Cautious Conceit

This Much Epic: Part 4 -

nobody@vox.com(Doctor L) — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 11:38:01 -0400

Doctor L's CT Re-retranslation.zip
Doctor L's CT Re-retranslation.7z

The translation is complete, finally. It was a long arduous task. But, I am pleased with the result.

It would have been released weeks ago, but I was having difficulty inserting Crono's new element icon into the game to replace the 'Lightning' one. It became necessary to look for help which I eventually got from justin3009 at Chrono Compendium.

So, I have made posts at Chrono Compendium and at ROMHacking.net, but it seems to be getting little fanfare. I wish I could find out how often it's being downloaded if at all.

I'm trying to concoct a way to get it more fan press without being a douche about it. No luck so far.

I'm not entirely done with everything though. I consider all my work an ongoing work in progress. So, as I continue to play the game, I'm fixing text to make it look more uniform and neat. Eventually, I'll submit these changes as a new release version. I also realized I need to change the default name of the flying craft in the game back to 'Epoch' as the CC team changed it to the Japanese name. But, the space provided isn't big enough for the name, so it's shortened making it look awkward. I've also changed a bunch of the abbreviated names of items and equipment to shorter names while trying to retain their original meaning in Japanese. A second run through the game made me realize how much this annoyed me. I've never been fond of abbreviating words normally not abbreviated.

Here's to hoping it gets the kind of recognition I'm hoping for. :-/

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...This Much Epic: Part 3 - Dawn of the Embed

nobody@vox.com(Doctor L) — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 10:26:12 -0500

Chrono & Frog

So, step 2 has been completed as I've inserted all the translated text into Chrono Trigger. Step 3 is currently underway.

I'm about 3 hours into the game fixing errors as I come upon them, then reloading the game to make sure they're fixed correctly. At this point, I figure I'm only anal enough to go through the game a few times trying every dialog tree I can before I release it to the public. I already have 2 friends interested in trying it out once I'm done and another who has said he'll think about it if he gets the time. Very understandable since he's in school right now.

It also gives me an opportunity to see the text in relation to what is happening on the screen finally. This has caused me to change the structure of some sentences again as they sounded fine on paper, but were actually horrible when put into the context of everything else.

This project is definitely keeping me busy. I'm glad I've had the determination to make it this far. I was scared I'd get too frustrated or have my attention diverted. Fortunately, the hard part is over.

So, is the game just as good as I remember? Yes! Man, I love this game. If Xenogears had gotten the kind of love this game got in terms of the development process, I think my mind would have exploded. The testing process has forced me to take my time progressing the game. This is by no means a bad thing either. I'm enjoying it all over again every step of the way.

When I'm finished with the testing process, I'm going to edit Crono's Element icon in his character profile. The North American release originally rendered it as "Lightning" while the crew that retranslated it edited it and rendered his element as "Sky". Both are wrong in my opinion. The Japanese character means "Heaven". I can see why it was rendered as Lightning since much of Crono's magic consists of attacking with Lightning in some fashion. On a side note, I sincerely have to wonder why the Japanese call 2 of his attacks Thunder and Thundaga. He's obviously attacking with lightning strikes, not the sound made from them (/end nerd rant). I can also see why the fan guys call it Sky as Heaven and Sky are interchangeable. However, seeing as how Crono is your token selfless hero who helps anyone he meets along his way, I think Heaven is more appropriate.

Also, Crono's techniques consist of lightning, as previously stated, generating powerful winds with his katana, and his final attack: Luminaire. Luminaire was Shining in Japanese. This is how the other fans rendered it in English. If you have not seen this attack, Crono generates a bright light that floods the screen. It does massive damage. Anywho, my point is that this light isn't from lightning and sky doesn't really define the light either. I would sooner associate it with a holy/divine power. Therefore, I say Heaven. Heaven explains the source of the lightning, the wind, and the holy light. Also, since I'm anal, I think it makes a better sounding counterpart to another element in the game: "Dark".

I've also added my handle, "Doctor L" into the localization credits just to give it some kind of stamp that I'm responsible for this version. The other retranslation crew did this too and I feel it's appropriate. I will be leaving their names and Ted Woolsley's in as well. My name will be at the bottom of the list as placing it anywhere else would be dishonest and wrong. My version is influenced by Ted Woolsley's easy to understand and interesting rendition while still maintaining the completeness of the other fans'. Both groups did the hardest work which was actually translating the text from Japanese to English. That and, despite not liking the rendition from KWhazit and the others, his crew still supplied the handy Excel files I used for my own planning, the CronoNick fix for Ayla, and the insertion of the Japanese artwork shown at the end of one of the game's many endings. The Nickname function and Artwork were originally unavailable in the North American release due to size restrictions and/or, in the case of the artwork, not being available when our version went into localization development.

When I'm finally satisfied with what I've done, I'll release my changes as a patch. I'd rather not risk a lawsuit from a world renowned and financially wealthy gaming company. Especially true for one who has been on a remake binge the past few years.

It's a shame the Playstation port (I don't consider adding some anime cutscenes a remake) was craptacular. The cutscenes were very cool, but the load times were horrible. You'd think they would have spent the time to make it more efficient. Having looked at the guts of the game has made it very evident as to why the load times were terrible, though. A large majority of the game is arranged very inefficiently. For example, it's fairly common for a character's dialog in response to another character's dialog to be in two entirely different memory locations in the ROM. Or, dungeon maps to have their rooms spread out across the ROM. None of this would have been a problem at all on the SNES, but CDs are a different matter as we all know.

I really wish there was some way I could insert the cutscenes into the SNES ROM, but that would be impossible to do since the SNES wasn't equipped to handle FMV anyway. Who knows, maybe when I'm feeling especially ambitious someday and better equipped with programming, I'll streamline the PS port on my own.

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Not Prepared for This Much Epic: Part 2 - Son of Epic, the Revenge!

nobody@vox.com(Doctor L) — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 12:37:37 -0500

ChronoTrigger

Seeing as many things have come up this week. I didn't have the chance to start inserting the new text into Chrono Trigger until last night.

Things were going well initially as I had changed a good portion of the dialogue in much of the opening sequences. When I went to test it, a scripted sequence never happened which made it impossible to advance. It was rather frustrating because it's never really been entirely clear to myself when this event is triggered. Although, it's never taken more than 30 minutes!

I'm going to keep hacking away at it though until I'm satisfied.

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The 90's Were Not Prepared for This Much Epic.

nobody@vox.com(Doctor L) — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 10:23:58 -0500

Chrono_Trigger

One of my favorite games of all time is Chrono Trigger. It was epic in story, gameplay, graphics (at the time), sound, and replayability.

The game was released on the Super Nintendo in North America in the ancient year of 1995. It's a RPG (role-playing game) developed by Squaresoft, now known as Square-Enix, towards the end of the SNES's life cycle. It would soon be the opinion of myself and others that it was the finest game conceived up to that point and possibly even now.

Final Fantasy VII hadn't come along yet and popularized RPGs in the States. They were thriving in Japan, but not so much here. However, that didn't mean there wasn't a fan base for 'em.

The game had a great premise: Time Travel. It focused on 3 friends from one time period and their companions they meet in other time periods from the past to the future. You can't have an epic story without the characters struggling against opposition though. The antagonist was Lavos. Lavos was an enormous parasite buried in the core of the planet that was feeding off the energy generated by the planet. Without giving too much away, it awakens fully at some point in history and destroys most of the life on the planet in the process. The characters learn of this at some point and devote themselves to preventing the event from ever happening.

The soundtrack for this game is simply amazing. I actually own the soundtrack. I bought it on import direct from Japan. It made me fall in love with the music of Yasunori Mitsuda who would later go on to score my other favorite game, Xenogears.

I've always loved RPGs more than other games. Recently, I've had the urge to play Chrono Trigger again. Except, I wanted to play it with the original dialogue intact. What I mean by that is, I wanted to play it with the dialogue unchanged from what it meant originally in Japanese. During the NES and SNES days, Nintendo had a nasty habit of censoring everything that might be deemed questionable to the American public. That means we missed out on story elements of a more "adult" nature found in games published on Nintendo consoles. Chrono Trigger was no exception. The story is still great, but censorship pisses me off. This is no fault to the people responsible for the localization process in NA though. They did great with the short amount of time they had and the restrictions placed on them by Nintendo's rules.

So, I found a version of the game that was retranslated from the original Japanese to English by a fan. I was eager to see the story again with its original wording intact. That was, until I actually started playing.....

4/6/2008 - EDIT: The following paragraph was stated in a time where I didn't know the full story behind the retranslation effort. In a way, my completed version is now phase II of that effort.

The translation was unbearable! Freakin' unbearable; I had to stop after 10 minutes! This group did a literal translation from the Japanese. Those of you familiar with the Japanese language understand how much of an ungood thing this is. You get what's been termed as Engrish. Engrish is the retarded, inbred cousin of English. They also chose to leave in the Japanese terms for respect when addressing someone. So, Crono wouldn't be Crono. It'd be Crono-sama. I hate it when people do this.....HATE IT! It's a personal preference thing, but... damn.

To the guy's credit, he supplied the public with an Excel spreadsheet containing all the dialogue from the original NA release, the original Japanese release, and his English translation. As a result of this literary atrocity, I decided to be proactive about my complaints. I took this spreadsheet and am now converting all of his text to grammatically correct and easily understood English. Whilst also, I am removing all the Japanese terms of respect and adding English equivalents where appropriate.

As you can guess, this is quite the undertaking. There are about 20,000 lines of dialogue in the game. I've managed to get through roughly 6,000 since I started a few days ago. There are plenty of instances where a sentence spanning several lines can be translated into just a few words. The original localization team must have figured this out too as I've used their translations as a basis for many sentences throughout. However, I am not changing any story elements.

So, once I'm done, it's getting inserted into the game and then I'll finally play the game like I wanted to. *phew*

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