Policenauts Sega Saturn Translation

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Policenauts Sega Saturn Translation

Post by FacundoARG »

Admin edit:

Unfortunately, the release announcement thread for the Policenauts Saturn translation was irretrievably lost in the forum database crash, so please use this thread for such discussion!

The patch, of course, is available at Policenauts.net.

-------

Hi All,

This is my first post here, and at first sorry for my SPANGLISH (I'm from Argentina).

I'm trying to translate (only text); so I'm making tools for it (I don't know any Japanese word) the Sega Saturn version, so Why I'm here? Easy, I refuse to play de PSX version xD and I have some issues.

I will start to explain all this mess:
- PART 1 -
I have some tools (made by GameZelda) for PSX; So.... I read all the "magic" and with a lot of new code I made the same tools for Sega Saturn; and now I can extract "almost" text information (in Japanese) to edit it.

- A little summary of the game files, that contains text information:
* MV000XXX.MOV (Contains Videos and Subtitles)
* GAMEX.DPK (Contains text IN-GAME)
* PN_VOX1.PAC(Contains text IN-GAME when Jonathan speaks) this was fucking HARD to edit it.

At this moment I can edit completely the PN_VOX1 file without errors (works good for now) and MOV files(not tested yet).
The big issue is the GAMEX.DPK.

- PART 2 -
I can edit the GAMEX.DPK using the same hack in the PSX version; But when I replace the file(Saturn Cd1), the game shows wrong information (When start shows a Japanese letter). I try to isolate the issue trying to reproduce the same PSX-US_PACHED game from the original PSX-JAP, by replacing only the GAME1.DPK (PATCHED); and.......... What I found? A-HA! The same error like Saturn. After 2 o 3 tries replacing files, I found something important, the "hack" is in the FONT.DPK and the BIN.DPK files.

*In BIN.DPK are located all text lines from main menu.

Summarizing all this mess, if I could found the "hack" All the Saturn version could be translated.

Any advice? Anyone remember why or where do the hack?

F.A.S.Q (Frequently Asked Stupid Questions)
1 - Why Saturn? Because I'm an HYPER MEGA FAN and Developer of Sega Saturn. :D
2 - Which is the biggest Football/soccer team? Very easy man, River Plate. :mrgreen:
3 - I can help you? Yes, feel free to contact me by e-mail only if you have knowledge of debugging and hacking.

Greetings from Argentina.
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Re: Policenauts Sega Saturn Translation

Post by Artemio »

Regarding Part 2 that happens because the routine to print the text was patched and recoded.
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Re: Policenauts Sega Saturn Translation

Post by FacundoARG »

Yes, but I can't find the "patch". I think that is in the BIN file, this one contains the MAIN MENU text and a file named DISPLAY. This file has only 8bytes diferent from JAP version. :S
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Re: Policenauts Sega Saturn Translation

Post by Artemio »

I honestly don't remember where it is, but if you debug it while drawing text it will be more than obvious. I believe the ram where the font was stored is used for this purpose.
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Re: Policenauts Sega Saturn Translation

Post by FacundoARG »

MMM I need to understand the psx debugger, and then the saturn one. It will be a little hard :s
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Re: Policenauts Sega Saturn Translation

Post by Artemio »

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Re: Policenauts Sega Saturn Translation

Post by Stratoslava »

It´s incredible to see just how this guy is not only attempting to sail through the punishing tides of Saturn coding, but he`s certainly achieving it step by step!.
BIG thanks to the original crew (Marc, Slowbeef,etc...) for supporting FacundoARG.

It`d be amazing to gather more people to aid him, at least the english version would come out way sooner than the spanish one

-.-.-.-.-.-

Mucha garra, FacundoARG!

Te lo desea OTRO FACUNDO ARGENTINO Y SATURNERO!
No se de programación, pero tengo excelente ortografía y soy profesor de inglés; te puedo dar una mano a la hora de traducir los textos.
Sigo tus avances en segasaturno, ojala pueda aportar un grano de arena a la causa!
saludos!
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Re: Policenauts Sega Saturn Translation

Post by SaturnAR »

Hi there, i joined the team about 10 days ago because Facundo was having troubles making the in-game string patches. I've been deeply working trying out to decode and understand all your previous work, especially the DATCH. You've done a great job.

It's true that in Sega Saturn things are quite more difficult, especially because there are less and worse tools, debuggers, etc. but with effort all can be done. You've proved that.

I've deeply studied the DATCH you've made. Once that was done, a flowchart was created. Then, founded the subroutine that should be replaced/hijacked and started studying SH2 (Sega Saturn processor) Instruction Set. Later, made some Assembly Code and translated to SH2 OP CODEs in hex (binary). Founded a safe place to put the DATCH in (yes, we use the FONT files too), we proceed to place our DATCH code there and intercept the original subroutine. It’s now in testing and seems to be working correctly. A few variations of the DATCH were needed for other parts especially because of the processor registers they use, or because one needed to calculate the string length, and others don’t, etc.

I've not disassembled or studied your DATCH from the binary code in the PSX files. I've studied it from the Strings datched and other tools.

Now, seems that in Sega Saturn there are 4 kinds of strings that aren't easy to translate:

In-game texts: already datched. Working, testing...
In-game menu (1): already datched (this was harder than the other because there is a string length subroutine that must be replaced too) Working, testing...
In-game menu (2): This is a special menu, and like the main menu, they lack of a parsing subroutine. So, intercepting the datched string is harder. We’re currently working on this.
Main menu: Like the above, but there are only a few strings there, so it was easier to relocate original string pointers. Working, testing...

I invite you all to the post in segasaturno forums. Of course, we would love to participate in this forum too. We’re trying to make some documentation of the technical process, so that others in the future can take this from starting point.
You can see the flowchart of the DATCH in:
http://www.segasaturno.com/portal/croni ... tml#p64243

and some captions of Sega Saturn first attempts. Yes...some things aren't translated in captions (even those who could be), or wrongly translated (like the newspaper text), but they are tests and nothing else.

We need Japanese translators, because Saturn version have more material than PSX. We currently have a few Main Menu strings that we don't really know what they mean and we can’t translate them. Many other strings are raising and we need to translate them to English too. Any help will be welcome. So, if you have a little time Marc... :D just joking...no pressure.
I must confess, i joined the team to solve the technical challenges more than to play the game.
And yes, it’s my first ROMHacking too. Any resemblance with an original team member is purely coincidental... :D

We'll keep you in touch!
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Re: Policenauts Sega Saturn Translation

Post by Artemio »

Best wishes man, I'll look forward to it. The Saturn has always had a place in my heart =)
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Re: Policenauts Sega Saturn Translation

Post by best name ever »

Hello SaturnAR,
Your work sounds outstanding! I Google translated the thread you linked to, and from what I could gather, your porting the PSX translation to the Saturn, and then translating it into Spanish? I also read something about dubbing it into Spanish!?
I'm I understanding all this correctly?

That sounds impressive, to say the least.
I've always dreamed of playing the Saturn version. Similar to Artemio, I also have a soft spot in my heart for the Saturn :)
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Re: Policenauts Sega Saturn Translation

Post by SaturnAR »

Thanks Artemio!

I have a very capable, professional partner in Saturn, Facundo, so i think we will eventually finish it. If not, i think it will be for lacking of japanese to english translators.

best name ever:

Thank you, but it's our work, not only mine.

Yes, we're trying to use all the previous translations made by Marc (an outstanding work), but there are new texts that didn't exist in PSX version, at least in the 2CD version patched.

Our fist goal is to release the english version, though we're all spanish speaking people. Then i hope other people will continue our work and translate it to any language they want. They will have a few new challenges, but the hard part should be already made for them.

We're currently a mixed group of people. Some of them are working only in PSX english to spanish translation, others are in both projects and i think right now im the only working 100% of the time in Saturn version. Facundo is working in both projects. Maybe a fusion of the group will occur, but we don't know that right now.

I don't want to put my hands in PSX version, because i don't want to learn another Instruction Set (i've been learning the SH2 in the past 10 days) and learning r3000 right now would only make me want to crash both SS SH2 with my barely hands. Having a 32 bit bus, but fixed 16 bit OP CODEs its just a pain in the ass and a bottleneck. Loading a 4 byte (32 bit) inmediate value to a register in SH2 takes a lot of more ROM than in r3000, so patching code gets harder. You have to move a lot of original code sometimes just to hijack a subroutine call. I must confess that this weakness in SH2 also have an advantage. String pointers are 32 bit long so to load them ROM tables are used and they are kind of easy to find and modify. That's what i've made in the main menu hack, but only because there are only a bunch of strings. If there were a lot (like in the menu we're just trying to hack) changing pointers would be a tremendous challenge increased by the fat that its a dynamic, constantly growing, changing menu.

As in all fans - nonprofit - people involved gets worried about receiving the correct recognition for their work. We will recongize the work of ALL people who have help us to get here, no one shall be forgotten or unrecognized.

We will always have a place for Sega Saturn in our hearts!
Last edited by SaturnAR on Tue Jan 29, 2013 12:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Policenauts Sega Saturn Translation

Post by IlDucci »

best name ever wrote:I also read something about dubbing it into Spanish!?
I'm I understanding all this correctly?
Ssssh! Don't say that loud! You'll spoil the surprise! ;)
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Re: Policenauts Sega Saturn Translation

Post by best name ever »

SaturnAR wrote:Thank you, but it's our work, not only mine.
Oh, of course.
Sorry, I wasn't intentionally pinning all the credit on you, just a bit uninformed is all.
IlDucci wrote: Ssssh! Don't say that loud! You'll spoil the surprise! ;)
Consider me interested :)
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Re: Policenauts Sega Saturn Translation

Post by IlDucci »

best name ever wrote:
SaturnAR wrote:Thank you, but it's our work, not only mine.
Oh, of course.
Sorry, I wasn't intentionally pinning all the credit on you, just a bit uninformed is all.
IlDucci wrote: Ssssh! Don't say that loud! You'll spoil the surprise! ;)
Consider me interested :)
Well, I cannot say how's going to sound like (We haven't even finished proofreading the voiced part), but I can give you some examples of what we've done already.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nm2dRlux8CI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfoNKgKu8dU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpy9_SZUK5w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdVN5rz6a_Q
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Re: Policenauts Sega Saturn Translation

Post by best name ever »

Oh, so you were part of the team that dubbed Time Crisis into Spanish!
I was quite impressed with that fandub back when it first came out, and I don't even know Spanish.

Though I'm a bit curious. I remember hearing that the official English version of Policenauts was held back because of syncing issues with the English voices. Has your team been able to bypass this issue, or was the problem just fabricated/non-existent?

EDIT: (Of course, this should be a concern for any dubbing project. However there's a myth that Policenauts is especially hard to sync because of that statement. )
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Re: Policenauts Sega Saturn Translation

Post by IlDucci »

I think it's more of a problem on how games are localised into English. Most of the time, the lipsynch has to be re-done for the English actors, so they just act and the editing goes after that. If you can't edit part of that lipsynch, you have a problem (In this case, I think it's the FMV lipsynch, because we've found the voiceovers lipsynch although we haven't even checked out how it works). So no, the problem was real.

We're doing it the opposite way, just as it's always been done with dubbing around this part of the world (Specially with Animes and videogames): We take the original lipsynch and adapt the texts to that synch.

I heard some recent games got japanese lipsynch with English texts... Am I wrong? (FF13, Catherine)
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Re: Policenauts Sega Saturn Translation

Post by best name ever »

I figured the issue was something like that.
I was a little skeptical that is was a technical issue, with the way the game plays the audio and it not adapting well to changes. Not quite sure how that would be the case, but you get the idea.
IlDucci wrote: I heard some recent games got japanese lipsynch with English texts... Am I wrong? (FF13, Catherine)
I know Catherine, for the most part, doesn't use the Japanese Lipsynch for the in game stuff. Not sure on FF13, though I think it's re-lipsynched.
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Re: Policenauts Sega Saturn Translation

Post by IlDucci »

Well, when I played both, Catherine's FMV were resynched, but a lot of ingame cutscenes didn't matched that well. Almost the same with FF13 (Key scenes and FMV resynched, others not)
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Re: Policenauts Sega Saturn Translation

Post by TechNoir »

Did someone say English version on Saturn? Hell yeah!
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Re: Policenauts Sega Saturn Translation

Post by SaturnAR »

TechNoir wrote:Did someone say English version on Saturn? Hell yeah!
Yes. We did :)
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Re: Policenauts Sega Saturn Translation

Post by SaturnAR »

We're needing Japanese to English translators!

We've released the first video showing some of our actual progress:

http://youtu.be/BevWB86UAkg

Enjoy. :mrgreen:
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Re: Policenauts Sega Saturn Translation

Post by best name ever »

SaturnAR wrote:We're needing Japanese to English translators!

We've released the first video showing some of our actual progress:

http://youtu.be/BevWB86UAkg

Enjoy. :mrgreen:
Holy crap! How did I miss this post!
You guys are awesome! :mrgreen:

As for Japanese to English translators, have you tried contacting Marc? I don't know if he would be willing to come back to Policenauts again, but it might be worth a shot :)
Also, you should ask around Romhacking.net. I'm sure someone their would be interested in helping you guys out.
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Re: Policenauts Sega Saturn Translation

Post by Stratoslava »

Just for those who don't speak spanish, news are that there are about 700 lines in japanese left.
That seems to be the biggest stone on the road right now, and the reason the whole project might die.
An obvious thought that goes round my head is that it would be IDEAL that Artemio, Marc and/or Michael would take a look at these... since eventually we (fans) would find a translator to help these guys out, but the remaining translation could end up being a bit ... strange. Not because of mistranslations but because we're talking about another guy touching the script and/or characterizations.
Even so, I do believe the final SS patch will be as outstanding as yours (you= the original crew), but AS A FAN of your localization, I had to tell you this.
Truth be told: Nobody knows better than you guys that this game was for you a hell of a ride, and that ONLY 700 lines of text left to translate wouldn't be much of a problem to deal with (looking back to the amount of effort you'd invested on this and leaving behind LIFE itself, that is).
You said that you wouldn't mess with the SS port because of nightmareish saturn coding... well, this part is on good capable argentinian hands right now, and MOST OF YOUR WORK is already WORKING ON REAL SATURN.

Artemio, I really am sorry if I sounded too pushy...it's just that it would be totally friggin awesome, not for completion but for what it means to have one of Kojima's most valuable jewels revisited: just better.

Thanks/Sorry (feel free to choose either one :P )
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Re: Policenauts Sega Saturn Translation

Post by Artemio »

It is completely out of my hands, I worked mainly in technical issues, decoding the text, reverse engineering of graphics and implementing tools to reinsert them, as ell as tellops (subtitles) in movies. I did help Marc with the translation, but in a very minimal way. We often discussed the context, searched for the best way to phrase something... but it was just those kind of small details. He was the one that proposed the options or needed an opinion on something that he already had options for, even if we sometimes suggested other alternatives, he made the choice.

I am not certain about it, but most probably he has been contacted already. And most probably he doesn't have time for it, due to his current work. I don't know, but I don't believe pushing him would be a good idea.

Leaving that text until the very end would be my way of dealing with this, if I was part of this new team. After all, it would be very easy to recompile a version with those lines anytime.
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Re: Policenauts Sega Saturn Translation

Post by Marc »

SaturnAR wrote:Many other strings are raising and we need to translate them to English too. Any help will be welcome. So, if you have a little time Marc... :D just joking...no pressure.
Awesome work! Really, just awesome, everyone involved.

Sent you a PM.

But yes, I would love to translate the Saturn text, and fix some typos from the PSX version at the same time.
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