A few questions about character limits

[throughhim413]

After a long time of doing nothing, I was looking at getting back to working on this project.  I've been trying to reach Cyllya, but not had much luck.  In any case, I've been working on translating on my own, so once I get back in touch with Cyllya, hopefully things can move forward on the translation front, even though I know Narikiri Dungeon isn't really top priority right now.

That said, Cless, as I was translating parts of the game, I had a few questions I needed to ask.  Basically, spacing issues.  Here's what I was thinking.  In the Japanese version, when naming your characters, the following were the default settings.  For Mel, Dio, and Kruelle, you get 4 spaces.  For the Narikiri House, you get 7.  And for the Player's Name, you get 8.  Now, I'm assuming that you're planning on replacing the game's character set with the English letters, but given that, will the number of characters still be set at 4 and 7?  For Mel and Dio, obviously it really isn't an issue.  But for Kruelle and the Narikiri House, their English counterparts obviously over-run the character limit.  So basically, is there some plan for expanding the character limits or would that even make sense to do?

Second, I was wondering about the number of characters per line.  But this is really related to that first question.  Any time that the game calls for any of the above names are called by the code, we need to leave that same number of characters open on that line.  So any line that says "Mel and Dio", we have to have it so that there the line says "(4 spaces) and (4 spaces)".  This is all fine, the bigger issue is that it makes it difficult to format the lines and make them look decent.  I mean, basically, I think it would look weird if there were a single line that said "A and B" and the line below it is 16 characters long.  I don't know what I'm suggesting.  Maybe something like taking the option away from the user.  But I don't know if that's possible even.  With a character like Kruelle and with the Narikiri House, that's the only way that we're even going to get the whole name in the script.  I mean, it would be simple to just use the "official" names in the actual script, though it would be kind of weird if we did that and just ignored the inputs by the player at the beginning.

I don't know, maybe you have some thoughts on the matter.  I think last time I spoke to Cyllya, we were still talking about what to do with the name for the Narikirishi class and for the various uses of that word throughout the game.  I think a lot of it was still up in the air.  So unless things have gone on without me, these are the kinds of things I'm still curious about.

[Cless]

I don't really think there's anything we're going to be able to do with input stuff, so we're stuck with the original limits.

I've entertained the possibility of using squish tiles. The screenshot with Kruelle's name fully spelt out is as such. Whenever the variable width font is implemented, there should be a lot of unused font space for those. Unless there are too many namable things. I'd estimate that we'd have at least 50-60 tiles available. Many more is possible, but I don't want to be too liberal with the number in case we need to reserve some values for DTE or something.

Perhaps it sounds cheesy but the only thing I can think of for Narikirishi at this point is Cosplayer...

[throughhim413]

When Cyllya and I were throwing around thoughts on Narikirishi, I think the one she suggested at the time was Costume Artist or something along those lines.  The question is kind of how to make it work in several contexts.  Like, if we call the costume itself Costume Artist, does the default name for the Narikiri House become Costume House?  And then we have the verb form of the word, which I think we had discussed translating as "to become" rather then to dress up or anything along those lines.  Plus, the problem with the Narikiri House is that it's a location name, so won't it need to be small enough to fit into the location bar?  I forget, how many characters could the location title bars even hold?

Could you explain the squish tiles thing?  Is it like a set variable that gets called and displays the character's name in condensed form?  Or would it actually be used to extend the number of characters per line in the standard dialogue box?

[Cless]

Normally, every letter is represented by one 8x8 pixel tile.

"Squish tiles" are used to draw long words across a set of tiles, and usually used if standard text doesn't fit. They can be used to create a pseudo variable width like effect. So the first tile used in Kruelle word contains the K, and part of the r, the second tile finishes the r, fits the full u, and part of the e, and the third tile finishes the e and fits both ls. Luckily, the third tile is completely filled, so we can just use the standard e character for the last one.

A visual representation of what I'm talking about:


top: squish
bottom: normal

[Cyllya]

Eh, you did get ahold of me; I just didn't say anything back because... you just told me what you were working on, there was nothing to say. *shrug* Guess I should've sent an "Okay" or something. Sorry about that.

With the squish titles idea, the name still takes up the same number of spaces. So when trying to format a line with Kruelle's name (or Mel or Dio's), just treat it's a four-letter word, regardless of how there are technically six letters there.

It'll look kind of funny, but with a translated GBC game... there's no way it's not going to look funny. (Sometimes, things had to be abbriviated even when it's still in Japanese!) Don't worry about line length being all even-looking, or you'll go insane.... More important, formating-wise, is not splitting up clauses between text boxes. Even well-written text seems all lame and choppy that way. (Sometimes it'll be unavoidable though.)

Here are some variables and how many spaces they need:

Code:

<CODE 04><$D8>      - Player (actual name you input, not what Mel/Dio call you) (eight spaces)
<CODE 04><$D9>      - Dio (four spaces)
<CODE 04><$DA>      - Mel (four spaces)
<CODE 04><$DB>      - Kruelle (four spaces)
<CODE 04><$C0><$04> - Favorite Food (seven spaces)
<CODE 04><$C0><$05> - Narikiri House (seven spaces?)
<CODE 04><$C0><$06> - Part of Funk's song (four?...I'll check later)
<CODE 06><$E8><$06> - Number of requests finished. (two spaces)

Any time an item shows up, that's eight spaces (<CODE 05><$C0><$6B> is Wing Boots).

As for the Narikiri House.... How about we change it so that the word "House" is part of the script instead of part of the name variable? So the script will say "This is the [whatever player entered] House." We can make the default entry Cosplay, and in the map location bar, take the variable out and just put "House." The only down side is that the name now takes up a whole 13 spaces in the script. XP Well, at least it's two words.

Location bar is eight spaces, iirc.

After thinking about narikiri.... Cosplayer is good enough for the narikirishi class name (except the length in the menu, but that's Cless's problem, not ours), and we might occassionally have to refer to it as "person who can become..." or something when dealing with those parts of the script that have a dual meaning to the word (the costume thing versus what kind of person they become). I guess we should treat narikiru as just another word, not a special term. "Become" should be okay for most contexts. Dress up and stuff like that is fine for some instances, but if you become a sick bastard who helps kill thousands and thousands of people to satisfy your scholarly curiosity, that's not "dressing up." @.@

I've entertained the possibility of using squish tiles. The screenshot with Kruelle's name fully spelt out is as such. Whenever the variable width font is implemented, there should be a lot of unused font space for those. Unless there are too many namable things. I'd estimate that we'd have at least 50-60 tiles available. Many more is possible, but I don't want to be too liberal with the number in case we need to reserve some values for DTE or something.

I think the list I gave above should be all the named things. But you remember those password parts of ToR that were the bane of many an importer? ND1 has at least three of those that I remember. I know one of them have a slight length issue but it's not too big of a deal (don't remember another one well enough). But will you be able to fix it so the game knows they're putting in the right letters?