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Topic: Japanese port (Read 4702 times)
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bpoint
Zebranky food
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Hello all,
I'm interested in getting Japanese (either subtitles or voice dubbing) into The Ur-Quan Masters. Can anyone tell me what the status is on this? I've searched the forums and it seems to me that while some people have the 3DO version, there is no activity in getting the text ported over.
The best threads I could find is this one, but this one also has some 3DO-specific info. Of course, the bug is still open.
If there is no one actively doing this, then sign me up right away! I absolutely loved SC2 and would love to bring it back into the Japanese audience (afaik, the 3DO version didn't sell very well over here). I've been living in Japan for more than 6 years now, and am fluent in Japanese. I have no problems reading and understanding the kanji in the screenshots posted by meep-eep, and also understand the nuances being used in the text.
If nothing has been started yet, I guess I would need to know where to start. I noticed there are text files for all of the conversations, but this doesn't sound like it would work too well. I haven't looked into the source to see how fonts are drawn yet either, but I guess I'm getting a bit ahead of myself for now.
So, is there anyone that can fill me in on how far Japanese support has been implemented? And where I would need to start helping out?
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JHGuitarFreak
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Thanks for the quick reply! I somehow missed the Wiki page in my searches... that translation page will come handy. So, if you want to volunteer, we will have half of the equation. Then, the licensing status of the existing translation and voices will have to be determined. I've already volunteered!  So who is responsible for handling the licensing issues? Is he/she someone who visits this forum often, or do I need to ask someone directly? I'll send a PM to meep-eep. Unfortunately, I do not have the 3DO version, nor do I even have a 3DO. I'll stop at a used game shop on the way home tonight to see if I can find it, but that might be a bit difficult in Okinawa. I might have to get one of my friends in Tokyo to check Akihabara for me. After that... either hope that it works under FreeDO (being 99.7% complete sounds promising!) or find a 3DO. Thanks for the initial info. For the time being, I'll use the screenshots here for preliminary testing.
the SC2 3DO iso that i have made works under Freedo (i use iso cause it's faster and i dont run the risk of cd damage) so i'm pretty sure that the SC2j will work, the only problem i might see for you is getting the bios, but i can help you with that since i have 2 3DO's that i have yanked the bios from(Goldstar and the FZ-10).
Another problem is that the NTSC bios does not have the kanji font implemented and the only way you'll see that font is if it's on the SC2j cd... but since there are screenshots of it in action and you can see the font that shouldnt be a problem.
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The artist once again known as Kohr-Ah Death 213. Get your MegaMod HERE |
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bpoint
Zebranky food
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I stopped by the used game shop this evening, and unfortunately wasn't able to find SC2 among the (rather few) available 3DO games. There were, however, about ten 3DO units ranging from 2,300yen (~$20) for the front-loading unit, and 5,000yen (~$40) for the "Real-II" top-loading unit -- which I am not familiar with. But since it works through FreeDO, I guess I might just stick with the emulator. That is, if I can find the actual game somewhere...
From looking at the screenshots, I'd be willing to bet that the fonts are probably pulled from the BIOS. In both the planet view and the talk view, the shape of the letters are the same while only the colors are different. For example the letters "kara" 「から」have a pixel-perfectly identical in both screenshots. So I guess I need buy a 3DO here and dismantle it to get the BIOS or something.
I just had a listen to the samples that meep-eep captured into ogg! They're absolutely _great_! The translations are done extremely well -- better than I originally expected. The people they chose to use to do the voiceovers for the different races are pretty much an exact match... except for the Starship Commander (he sounds a bit crazy). Whoever did the Japanese translation must have spent a large amount of cash and time to do it right, though.
I need to get to bed soon, but I'm off to grab the source and compile a debug version for now.
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« Last Edit: January 25, 2006, 03:53:00 pm by bpoint »
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bpoint
Zebranky food
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I've just sent a question to TFB asking about the copyright on the Japanese version. Thanks! Let's hope they respond with good news.
Getting the Japanese voices to work would be relatively easy. It would just be a matter of putting the right files in the right place. Agreed. Doesn't sound too difficult.
Getting the Japanese fonts to work would probably require a few adjustments to the UQM code. I haven't yet delved into the source code, but according to the Wiki, the texts are encoded in UTF-8 format which is then converted to a Unicode value and the proper .png(s) are pulled from the .uqm. If that's the case, all I need to do ensure the Unicode CJK letters I'll be using have a proper .png...
I was planning on writing a quick tool to scan the .txt files in each directory and write out a .png for only the required symbols using FreeType and (for now) MS Gothic. This would be relatively easy to do (I've actually already done something like this before), but obviously wouldn't be a long-term solution as the font itself would be undistributable. If the font used in the SC2j is not from the BIOS, then it's just a matter of pulling it from the CD somehow, and then remapping it to Unicode.
Like the English version, if I'm not mistaken, the Japanese version doesn't have subtitles either. But unlike the English version, there's no PC version from which you could snatch the text. Everything would have to be transcribed manually. And remember that we're talking about 12 hours of speech here. Hmm... no subtitles. Well, I guess I got my work cut out for me then, eh?  I'll do whatever I can to make sure that UQM gets Japanese support, though. I have a bunch of friends over here that need to be introduced to this game!
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bpoint
Zebranky food
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I've managed to make some initial progress on getting the Japanese 3DO text into UQM. This is a screengrab of the 3DO version taken by meep-eep, and here's what I've got working so far:
Obviously a few things aren't perfect... the letters need better alignment, and need to be more properly spaced. But that shouldn't be too difficult to accomplish within the next few days. I did have to make a minor patch to the code to get it to accomodate larger characters, and I was also forced to switch to using OPT_3DO for the font setting. Apparently the PC uses a special "font effect" that doesn't like characters larger than 6x6. I tried to read through the code, but couldn't make out what it was doing. Is there anyone who can describe a bit about the font effect stuff to me?
As for the fonts, I've hacked together a simple tool which parses all of the .txt files used in conversations and uses libgd to write each character (using FreeType) into its own .png file for that text. As I said before, this isn't a long term solution since it uses the MS Gothic font, but it'll have to do until we get an OK from TFB...
Which leads me to... meep-eep, any word yet?
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