Lunar SSS / SSSC Status & Translator Request?

[Mr_conan]

Hey,
Long time lurker here, finally registered. So I've been working with Ms. Tea on the Lunar Saturn translation on and off. Her original idea was to extract the iOS text and insert it into the game with re-encoded WD videos. Since we are putting the tools together anyway to insert text, I thought it might be fun to re-translate the game and do a subtitled version if there is any interest. It looks like some of the lunar net members have translated pieces of the games in the past. Any chance someone would be willing to perform a full translation if I were to provide the JP text dumps?

Current Status for Saturn SSS:
Dialog JP Text Extraction Proof of Concept (iOS, SSS, SSSC) - Completed
Dialog Text Extraction & Insertion to Saturn - 70%. Need to finish coding in the extraction to make the output prettier.
Dialog Text Saturn ASM Routine - 70%. Need to update to include dictionary or other compression technique.
Menu/Item Extraction - 100%
Menu/Item Insertion - 0%. Need to find all entry points and write updated ASM routines.
Videos - Ms Tea figured out how to improve the quality on SSS.

Saturn SSSC - Sort of ignoring for now. Changes are going to be 95% identical to SSS in the end.

I'll probably have a clean JP script dump in about a month (provided my kids stop bringing home plagues from school).

[Kizyr]

I'm interested (I translated larger chunks of MSL for my walkthrough, so I'd be up for this as well). And for that matter, it's fantastic to know that Ms. Tea has been getting more progress on this.

I'd want to insist on something like WD's process of multiple layers, though -- e.g., translator -> editor -> final edits.

I don't want to voluntell someone, but I basically did this for two of the Lunar manga in working with Alunissage, and it worked (IMO) pretty fantastically. End result I felt was much more coherent and cohesive. KF

[Alunissage]

I would very much like to rewrite the dialogue a bit -- not tons, as I like the WD translation (and parts of the LL and SSH translations), and mainly want to fix things that don't quite match up with what's going on or established personalities. And minor errors. As it happens, I already have a script dump, though I would like to see what you extract and compare. There are occasional lines that simply don't show up in the game because they're mapped to a combination of flags that never happen (e.g., text for Royce right after Nash joins the party, which is impossible to see in-game since she's no longer anywhere to be found), which can be misleading if you're looking only at the text.

Will you have the ability to change character portraits? One problem XSeed ran into is that WD did have that capability and redid scenes to insert lines spoken by other characters, changed the portraits to fit better, and lengthened conversations. XS was given the WD dialogue and adapted it for SSH, but had to rewrite those scenes. In general, I think the WD edits improved the scenes, but I can definitely understand if the same situation happens here (and another reason that inserting the iOS text in to the Saturn game might be difficult).

How would you feel about similar alterations? One reason I like LL, despite the translation badly needing another round or two of editing, is that the characters, at least at the beginning of the game, are more likeable. Of note, Alex does a lot more talking for himself rather than Nall saying everything for him. In SSSC, WD changed one instance of that near the beginning of the game -- in Japanese (and in SSH), it's Nall who suggests using the Flame Ring to melt the ice in the cave, while WD had Alex saying "I think I know..." and then doing it. And I have a whole screed about how underappreciated Ramus is in my head, and I'd like to tone down the insults directed at him. Even in Japanese, Nall says that Ramus didn't do anything with regards to getting the Dragon Diamond, when Ramus is the only reason they're all there to begin with!

...As you can see, I've spent a LOT of time thinking about Lunar 1 and how various lines were translated. And actually, I was just saying wistfully to my husband recently that I really wished I could have the chance to rewrite SSS, so I'd very much like to do this, particularly if Kizyr and Temzin are on board -- though I don't want to voluntell the latter, as it were.

[Mr_conan]

Thanks for volunteering Kizur/Alunissage ! Yeah I was kind of envisioning some sort of translation that's similar to the WD, but has fixes here and there, maybe some additional dialog from the JP that never made it in (if it was meaningful). It sounds like you have a lot of good ideas.

It looks like I have the extraction cleaned up sooner than I thought. Right now I have the following extracting to .csv files: Saturn SSS, Saturn SSSC, iOS jp, and iOS Eng. The iOS Eng isnt perfect, it could use some extra tabs to make the dialog lines line up, but its readable as-is.

The tool I'm working on is located here: https://github.com/MrConan1/lsb
You can run it yourself to extract the scripts (i made batch files in the test folder), or if you prefer me to email them, I could do that too. No rush on translating/editing, there's still a decent amount of work to be done with the game hacking.

The japanese table file is called font_table and is also on that github. It could probably use some double-checking. I cross-correlated matching dialog between Saturn SSSC and the ios JP editions to autogenerate most of it. There were still an additional 200 or so I did myself, so there could be a few errors. The additional characters seem to be used in the menu files, which I can also send over. The tool I used to generate that data isnt available yet, it still needs to get cleaned up.

Regarding character portraits, there is the ability to add / remove and alter them. There appears to be a limitation though as to which portraits can be used per "scene". It seems to go along with whichever TEXTxxx.DAT file is currently loaded. I mapped out the allowable portraits for TEXT002.DAT (Burg), but haven't looked at any of the others yet. So it might not be an issue if the portrait you want is already available in an area, otherwise the game would need to get modified to include it in a certain area.

So, back to the tool, Misty came up with an idea to basically treat the whole thing as an editable script. If you take a look at https://github.com/MrConan1/lsb/tree/master/test/ there is an input example and an update example. When you run the lsb.exe tool in decode mode it creates the csv file and also a text metadata "input" file that can be modified. You can also create an update file that can be used to update an existing metadata input file when you run the tool in update mode. Then when you run the tool in encode mode, you give it an input metadata file and it builds your binary file that the game can read.

The CSV file has 3 columns. The first is an ID. That ID maps to a command in the metadata input file. The second column tells you if its an Option Box or Dialog (only two types of texts in the script file). Then the third column is the decoded text, or control code.

The update file allows for removal, insertion (before or after), or overwriting of metadata commands. You provide the ID of an item, the operation, and then the alteration information.

The idea I had for automating things is we would put the updated translation in a new column of the existing spreadsheet. Then I would make a tool to translate that column into a formatted Update file. You run the lsb.exe tool on the original metadata input file and feed it the update file to create a new input file. Then run the tool in encode mode to create the binary file for the game. Something like that.

I'll probably start looking at compression next as there is a 64K hard-limit on the TEXTxxx.DAT files. Ones thats working I should be able to play around with Misty's font and inserting English dialog in-game.

[Alunissage]

Okay, cool! I'm glad there's time, because I'm also playing through the games and transcribing text manually that takes some time. Do you mind emailing me the .csv and menu files, to my username at gmail? (I don't check that account unless I'm expecting an email, so any other communication that's private is probably better directed to me via PM on the board.)

I know what you mean by the chara portraits being limited to what's used in the area. That shouldn't be a problem. Usually the changes I've seen have been between Nall's "normal" face and his "cheerful" face, and both are used lots everywhere.

How about character limitations? I suspect that WD had to make some alterations to get the line length in English to fit. The SSS Japanese lines appear to be around 18 characters, WD's lines max out around 35, and SSH's English lines around 45. Lunar Legend only had 20 English characters per line, which I think must be the same as the Japanese.

One bit of dialogue that doesn't get shown is that Meribia is named for Mel (which, to be honest, always seems a bit weird to me). This bit of backstory shows up in EBC instead. I think a flag number was typoed. Don't know if there'd be a way to fix that. That particular character's English dialogue should be rewritten anyway; three different TSS characters' lines were combined for that one person's first line, and they contradict each other a little.

Well, I'm getting a bit ahead of myself here. Send me what you've extracted and I'll take a look this weekend!

[Mr_conan]

I sent over the files.

The font Misty is using has roughly the same spacing as the PSX font. I think I just need to go in and modify a number or two in the code to get the spacing dead-on. The game is using 16x16 tiled characters and has a built-in variable width font.

I have a portion of the script commands traced out as to how they work and what they do. The flag set and flag clear commands were traced completely, as well as most of the branch commands. So in all likeliness we should be able to fix the flag typo you mentioned. Some notes here https://github.com/MrConan1/lunardata/b ... Script.txt although it needs to be updated to fix some inaccuracies. I also located the command to give you gold and maxxed myself out