Closing Remarks

Any moment now, the Heroes of Shadow team will be conducting the closed beta test of the translation patch (or not, it looks like I f***ed up the beta. Now you should be glad we had a beta first). I'm not sure if I'll have the chance later, so I'll just give some closing thoughts now.



First and foremost, I'd like to thank everyone on the translation project team for their invaluable assistance and selfless volunteering, and also for sticking with us till the end (even if not everyone was around all the time). In case you don't know what they did:

Blazer did, um, stuff and then quit. There's not much to say about him. I kid. Blazer's done a bunch of very important stuff, not least gather the whole team in the first place. They helped to organise the team and the translation process and also got their hands dirty with hacking and various negotiations.

TheEnd was our veteran translator, who also worked on the Hasha no Tsurugi and other scanlations. They translated just about everything that wasn't the menu, prologue or the main story branch. Yes, that includes the super-lengthy base conversations.

Agro was our rising star translator, somebody who we hadn't heard of before, but they quickly made a name for themself for their reliability and determination. They translated the prologue and main story branch from scratch and did great justice to the Mystery of the Emblem storyline.

Nintenlord is probably the Hero of Shadow you haven't heard much about, in this translation at least. But without their help, this translation would have struggled to get traction, because they coded the super-efficient text editor. I shudder to imagine editing the text manually...

NomadicTrooperGirl ate all the Japanese graphics and spat out English graphics. We've had 2 graphic editors who did some work then disappeared. NTG did one graphic, vanished for ages, then reappeared and did everything. They're also a graphic editor AND graphic hacker-that's two hard jobs in one!

I'm sorry for bunching all you guys together, but you're all important individuals, I swear! I'm talking about Illumio, Martze, Pandorakun and Ryan, our trusty localisation team, who spellchecked, grammar-checked and zapped any zany Engrish lines.

I probably also ought to thank myself. I kind of joined the team initially to provide advice and support, but I ended up doing 90% of the menus and then verifying all the text in the game. I'm also apparently the project lead now... but that's probably in name more than anything.

And, while not Heroes of Shadow, I'd like to thank Nagato, DarkTwilkitri, Arch, Zak, Zaishi, Vi and Snow (sorry if I forgot anyone!) for providing various levels of assistance. In particular, Nagato is one crazy skilled hacker and if not for them, we wouldn't even have lowercase English symbols in the dialogue. Bonkers, right?

Finally, I'd like to thank every Fire Emblem fan who's been keeping up with or anticipating the Fire Emblem 12 translation. Seriously, keep your eyes peeled. The next time I post (I dunno when though...), I can almost guarantee you won't be disappointed!

Final Cryptic Post

Sorry, I know I'm barely trying here.



Something something closed something something beta soon.

Here's a question to not be totally boring: How often would you like to see patch releases after the completed patch is finished?

While the completed patch should be perfectly playable, it might not be feasible to polish EVERYTHING and we might have missed a few specks here and there.

Not-so-cryptic post

Some of you might remember this screenshot:



It's still valid - both the font glitch and the lack of available hackers to take care of it. Your comments about this matter can come in three flavors:

1. A patch that doesn't have a clean name box is a patch I won't recognize.
2. It can't be helped.
3. I can help with that.

(No, beta testing hasn't started yet; it's mostly out of my hands at the moment.)

Cryptic Post No. 2

Hi all. Progress is going great, but sadly I've caught myself a cold so I've temporarily halted work.

I'm not sure what the other team members think, but I'm planning to withhold posting concrete details about the current progress, especially as we near the final leg of the project. I mean, I could tell you, but it's not going to make the patch come out any sooner : P

While I have doubts this situation would occur, there's the remote possibility that Nintendo may send us a C&D and I definitely don't want to risk wasting everybody's (and my) efforts and hard work on. So for now, I'll try not to spoil too much, in case we end up on (all?) the gaming news sites like a certain prosecuting attorney.

Also... ?!

Cryptic Post No. 1

As promised, I'm giving you a cryptic post.

Your clue is "The message was already posted."

I will not be revealing the answer (but I may provide a clue for this clue if needed), but you're free to guess (or not).

Also, I failed my driving test by doing a few silly mistakes, which may or may not have included accidentally running over a dog. Normal progress will recontinue shortly after I've drowned my sorrows with my mage girls and arranged or not arranged said dog's funeral.

No animals were hurt during the creation of this blog post.

Vincent-Mar

Hi all, this is kind of late in the game, but I need an opinion.

Does "Vincent-Mar" sound too stupid to you? You can be perfectly honest. I think it's kind of stupid too.



Thing is, Tiki has a "special" nickname for My Unit, which is giving us a few headaches, because it--"My Unit oniichan/oneechan" or "(Big) Brother/Sister My Unit"--doesn't translate into English well. Additionally, this nickname has already been localised in Shadow Dragon for Marth--"Marth oniichan"--as "Mar-Mar".

So I figured we're going to end up with something silly anway, so I put two and three together and got "My Unit-Mar". You can help by either praising or blasting my choice and/or providing an adequate or hilariously funny alternative.

Other ideas include: Mu-Mu (TheEnd), Kni-Kni (Blazer)

Update: Slight correction