

[SunGodPortal]

Sounds like a cool project. I've only played the SNES version but it was a fun and very unique game. One of the most original RPG settings I've experienced. A nice change of pace from following the prophecies to find sacred crystals in the mystic forest to fight the resurrection of an ancient evil assuming it isn't a giant militant force/corporation lead by a sociopath in a futuristic society bent on using apocalytic forces for world domination/leading to the world's destruction.

EDIT: Correction. You don't "follow" a prophecy, you "fulfill" it. LOL

[KingMike]

Yeah, I'm probably in over my head right now. As much as I'd like to see, there is text but it's all mixed in with other stuff and I admit I don't think I'm getting X86 (PC-98 uses some clone of that) as much as I do the other CPUs I've looked at.

[SkyeWelse]

Hey! I played this game over the summer and loved it. I am messing around with the game files right now, trying to figure out where most of text is hiding. I don't know yet if I am in over my head, but I am definitely interested in helping out on the programming side of things. I'll send PMs to the previous two posters.

-Max

I just responded to your PM and I'd definitely be up for working on any graphical edits needed for the game. I would also be able to test it on real hardware. I'm a PC-98 enthusiast, so there are plenty of other PC-98 projects I'm interested in working on as well, most of them being RPGs or Action-RPGs.

-Thomas

[kuoushi]

Responded as well. Certainly still interested and around. Free time to work comes and goes but I am still willing to translate.

[SkyeWelse]

Some good news to share. Normally 46 Okunen Monogatari (which spans about 5 disks, possibly one more if a 6th userdisk was required for saving) does not install directly to an HDD image. However, a member over at the PC-98 community Tokugawa Corporation named Fa123 was able to edit 46.exe so that it can be played directly from a HDI image. I've tested this in Project Neko II and also on real hardware and everything works just fine, even saving and loading without a userdisk:

http://retro-type.com/PC98/46okunenm1.jpg
http://retro-type.com/PC98/46okunenm2.jpg

Btw, the game really runs best in Dos 3.3 so I wouldn't recommend running in in Dos 6.2.

-Thomas

[hollowaytape]

Hey all! Making steady progress. I've dumped all the in-game text, and I'm writing a decoder for the .GDT images, the compression of which I just figured out. There's plenty of text in the chapter title and joke ending images, so I want to make sure I have it all before I send it off to kuoushi for translation.

I found some pretty standard pointer tables, but unfortunately they point to some of the more mundane things - error messages, system stuff, menu items, cinematic text, skills. I've yet to locate the dialogue pointers. I have a feeling they're lurking in the map files, so that'll take some additional work to find. I can work on finding them during the translation as well.

[tiozinho]

Congratulations translation initiative of this great game, translated from English into Portuguese the SNES game and have interest in the translation of this as well.

http://www.romhackers.org/modules/smartsection/item.php?itemid=97