Stuff

November 10, 2009

The last news update scored over 100 comments, so I guess you guys deserve another one. Next update will happen if this news gets over 9000 comments.

Progress has been steady on most fronts. The Project Overview page has been updated, but here is a run-down of the most important developments:

Super Robot Wars J

Editing is complete! Deets did an exceptional job in finishing the whole mammoth script in such a timely fashion. Now he moved on to work on editing images (he has a talent for that too!). Notice the “Shield Defense” graphic in the screenshots next to this. There are only very few images left to edit (and hack). This project is really close to being done now. Beta testing should commence within the next few weeks. (No we don’t need any testers, thanks).

Super Robot Wars F

Speaking of super robots, F did also make a huge leap in progress since the last time. Tyria is almost done translating, all that’s left are a few entries in the character database (Bonus content giving an overview of the characters and shows that appear in the game). Once he is done he will start to get cracking at SRW FF soon. In case you didn’t know - SRWF is only the first half of the story, F Final tells the other half. You can import your end savegame from the first game and carry over all stats, money and items to the new game. A translation of F alone would be pretty unsatisfying, but don’t worry, we will translate both.
Since the script is in such an advanced stage, Kingcom also started hacking the menues and made good progress. The project should get even more attention once J is released. By the way, Deets also signed up for editing again and already edited the first scenario! Rock on Deets!

Oriental Blue & DQM 1+2

This project is also progressing smoothly. More menues are done, what’s left are mostly minigames. Tom edited the script like 20 times in the meanwhile too, so it should be pretty polished. Speaking of Tom, the script of DQM 1 is completely translated. Kingcom also started hacking many menues. I played it for a bit already, and the first game is really quite playable already. More progress on this one is on the back-burner though until Oriental Blue is finished.

Tales of Innocence

The Tales of Innocence project is also going absolutely great. The script translation was finally completely finished a few days ago! After a massive marathon session of translating the last skit was translated well ahead of schedule. The script is being edited now. Another project that should enter beta testing very soon.

Kingcom also spend a great deal of time on his assembler called armips. While working on our projects over the years it was clear that goldroad/spasm and the other available assemblers for our target platforms were shit. So he wrote his own! After a ton of features were added he finally made a public release some weeks back, you can read about it (and download it if you like) at this thread. You can also see the feature list there and leave feedback if you like. I’m sure he’ll be glad to know if any other soul besides him uses it.

That’s it for now. There probably won’t be another news update until a release is ready (the 9000 comments thing was a joke). I’m sure though this time it won’t be another three months. Stay tuned.

Posted by KaioShin at 9:35pm
48 Comments »

News Round-Up and a Little Request

August 01, 2009

Dear readers, this will be a BIG update. Not only do we have lot’s of news, no, to commemorate the event we also have a ton of pretty pictures to look at. We hope you enjoy them.

First off, we have a new project to announce, one that should please especially our long-time fans who are with us since this was just my personal little site about my newb attempts at hacking Caravan Heart.

Dragon Quest Monsters 1+2 (PSX Remake)

The hacking is currently being handled by Kingcom and none other than Tom (who also translated Caravan Heart) is working on the translation part of it. So far the project is already going very smoothly. As you can see in the screenshots a VWF is already implemented and working. Menu hacking is a different beast and will surely cause some headaches later on, but when did we ever let that stop us? I’ve been told the translation is progressing smoothly, although Tom will be moving to get a new job soon, so progress might slow down for a few months.

Xenosaga I+II DS

Yes we know, it’s been ages since we talked about this one. Translation is steadily going forward though and we also got a help offer from another translator, so things might move along even faster soon, if the original translator gives the OK. Here are some screenshots of translated scenes from the game:

Oriental Blue

Oriental Blue has been completely translated for a little while now. The news about that was eaten by the server crash, so here it is again. Kingcom also continued hacking work on it, so it’s getting closer to completion all the time. There is still a fair bit of stuff to be done (lot’s of minigames that’ll surely require lot’s of annoying image hacking) but this project is propably the second closest to completion apart from SRWJ. Speaking of which, it’s still in editing. We now started to edit the chapter graphics too.
Anyway… back to Oriental Blue. Yeah it’s going great and to apologize for the lost news entry here is a bunch of screenshots:

Devil Children - Ice Book

This one has also been translated for quite a while already, but the hacking of this game can only be described as a neverending nightmare. So don’t give me too much flak for slacking off on this one. It will be finished though, even if I’ll lose my soul in the process (not unlikely). We noticed we never showed any menu screenshots of this game either, so enjoy these. I paid for every single correctly menu label and every single correctly printed string with blood.

Tales of Innocence

Absolute Zero’s throughhim413 made a few special progress reports. Instead of just writing about it, he created two videos with commentary by himself. Pretty neat, be sure to check them out:

Progress Report 1

Progress Report 2

And before you ask, no I won’t do such a thing for any projects here. My accent is why too thick for you to understand anything anyway =P

Also… Could anyone create a new site theme for us?

Together with this news, the Project Overview page has also been updated. There has been some, ehm, critique, that we shouldn’t make such a page if we don’t update it often. It’s purpose is not to give you 0.01% exact live updates updated directly whenever we receive 2kB of text from one of our translators. The page is intended for new visitors who want to get a overview over all the projects combined into one page instead of reading up on all the news entries of the last two years. In that spirit we’ll probably update it only when we also have a front-page news like this.

Last but not least, we have a little request from you. We’d really like to have a new theme for the website. Is there a fan out there with webdesign talent who could help us out with this? Both Kingcom and I are pretty much n00bs when it comes to web stuff. As you can see on the Xenosaga screenshots, the current theme has some problems with pictures for example. 800×600 really isn’t up-to-date anymore, we’d really like a 1024×768 optimized design. There isn’t much we can offer in exchange for any help, other than access to our betas when they are done (might still be a few months off before we get to the first).

It would really be kick ass if someone could create something for us. We don’t have any fixed ideas on how it should like, I guess the only parameters are that it’s a Wordpress theme, compatible with the newest version of Wordpress and that it should handle pictures better than our current layout. Leave us a comment with a valid mail address if you’d like to help.

That’s it for today, thanks guys and look forward to more news whenever it’s ready.

Posted by KaioShin at 12:43pm
108 Comments »

Need Moar Newz

March 15, 2009

Woah, has it been three months already since the last post? Time sure flies by. We meant to write something for quite some time now, but you know how it is… there’s stuff to do, games to play and translations to finish. Despite our silence work has been steady and progress has been amazing on many fronts. I’d hope at some point you people would trust us on that instead of declaring us dead.

So what’s up?

Script translation and preliminary editing of SRW J is complete! Hackingwise the game has been very advanced for a long time already. We have a new editor on the team who is giving the whole script a second edit to make it shine as much as possible. His name is Deets and this second edit is also already well under way. I realize many of you would be happier with a raw beta release now and a polished translation later, but we decided against it. We’d like to present you with a truly professional translation that’ll make us proud and all of you happy. Please have some patience and bear with us, the end result will be worth it.

Tales of Innocence is also going excellently. The story event portion of the script has been completely translated leaving only the skits left to go. I’m damn excited myself to see this finished soon. For more information and screenshots, see Absolute Zero’s site.

In other, even greater news, I have the honour to announce three new projects to the public. Yes ladies and gentlemen, three! They have been worked on in the background quite some time already (one of them for half a year), but we feel the time is finally right to make them official. If you follow the comments and the board at romhacking.net you might have already known about some of them.

Oriental Blue
This GBA RPG is a spin-off of the famous Tengai Makyou series. Tom will be translating it and Kingcom is taking care of the hacking. It has actually quite far progressed already, with the translation progress reaching past the 50% mark.

Super Robot Wars F
After Tyria finished translating SRW J it was time for a new project of course! He’s currently translating the PSX version of SRWF. The hacking is still in early stages, but there has been great progress already. Compared to SRW J the script isn’t even that big, so maybe this one won’t take Tyria too long.

Super Robot Wars D
Another SRW? Yes, we’re totally serious. This one won’t be translated by Tyria however since he is obviously already busy. Another translator who’d like to stay anonymous at this point, is handling this script. It’s the predecessor to SRW J, so it’s not as spectacularily looking, but most people agree it has the superior storyline among the two games.

That’s all for now, rest assured there has been steady progress on all of our projects. If I didn’t mention one specifically, assume that no news is good news. Not all of our translations are as insanely fast as Tom or Tyria. We’ll bring up these projects again when they reach major milestones.

Posted by KaioShin at 9:17pm
37 Comments »

Not dead yet

October 12, 2008

It’s been a while, isn’t it? We didn’t die, quite on the contrary, we have a ton of progress to report on several projects’ fronts. We just didn’t feel like writing much. Fortunately you aren’t e-mail bombing us when we don’t post something for three days unlike the poor Mother 3 guys. *ahem* On to the news!

Image editor post:

I’d like to thank everyone who volunteered to help. A lot of people sent in the first batch of trial images, that really surprised us. The second one was a bit harder and only two people replied with an edited one. I guess we were pretty demanding after all. In the end we decided to give the post to death_seraph. Welcome to the team! I’ll try to have screenshots with his work in action soon.

Super Robot Wars Judgement:

Unfortunately, the editor we had presented to you in the last update left shortly afterwards due to time constraints. Not all is lost though, since we got a competent replacement just a few days ago. The new editor is YuushaFan, a friend of our translator Tyria. The very good news is that he seems to be as insanely fast as Tyria. I’m positive we’ll see lots of exciting progress on the editing soon.
The translation is progressing smoothly as well. Last I heard everything to mission 20 or so is already translated. Kingcom hopes to crack the last few remaining hacking issues soon as well.

Devil Children:

Translation is about a good 70% done. Story dialogue is already completed, what’s left is misc stuff like devil descriptions. Tom promised to have the translation finished soon! I have been working on the hacking again too, fixing a ton of minor menu problems. Kingcom helped out too, so we’re looking at good progress here. The game is a convulted mess though (only programming wise of course), so there is still lot’s to do.

Tales of Innocence:

Hacking should be mostly complete and the translation is progressing smoothly. You can find more detailled progress reports on Absolute Zero’s blog.

Xenosaga & Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei:

No news is good news. Translations are progressing smoothly.

Magical Vacation:

One of the two translators vanished. I don’t know what’s up with him, but I haven’t heard from him or seen him online in 2 months or so now. Anororn is making slow but steady progress though. The translation might progress somewhat slower, but it IS progressing. If someone else would like to fill the blank and help out with the translation contact me.

I’m also still looking for a translator for the Shin Megami Tensei GBA remake! If anyone is interested, you know where to find me. The game is awesome, it really needs to be translated!

Posted by KaioShin at 12:14pm
30 Comments »

Tales of a Translation

July 15, 2008

I’m proud to announce the latest and most recent project, Tales of Innocence! It’s a collaboration with throughhim413 from Absolute Zero, who also translated Tales of Phantasia for PSX last year. Even though the project is still a young one, a lot has already been accomplished. But see for yourself on the screens at the bottom!

Additionally, KaioShin decided to take care of finishing xdaniel’s Kururin Paradise translation, so he is working on something, too, now. The game has a fair amount of graphics that need editing, and if anyone would like to help with them, we would be very grateful.

But now it’s time for the screens!

Posted by Kingcom at 2:20am
28 Comments »