Progress update and screens for Jan 18th 2009.

[Cless]

We are commited to getting the ToD DC menu patch out in a reasonable time frame and we've been busting our butts since revealing it to make this happen. It's eaten into some time I should probably have spent polishing Phantasia, but again, the reveal was ahead of our original plans. I'm taking a break for the time being, and am posting where we are at this point.

Translation status (Jan 18, 2009):

Complete:

Menu labeling, and menu-specific text:

• Main
• Items
• Equip
• Reforge (aka Rerise)
• Status
• Artes
• Status
• Save/Load/Import Data menus
• Food
• Swordian Devices
• Advanced Gate (possibly going to be renamed in the project, haven't settled on a new name yet)
• Collector's Book
• Monster Book
• Food Book
• Customize

List stuff:

• Item names
• Item descriptions
• Title names
• Support Talent names
• Support Talent descriptions
• Character names
• Swordian Device names
• Shop names

In progress:

• Title descriptions
• Arte names (mostly done, but some of these are insanely difficult to localize. Some translated names without official counterparts are in a sort of embarrassing state.)
• Arte descriptions
• Monster names (annoying!!)
• Battle text (tutorials, engrish cleanup)
• Equipment and Swordian Device Effects

Not started on:

• Strategy list
• Strategy descriptions
• Monster descriptions
• Discovery Book (list or descriptions. Labeling is done, though)
• Story synopsis text (probably not going to happen for the menu patch)

All translated text is in various states of editing. Please be aware that the game's menus alone have nearly 500KB of text. THAT'S A LOT. Although we're cutting some corners for the menu patch (like the story synopsis, which makes up around 70k), it's still a lot for a menu. To give some perspective, 500KB is nearly 5/6s the size of Phantasia's entire main dialogue script. Not to mention, nearly twice as much menu text as there is in ToD2.

Hacking notes: I did a small ASM hack (not very easy on PS2) that fixed a severe limitation in the main menu's Location display. In a nutshell, it now lets us display 32 letters there. There was originally a hard limit of just 12.

I also found a way to reduce the spacing between each letter, and the result cleans up a few minor cosmetic issues, and lets strings get just a tiny bit longer before the game automatically shrinks the text size to fit in the space.

[ForceCube]

500 KB? WTF? That's insane! I'm currently proofreading a 1MB script and every 5 seconds I stop to think "man, why the **** does this game have so much text?". And 1MB is the whole story dialogue!

And if the menu text alone is that big, imagine the main script. I hope throughhim survives this.

[Shawn]

Looking really nice Cless.

[throughhim413]

I hope throughhim survives this.

Don't worry, I've learned to take pleasure in life's small victories. For example, "Thank God I don't have to translate any more food descriptions!!!!!!!!!"

[Demon000]

Wow! This is looking incredible! Good luck with the project

[chaos]

Great job! The spacing between letters is definitely better!   

Just noticed that weird 'blob' in the first image on 'Artes.'  Was that always there? It's been a while since I've played the game...

[Craymel]

I think the blob your refering to is there to give the gem where the information of what menu your in is just to make it look shiny round and gem like. So yes it was originally there. Hope that helps new poster

[Penance]

Well done Cless and th.
This is amazing, your doing such a good job.

@Cless; You figured out how to minimize the spacing between letters?!
Do you remember that conversation we had through PM?

[CloudHiro]

I thought Clemente was the swordian of lightning and the swordian of light was [spoilers]

the swordian the final boss possessed to keep himself alive in the past, Berselius

[/spoilers]

Or has that changed since the origonal ps1 version?

Otherwise great job so far

[throughhim413]

That would be the Swordian of darkness, I believe. Clemente is the Swordian of light since lightning and light are a single element in Destiny.

[CloudHiro]

Im pretty shure Chalter was darkness (and earth) since it focused alot on darkness attacks. again, I may be mistaken. or it was just mistranslated in the english localization

[spoilers] besides, Berselius was the one that took down Miktran, and as far as I remember had a white (at least in the origonal) and black bladed apearance, so it could be ether or <_< [/spoilers]

[throughhim413]

Chaltier definitely has a lot of darkness spells, but I believe he's supposed to be earth. I was always under the impression that it was one Swordian per element. In any case, the stuff in the screenshot was just translated directly. So rather than accept my speculation, the actual text is probably more reliable.

[CloudHiro]

alright then, thanks for clearing that up. hope to get the menu patch soon. the story I can handle with all the translation guides out there, I just get confused when trying to navigate the menu 

speaking of which, any chance of releaceing alpha and beta releaces of the menu patch along the way? cause it looks like you guys have alot of it done already

[Majutsuko]

I was just wondering about the new Level 6 SD they gave Rutee in this version. She got one called "Shield" which is supposed to defend against critical hits, but instead Namco messed up and made it give +1000 HP to her max HP. Are you going to try to correct this, or just rename it to "Stamina" instead to go with the HP boost?

I love what you've done with the menus btw Cless! Oddly enough, the first thing I noticed was that the spacing between the stars and the message speed was fixed XD

Major props to Absolute Zero for the tediousness of the menu translations too of course~

One last thing...can you edit/replace images in this game? I just thought it would be cool if you held a contest where people could design a new HQ cut-in for Majinken Setsuga. After all, Leon got stiffed compared to the other characters in that regard.

[Kajitani-Eizan]

i also seem to recall clemente being lightning and berselius being light in the PSX version. iirc the elements were separate back then; like excalibur was light element, but clemente was lightning. dunno if that was the translation, or what, though.

chaltier was of course earth, but also inexplicably had darkness moves (demon's lance), even though no other swordian besides clemente had spells that didn't match the swordian's element.

[Penance]

One last thing...can you edit/replace images in this game? I just thought it would be cool if you held a contest where people could design a new HQ cut-in for Majinken Setsuga. After all, Leon got stiffed compared to the other characters in that regard.

You can definatley extract the images, Cless extracted loads from this game.
I actually do loads of graphics editting on PC games, you just know how to acess the files and such. The game I usually edit graphics/images for pretty much has been pulled apart and has a shit load of custom tools so it's pretty easy.
Basically I'm saying yes. You SHOULD be able to edit the images and slap them back in but i'll leave that up to Cless to answer it fully.
(Btw it's Judgey)