Emerald Dragon Localization Project!

[NightWolve]

Thread Mirror #1: ysutopia.net/forums/index.php?topic=431.0
Twitter Tweets: twitter.com/NightWolve75/status/555595460602527745
https://twitter.com/NightWolve75/status/1089000068215177216

Intro [1/13/2015]: I had been in talks with my old friend David Shadoff about taking over one of his excess stalled projects and this was one of them. Mulled it over and decided I'll try to push this over the finish line, but no guarantees... As such, I was given all project materials, including ~60% of SamIAm's translated results from 2007. I've also been discussing it with Sam on how to proceed and think I can meet his needs, though time will tell. If successful, this'll mark 11 years since my last full PC Engine CD RPG project (Ys IV) got off the ground in 2004 (the dub in 2012 was just a little blip)! I had decided I wanted to stick mainly with more modern x86 Falcom PC Games after Ys IV, but with Emerald Dragon, I am retro again, baby!

9/6/2019: A first-look teaser of the Emerald Dragon [PC Engine CD] English localization project has been published!!!  Took YEARS to get here...

Loading: twitter.com/NightWolve75/status/555595460602527745

Loading: twitter.com/NightWolve75/status/1089000068215177216

Reviews:

pcengine-fx.com/reviews/duomazov/emerald-dragon.html
honestgamers.com/3140/turbografx-cd/emerald-dragon/review.html

[NightWolve]

ED Project History Log

** 2/28/2015 - Translation Station adapting to Emerald Dragon's specifics

An inside look at my custom translation software built on AccessVBA with an Emerald Dragon message box emulator coded properly. The march of progress continues on stomping the competition with every step!



** 2/14/2015 - The Great Leap Forward: First LZSS Recompressed Text Block Inserted!

The project crosses one of the greatest technical hurdles and thus it now becomes clear that it can and will be finished!!! Recompression of the first testing text block with David's superior LZSS functions back from 2004 (coded for Ys IV) were made to work here and successfully at that! BEHOLD! Project Status: Resurrected with confidence!!!




** 1/31/2015 - Test Insertion

Identified a compressed block/stream, sought town message, set control bytes to 0xFF to allow literal text insertion for a quick font/writing test, and voila!



Using current font tiles (harvested from the PC-FX BIOS!):


** 1/13/2015 - Font Inspection Situation

Poked around the ED ROM track with a new tile viewer (YY-CHR.NET) to see what kind of font hacking is needed, found it uses a fixed-width 8x12 1BPP font, and most importantly it is uncompressed, just like Ys IV, meaning I can handle it. Otherwise, I would need David or Bonknut's help for an advanced VW (preferably) font hack job. Had to refamiliarize myself with an old tool [feidian] by D-BOY I used for Ys IV (I am rusty), but once I did and with the precise offset, I extracted the font in a viewable format. I can now insert the same font I used for Ys IV or a more medieval looking one.

feidian.php -r 8,12,16,8,0x499D5  "Emerald Dragon (J)-02.iso"  EDOrgMainFont


feidian.php -r 8,8,21,1,0x498B1  "Emerald Dragon (J)-02.iso"  EDOrgDigitFont


** Oct 13, 2014 - Talks began with David Shadoff about taking over the project

David uploaded all project materials to me, an ISO/WAV/CUE image file set of ED (ripped with *my* TurboRip I might add O:)), including 60% of SamIAm's translated results, and gave me a briefing on where the project was at to the best of his memory, etc.

** Apr 05, 2006 - Original Project Origins. YES, that far back!

The project began in 2006, 9 years ago, with SamIAm himself looking for a programmer to extract/prepare the ED script. David Shadoff saw the thread and decided to work on the game!
forums.magicengine.com/en/viewtopic.php?t=1543

David made the project official after extracting the script. 60% of it was translated judging by SamIAm's last update in the thread on Jan 22, 2007, but that's where things stalled from then on.
forums.magicengine.com/en/viewtopic.php?t=1557

[BigusSchmuck]

Awesome news!

[NecroPhile]

FUCKING SWEET!!!!   

[SamIAm]

My promise in this is that if the hacking can advance to a point nearing completion - that is, if they get the script to insert and display - I'll finish the script myself.

[Dicer]

I am...EXCITED.

I've wanted this in English forever, managed to play it in Japanese upon release oh so long ago, that was a trip.

[Lochlan]

THANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOU!!!! + mad props to SAMIAM for being such a prolific translator in recent times.

I'm glad to see an accomplished ROM hacker such as yourself working on this project, I'm sure whatever state you leave it in will represent some non-zero progress even in the worst case.  I'm hoping for the best, though, I've been wanting to play this one for a long time!

[JoshTurboTrollX]

This could just be the coolest translation yet!  My body is ready.

[Sarumaru]

This is awesome. I say once finished, press em all pro-like then offer em for like 35 bucks a pop or something reasonable. Not like anyone owns these copyrights anymore anyway.   Just a thought cuz if you don't do it, someone else might and that makes for some bitter fruitzzz~

[esteban]

EMERALD DRAGON!!!!!!!!!!'nnnn nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am happy.

My promise in this is that if the hacking can advance to a point nearing completion - that is, if they get the script to insert and display - I'll finish the script myself.

Some of us will remember this! We will tenderly, but firmly, hold you to your word.

[TurboXray]

If want me to do the font routine (and single byte ascii read routine, and possible DTE or dictionary compression, etc), then it's gotta be for the extended SCD card (more ram). Else, it's too much of a pain to handle otherwise (time and frustration). That would be my requirement, to be on board.

 You want a VWF routine? That always complicates the script side of things (formatting), but if all I would handle is the font and string read routine, then no problem here.

 IIRC, from talking with Dave years back, is that the script is compressed into LZss blocks. Nothing fancy. He must has figured out the pointer system, if he dumped the script. If the extended SCD card is used, recompressed on the LZss side could be just simple runs of literal bytes (super easy to write a util for), and have the English friendly compression on the new string side (simply dictionary compression: 2 byte, 3byte, and 4byte entries. Static dictionary for the whole game, nothing variable. Or if I'm really lazy , then just a token system to a large script in extended ram), that would sit on top of it (transparent to the game).

 Anyway, those are my thoughts on this. All the source code is yours to do with as you want, once it's finished (you'll have ownership/license/whatever). There's a catch though; time. It'll be slow going and/or delays, because SamIam and I already have two projects we're looking into. If this project has serious commitment and team, and SamIam wants to put priority on this, then I'm fine with that. But I don't have enough free time to productively stretch over several projects, so multiple stuff would be put on hold if I did take this on.

 I don't know how much free time MooZ has, but he's experienced in making new font print routines and new string read routines. Besides Esperknight and MooZ, I don't know of anyone else that has experience with this on the PCE/CD (asm hacking).

[Lochlan]

Not like anyone owns these copyrights anymore anyway.

I'm sure that's not true.

[NecroPhile]

I'm sure that's not true.

It's not.  They even still make games for the Vita, but that doesn't mean they'd care.

[Sarumaru]

I'm sure that's not true.

It's not.  They even still make games for the Vita, but that doesn't mean they'd care.

Who does? Alfa System?

[NecroPhile]

Who does? Alfa System?

I was thinking Media Works, but it doesn't matter.  Even if a company goes under, the IP is almost always sold to someone or the rights will revert to the person that actually created it.

[Sarumaru]

Oh. Well, I doubt anyone gives a sh!t really, I think if the effort is put into creating this trans project, it'd be awesome to see them pressed proper. You know you'd like to see a pretti English-language Emerald Dragon sitting pretty on your shelf!

[Bernie]

We better ask BL before pressing anything....

[Dicer]

Get back on topic of making the translation happen, talking of pressing only derails and enrages...

[Bernie]

Get back on topic of making the translation happen, talking of pressing only derails and enrages...

lol...     No sir King Dicer....  If this translation happens, I am fairly sure those involved wouldn't mind it. 

[Dicer]

Get back on topic of making the translation happen, talking of pressing only derails and enrages...

lol...     No sir King Dicer....  If this translation happens, I am fairly sure those involved wouldn't mind it. 

Sorry didn't mean it come off so..BOSSy 

It's just that there are so many "in the works" projects for our beloved machine, I'd like to see some of them get done...then we can worry about pretty packaging and copyrights and all that fun stuff.

[Bernie]

Its cool man.  I get where ya coming from. 

[Sarumaru]

It's all in good fun, my intent was not to derail anything. It may be pointless to talk about such things this early in the process but it's fun to think about none the less. This is a discussion forum after all

[NightWolve]

If want me to do the font routine (and single byte ascii read routine, and possible DTE or dictionary compression, etc), then it's gotta be for the extended SCD card (more ram). Else, it's too much of a pain to handle otherwise (time and frustration). That would be my requirement, to be on board.

You want a VWF routine? That always complicates the script side of things (formatting), but if all I would handle is the font and string read routine, then no problem here.

It looks like right out of the box, it's just like Ys IV, and I can already do this:



Either Courier or a hacked 8x12 Ys Book I&II font. I wanted to make a GUI patch down the road for Ys IV to let you choose between either font, but never worked on it yet. But yeah, that's what I was telling David, why risk flaky VWF hacks like EsperKnight's hack that doesn't work on real NEC hardware. I can live with the same result as Ys IV. If it had zero support for an English font, was using the system S-JIS 16x16 one like many games do (Startling Odyssey II), then I would've asked ya for a serious font hack job that might as well be VW if it can be accomplished. Seems like "if it ain't broke, don't try to fix it" to me, although a VWF hack is so ideal, it would be cool (what you did with the Dracula X opening was amazing).

Alright, so the major obstacle to overcome is reversal of the decompression code, to be able to recompress a text block and insert it back in. I think I'll wait for David on that. When I was mulling taking the project over, I kinda thought he already finished that and I just needed to work things out with SamIAm, prepare my Translation Station software again for him, get a handle on where things left off, and resume it, etc. But yeah, looks like I still need an advanced programmer's expertise.

Also, for the tight menu system, we might need to make graphic tiles of the whole word to fit, but I think I might be able to actually do that by using left over tiles from the font area. But that might be something that I'd need your help on if my idea doesn't work. Another idea is maybe to disable some of the ADPCM voice acting when there is simultaneous text being displayed by the character, acting as subtitling. That would reduce the dubbing part of the project for down the road.

All the source code is yours to do with as you want, once it's finished (you'll have ownership/license/whatever).

That's cool of you, but just to let ya know, I wouldn't "deucebag" you if somehow an XSEED Games type of situation/commercialization happened (There's zero chance here, but not if it was say a PC game). Work hours that you did for free as a fan under different circumstances become retroactively billable AND credit-worthy and I don't get to just throw you under the bus because of ideological/political/philosophical bigotry/animus, and pretend that you were never there, etc.

True, you're essentially verbally giving up your IP Rights for the product of your work hours by the formal statement that you just made, but still... You don't step on people like that in the face of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Also, I dunno if I ever mentioned this before, but I always really appreciated the way you stood up to the extortionists over at "romhacking hacks.net" back in '07 with the Felghana leak drama, etc. Many people I thought were friends turned out to be cowards or backstabbers-in-waiting.

Anyway, back on topic. I'm gonna work on building the new font bitmap and test insertion. I also gotta rebuild Translation Station for SamIAm and for me because the way David left it is confusing. A reextraction is gonna be needed cause he didn't record the offset of where the script block begins in the database it appears... I'm pretty rusty, but gonna give it the ole college try!

[SephirothTNH]

Damn NightWolve nice.  I havn't read everything yet but I just wanted to say it's really good seeing you work on something again.  I can't wait.

[DeshDildo]

Yes!  Thank you all for moving this project forward!

[esteban]

**** happiness continues ****

[TurboXray]

Placeholder - History Log

** 1/13/2015 - Font Inspection Situation

Poked around the ED ROM track with a new tile viewer (YY-CHR.NET) to see what kind of font hacking is needed, found it uses a fixed-width 8x12 1BPP font, and most importantly it is uncompressed, just like Ys IV, meaning I can handle it. Otherwise, I would need David or Bonknut's help for an advanced VW (preferably) font hack job. Had to refamiliarize myself with an old tool [feidian] by D-BOY I used for Ys IV (I am rusty), but once I did and with the precise offset, I extracted the font in a viewable format. I can now insert the same font I used for Ys IV or a more medieval looking one.

feidian.php -r 8,12,16,8,0x499D5  "Emerald Dragon (J)-02.iso"  EDOrgMainFont


feidian.php -r 8,8,21,1,0x498B1  "Emerald Dragon (J)-02.iso"  EDOrgDigitFont

** Oct 13, 2014 - Talks began with David Shadoff about taking over the project

David uploaded all project materials to me, an ISO/WAV/CUE image file set of ED (ripped with *my* TurboRip I might add O:)), including 60% of SamIAm's translated results, and gave me a briefing on where the project was at to the best of his memory, etc.

Just to verify, this font is actually used in the game? Are you sure it's used for the main dialog box, and not something like the battle screen? If it's used for the main dialog box too, then that's pretty amazing find.

 As for Dracula X opening/intro, that wasn't a VWF routine. That was a replacement 6x12 font FWF routine. It's the cleanest way to hack a 12x12 print routine (which 98% of all PCECD RPGs use). It looks tight like VWF, but it's not. It's a great compromise between the two, IMO.

 On the note of pointer, like I said if the pointer system hasn't been figured out (a separate pointer table than the LZSS block), and you don't want to go through the work of RE'ing it, you can do a token system incorporated into it (making some new control codes). On that note, I never found LZSS in small block/window sizes to compress that great for English text. You guys didn't have a problem with Ys IV in this regards, or did you have to cut the string lengths down?

 The other downside to VWF, is that it takes longer to build out a character than a FWF routine. This can mess with timing in a game, which can lead to problems. I had this issue with Dead of the Brain, where I had to make special LUTs to speed things up. I'm supposed to look over Esperknight's VWF routine, but I suspect this might be happening (or a bank/page mapping conflict). Considering he had problems on the real hardware, tells me it's primarily a timing issue thing.

[SamIAm]

My promise in this is that if the hacking can advance to a point nearing completion - that is, if they get the script to insert and display - I'll finish the script myself.

Some of us will remember this! We will tenderly, but firmly, hold you to your word.

By all means, do so! I've got four completed game scripts awaiting the hackers to finish their ends. I would love to be in a position where the only thing standing in the way of a finished translation project is the script. If someone gets English text to insert and display with a good enough looking print routine, the flag is up as far as I'm concerned.

BTW, 1000th post. 

[spenoza]

What a great 1000th post! Positive energy, dude. Positive energy.

[esteban]

Still loving this.

[Sarumaru]

Still loving this.

For reals. I am reeeaaalllly looking forward to this project getting completed. Makes my nipplz all stiff.

[technozombie]

This game looks really cool. I hope everything continues to go smoothly.

[seieienbu]

Like a late Christmas present; this is absolutely fantastic news. 

I wish you good luck Nightwolve!

[roflmao]

Late to the party response: WOOOOOO HOOOOOOOO!!!!!

[BigusSchmuck]

Do you guys need donations like hardware and cash and stuff?

[SuperPlay]

Great stuff, this is one of the games that I would love to play :-)

[D]

Nice to see someone working on this one. It's probably the best widely available version of Emerald Dragon, since it's still somewhat true to the original game.

For most players this will be the closest they would ever want to come to playing the original PC-style Emerald Dragon.

As someone who owns both, I still consider the FM-TOWNS version to be superior. It has the original voice cast, side quests and soundtrack, and the cut scenes are based on the hand painted style of the manual instead of stock anime.

Get in touch with me if you need any help with font design or manual design. I own most of the Emerald Dragon guidebooks for the PC editions and they have lots of good art.

As for Dracula X opening/intro, that wasn't a VWF routine. That was a replacement 6x12 font FWF routine. It's the cleanest way to hack a 12x12 print routine (which 98% of all PCECD RPGs use). It looks tight like VWF, but it's not. It's a great compromise between the two, IMO.

That was my suggestion as well. 6x12 works great for text-heavy games with limited screen real estate. Kil's Langrisser IV translation made use of a 6x12 font I designed. The narrower tiles leave less space around glyphs such as i, l, and j, and also around punctuation marks. It helps to mask one of the more negative effects of monospaced fonts.

imgur.com/YKZOscK.png

[D]

I do not know why I quoted your message, but I just wanted to give you some grief for having such a long username. I mean... how is anyone supposed to abbreviate that?

Maybe you could make it shorter by only writing the first stroke of the D, which I guess would be I?

[spenoza]

I do not know why I quoted your message, but I just wanted to give you some grief for having such a long username. I mean... how is anyone supposed to abbreviate that?

Maybe you could make it shorter by only writing the first stroke of the D, which I guess would be I?

I think, in your case, we would lengthen your name. Sort of like a backwards nickname. We could go for pronunciation and call you Diiiiiiiiii or Deeeeeeee. Or go for appearances and call you CI (which is just a backwards D). Or I). Or ol.

I am apparently too tired to be doing this. I'm actually having fun...

[HailingTheThings]

I do not know why I quoted your message, but I just wanted to give you some grief for having such a long username. I mean... how is anyone supposed to abbreviate that?

Maybe you could make it shorter by only writing the first stroke of the D, which I guess would be I?

I think, in your case, we would lengthen your name. Sort of like a backwards nickname. We could go for pronunciation and call you Diiiiiiiiii or Deeeeeeee. Or go for appearances and call you CI (which is just a backwards D). Or I). Or ol.

I am apparently too tired to be doing this. I'm actually having fun...

We shall call him "Dī no Shokutaku!"

[SkyeWelse]

I'm excited to hear about this project since I've wanted to play it in English for awhile now. I own the MSX2/2+ version, but it does run pretty slow on a real MSX machine which makes this version much more of an attractive version to play an English version of. If any of the supplemental materials can be utilized from the MSX2/2+ game, please let me know and I can photograph or scan them.

I wanted to post here sooner, but I've been pretty wrapped up doing some graphics for the Nayuta no Kiseki fan-translation project and a port/remix of Fix It Felix, Jr for the MSX2/2+ that a friend and I are "hammer-ing" out... Get it?... hammer? Because.... Felix uses a....

Ah whatever. : )

Nice to meet you all.

-Thomas

[ParanoiaDragon]

Hammer time!

Welcome SkyWelse, for some reason I thought you were a member here for awhile, but you only have 2 posts, & apparently you registered here a week ago!  Well, once again, welcome.

[SephirothTNH]

Ditto.  Welcome aboard SkyeWelse!

[NightWolve]

Just to verify, this font is actually used in the game? Are you sure it's used for the main dialog box, and not something like the battle screen? If it's used for the main dialog box too, then that's pretty amazing find.

 As for Dracula X opening/intro, that wasn't a VWF routine. That was a replacement 6x12 font FWF routine. It's the cleanest way to hack a 12x12 print routine (which 98% of all PCECD RPGs use). It looks tight like VWF, but it's not. It's a great compromise between the two, IMO.

 On the note of pointer, like I said if the pointer system hasn't been figured out (a separate pointer table than the LZSS block), and you don't want to go through the work of RE'ing it, you can do a token system incorporated into it (making some new control codes). On that note, I never found LZSS in small block/window sizes to compress that great for English text. You guys didn't have a problem with Ys IV in this regards, or did you have to cut the string lengths down?

Hey Tom, I wanted to first verify with a message box besides the status menu (which I could test with weeks ago) and here it goes:



Progress continues! PC-FX BIOS to the rescue! That is an 8x12 font Derrick extracted from the PC-FX BIOS!

So yeah, I tracked down a compressed block and got to the message for the sign. I didn't recompress the whole block, I set 2 control bytes inbetween to 0xFF so I could type literal bytes direct. We've got the same LZ codec as Ys IV, so format is control byte and 8 bytes of payload, etc.

As to your Ys IV question, nope, didn't have a problem where I had to go back to the translator to try to shrink text because a recompressed English block exceeded the space allocated! It worked out with no problems!

Well, I might actually have everything needed unless it comes to graphics somewhere, but it looks like I won't have to call upon your expertise just yet - David already did the tough analysis, the research, identification of all text blocks, the codec changes, etc. and the print routine with new font tile insertion is gonna work out fine if one is satisfied with 8x12 fixed-width as with Ys IV.

[roflmao]

Aw yes!

[SignOfZeta]

Yep.

[TurboXray]

Wow! This sounds like a done deal then. I expect to be playing some translated Emerald Dragon by summer's end ;)

[esteban]

Damn. Yes. Indeed.

[NightWolve]

That was my suggestion as well. 6x12 works great for text-heavy games with limited screen real estate. Kil's Langrisser IV translation made use of a 6x12 font I designed. The narrower tiles leave less space around glyphs such as i, l, and j, and also around punctuation marks. It helps to mask one of the more negative effects of monospaced fonts.

i.imgur.com/YKZOscK.png

This is Derrick BTW (once went by D-BOY) and yes, he shrunk it down to just D... ;) A noteworthy fan translator of years past who worked with Byuu/Near a lot - his font software also helped with Ys IV BITD! Here's one of his PCE projects actually for a HuCard:

files.derrick.sobodash.com/translations/crestofgaia

_{https://web.archive.org/web/20170320191357if_/https://files.derrick.sobodash.com/translations
https://web.archive.org/web/20170321042034if_/http://files.derrick.sobodash.com/translations/akuji}

romhacking.net/translations/813/



The latest patch would be there and there are other interesting projects to check out if one is so inclined. FYI gentlemen!

[pnauts]

I'll have a look to this interesting topic.
There'll be for sure many interested to understand it !
personal opinion, I don't wait for dubbing, sub will be nice, but perhaps not the easiest way.