Christmas stuff (December 25th, 2008)

[Cless]

It'd be wonderful if the patch could be released today, but it just isn't ready. I'm still feeling pretty confident about an early 2009 release, though. Anyway, I'd still really like to post an update to the front page, but I still don't feel ready for that yet either. I plan for the next site update to have lots of new media.

Stuff continues to move along. I still work on this thing almost daily, for hours. Although I find myself easily distracted and work a lot more slowly than I'd like, progress is progress.


A few weeks ago, Nusakan indeed finished the first draft of the main script edit, and I also inserted it. Things are looking pretty good now compared to its state pre-edit. There's still more work to do, though. While ToP's script by far isn't the largest out there, it's still pretty big for a single person. As you go along, you end up getting more ideas, and want to take another pass at older stuff to incorporate them. I expect that by the time this is final, the vast majority of text will have been rewritten from the original translation. We're really trying to get a recognizable, fitting speaking style going for each character that goes beyond the literal translations. Many dry dialogues are being fleshed out with logical details that fit in with the spirit of the original lines (there are few randomly injected jokes), which also helps clarify some vagueness.

Another issue is consistency. I have to do much of this one myself, pretty much. Our script has been through four translators. Some otherwise identical terms in Japanese end up getting translated differently by others. Let's hope nothing gets accidentally overlooked.

Nusakan's second draft of the main script and the first draft of the skit script should be getting worked on now. The nature of the skit script though is pretty limiting compared to the main script. There are more issues, like timing length (limits ability to flesh things out), and you can't really do any line-swapping (sometimes you can get lucky and move some ideas around, at least).

Random script comment: The puns in this game suck, really, really bad. We've got ideas for some of them, but there are still at least a couple left. One particularly bad one is where grottos make Arche hungry, because the Japanese word for "grotto" is the same/similar to one meaning "cafe." This doesn't translate to English at all. A drastic change is likely going to be needed here, whether it being change the name of the Eroded Grotto, or completely changing the dialogue of the scene to some kind of related joke.


The battle voices at last have been roughly translated. They're a bit of a pain to work with, as I'm unsure how to actually trigger a number of them. Getting context for those is a bit difficult. Habilain says he might be able to figure them out via reverse engineering. If it's not, it's quite possible that they have extremely obscure conditions and there is a risk that the translation could be a little off.

Many battle lines are still in need of a style edit (Writing everyone's "yatta" as "I/We did it!" is boring and sucks).

One thing I've learned is that there's apparently a dummied Command menu (used in Tales of Destiny's battle menu). Voice clips were recorded for the options but were never deleted from the game or sound test. I guess they were planning to use Destiny's battle menu for the remake, but instead opted to fall back on the SNES version's basic four options at some point following the voice recording. (Not related to the battle voice clips, but in the battle menu labels, there is graphic text for a Command menu option, too. Must have been taken out fairly late in the development cycle for it to still be there. For me, it was actually interesting finding some real, tangible unused leftovers from ToD still in the game. I bet there are even more at the ASM level.)

There are also clips that seem to have been meant to be used at the very start of a battle, but nothing like that is ever spoken in-game. Some things are simply troubling...there's a voice clip that's quite clearly an alternate for Chester's Thunder Blitz (aka Goten) arte. It never triggered after multiple uses. The thing is, the alternate clips for his fire, ice, and earth-elemental artes work just fine! Interestingly, there are voice clips for Dhaos second form's artes, but his voice isn't actually used in that battle.


Habilain had a real life thing to deal with and it set him back a few weeks. He's back in the game now with an extensive hack that enhances the world map menu's town and shop name display. Originally those names are stored as graphics, but this hack changes them to real text. This hack offers the following benefits:

• No [meaningful] limitation on letter height: The original only allowed a maximum of 12 pixels. If using the dialogue font (which is what I wanted, for consistency's sake), letters that sit low lose their lower outline, which looks ugly.
• No palette limitation on shop names: Normally, the shop names are forced to share the palette with the icons displayed next them, leaving only two colors for the text. It's ugly, especially the brown outline. Real text of course gives the proper black outline and the full gradient.
• One shop name is called "Tiger Blade," in reference to the arte. With the arte name selector, it needs to change to Kogahazan if on the other setting.
• Easier to change/update names: A benefit for us hackers, really. It's really kind of a pain opening up Photoshop to piece together an updated name. I'd rather just quickly edit the text and reinsert.

The hack isn't perfect yet, bugs were found after a bit of extra testing, but they should be worked out soon.


As for me, lately I've been focusing on tying up various small issues mostly not really worth mentioning in detail. A little bit of everything, really.

[throughhim413]

Good luck with the "grotto" pun, that one gave me all kinds of headaches too. ToP was pretty mean with its puns. I'm quite curious to see how they'll all be dealt with in your translation actually. Sounds like everyone has been busy, so keep up the good work!

[Yetika]

Really pleased to hear the progress~

For Arche's grotto pun, how about Risotto? It's a kind of food, so it miiiight work.

[Cless]

Heh. I'm not decided on what we're gonna do with it just yet. While I'm slightly guilty of peeking at it and borrowing some editing ideas, the GBA version renamed the Eroded Grotto to the "Limestone Cavern" or something. Reminds Arche of limes! Not keen on it though...limes don't seem particularly appetizing to me on their own.

[throughhim413]

Maybe the limes are related to Arche's love of alcohol and she's actually drooling over margaritas. Or something...

[Yetika]

Hahaha, wouldn't put it past her to think like that, indeed. Especially considering the infamous boat scene. XD

[me_001]

Could "gratin" work ? It sounds a bit like grotto and it's food.

[throughhim413]

I think I used gratin in my translation, if I remember right. That was why I translated the location name as "grotto" in the first place. I think that it can probably be done better, but it was the best I could come up with.

EDIT: I don't mean to imply that you can't use gratin, of course. I'm sure I wasn't the first person nor will I be the last to come up with that play on words.

[Cless]

Coincidentally, Shinhoshi translated the name of the place as Eroded Grotto when she worked on the debug room file a few years back. It kinda stuck all along.

Funny thing about about the lime/alcoholic reference: LoZ: Link's Awakening has a bit of a pun on grotto too--the second level was called "Bottle Grotto."

I guess there are more possibilities than I had thought. But still, I haven't settled on anything, or if I even want to leave it as a pun at all. I definitely want to try making it amusing.

[throughhim413]

Sorry if I'm still sounding like I'm taking credit for coming up with any names. It honestly isn't my intention. I didn't know you were also using "grotto", I remember last year a lot of people objected to it at first. Something about it sounding "too exotic". I rather like it though. I'll just say "good luck" again and bow out before I put my foot in my mouth anymore. Do your best with those puns!

[Cless]

No, no, I didn't mean it like that. It's all cool. Things like this are bound to happen. It's clear that our reasonings behind the name choice was a bit different, not that that really matters, though.

[nusakan0]

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get too much work done over the break, largely because of computer difficulties.  I took a little while to unwind after finals (and to play some Persona 4), but shortly after commencing editing my laptop ran into some problems and began to critically overheat.  I managed to get the problem fixed a few days ago, but it freaked me out a bit and quite obviously slowed things down.  At the very least, I'll try finishing the first draft of the skit script by New Years.

Also, I entirely agree about the grotto pun.  The alcohol suggestion sounds good.

[Gamesoul Master]

Hmm... could be difficult. If you want to stick with Eroded Grotto, how about "gratin" as the related food of choice? Though people tend to think only of potatos au gratin, there *are* many different types of gratin out there. For instance, there's Onion Gratin, Spinach Gratin, Vegetable Gratin, Cheese Gratin... plenty of them to work with (and possibly justify the joke, since you may have to at least slightly elaborate on "gratin").

It's probably going to be the closest and easiest to work with suggestion you'll get on "grotto"... lol.

[habilain]

Whoo! Barring real hardware problems, the World Map screen is hacked and done.

Personally, I feel that Gratin from Grotto is a bit of a stretch, but if it's going to be used... how about "Olivine Grotto"->"Olive Gratin" (Olivine is another name for Peridot, though it's mainly used for impure Peridot). The other food pun I can do on a cave name is "Jaffeite Cave"->"Jaffa Cake" (Jaffeite being a cloudy white rock) - which is probably better, insofar as it's a cake. Although it might not be something that Americans are familiar with (they're certainly popular in the UK, but I have a nasty suspicion that they're called something else in the USA).

[Kajitani-Eizan]

honestly, i like the risotto option the best. i'd probably take something like gumbo over gratin -- something that rhymes is better than something that just alliterates.

[gyozilla]

The 浸食洞 (Shinshokudou / Eroded Grotto) -> 新食堂 (Shinshokudou / New Dining Hall) joke.

アーチェ「新食堂よ！シンショクドウ！」
Arche: New dining hall! A new dining hall!
クラース「ん？」
Klarth: Hm?
クラース「何か今、変な言い方をしなかったか？」
Klarth: Didn't you just say something in a weird way?
アーチェ「・・・気にしない気にしない！」
Arche: ...don't worry, don't worry!
アーチェ「新食堂の話なんてしたら、おなかがすいちゃったよ・・・」
Arche: Speaking of a new dining hall, I'm hungry...
ミント「？？？」
Mint: ???
クレス（浸食洞の話で、お腹が・・・？）
Cless: (Speaking of the Eroded Cave, her stomach is...?)
アーチェ「ねぇ・・・クレス」
Arche: Hey... Cless.
アーチェ「ここで、ちょっと食事しない？」
Arche: Can't we have a meal here?

Notes about the original: Shokudou is more of a cafeteria / food court than a cafe. The problem with the joke is it puns off the entire Shinshokudou phrase, not just the shokudou / grotto part. Her epiphany was to Shinshokudou; Mint and Cless react to the whole thing. If Arche says "Speaking of risottos, I'm hungry...", it shouldn't be all that confusing for Mint. And Cless wouldn't try to figure it out in his head like that.


One possible edit is to have Arche make a run-off-at-the-mouth Risotto reference, never mention it again, and have her change it back to grotto so Mint and Cless' headscratches actually make sense (her character style is talking weird anyways):
Arche: Risotto! Grotto, Risotto!
Klarth: Hm?
Klarth: Did you just say something all weird-like?
Arche: ...nothing, nothing!
Arche: Speaking of grottos, now I'm hungry...
Mint: ???
Cless: (Speaking of grottos, she's hungry...?)
Arche: Hey... Cless.
Arche: Can't we have a meal here?


But if you don't mind furthering the alcoholic reference, the other way to pun this is Eroded Cavern with Tavern. (A lot of people don't know what a risotto is.)
Arche: Tavern! Eroded Tavern!
Klarth: Hm?
Klarth: Did you just say something all weird-like?
Arche: ...nothing, nothing!
Arche: Speaking of caverns, now I'm tired...
Mint: ???
Cless: (Speaking of caverns, she's tired...?)
Arche: Hey... Cless.
Arche: Can't we take a break and have a meal here?