Xanadu I and II - General Translation Project(s) Thread

[elmer]

Ha ha ha...

My unofficial theme song while I work on these games is this.

Hahaha, listening to that immediately made me think of this ...

Gotta watch that again, soon.

[NightWolve]

My unofficial theme song while I work on these games is this.

Fine choice from a masterpiece, I really loved that game! That final battle was truly epic, just incredible, and it reminded me why I ever got into gaming in the first place! Glad I picked it out of my backlog and finished it off a few years ago.

[SamIAm]

Update time.

The second pass of Xanadu 1's beastly Chapter 7 is done. Chapter 8 is just shy of being halfway. The next two chapters are both happily on the skinny side, and they are also essentially the last ones since the final Chapter 11 barely has any text in it.

Sadly, the busy time at work is upon me. I have a week to prepare, and then it's going to be crazy until the end of August. My progress is going to slow down, and I might not be able to participate in some of the time-consuming discussions we've been having around here or keep in touch with elmer quite as frequently.

The good news is that I do have days off, including an entire week from August 11th to the 16th and the last three days of that month. Tomorrow is a day off as well, and if I can finish Chapter 8, I might be able to manage getting all the way through Xanadu 2 by the end of August as I originally hoped.

After that, I'll focus exclusively on the dub for a while. When we have that in the can, I'll do a (hopefully faster) third pass that will be include some testers...and that might be it.

When elmer and I were working on Zeroigar, I was able to approach editing in a truly perfectionist way. That game only takes about an hour to beat, and we went through it again and again over the course of a few months. It was easy to savor each line both on its own and as part of the whole, and tweak things over and over until we really felt like everything was as good as it could be. You could show me any line from that game, and I could tell you why I think it's in the best form possible.

These Xanadu games are just too big for that. Word-count wise, we're probably talking about over 100x as much text. We can polish out all typos, grammar errors, inconsistencies, and really flat-sounding lines. For the most part, this is already done. However, if we try to make it so that every single text-box is phrased in the absolute most ideal way possible, we'll never get this done.

It think this will be an exercise in leaving well-enough alone and hoping that anything that is less than awesome won't really detract from the overall experience anyway.

[destructive cactus]

Whoo! This is so exciting. I forget if I've already commented in this thread before, but I'd like to volunteer for any help with audio/testing. I have a duo-r with an everdrive and also am a recording musician with a good vocal mic and outboard gear/effects and could help out in that capacity, if there's a need. Please feel free to ask me anything in here or via PM if you think I might be able to help!

[jtucci31]

These Xanadu games are just too big for that. Word-count wise, we're probably talking about over 100x as much text. We can polish out all typos, grammar errors, inconsistencies, and really flat-sounding lines. For the most part, this is already done. However, if we try to make it so that every single text-box is phrased in the absolute most ideal way possible, we'll never get this done.

It think this will be an exercise in leaving well-enough alone and hoping that anything that is less than awesome won't really detract from the overall experience anyway.

Yeah as long as it reads pretty well and is devoid of any glaring grammatical errors, I'm completely and utterly happy with this! I still just can't even believe it's gotten as far as it has

[SamIAm]

Whoo! This is so exciting. I forget if I've already commented in this thread before, but I'd like to volunteer for any help with audio/testing. I have a duo-r with an everdrive and also am a recording musician with a good vocal mic and outboard gear/effects and could help out in that capacity, if there's a need. Please feel free to ask me anything in here or via PM if you think I might be able to help!

Hi, and thanks for your interest!

Basically all of the mixing is going to be done digitally via Audacity, which is adequate for the job. However, one thing we're going to want to have that I'm not really familiar with is cool distortion effects for some of the boss voices. If you happen to be familiar with how to do this, whatever the method, I'd love to chat.

Anyway, with a good microphone, you and/or any of your friends would be in a good position to play one of the roles in the dub. One of these days, I'll get around to casting, and I hope you'll be up for trying out!

-----------------------------

In other news, I finished Chapter 8 and actually got a lot of Chapter 9 done already. My money is on having the second pass of Xanadu 1 complete by the end of the month, and that's a very nice place to be.

Yeah as long as it reads pretty well and is devoid of any glaring grammatical errors, I'm completely and utterly happy with this! I still just can't even believe it's gotten as far as it has

I think people will be happy with the quality. Each time I do a pass, I reload every conversation repeatedly until I test every change and otherwise see the whole thing working well enough that I'm not hit with any ideas about how to improve it. Even in this second round, it's completely normal to reload a conversation more than 10 times before it's done.

It's just that I know that if I did a fourth or fifth pass, I'd probably bump into things I'd want to change. Sometimes it's a matter of not being able to notice one problem because it's surrounded by the noise of other problems. Other times, it's a matter of having gone with an idea that's only "good enough" because I just couldn't think of anything better, but upon coming back to it weeks or months later, I can go at it with a fresh mind and come up something that's actually "good".

Hopefully, by now, there's not much of either kind of issue left, and whatever is there can be zapped in a quick third pass.

[destructive cactus]

cool distortion effects for some of the boss voices

Yeah, I think I could help here - would be glad to talk it over and/or try some things! All the 90s vocal 'tricks' are pretty easy and fun to do nowadays.

[SamIAm]

Chapter 9 is done!

I think I'll have the second pass of Xanadu 1 complete within the next four days.

Xanadu 2 should be relatively smooth sailing the second time around. It's a smaller and simpler game to begin with, and my editing was firing on all cylinders by the time I got to it for its first pass. I'm definitely gunning to have it done by the end of August.

I can't wait to find out which game elmer likes more.

[elmer]

Chapter 9 is done!

And Chapter 9 is played through! Dang, I'm enjoying this game. 

Falcom really went overboard with all the different things that people say.

Since the lines are in the separate scripts that correspond to each different location, and you visit each location multiple times as the story progresses ...  it must have driven SamIAm absolutely mad trying to figure out which line was said exactly when in the overall progression of things in order to give just the right nuance to each line. 

I'm glad that only have to deal with the coding.

But now I'm stuck waiting for Chapter 10 ... and I really want to know what happens next!!! 

[SamIAm]

After a marathon-couple of days, the second play-test pass of Xanadu 1 is done. 

I'm going to wait until maybe Friday before starting Xanadu 2 just to clear my head a little bit.

In the meantime, I hope elmer enjoys finally being able to finish one of the games. 

[SamIAm]

Out of curiosity, who here has completed the dungeon at the end of Xanadu 1 before? If you have, you should give elmer some encouragement now.

I don't want to spoil too much for people who aren't familiar with it, but that last dungeon is dumbfoundingly huge and complex. It's a tower with 30 (31?) floors, and each one is practically as much of an ordeal as any single dungeon in any previous chapter. You could split the whole thing off as a separate game, and it would stand.

The good thing is, you can go back to a checkpoint after each floor, and the middle ten are actually the easiest, so it's not that hard to work at. It just takes a little perseverance, that's all.

[Necromancer]

You can doo eeet! 

If my dumb ass could make it through with zero moon rune skillz, you should cruise right through soon enough.

[elmer]

I don't want to spoil too much for people who aren't familiar with it, but that last dungeon is dumbfoundingly huge and complex. It's a tower with 30 (31?) floors, and each one is practically as much of an ordeal as any single dungeon in any previous chapter. You could split the whole thing off as a separate game, and it would stand.

It's not SO bad since they've given you a map if you buy the CD ... but OMFG ... I'm only on level 4/5 and they're making me go up one or two levels and then drop back down through holes in the floor just to get to different parts of earlier floors to unlock things!!!! 

I've scanned the map to make it large enough to read, but I'm probably going to have to print it out so that I can mark stuff on it like where the holes go, and where the waterfall warp points go, just so that I can see which bits of each level I've actually explored.

This really does look large enough to be a separate game itself.

[jtucci31]

It ain't easy and it's definitely daunting to say the least. I felt so damn accomplished when I beat it. You can do it elmer!!! Just play for hours on end, don't take many breaks. The more you're at it, the better you'll get.

[elmer]

If my dumb ass could make it through with zero moon rune skillz, you should cruise right through soon enough.

It ain't easy and it's definitely daunting to say the least. I felt so damn accomplished when I beat it.

Thanks guys!

I have absolutely zero moon-rune skills ... but luckily, the final level doesn't seem to require them ... just major mapping skills.

If it wasn't for the printed map in the game CD package that I scanned, I would have given up by now!   

As it is ... I can see (and mark) exactly where I've been on the scanned map, and see exactly what the "hidden" bits are that I've missed.

After a number of "marathon" sessions, I'm at the start of the 23rd floor, with all other floors completely finished (including all the "hidden" treasures that only a lunatic would normally find!).

I'd like to say that SamIAm's translation has been flawless on this level ... but there's really no speech at all except for on the bottom "basement" level, and it's hard to comment on things that hardly exist. 

I'm looking forward to getting to the top level(s) of the tower and seeing the final scenes of the game in their English glory!

I'm really missing all the story-telling from the previous levels.