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Re: Current Project Status (Updated September 3rd)

Posted: Sun Sep 21, 2008 1:05 pm
by JimboKudo
The trick here, fairuza, is that we would never know whether or not they were saving it for a holiday release. Besides, this project has gone too far to be canceled or forgotten now. I don't really care if we have to wait a couple extra months, just think of it as a form of payment for the hard work that they've done. Of coarse, I don't think they would delay it at all. :wink:

Re: Current Project Status (Updated September 3rd)

Posted: Sun Sep 21, 2008 1:33 pm
by Solidé
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[url=http://www.policenauts.net][img]http://img523.imageshack.us/img523/1867/policenautsbanner05wi4.png[/img][/url]

Re: Current Project Status (Updated September 3rd)

Posted: Sun Sep 21, 2008 2:02 pm
by James_The_Stampede
JimboKudo wrote:The trick here, fairuza, is that we would never know whether or not they were saving it for a holiday release. Besides, this project has gone too far to be canceled or forgotten now. I don't really care if we have to wait a couple extra months, just think of it as a form of payment for the hard work that they've done. Of coarse, I don't think they would delay it at all. :wink:
<Snark>

I think the idea of delaying it until right before the rapture was batted around. Think about it: The last game you'll ever play will probably be the best one! Of course, my ideas tend to get swept to the side :(

</Snark>

Re: Current Project Status (Updated September 3rd)

Posted: Sun Sep 21, 2008 5:06 pm
by Kojima_Devotee
If you don't mind me asking, Slowbeef, I understand you've completed the first Act's English insertion. Will that mean that the following acts will be easier due to the hacks working properly?

Thanks again for all these informative status updates! You were worth waiting a year for, Slowbeef! :lol:

Re: Current Project Status (Updated September 3rd)

Posted: Sun Sep 21, 2008 5:13 pm
by slowbeef
Kojima_Devotee wrote:If you don't mind me asking, Slowbeef, I understand you've completed the first Act's English insertion. Will that mean that the following acts will be easier due to the hacks working properly?
In theory, yes. I say "in theory" because there may be a bug that only manifests itself in later acts, like a control code that only gets used once or a case where there's a corpus of text that's just much larger than everything else that we never encountered before, etc. I can't know for 100% certainty that everything we've done is actually finished without playtesting the whole thing with all the hacks together.

That's sorta why I've been reluctant to give out dates or anything like that. We're not really done until we're really done.

Re: Current Project Status (Updated September 3rd)

Posted: Sun Sep 21, 2008 6:13 pm
by Kojima_Devotee
slowbeef wrote:there's a corpus of text that's just much larger than everything else that we never encountered before
It's a good thing Kojima games don't have a lot of lengthy exposition sequences. :lol:

Re: Current Project Status (Updated September 3rd)

Posted: Sun Sep 21, 2008 6:24 pm
by slowbeef
Kojima_Devotee wrote:
slowbeef wrote:there's a corpus of text that's just much larger than everything else that we never encountered before
It's a good thing Kojima games don't have a lot of lengthy exposition sequences. :lol:
Actually, no joke - that's what worries me. Kojima does weird one-off things in his games like making the screen go black and say HIDEO. So I'm expecting some weird fourth-wall breaking thing that happens in the text only once in the whole game if you do things in a certain sequence and for some reason or another, it's technically different from everything else and completely blows the hack.

Re: Current Project Status (Updated September 3rd)

Posted: Sun Sep 21, 2008 6:55 pm
by Kojima_Devotee
I see. However, if you encountered such a thing, does that mean that the hack(s) is(are) no longer usable, or will an additional hack be required to fix the instance?

I don't know anything about programming, so forgive my naivete.

Re: Current Project Status (Updated September 3rd)

Posted: Sun Sep 21, 2008 7:01 pm
by snatcher1996
Alright, here's a much improved version of my previously posted name badges.

Like Artemio suggested, I made it a Bitmap which actually uses exactly the same colors as the original one he kindly posted. I added it to the bitmap as well so everyone may compare my work to what the japanese ingame looks like. I guess it worked out pretty well so far...
I managed to fit longer names like "Secretary" or "Tokugawa" and even "Stewardess" inside the black box, without having to part with the ingames fontstyle in favor of readability. For each name, there's at least a space of one black pixel between the letters and the edge of the black box, so all games should look great inside the white frames as well.

Tomorrow, I will go through my work one more time, in order to make it look perfect, i.e. have a look at every pixel again. Any suggestions, how things should look different is highly welcome! Also, if someone liked to see an alternative to any of the names, that has not been considered in my templates so far, please just drop a note and I will include it.

Re: Current Project Status (Updated September 3rd)

Posted: Sun Sep 21, 2008 7:21 pm
by slowbeef
Kojima_Devotee wrote:I see. However, if you encountered such a thing, does that mean that the hack(s) is(are) no longer usable, or will an additional hack be required to fix the instance?

I don't know anything about programming, so forgive my naivete.
No, that's fine - no need for apology.

It just depends, honestly. We've come far enough that I don't think I'd like to say "in-game patching has to be completely redone" so I might have to engineer a workaround. That kind of thing sucks (one-off workarounds), but if it really were something that only happened once or twice in the whole game it might be worth it.

But it's also possible that there's something that happens more frequently and we do have to take a big step back to re-engineer how we account for it. I just can't say for certain at this point. The good news is that the Prologue actually contains a lot of the tech stuff that we need to account for, so it's actually really good for testing.

And it's also possible that no such thing occurs and we're fine, in which case the only "bug hunting" we'll be doing are finding typos in Marc's translation. :) For that part of the code anyway.

That's sort of the challenge of this whole thing. You just don't know precisely how the original code was engineered, so you work with disassemblers and debuggers and all the tools you can and try to examine it and make your best informed guesses. The reason I say my patcher is solid is because it's working with all the inputs I've thrown at it so far and the game's yet to be broken in that regard. It might or might not be when we give it more and more inputs. And one day, hopefully soon, we'll have given it all the inputs in the game and it will work.

Re: Current Project Status (Updated September 3rd)

Posted: Sun Sep 21, 2008 8:46 pm
by HidJunker
Hello, Im new in here!

anyways I just had to register and thank you all for making this project
possible, no words can really be used to describe how gratefull I am for
the current project status and updates and all of your hard work Slowbeef!
and others who are currently working and were working on this project THANK YOU!!!!:D

Snatcher was one of my favourite games of all time
and now that the policenauts translation project is goin smoothly
I can finally see my self playing policenauts in the near future.


keep up the good work guys!

-HidJunker

Re: Current Project Status (Updated September 3rd)

Posted: Sun Sep 21, 2008 9:47 pm
by Kojima_Devotee
Welcome to the group, HidJunker. Indeed, Slowbeef's contribution alone made the year wait worth it.

Man, I really do need to stop posting every two replies or so. Time to find something else to do. :lol:

Re: Current Project Status (Updated September 3rd)

Posted: Sun Sep 21, 2008 10:53 pm
by JimboKudo
Nice work on the tags snatcher. They're much easier to read now.

Re: Current Project Status (Updated September 3rd)

Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2008 12:12 am
by Andrigaar
I'm also a goon, and 'Beef occasionally teases that text-contest thread with shots with the translated graphics.

Probably an old remark, but is "Cop" the best localization?

I only ask because it seems more of a slang term. It's a valid translation (I did look,) but it still strikes me as off.

Re: Current Project Status (Updated September 3rd)

Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2008 5:45 am
by Zhukov
Its very exciting seeing all these developments occur :mrgreen: I imagine hacking the PlayStation version is difficult enough, I couldnt imagine what the Saturn version is like!

Re: Current Project Status (Updated September 3rd)

Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2008 6:21 am
by Henry Spencer
Yeah, snatcher1996's tags are definitely the best of the lot so far (I've seen all the ones from the Something Awful thread).
Andrigaar wrote:Probably an old remark, but is "Cop" the best localization?

I only ask because it seems more of a slang term. It's a valid translation (I did look,) but it still strikes me as off.
What would you prefer they use? "Officer", "Patrolman" or some other variant like that?

Re: Current Project Status (Updated September 3rd)

Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2008 7:00 am
by snatcher1996
Thanks Henry Spencer, it means a lot to me!

I thought to myself that "Cop" might sound a little odd ingame, so I added "Officer" to my name badge chart as an alternative.

Also I Improved on some of the letters to make them a little brighter. For the rest of the evening, I will put some effort in making characters that seem a bit thin a little bigger.

Re: Current Project Status (Updated September 3rd)

Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2008 11:58 am
by snatcher1996
That's it for today, my newest version.

I included "ASL" and "Employee", as I read them at SA forums and improved on a lot of the capital letters.

As for the alternates: I guess "Officer", "Stewardess" and "Reception" would be my choices.
Concerning the white frames around the name tags: I guess I'd want the game to look as close to the original as possible, therefore I'd prefer to stay with the white frames.

What do you think?

Re: Current Project Status (Updated September 3rd)

Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2008 11:59 am
by snatcher1996
... again with the zip-file attached :mrgreen:

Re: Current Project Status (Updated September 3rd)

Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2008 12:10 pm
by slowbeef
I'm gonna write a script to stitch these into memory so I don't have to keep rebuilding the game. You're on deck, snatcher1996 - I'll try yours next.

Re: Current Project Status (Updated September 3rd)

Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2008 12:13 pm
by snatcher1996
Just saw your post, slowbeef, so please ignore my PM :mrgreen:

Re: Current Project Status (Updated September 3rd)

Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2008 10:09 am
by slowbeef

Re: Current Project Status (Updated September 3rd)

Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2008 10:24 am
by snatcher1996
Thanks man, I appreciate it!

I see your point with "Slewardess". I will try to overcome this by making the "t" more visible. I will try to improve some other things I do not consider good enough as well.

Re: Current Project Status (Updated September 3rd)

Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2008 12:41 pm
by Andrigaar
Henry Spencer wrote:Yeah, snatcher1996's tags are definitely the best of the lot so far (I've seen all the ones from the Something Awful thread).
Andrigaar wrote:Probably an old remark, but is "Cop" the best localization?

I only ask because it seems more of a slang term. It's a valid translation (I did look,) but it still strikes me as off.
What would you prefer they use? "Officer", "Patrolman" or some other variant like that?
Actually, that is the direction I was looking at. Just something more neutral since you don't often hear someone say "It's a cop" or "Buncha cops over there" without resentment for authority.

Re: Current Project Status (Updated September 3rd)

Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2008 2:24 pm
by snatcher1996
I made the "t" in "Stewardess" more distinguishable from an "l". Furthermore I made all the letters "d", "e" and "o" brighter so they should look less anemic.