Xanadu II Translation Development Blog

[elmer]

Here is a version of the logo with THE that is 1 pixel narrower than the original.

That looks great, thanks! 

That'll work fine on the title screen, but as I pointed out here ...

https://www.pcengine-fx.com/forums/index.php?topic=19674.msg457215#msg457215

We've only got 240-pixels maximum width for the logo on the Opening Visual.

I guess that one option would be to just chop off the leading "The" on that Opening Visual, that would make it fit.

Would that bother anyone?

[Vimtoman]

I prefer it without the "The"

[SamIAm]

We've only got 240-pixels maximum width for the logo on the Opening Visual.

I guess that one option would be to just chop off the leading "The" on that Opening Visual, that would make it fit.

Would that bother anyone?

Surely we can come up with a more elegant solution.

Black Tiger, I know you spent a long time on that original graphic, but in all honesty, both the "of" and the "the" are a bit too small now, and the "the" especially looks a bit on the tacked-on side.

I'm a lousy artist, and this might sound totally naive, but based on a little goofing around with Gimp over the original background, it looks to me like 240x32 is enough to fit "The Legend of Xanadu II" comfortably enough, even with all the letters of a uniform size, as long one is willing to go with a different style. We have a few colors available for shading or outlining...elmer could probably tell us if it's an option to change the palette, too...and we can keep it simple.

Here's a quick-n-dirty mock-up. It's just Palatino Linotype Bold Italic with an outline and no shading. Let me emphasize that I don't think think this is beautiful or stylistically ideal so much as I just think it demonstrates what's possible within our size limitations. Although I see now that I accidentally made it 33 pixels tall, the important thing is that it's only 232 pixels wide.



A prettier font and some hand shading/touching up, and I think we can do this. It's fine to make the "The" and "of" smaller, too, as long as it's in moderation.

EDIT - Rebalanced the sizes just a bit. This is 239x32:

[elmer]

Here are CrackTiger's logos with taller letters for "THE" and "OF", and with a little bit of rounding on the "A" in Xanadu, and straightening of the stems on the "X" and "A" ...






The Xanadu 1 logo now fits within the space that it needs to.

The Xanadu 2 logo is still a couple of pixels too wide ... but here's the interesting thing ... the interior of the Xanadu 2 logo just fits within the 240-pixel limit that's needed in order to make the "highlight-in-the-dark" effect work.

The means that if I can screw around with the display code in a pretty major way ... then I just might (if I'm very, very lucky) be able to get it to work.

Unfortunately, there's no free space in the code that can be used to abuse it in that way, which would mean changing the location of the code file on the CD (i.e. it's going to be a lot of work).

It would also require doing lots of extra moving around of data in VRAM that the code does not do now ... which could easily break things, or just plain not work.

<EDIT 3RD TIME> (to fix a couple of outline pixels)

A small mod to the bottom of the "II" in Xanadu 2 to make it a little more balanced, and different sizes for the "THE" and the "OF".

I think that I prefer the bottom one, but I'm not sure.

[CrackTiger]

That updated logo for The Legend of Xanadu looks much better than I expected and after having some time away to gain perspective, the The Legend of Xanadu II logo looks much better than I thought. The smaller OF isn't just to save space. Having it match the THE makes the THE feel less tacked on and balances out the logo overall.

If the latest logo was accepted more or less (I'd like to try improving the smaller "II", THE and OF and misc can be adjusted), I planned to make an alternate for the cinema which needs to be 240 pixels wide. I was going to re-sculpt the "II" to remove a couple more pixels. Basically giving it edged corners instead of pointy ones would make everything 240 wide. If it looked good enough, the same could be used for the title screen.

But Sam really doesn't want the logo and a faithful style isn't a priority for him. I don't want to spend much time on something that is going to be tossed in favor of generic font text. That last mockup of his and comment really shows how radically different we view aesthetics. I think that a smaller version of the same font like that looks ridiculous. Like something out of a photoshop disaster.

I'm not just desperate to have something I worked on appear in a game. LoXII has been important to me for almost 20 years now, which is why I put so much work into my guide back then and have been telling everone about the game ever since. I want a faithful logo because I care about the game and want it to be a step above generic localizations. If I had enough free time, I could post lots of examples of game logos with similar small text paired with stylized text.

If you guys can agree that you want to make this logo work, I'll continue working on it.




EDIT: Here is a good example off the top of my head:

[SamIAm]

The bottom one that elmer posted, I could live with. Let's see what it looks like on a TV.

The title on the title screen has to match the title of the game. In addition, it has to look good. Adhering to the style of the original is a nice bonus if we can get it, but I wouldn't want it to come at the sacrifice of either of the first two things. 風の伝説ザナドゥ is eight characters, only three of which are kanji, while The Legend of Xanadu is twenty; it really doesn't seem inappropriate to recast the style entirely, and I dare say that that's probably what Falcom would have done if they had made the art for an English localization themselves.

The point of those images I posted was only to show that 240x32 is enough space to approach the title screen text in a variety of ways.

CrackTiger, your work was great before we realized we needed a "The" in there, and it might work out yet. Like I said, all I really care about is that it has the complete title and it looks good.

[Dicer]

I prefer the top, the smaller THE and OF don't look stretched to me, where the bottom one does, regardless it's bang up work either way...

[elmer]

Here's the new logo (larger text version) working in the game ...




I like it! 

Let's hope it works well on SamIAm's TV.

There's still the question of whether the title should actually be "Legend of the Wind II" ... but let's leave that discussion for another day.

BTW ... the horizontal crossbars in the large E and A are above the centerline of each glyph, so I don't see any visual disconnect in having the crossbars in the small text also be just above the centerline.

[NightWolve]

There's still the question of whether the title should actually be "Legend of the Wind II" ... but let's leave that discussion for another day.

Eh, "Xanadu" is just so well known (add in that movie!), it'd be very tough to justify its removal. I hated these sticking points in projects... Sometimes Falcom really did do a bad enough job to ignore precedent/history of documents/printed materials/game script (like say "Romn" which Konami later localized to "Romun" for Ys VI). I foolishly went back to the Ys IV script, changed it to "Romn" so it all looked the same with the PC version's manuals/script/website/etc. but after Konami, it was like, duh, did I really need their precedent-setting PS2 release in the US to realize I shouldn't have done that ?? Heh.

[deubeul]

A prettier font and some hand shading/touching up, and I think we can do this. It's fine to make the "The" and "of" smaller, too, as long as it's in moderation.

Font consideration apart, I love the fact that you use upper and lower case, It makes the "II" stand out.

[elmer]

I've asked to see what the logo would be like if the logo font were made a little bit narrower, but it never happened, and so I decided to spend some time in grafx and try it myself.

Changing the width of the stems of each letter from 6 pixels to 5 pixels give us back a whole lot of space.

I've used that space to make the "The" and the "Of" wider again, and to restore the larger "II" and space it out so that it doesn't get lost in the main logo.

The Xanadu 2 logo now fits in the 240 pixels that are allowed for for it, meaning that I wouldn't have to jump through hoops to make it work in the Opening Visual.

What do folks think? Is this an improvement on yesterday's versions?








Wider font version ...

[johnnykonami]

I honestly think this one looks best, with "The" and "of" staying the same size.

[NightWolve]

I can't choose...

[SamIAm]

                 

Three out of three people I have asked, with no explanation beyond presenting both images at the same time and asking which they prefer, have pointed to the mock-up with equal-sized lettering.

Two of those people were Japanese, and they said something kind of obvious from which I think a lesson can be drawn: The equal-sized lettering is much easier to read.

If you take any one letter from BT's image, excluding the THE and the OF, and compare it to the corresponding letter from the mock-up I made, BT's letter looks better, no question. However, I still think the fact that it was retro-fitted from having no THE at all to its current state has made it deeply flawed. Otherwise, my highly amateur mock-up shouldn't have been able to even compete with it.

Elmer's latest version is a definite improvement. Besides the larger THE, the II really needed more separation, and now it's got it. If we go with that, I'll basically be satisfied.

However, I would really be interested in seeing more mock-ups made with equal-sized lettering (or at least closer to equal if someone can make that work - I obviously couldn't). I honestly think that if we took that approach with a better font than the one I used, then took the time to add a bit of shading and touch up whatever else by hand, we could get something that has the best of both worlds.

Black Tiger, if you would like to make that kind of mock-up, I'd love to see it.

At this point, I want to see a whole smorgasbord of mock-ups, and in addition to making more of my own, I would like to invite anyone else who has a vision of what this title screen could look like to contribute. After all, if I can make a mock-up, anyone can. You wouldn't need to polish anything - just make sure it fits into 240x32 and uses the same colors from the original.

Here's a blank background and the original image:
           

Of course, "The Legend of Xanadu II" and "Xanadu - Legend of the Wind II" (dropping or changing the hyphen is fine) are both welcome.

[SamIAm]

To get the ball rolling, here's my first mock-up with a sloppy attempt at shading.



I think it at least shows that we ought to be able to get shading in there even with equal sized lettering.

Next, I'll try some different fonts.

[NightWolve]

Of course, "The Legend of Xanadu II" and "Xanadu - Legend of the Wind II" (dropping or changing the hyphen is fine) are both welcome.

Oh, silly me, right, it wasn't about dropping Xanadu. This "Xanadu - Legend of the Wind" subtitle business. Even if it's technically more accurate, I think it sounds terrible and takes some punch out of what's already a great title. I'd leave it alone.

[SamIAm]

Another not-awesome-but-thought-provoking mock-up:


(234x30, Deftone Stylus)

I chose this font as an example of a thicker cursive style that is really easy to shade (not that I did a particularly great job of shading). The image I posted previously had a few places where there was only one dark blue-green pixel in between the light blue outline, such as the upper left parts of the lowercase A's, and it became impossible to apply formulaic interior shading there. With something like this, that's not a problem. There's even enough room to apply something like a horizontal gradient shade if we want to.

With this font, I can't say I'm in love with the T, the X, or of course the II. Don't ask me why the lowercase U came out so short, either. Anyway, it's interesting. If the question is "Can we fit legible, cursive, outlined letters in that space and still have room for shading?" this gives us the answer: absolutely.

Something just a little "tighter" all around could look nice.

Next, I'll try something more print-like.

[elmer]

Another not-awesome-but-thought-provoking mock-up:

Oh, dear Sam, that may be one of the ugliest mock-ups that I've ever seen ... I could even have nightmares! 

Perhaps we should leave the experimentation to folks who have an "artistic" eye! 

I rule myself out on that account ... and you're teetering on the borderline with that last screenshot. 

If you want to keep on going ... may I suggest Berthold Nofret Std Medium Italic ...

https://www.linotype.com/260403/nofret-medium-italic-product.html?showVariation=261622

It's one of my favorite fonts, and I have a licensed copy of it around here somewhere!

[SamIAm]

It is pretty gross, isn't it? 

I'll try that font later, thanks!

[Phase]

I gave it a shot, tried to make it like the cover art.
Not sure how it would look on a tv could be too aliased?

[SamIAm]

Thanks, Phase! I dig it!

Could you try making the II a little sleeker, and increasing the amount of space between the words?

I whipped another one up real quick. This kind of thing would be hard to shade, but I don't think it looks terrible. The tips of the lowercase H and D I could do without...


(239x31)

Right now, I'm looking at stuff of the fancy-thin-liney variety, and most of it doesn't work. Since we need a light blue outline around a dark blue-green primary color, it seems necessary to keep some real width in there.

Using cursive because Falcom used cursive seemed reasonable enough to me at first, but I'm starting to think that if we have to stick with this color scheme, where the line can never be thinner than three pixels wide and needs to be four for shading, we're probably better off going with some kind of italicized print unless we can find a simple fat cursive that doesn't look bad.

The extra width forced by the outline might keep us from wanting to use the original cursive style. That, and the fact that it is a bit on the gaudy side.  Anyway, Phase, if you don't mind making a couple of quick modifications like I mentioned above, I'd really love to see what it looks like.

[SamIAm]

(239x31)

I tried bolding and shading the last one I made. The X got funky when I modified away some of the weirdness introduced by the bolding, and I still don't like the nightcaps on the d and h. Also, at the moment, the shading is a little harsh - I used only the darker of the two colors.

Overall, not too shabby.

[elmer]

I gave it a shot, tried to make it like the cover art.
Not sure how it would look on a tv could be too aliased?

That's very interesting, thanks!

I think that it looks too blurred at the moment with the letters running into each other, but it looks like you've got plenty of space to space things out a bit more.

The exterior anti-aliasing is also a bit too heavy at the moment.

The big thing that it shows, is that going in that direction is unlikely to give enough pixels to keep the interior drop-shadow that's in the original Japanese logo.

[NightWolve]

Another not-awesome-but-thought-provoking mock-up:

Oh, dear Sam, that may be one of the ugliest mock-ups that I've ever seen ... I could even have nightmares! 

Heh, yeah, non-starter!

[esteban]

Here is my mock-up (Original font):

[NightWolve]

Hahahahaha!!!!

Where did that come from ??? ;)

[Dicer]

Not diggin the cursive...

[SamIAm]

That one I posted was just an experiment to see if I could get shadable, legible cursive letters in 240x32. 

Here's another version of that last one I posted. I removed the nightcaps, though the tips could still be improved, and I enlarged the II.



If I do anything else to it, it will be to increase the height of the capital T and L by a pixel or two.

Next, I'll try a straighter, possibly thicker and more rigid font.

[Phase]

ektophase.com/TG16/Xan2.png  -old
Here's a cleaner version no outer anti-aliasing, bigger word spacing, slight inner shadow. The II would have to be remade to match. Would take more work to add a bigger gap to the letters. I could work on it if you guys liked were it is going. but not sure if its gonna get too much better, its kind of an extreme cursive to do in the limited resolution.

Edit: cleaned slightly more and added a basic 2

[SamIAm]

It definitely brings a smile to my face (you know, in the good way).

If there is anything else you feel like doing to it, I'd love to see it. On the other hand, if you want to hold back on sinking more time into it for now, that's fine, too. We're in a very experimental phase at the moment.

Anyway, I'm really happy that we have this avenue explored now, so thanks again!

[Phase]

No problem, yeah its always cool to see different concepts.

Here is a certain font we all know(hint look at my avatar) but it actually looks kinda rpg like, kind of like final fantasy slim letters

[SamIAm]

Cool! I hadn't tried any uniform-size all-caps solutions yet, but I might have to soon.

I'm still searching for a font that takes the plain mixed upper-lowercase in the direction I'd like to see it go, too.

[Phase]

I edited my last post with the cursive font added a matching 2 in there or something.

[SamIAm]

After more failed experiments, I went back and tweaked this one some more:



- Increased size of T, L, and X.
- Tweaked tips of d and h (maybe made them worse, though)
- Merged II
- Moved things a little closer together - now it's 234x29

I find it highly unlikely that anything I make is actually going to wind up being used, but nonetheless, this is pretty fun. It's actually the first time I've ever fooled around in a modern graphics editor, and the first time I've drawn pixels since high school. 

[elmer]

Thanks, that definitely looks better to me.

But the letters still blur together too much inside the words IMHO. 

its kind of an extreme cursive to do in the limited resolution.

Yes, it is, and I'm absolutely amazed at how faithfully you've reproduced all the curly details in the box art in such a low resolution.

Great job! 

The main logo itself is 196 pixels wide, but you'd only need another 13 pixels to add 1 pixel space between each letter to separate them, which would still be well within the 224 pixel limit for Xanadu 1.

It would mean reducing the new "II" a little in order to fit in Xanadu 2's 240 pixel limit, though.

Do you think that the extra 1 pixel would be enough to work with, and still look good?

No problem, yeah its always cool to see different concepts.

Here is a certain font we all know(hint look at my avatar) but it actually looks kinda rpg like, kind of like final fantasy slim letters

I'm a bit worried that it looks too much like the Final Fantasy logo, and it really has no connection to anything in Falcom's original artwork ... but it's clean and readable and I've always loved using small-caps as a solution for avoiding inconvenient descenders like on the 'g'. 

After more failed experiments, I went back and tweaked this one some more:

Actually, I really, really like this.

It's not as faithful to the box art as Phase's logo is, but it's got the same "flavor" to me, and it's clean and readable.

The tail on the 'f' helps stop the tail on the 'g' from looking so lonesome and out-out-place in the absence of all the curly extras from the T, L and X.

[SamIAm]

The latest version. (236x32)

- Lowercase letters re-rendered and stretched to be one pixel taller before applying outline. With the f at 32 pixels tall, we're now at the maximum height for the image.
- T and L raised in height by one pixel, done by hand.
- The II is redone to be a couple of pixels larger and sit one pixel beneath everything else.
- The old X was sloppy and shorter than the T and L. I re-did it and brought it in line.

[Phase]

That does look good, a few of the letters are a little sharp like the E. I'm curious how that would look not italic?


Updated the letter spacing, smaller II, also tightened the word spacing a little to get it to fit within the background tablet.
Are we just using the colors on the title screen or is there a palette? I think I used some colors from the original concept, and perhaps the outline is a little bright right now.

 
Side by side isn't too close, and it is turbo related heh. I also like that its clean and the tall text kinda gives it a chisel
look to go with the background tablet/stone. On the other hand you are right that it doesn't have any connection.

Well, all of them are interesting   

[SamIAm]

That does look good, a few of the letters are a little sharp like the E. I'm curious how that would look not italic?

"Italic" is basically an element that's baked into the font itself, so even the non-italic version actually renders about the same.

Another problem is that we're very short on space, and you'll notice how tightly things are packed around the two e's in "Legend" in particular. If rounding them out displaces the next letter by very much at all, it'll be a problem.

You could definitely call it an inherent flaw of this whole design.

But maybe there is another e from another font that fits the style and doesn't have the sharpness. I'll have to experiment.

Updated the letter spacing, smaller II, also tightened the word spacing a little to get it to fit within the background tablet.
Are we just using the colors on the title screen or is there a palette? I think I used some colors from the original concept, and perhaps the outline is a little bright right now.

AFAIK, we'll need to keep this within the colors you see in the original graphic only, which is made of sprites and uses its own palette. None of the extra colors from the background layer can be copied. So, that's two shades of light blue for the outline, two shades of dark green for shading, and one shade of moderately dark blue-green for the main body.

Those might be changeable, but I'm not sure if it's possible to go beyond five colors.

I think you've got this one looking better than ever, but I'm afraid that once it gets simplified into the limited palette, it will look a little rough. The font itself is also still maybe a little on the gaudy side.

 
Side by side isn't too close, and it is turbo related heh. I also like that its clean and the tall text kinda gives it a chisel
look to go with the background tablet/stone. On the other hand you are right that it doesn't have any connection.

Well, all of them are interesting   

Definitely 

This last one is my favorite of the ones you've done, and I would say it's already a very serious contender. The "chiseled" look is something I was hoping I could incorporate into a lowercase rendition, but I can't seem to find anything that will work for that.

I don't think it looks too similar to the Final Fantasy or Turbo Grafx fonts. However, I do worry that it's a pretty big stylistic departure. It looks so powerful and in-your-face, but the original games as a whole, especially the second one, are a little more subtle and gentle in terms of overall style.

When you load up Xanadu 2, you see only the background layer first, and then the title graphic dissolves in. When it's finished, this music starts. Eventually the background layer fades to black, and you see twinkling blue crystal shards start falling down the screen behind the title graphic like snow while the music continues. It's all supposed to be very pretty.

[SamIAm]

Managed to get that e rounded out a bit. It cost me two horizontal pixels, which isn't bad.


(238x32)

I'm not sure whether I really like it, though. "Sharpness" itself is supposed to be an element of the font. Once I round out the e, there is more pressure to round out the n, and once you've done that, the whole thing is a bit less striking. Also, even though it looks good after the h, the rounded e doesn't jive so well with the g or the n.

However, this did get me to realize that it would actually not be difficult at all to go back to the original e and just lengthen its tail a little, which it needed.

I like that we aren't coming too close to the maximum size with the original e. 236 feels like it isn't quite spilling out of the background border yet. I also remember elmer saying that Nintendo would reject a game for having a title that spanned to much of the screen.

While I was at it, I put the X-and-the-a and the d-and-the-u each one pixel closer to each other, then turned that savings around to spread the The-and-the-Legend and the u-and-the-II out one pixel further apart.

[SamIAm]

This fixes (or at least attempts to fix) the last of the major things I was worried about.

(237x32)

- The T is much improved at the cost of only 1 horizontal pixel.
- The tips of the h and d's are modified so that they're not so dang round anymore.
- The left base of the h is also de-rounded.

[elmer]

Updated the letter spacing, smaller II, also tightened the word spacing a little to get it to fit within the background tablet.

Thanks!

Are we just using the colors on the title screen or is there a palette? I think I used some colors from the original concept, and perhaps the outline is a little bright right now.

The palette for each game is in the logos that I've uploaded here, those are game-ready paletted images (the red backgrounds are color 0 which becomes transparent) ...

https://www.pcengine-fx.com/forums/index.php?msg=458266

[elmer]

Well, SamIAm and Phase have inspired me to put some more time into pushing pixels in the old logo, and I've cleaned it up a bit more and used small-caps for the letters instead of all-caps.

I think that it makes it a lot nicer and more readable to the eye.

Anyway, here are the current contenders, all mapped into the game palettes.

It's really unfair to put Phase's logo in here, because I had to remap it myself, and I'm sure that he'll do a cleanup pass and make it look a lot nicer, but I thought that it would be interesting as a size/style comparison anyway.












<EDIT>

Whoops, got the interior color wrong on the Xanadu 2 logos for a second ... fixed it!

[LentFilms]

Personally I like Phase's logo at the bottom. It is similar to the English logo used by Falcom and it looks the least stiff, if that makes sense.

[Phase]

Looks like all of them are improving 

I'm late, was just changing them to the palette  and trying the purple out.

[elmer]

Looks like all of them are improving 

That's the magic of competition!

I've just checked, and it looks like none of the other colors in the logo palette are used anywhere else on the screen ... so that gives us all an 9 extra palette entries to create some new anti-aliasing colors if we want to.

That's where my meager programmer-art skills give up, so if Black Tiger isn't interested in improving the logo some more from where it is now, then the field is going to be open for you guys. 

[schweaty]

I also like phase's version.  I think he is a graphic designer by trade, so we should take his free work he has given us ;)

[SamIAm]

In terms of shape, I think I'm about done with mine, too. From here on out it, I would only change the colors and maybe add a external horizontal drop shadow on the left. Depending on how things go, I might also do a tiny bit of modding so I could add drop shadow on the bottom, too.

In terms of alternate colors, I would be interested in having an alternate intermediary shade tone between the primary blue-green color and the darker shadow color, if one exists. The current intermediary tone is the same as the main background color and doesn't work so well in the places I might like to use it.

Also, if we add any external drop-shadow to whichever one we go with, it might be better to have it as black. The background layer screen fades out to black for the crystal-snow, and if we use a not-quite-black color, it might stand out in bad way. Of course, it might not.

Anyway, nice work, Phase and elmer.

[CrackTiger]

I'm currently working on a 100% pixelart version of the official English logo (no fonts or photoshop effects used).

It's 240 x 64 pixels.

[NightWolve]

I'm currently working on a 100% pixelart version of the official English logo (no fonts or photoshop effects used).

It's 240 x 64 pixels.

Now that I kinda like and nice idea to center 'II' as a background to gain more width for the rest!

[spenoza]

I'm currently working on a 100% pixelart version of the official English logo (no fonts or photoshop effects used).

That's very nice, actually. My only complaint would be the giant "II" is a bit too giant, and obscures too much of that neat design in the center of the background. I think a slightly slimmer variant would be the bees knees.