I never really posted much on the blog, so most of you probably don’t know me. I’m Kingcom, and I’m responsible for all the hacking and programming of this project. Today, we want to announce another new feature. A few people proposed to add subtitles to the opening FMV, but we were unsure whether to actually do so or not. In the end, we decided in favor of it. But while subtitles are nice and all, they do distract from the video, so it is also possible to turn them on and off in realtime by pressing the select button.
The technical aspect of these subtitles is actually pretty interesting. Unlike the battle subtitles, I couldn’t use sprites here. The 2D hardware was completely turned off, so I had to change the actual video frame to insert the subtitles. This is all done at runtime, of course.
Naturally, the ending song will also be subtitled. This means that not a single Japanese word remains untranslated. Every voiced part of the game has a corresponding subtitle.
You may not notice it when you’ll finally play it, but we have also changed many smaller things to enhance the game. Most are just to support English text (a/an detection wherever it is necessary, redesigned menu screens, etc), but we also changed some things beyond the normal text. The game seemed pretty rushed in quite a few aspects, most notably the menus. The battles are awesome and fluid, but the menus were very unrefined. The (very object oriented) menu engine is really well done, no doubt about that, but they didn’t take real advantage of it.
One of these changes is shown in the second screenshot. The stat numbers originally displayed the difference between the old and the new stat, but we thought it wasn’t very intuitive. So now we changed it to display the actual new stat, making it easier to compare weapons and styles with each other. In addition to these and similar changes, we have also fixed a few bugs. The game doesn’t crash if you encounter an invisible enemy in a guild dungeon anymore, and you will also get the displayed amount of money when selling a weapon with bonus parts.
I think some people might be interested in a few stats about this project. Aside from the text, there are 150kb of assembly code, several hundred changes to the original code, and 160kb of C++ code to dump and insert all the necessary data. Everything has been changed to work with the translated text in a very natural way.
And finally, throughhim already posted it in the comments, but some people don’t seem to understand it. There will be no release this year. We planned to and we wanted to, but it ultimately didn’t work out. It will most likely be released early next year, and no, this does not mean the first weeks of January.
Thanks for this very interresting news and for your amazing work all of you
!
Can’t wait, we all love the hard work your putting in!
Why are the subtitles backwards?
@Abstynthe
Didn’t you read a couple of comments before yours the answer I gave? Seriously…
No complaints here. Since most people waited a hella lot longer than me, I’m pretty sure we’ll be good and wait.
Can’t Wait
:D
Sorry, it appears I’m stupid. I didn’t notice this was the second page. I had completely missed the first page.
So you decoded every frame of the intro video, inserted the subtitles in each frame that has lyrics, and rencoded it back to imagine? No loss at all?
When I played Tales of Phantasia with your patch, I said to myself, “These guys have done a helluva work with this”. The Phantasia patch was amazing, and this Innocence patch seems to be be better! Not only you took concern of the myth that takes place behind the game’s storyline to make the translation as natural as possible (I still remember how many people argued about the name “Luca” or “Ruca” and “Lucas”), you even went through the trouble of changing the game script and add features that sometimes seems unnecessary, and yet, make the game more enjoyable to play.
This project has gone beyond just a “translation project”. It almost feel like the game is re-released as a Special Edition.
I’m currently playing Tales of Destiny Director’s Cut (I understand Japanese but only a little, thank God they had the whole game dubbed), and I definitely can wait for a patch that come from your team. With such a great game and such a great translation team, I definitely can wait.
Keep up the good work, guys! And don’t forget to take it easy sometimes. Enjoy your holiday and new year party
@Porgos: Sure that’s what they do? I think they patched the code to get the raw frame after being decoded, and then pasting the subs over it by software (software bitblit) in real time just before displaying it in the screen, no reencoding at all.
Yeah, I wasn’t sure what Kingcom was saying, so I asked him. He said “The subtitles are added by modifying the decompressed video frames before they are displayed”.
Nah yo, he blasts em on with magical powers
True!
While we wait, would you guys please fill us in on the styles…? The Wiki pages aren’t real clear on them… Is the difference between the styles and the skills you learn from the styles clear as far as control goes?
Styles change stats and allow you to gain skills as they level up. Skills can do a whole variety of things, but those are where you main customization will come from. For anything else, it’ll be easiest to learn by playing.
haha, it’s been a year already? wow.
as far as i’m concerned, you guys keep working at your own pace. the things i’m seeing are very very satisfying, and no doubt i’ll have my grubby hands full when this comes out.
merry christmas guys, mad respects, and more power in the future.
NB: love the video updates.
merry christmas guyyy
i decided to have a little play around with this game and i gotta say im very impressed i dont wanna go much further because im gonna start again anyway and also running around like a madman trying to find where im going is rather tedious. stupid question but ive never played a tales game before and ive spent way too long trying to figure this out how do you do the like omega special moves where you transform and stuff like i know you press L+R when you get the blue circly thing round you when the red bar thingy gets full but what after that? sorry ill accept bieng called a noob for this i deserve it.
@Kupo!: You have to unlock Innocent style first.(Get at least three styles to level 15 on one character and go to sleep at an inn. Hi-ougi abilities are gained by leveling up your innocent style.)
@Kupo!
I hate using the term “newbie” since it always sounds derogatory to me, also, I mean no offense when I say this… You sound like a newbie to the Tales series… So, I’ll tell you… The “Omega Special Moves” are called Mystic Artes or Hi-Ougis. They’re in just about every Tales title. Some, like Tales of the Abyss and the PS3 port of Tales of Vesperia, have the playable characters using 2.
I wanna’ play the PS3 port so bad… Does anyone here know for sure if they plan to release the PS3 port in America?
@bob,
this may be unconfirmed, but I think they plan to release it in the upcoming 2010, its currently in a TBA status at GameFaq, but I think they plan to do so soon, and thanks Kingcom !! I really look forward to the end of the project!
A great mention of your work at Siliconera!
http://www.siliconera.com/2009/12/27/when-fan-translators-outdo-a-commercial-product/
Hey, cool. Thanks for the heads up.
Great Job !
The only thing that “seems” confusing is when an equipment is supposed to up a stat its in red while if it lower one its in blue.
I always associated red with the negative, weird.
Same here. I can’t think of a game where it’s blue = positive, but it feels like it should. But I’m sure I’ll get used to it.
Hey uhh…
i just kinda stumbled across your forum and read a few updated posts.
I have no idea what this game is about but your images and determination got my curiosity going. I might actually be looking forward to this game. so, keep up the good work…
Sometimes, reading others comments really bugs me. even if i’m not the one translating or doing the work. Like for example , there’s people that “stating their feelings” so that they could get AbsoluteZero’s attention and some other stuffs like that. It really bugs me for some reason. Can’t “these” guys just wait for it? Come on. Ur still getting it without putting effort. Just have to wait. that’s it. Geez, I feel kinda sorry for both AbsoluteZero and those kinda guys.
… AND A HAPI NIU YIEH!
no, seriously, Happy New Year, everyone, and godspeed for the release!
we are waiting for this releaseeee!!
happy new year and the best of luck to you !!
I know it has nothing to do with this project, but Front Mission 5 100% patch was released.
I would not say anything here, but I remember reading some people talking about it here, a few months ago.
Hey, take your time. I’m not gonna be dead next year, I just want to play it eventually, as I’m sure most people do
Patience is key!
ILU, I’m sure many people including me are grateful for all of the staff members to take years to translate to create an amazing North American version of this game, it surprises me you guys can use up that much time while having a job or some sort.
It suprises me its not released yet D:
you know i have no problem with when it is released…
as long as it’s before 2012
XP
Now, if only someone would translate ToW:RM2.
As Shakespeare said: any word in good hands can become poetry. Keep up the impressive efforts and receive all the energy we send you with all our thanks ! A thousand and one thanks ! (or oughtn’t it be a thousand and ten?)
Just a bit curious, is there any bugs/glitches that are in the game that people should be aware about? Sorry if this was asked before.
That’s why they’re still working on it… Not only are they adding a new feature, but they’re working out the bugs… It won’t be much longer, when they release it, they’ll tell us if there are any major glitches or bugs we should watch out for…
I think you guys should get a reward from a video game industry or something.
Can you guys make a pseudo-project log? Something like:
Translation – 98%, needs work around some Skill Names
Hacking – 91% still working around a way to prevent that “random glitch”
etc.
glitches are inevitable in any working hack…
Sauchicha// they’ve already did. just click Tales of Innocence section twice up there (don’t click the image section). Then you’ll see
|_ lol, asshole. He was just saying that as an example.
But I agree, a project log would be awesome!
ooops, I was talking to Diego, mind you.
TT__TT I also spoke as an example. But this kind of work and even difficult. Sometimes a speech can get out of the balloon speech because of the difference in the size of words in English and Japanese, can also lead to a graphic glitch and rewrite again.
I THINK it really has no way to predict this, so the beta-test is important and understandable the delay =)
indeed, it was just a comment even on the basis of the Sauchicha said about hack work: “Hacking – 91% still working around a way to prevent that” random glitch ”
Then came the explanation in my previous post =D
We don’t throw the text into the game and hope it works. Everything is properly reprogrammed. There are actually no limitations at all.
Beta tests are used to catch any leftover problems, and extremely unstable products would never reach that stage.
Thank you for all the effort you guys put into this project!
looking forward enjoying this game!
gtrz
Voenie
I’m here to contact with the main responsible of the project. I would be very pleased if you could let me expand this project to other horizons. After you’ve finished the translation (or meanwhile) you could give me the texts to translate them to Spanish. You see, Spanish people are very reluctant to play games that aren’t translated. Tales of Symphonia was translated, and everyone loved it. The same with Dawn of the New World. Bringing Tales of Innoncence on the DS translated into their language would ease the series to be known. And we could bring that to Latinamerica too. After that, or at the same time, I would be able to translate it to Portuguese as well.
Well, I’ve said what I had to: Count on me.
Here’s my e-mail: yurialencar1@hotmail.com
Anyone interested like me, give me a shot!
I’m repeating the comment since you could not see the other comment I posted.
I also think a Spanish translation straight from throughim’s translation would be good, but it’s against his principles… Unfortunately it seems there’s almost no people that’s both capable and interested in translating straight from Japanese to Spanish (but a lot that are interested and can translate from English to Spanish).
Idioms WOULD BE piece of cake. Sorry xD.
I told him that after the game release, the translation will be inevitable. I only wanted to move it up.