Friday, July 20, 2012

Challenge time!

NTG

Can you spot any Japanese text in these screenshots?

Shadow Dragon Trivia

Aveyn Knight

I'd like to say thanks to everyone who sent me a message about yesterday's volunteering task. I'll reply to everyone soon and begin the difficult task of narrowing down who to recruit...

In the meantime, I'm going to apologise for interrupting progress yet again, to mention something curious I spotted in Shadow Dragon, which is slightly related to this game.

When NTG was helping me insert the tutorial graphics, she was asking me where file 19 is. The tutorial files are numbered 01 to 38 internally, but there's no 19 and instead a weird gap between 18 and 20.

Well it turns out the missing tutorial 19 actually appeared in Shadow Dragon... or didn't appear, would be more accurate. It seems Intelligent Systems were planning to implement the ability to issue orders to units, like in Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn, but dropped it at the last moment.

The image below shows the unused tutorial card about issuing orders:



As you can see, Nintendo of America's localisation team translated the tutorial text, but cleverly didn't bother changing the graphics. I can completely understand their actions, since graphics are always more fiddly to edit than plain text; why bother translating a graphic that nobody's ever going to see? Amusingly, NTG actually translated a few unused graphics because she hasn't played the game and didn't realise they weren't used : P

For those interested, these are the orders that were planned:

Avoid[X] Order units to stay out of enemy range unless otherwise instructed.[X]

Protect[X] Order units to protect Marth unless otherwise instructed.[X]

Attack[X] Order units to attack nearby enemies unless otherwise instructed.[X]

Wait[X] Order units to stay put unless otherwise instructed.[X]

Follow[X] Order units to stay with Marth unless otherwise instructed.[X]

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Volunteer hunt (closed)

Aveyn Knight

Thanks! Applications are now closed!

I'm sorry to interrupt the progress posts, but I'm looking for 1 or 2 volunteers who are fairly familiar with (say, played the game once or played most of it) Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem, i.e this game, good with English and willing to spend up to 30 minutes proof-reading a rather lengthy interview for the game.

Laughs Iwata

Please e-mail me at:

aveyn_knight [at] yahoo [dot] co [dot] uk

subject "FE12 Interview" and mentioning your credentials if interested!

In other news, the graphical editing is going sweet. NTG sure is a graphical wiz; in the time it took me to insert 1 image, she did like 10. Oh dear...

Sunday, July 15, 2012

Long time no "Hi"

NTG

I pretty much disappeared for about a year, but now that it's the summer holiday I finally have some time to do some graphical work for this project. I helped Aveyn Knight finish off the dictionary graphics and now I'm working on the chapter names. Here's a (not so) random mash-up of screenshots:

Friday, July 13, 2012

what's this

Blazer

sorry this is old but showing anyway



lol y is an FE12 thing here? oh cuz the guy who made this thing helped me (...or at least tried to, idr details) with graphics before.

i was like 'cool pic bro, rep FE12 moar plz'

if onry the tranzlayshun had such awesum grammor.

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Blazer's Proofreading Feed: Day 2

Blazer

5:45 PM: Been setting stuff up for like... half an hour? Now I can get started on 001. Not only are the scripts smaller but they should be less... annoying in general, due to their nature, so this should be fast. Plus, I'll be faster now that I'm experienced. :)

6:25 PM: Well, I totally forgot that the text editor was updated from the older prologue scripts, so I had to get used to new names for old codes... but anyway, I at least finished chapter 1. I'm still not over the fact that this game actually has some kind of a story...

7:50 PM: Some drama happened on my Fire Emblem fansite distracting me since the last update. Furthermore, I'm now tired, so I'm going offline for a little... will start chapter 2 when I get back.

10:01 PM: Well, thanks to various crap I haven't made much progress, but I think I can finally start chapter 2 now... *sigh*

11:40 PM: Sorry, I forgot to say that I finished chapter 2... then I almost finished chapter 3 except a few text entries won't load. I'm going to have to ask Vincent about that (because he's smarter than me so if I can't figure it out, maybe he can) as soon as I finish typing this update. So I guess that means I'm done spending all of my free-time proofreading/formatting text until I get this fixed... I sound sad but I'm actually kinda happy I hit this roadblock, lol. Maybe I can play Path of Radiance or Xenoblade Chronicles...

Day 2 feed is finished.

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Blazer's Proofreading Feed: Day 1

Blazer

I'm beginning the mass proofreading. I'll be editing this post to keep track of progress while also letting you guys know how it's going. Sadly even though it's summer I'll still be "AFK", or "away from keyboard", at times, during which I won't be working. All times are EST. This will continue until either I hit a roadblock or I finish every script of the main story dialog (i.e. not base conversations and other miscellaneous text).

July 10th, 2012

3:52 PM: "News stream"/feed started. I have a couple programs open, but nothing's really happened yet. I know I won't be able to work for long...

4:00 PM: Thanks to VincentASM I've gotten some Action Replay codes (AKA "cheat codes") installed on Desmume (AKA DeSmuME lol). Now I can test things a bit easier...

4:09 PM: I think all of my preparations are done. Now I can actually start proofing: however, what I do is a little bit more thorough than the normal proofing that the other people do. I have to actually test the dialog in-game, which, for the most part, hasn't been tested, and make sure it not only works properly, but it looks good. Dialog has various... codes and formatting embedded in between their words to do things like line breaks, forcing you to press a button to move the text, load portraits, close eyes, or whatever. So I'm not only fixing grammar and making sure things sound good, but that they look good. I am the final "proofer", but we are also going to have a translation accuracy check done by the original translators just to make sure one last time the script is good (but said check shouldn't need to make any grammatical or formatting fixes). Also, I finished the first and second parts of the prologue already, so I'm about to start the third. With the new cheat codes, it should be easy enough to solo everything with MU ("My Unit", the hero character that the player creates).

4:37 PM: The first test is going through. I lost about 10 minutes doing something else, meaning it only took about 15 minutes, which is much better than before, when it took me twice as long for the initial test. This script is not only shorter but I've also gotten a little bit quicker at fixing formatting and whatnot, which is good for me...

5:01 PM: I don't understand how, but the game was trying to load a text that didn't exist in any of the text files we had: including the original. I managed to fix the problem by making said entry exist, but if the original didn't have it, then... I don't know. Well, at least Prologue Part 3 is done. Here comes part 4...

5:26 PM: Part 4 initial proofing complete... I want to test it now, but I'm short on time...

5:36 PM: Part 4 is almost done; it just needs one final test to make sure all the fixes really worked. But I have to go now...

8:10 PM: Got back at 8:05; finished my final check of part 4, which just needed a couple more fixed. Onto part 5...

8:38 PM: Initial proofing of part 5 is done... but I'll have to continue later.

9:33 PM: Started back up 10 minutes ago and successfully finished inserting and testing part 5. However, I'm going to take a break now as this is a weird way to be spending my birthday.

July 11th, 2012

12:27 AM: Dammit, how can summer be half-way over? Time to kick myself into overdrive. I won't sleep until I at LEAST finish the prologue unless something crazy happens...

12:47 AM: One forever later, I finish the first run of part 6...

1:00 AM: Part 6 done. Starting part 7.

1:34 AM: Part 7 is *finally* done. Time to test and fix...

2:57 AM: Crap, I forgot to update saying when I finished part 7. But I did. Then I started the dreaded script of part 8. Then I finished it just now. Testing time...

3:33 AM: A ton of proofing, random glitch fixing, testing, more proofing, and more testing later... I've finished part 8. Dang, I knew it'd take a while, but that was ugly. At least the main chapters will be quicker. I'll be back when I have a bunch of free time again. For now, I get to sleep! Yay!

Also note that I call it a "day" as in the time-span of which I was awake... as in my day starts when I wake up and ends when I go to sleep, and thus so does this "day" of proofing. Just wanted to clarify that~.

3:44 AM: ...Lastly, these screenshots and captions are for you. Good night for real, everyone!


"Cain Tries To Be Scary" and "Katarina, (Seemingly) Generic Tutorial-Esque Commenator"


"Merric the Cool Mage... I mean Wind Mage" and "Cecille Mid-Blink, As If Though Fire Emblem Characters Have Sincere Emotions Again"

Feed: Day 1 is Finished.

Saturday, July 7, 2012

Graphics with a vengeance

Aveyn Knight

I have won in the battle against the dictionary and tutorial graphics and defeated the nefarious One Image with Multiple Palettes. It was a long and tiresome battle and my work is far from over as I have to rebuild fallen nations, but at least no more mage girls will have to suffer again.



Anyway, see you soon, if the next battle doesn't kill me.

Thursday, July 5, 2012

The reason why this didn't get localised

Aveyn Knight

See this little Japanese text?



This is of course pretty straightforward to translate and it means "Father and child". Trouble is, the image I showed is the only available space you get to write "Father and child".

So... er...

But in all seriousness, if Nintendo translated this game, they'd be able to rearrange the graphics to make space, but I'm just a humble wannabe graphic hacker : (

...And in brighter news, I've made a few leaps and bounds with regards to the dictionary graphics. If everything goes to plan, I should able to show some progress soon.