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Re: Current Project Status
Posted: Fri Oct 03, 2008 9:53 pm
by 8bitsonic
slowbeef wrote:Spoiler alert! Abe Vigoda is still alive in 2043 and that is Policenauts canon.
If Marc actually localized that into the game... bless you, sir.
(Unless you're joking, or it was there in the Japanese version?!)
Re: Current Project Status
Posted: Fri Oct 03, 2008 9:55 pm
by Artemio
A small status update.
Right now I am working on the graphic overlays that are places above video during the game, such as the opening credits and some places and character introductions.
Right now I can enable or disable either video, audio, overlays or all from movies, and also can dump the graphic data.
We are still working on decoding these and editing them, but they are isolated and we can control if they are displayed.
Re: Current Project Status
Posted: Fri Oct 03, 2008 10:04 pm
by 8bitsonic
Artemio wrote:A small status update.
Right now I am working on the graphic overlays that are places above video during the game, such as the opening credits and some places and character introductions.
Right now I can enable or disable either video, audio, overlays or all from movies, and also can dump the graphic data.
We are still working on decoding these and editing them, but they are isolated and we can control if they are displayed.
Ah, this is the kind of update that we all wanted during the mostly quiet past year... fantastic!

Re: Current Project Status
Posted: Fri Oct 03, 2008 10:06 pm
by Jack Stern
Queston: Is it possible (as far your knowledge can reach) to dump the audio (voice-over) and then input another audio data? To say, implement English voice-acting in the game for example.
Re: Current Project Status
Posted: Fri Oct 03, 2008 10:10 pm
by slowbeef
Jack Stern wrote:Queston: Is it possible (as far your knowledge can reach) to dump the audio (voice-over) and then input another audio data? To say, implement English voice-acting in the game for example.
Someone on romhacking.net put it best:
"Anything is possible given enough time, effort, and cursing." And in my case, coffee.
edit: That's actually a serious answer. Replacing Japanese character bytes with English bytes is possible, so technically, replacing an audio file with another is a similar problem: at the end of the day, it's bytes to bytes though that's vastly oversimplifying things. There's a ton of logistical problems you run into (What audio format does Policenauts even use? Can it be converted to a lossless format like WAV? Should it? Do I have room on the CD to put it back if my new audio is bigger? Do I have to decrease audio quality to get it to fit? How do I get all my voice actors have the same or similar microphone quality without renting a recording studio? If I'm overhauling the game this much, would it make more sense to rip all of the assets I can and just remake it myself? Actually, if I'm doing all this, why not just make my own game?)
Re: Current Project Status
Posted: Fri Oct 03, 2008 10:18 pm
by 8bitsonic
slowbeef wrote:Jack Stern wrote:Queston: Is it possible (as far your knowledge can reach) to dump the audio (voice-over) and then input another audio data? To say, implement English voice-acting in the game for example.
Someone on romhacking.net put it best:
"Anything is possible given enough time, effort, and cursing." And in my case, coffee.
edit: That's actually a serious answer. Replacing Japanese character bytes with English bytes is possible, so technically, replacing an audio file with another is a similar problem: at the end of the day, it's bytes to bytes though that's vastly oversimplifying things. There's a ton of logistical problems you run into (What audio format does Policenauts even use? Can it be converted to a lossless format like WAV? Should it? Do I have room on the CD to put it back if my new audio is bigger? Do I have to decrease audio quality to get it to fit? How do I get all my voice actors have the same or similar microphone quality without renting a recording studio? If I'm overhauling the game this much, would it make more sense to rip all of the assets I can and just remake it myself? Actually, if I'm doing all this, why not just make my own game?)
GROAN. We're not going to start with this voice acting crap again, are we?? The last guy who wanted to do that literally got laughed off the Kojima forums and had to hang out in the Off-Topic boards for a long time.... still doesn't post around here much anymore...
Re: Current Project Status
Posted: Fri Oct 03, 2008 10:23 pm
by slowbeef
Nah, I'm just having a hypothetical conversation. I deal with enough "fan dubbing" on my own forum to be scared the hell away from projects like that.
Re: Current Project Status
Posted: Fri Oct 03, 2008 10:37 pm
by Jack Stern
8bitsonic wrote:GROAN. We're not going to start with this voice acting crap again, are we?? The last guy who wanted to do that literally got laughed off the Kojima forums and had to hang out in the Off-Topic boards for a long time.... still doesn't post around here much anymore...
Jeez... It was just a question.

What's the big deal? I'm mostly asking this because not all the companies works in the same way in terms of software & coding when programming on the consoles. While some companies like Atlus' coding in general is very arranged, other companies like use a different compression or elements in that aspect. That's why arranged for example, a undub version of P3 is more easier than say, FFXII. I thought Konami's coding elements would be more simpler than others in the sound department, but it seems it's more complicated.
The point is, the idea of implementing this stuff is "It'd be great, but I can deal without it" rather than "It must BE that way, or this sucks!". I don't see what's so funny about asking the possibility. I appreciate both Japanase VA and English VA by equal terms, actually I played MGS1 and MGS2 just to hear voice-actors such as Otsuka, Tease and Takaya (Snake, Meryl and Otacon respectively)
And thanks Slowbeef for the answer (kind of rough but still going directly on point) I'm mostly interested on this because I'm dealing with directing a recording progress in a gaming project of the studio I'm working, and it's my favorite part of the games actually.
Re: Current Project Status
Posted: Fri Oct 03, 2008 10:41 pm
by Artemio
Just as slowbeef put it, is possible. And right now we know where the audio is and we can remove it. It would be a matter of figuring out the codec.
But it is something we won't do, so you can be at rest 8bitsonic.
Re: Current Project Status
Posted: Fri Oct 03, 2008 10:42 pm
by 8bitsonic
Jack Stern wrote:8bitsonic wrote:GROAN. We're not going to start with this voice acting crap again, are we?? The last guy who wanted to do that literally got laughed off the Kojima forums and had to hang out in the Off-Topic boards for a long time.... still doesn't post around here much anymore...
Jeez... It was just a question.

What's the big deal? I'm mostly asking this because not all the companies works in the same way in terms of software & coding when programming on the consoles. While some companies like Atlus' coding in general is very arranged, other companies like use a different compression or elements in that aspect. That's why arranged for example, a undub version of P3 is more easier than say, FFXII. I thought Konami's coding elements would be more simpler than others in the sound department, but it seems it's more complicated.
The point is, the idea of implementing this stuff is "It'd be great" rather than "It must BE that way". I don't see what's so funny about asking the possibility.
And thanks Slowbeef for the answer (kind of rough but still going directly on point) I'm mostly interested on this because I'm dealing with directing a recording progress in a gaming project of the studio I'm working, and it's my favorite part of the games actually.
Okay, fine that you're interested in the technical end of it, but I'm just a little spooked over the idea that people might start demanding a dub if we bring it up again, as if it would add anything good to the translation. Jesus, dubs are hard enough for a game company to pull off properly, much less a few game hackers/translators scattered across the world...
And a game with Japanese voices and English text...hm... it's ALREADY going to be an undub!

Re: Current Project Status
Posted: Sat Oct 04, 2008 1:56 am
by slowbeef
Artemio wrote:
Right now I can enable or disable either video, audio, overlays or all from movies, and also can dump the graphic data.
Artemio is understating how huge this finding was. I was honestly expecting a long, drawn out process of figuring out the codec and he just saved us a ton of work. It was really, really, a beyond awesome find of his and when you do finally play the game, you should give a thought to "I wouldn't have been able to play this for at least another half-year or something if it weren't for Artemio."
I know I get a lot of props for finding the in-game text solution, but in reality, we're only here because of the years of hard work the team put in before me. If anything, I got lucky by jumping in so late because they managed to have so much of this game mapped out already.
Re: Current Project Status
Posted: Sat Oct 04, 2008 3:58 am
by Lonheartda60
I thought the question was pretty interesting.... it personally wouldn't matter to me, it kinda reminds me of watching Detective Conan or somethin we'll all still get the same great story.
So do you guys have a checklist or do just do what comes next? Like scene by scene.
Re: Current Project Status
Posted: Sat Oct 04, 2008 9:00 am
by epitaph
Artemio wrote:
Right now I am working on the graphic overlays that are places above video during the game, such as the opening credits and some places and character introductions.
I figured the credits/text during the introduction (i.e. "Old Los Angeles" etc.) was encoded in the video whereas the telops (character introductions etc.) were drawn by the game engine. Am I totally off in this assumption?
Re: Current Project Status
Posted: Sat Oct 04, 2008 9:11 am
by Marc
8bitsonic wrote:GROAN. We're not going to start with this voice acting crap again, are we?? The last guy who wanted to do that literally got laughed off the Kojima forums and had to hang out in the Off-Topic boards for a long time.... still doesn't post around here much anymore...
Well, as you'll recall the reason people found his suggestion so humorous was because he was so confident his family members could provide all the voices. Then after a few weeks of silence, he said they all had crappy voices that didn't fit the characters.
I'll admit at the start Artemio and I entertained the idea of doing an English dub, but we decided to let it go when we realized we wouldn't be able to do the game justice. Besides, the game already has excellent Japanese voice acting as it is.
Re: Current Project Status
Posted: Sat Oct 04, 2008 10:57 am
by Artemio
epitaph wrote:
I figured the credits/text during the introduction (i.e. "Old Los Angeles" etc.) was encoded in the video whereas the telops (character introductions etc.) were drawn by the game engine. Am I totally off in this assumption?
Both are drawn over the video =)
Re: Current Project Status
Posted: Sat Oct 04, 2008 11:22 am
by slowbeef
Lonheartda60 wrote:So do you guys have a checklist or do just do what comes next? Like scene by scene.
Not
exactly. I can speak best to my part, the in-game text and menus.
The idea is kind of this:
- You make a hack for one part of the game, like the in-game text. You try it on one scene. Your first attempt, you maybe get something wrong, or it doesn't quite work, so you adjust your hack, recode it, etc. You find bugs and fix them until the whole thing works correctly. When you're done with all this your hack is in a better place, so you can be reasonably that it works well.
The first scene is always the hardest. For me, this was all of the Prologue before the space plane. It was a great first data set because it's one of the largest on Disc 1, so I get a great feel for how the rest of them are going to work.
- So you do another scene, and it effectively increases your data set. The second scene is important because it'll show you how robust your program is. A good computer program should work on variable data sets that you get as input, so if there are problems, you know you have to do stuff a little differently.
For me, this is the spaceplane.
(Note: A big problem with this project is that your data sets are successively farther and farther in the game, which means they're always a little bit harder to get to. Also, if you make a new "build" you might corrupt your savestates, as the stuff that was in memory in your last version of the patch may no longer match the stuff in the game. So you have to keep using in-game saves and load over and over again. I prefer to playthrough previous stuff because it somewhat assures I didn't accidentally break or corrupt my previous work.)
- We hit an interesting stumbling block in the third scene (the in-game system menus file) as it was very different from all the others. I'm glad it happened early though, as I had to rewrite some portions of my patcher to be able to accommodate it and keep it working for the ones we'd previously done.
- Now my patcher's in a good place (I feel) and the next two datasets introduced a couple of bugs, simply because they had one or two things the others didn't. I'm actually just about to test a new one.
My point is that like Artemio said, this is an all-or-nothing kind of thing where when you get your program right, all the datasets just sorta snap into place one day. The only thing is there's so much data to process and it's so varied, that one file farther ahead in the game maybe include something a tiny bit different then you've seen. So if you can imagine, this is sort of one of those exponential curves where the curve starts almost vertically steep at x=0, but levels out faster as you keep going.
By the way, concerning voice acting and fan dubs - I listen to a lot of fan-made audio in the Let's Play forum and the biggest problem with professional-sounding independent voice acting is that a Logitech headset sounds different from an on-board mic sounds different from something expensive and no one really has the kind of filters that you need.
Forget programming, I mean that voice acting brings along a ton of logistical problems with it as well. Not only that but (again, we're not doing it) Policenauts has a ton of actors and scenes. It's not a great game to fan-dub if you've never done that sort of thing before.
In the programming aspect, anything can be done - logistically speaking, it's very hard to do it well enough to sound professional.
Re: Current Project Status
Posted: Sat Oct 04, 2008 12:33 pm
by scarboy
Also everyone who will want to voice act will have nerdvoices.
Re: Current Project Status
Posted: Sat Oct 04, 2008 1:39 pm
by slowbeef
Yeah, that too.
Re: Current Project Status
Posted: Sat Oct 04, 2008 2:12 pm
by JimboKudo
I don't know if anyone's asked this question yet, but are you guys going to be translating other graphics besides just the name tags? I'm talking about stuff like grafitti or words on bilboards.
Re: Current Project Status
Posted: Sat Oct 04, 2008 2:43 pm
by Lonheartda60
I had to read slowbeef's reply like 6 times before i understood everything lol.
Hey so have you guys patched any other games? jw

Re: Current Project Status
Posted: Sat Oct 04, 2008 3:18 pm
by Marc
JimboKudo wrote:I don't know if anyone's asked this question yet, but are you guys going to be translating other graphics besides just the name tags? I'm talking about stuff like grafitti or words on bilboards.
Yeah, there are a few places in the game where we're going to do that. Anywhere we need to, basically. Actually, it mainly amounts to fixing Engrish. You see, all the characters are supposed to be speaking and reading English; the game is just in Japanese so Japanese players know what the heck's going on. It's like how in Metal Gear Solid 3 some characters are speaking Russian but we hear it as English.
Re: Current Project Status
Posted: Sun Oct 05, 2008 8:43 am
by Lonheartda60
Hey so how come when turn on Policenauts and don't press anything...its all in english?
Re: Current Project Status
Posted: Sun Oct 05, 2008 9:54 am
by Marc
Same reason the back of the game box is in English. A way of appearing cool.
Re: Current Project Status
Posted: Sun Oct 05, 2008 2:31 pm
by Henry Spencer
...English is...cool? Oh, okay.

Re: Current Project Status
Posted: Sun Oct 05, 2008 2:47 pm
by Marc
Amongst the usual Japanese, it is.
