This section should answer most questions about this translation. If you don’t care who does this and how this is done, you don’t have to read this.
And of course, there are a group of beta testers who worked very hard to correct about 400+ bugs in the first beta patch. Unfortunately, among the 16 beta testers who promise to test the game, only 5 have completed the game. About 40% reported only once or twice, and the remaining 30% simply disappeared. Those 30% people will not be counted as contributors.
People who wrote programs such as Hexworkshop, Thingy, Naga also indirectly contribute to this project. The original game is, of course, done by Square, so they have all the rights to the scripts. See the complete credit list at the end of this document for all the people I would like to thank.
In the first patch being released,
I’m using my own font, table files and compression
schemes. Translation is a mix of my work and Lee’s,
as we compare our translations and pick the best.
Disnesquick is responsible to provide a complete dump and
figure out the ASM/hex code aspects of the project, and
his work helps speeding things up a lot. I also do
programming, insertion, formatting and alpha testing
myself. Together with Sheex, we will eventually beta test
as many main characters as possible. Unfortunately,
Disnesquick’s ASM work is not included in this
patch. This may happen, if someone (including me) is
interested in improving the look of it. Of course, the
current font should be good enough for anyone to play the
game through.
Getting attention may not be as good as what someone thinks, so I try to keep it to minimum. I’m doing the translation for fun and satisfaction, not to get attention or money. That’s why I don’t announce the project until it is done (or at least close to). Also I was thinking whether I should release my work before, and keeping the project hidden allows me to change my decision any time. And to avoid people from keeping asking whether the patch will be completed, the best thing is just not to announce it. If one pays lots of attention to the scene or RS3, he/she may notice that I had joined one of the four groups who claimed to translate RS3 in August, 99. That was not a very good experience, though.
Only a few people, including my current
teammates, knew that I was working on this project before
the announcement. We had even exchanged screenshots and
discussed about the technical aspects of this project
before Lee announced his project. They are very good at
keeping secrets, though.
For several reasons. First, I would like to see people’s reaction. How many are indifferent? How many are showing appreciation? How many people like the game I like? And young kids? People who have been waiting? People who are in emulation scene? I can imagine different kinds of reactions, but I would like to see them in reality. It sounds silly because I put myself in a position to be commented by people I don’t know. But from another point of view, I can know how good I have done the project, and I can learn a little bit more about human beings.
Second, I think may be this is some kind of repayment to the Scene, as it treated me with nice translation of FF5 and SD3. Well, the teams who translate those games probably don’t need any repayment. They may not even want to play RS3, but such is such. At least I have done my part. Wait. May be this can encourage other people to release their secret TOP and DQ6 project? J
Third, I want to show people who are waiting for a translation that it is possible to do such a translation from scratch. I don’t know Japanese a year ago; I don’t know ASM for SNES; English is my second language; and I need to work in real life, too. If a guy like me can finish this game to this extent, many smarter guys out there can definitely do a better job than just sitting there and wait. Of course, help from some skilful friends are needed, like Lee and Disnesquick. I know that many people want to get something by paying nothing, and that’s another story.
Finally, since I have agreed to join
force with my teammates, I don’t want to let them
down. They may not mind, but I don’t feel good to
just leave them hanging in the middle.
At the beginning I just wanted to translate the
game so I can know what it’s about. I thought it is
impossible without spending thousands of hours to insert
so much text into the game. Then SD3 came out and proved
the possibility. Their work is very impressive, I must
say. So I decide to use my own translation and try it
out. (Eventually it still takes lots of hours!)
As one may also notice that every major game has been claimed by at least 1 group, but it is not likely that all of them are going to be released. So "someone is already translating something" is not a good enough reason for me to stop me from doing the project.
TOP and DQ6 are nice games, too. But my
style is to finish something that I have started. RS3
itself is such a tedious project that if one wants to
finish it in a year, one would not have time to do other
projects at the same time.
(Update: TOP and DQ6 are eventually available in 2001!!)
Considering the size of this game and
the fact that I learned and started a lot of things from
scratch, the project time is actually quite short.
Translation was the slow part at the beginning because my
Japanese skill was not proficient enough to translate
without looking into dictionaries (yes, plural). After
November, text insertion and formatting was a headache.
The project proceeded slowly until Disnesquick offered
his dump and his dumping program, which shows the
locations of pointer tables, and how the pointers work. I
then wrote my own dumping and insertion programs and
speed up the insertion to about 5 to 10 times faster. If
Disnesquick did not help, I think I’ll be too tired
to drop the project before completing it.
If you really want me to specify the most difficult task here, it is to endure the whole process to finish the project. Finding reliable teammates is extremely hard. The first group I joined quitted 2 weeks after announcing the project. I decided to work alone on September because I don’t want to be disappointed again. Other dedicated people would probably think the same way, and I found it quite difficult to talk them into joining force. Nevertheless, this is the past. When everyone gets tired, we decide to join force and try to get the things done.
On the other hand, one can easily
"burn out" to do the same thing everyday. There
are also lots of better things to do in real life.
Imagine if one can only translate and insert 1K of text
into the rom per day, it will take 250 days to complete a
game as big as RS3. And if you try, you will know that
translate, format, insert, test and debug 1K of script is
not a 15-minute job. With proper tools and skills, one
may do this in 1 or 2 hours. Otherwise, it may take
hours. And usually the workers get important work to do
in real life and can’t work every day on the
project. You should be very surprised to see patches of
SD3, RS3, DQ6 and TOP.
Yes,
I would still like to see a translation of TOP and DQ6,
but I have run of energy for now. So I’ll wait this
time and hope that someone will finish them.
Anyway, all these depend
on my time and mood, which I don’t have much right
now. Don’t put too many expectations on a perfect
patch.
Oh, did I mention that English is my second language? You shouldn’t look at this translation like a professor of the English department looking at his student’s thesis. After all, this is free work. Bad work is expected, and good work is a surprise. If you find mistakes, you are welcome to let me know in a polite manner. But don’t yell at me (in the sense of writing me letters with cap lock on J ). You are not my English teacher, so I’m not obliged to hand you a 100% correct and surprisingly interesting translation. I didn’t even get 80% in my English grammar/composition course!
And, don’t underestimate a year of dedicated Japanese learning. Even before this I have read hundreds of Japanese manga, tens of Japanese anime and many Japanese shows/movie, so I have knowledge of the Japanese background and what certain phrases/words mean. Besides, I can recognize and understand many Kanji readily (because I know Chinese), which makes Japanese much easier to learn. The scripts in RS3 are not really difficult sentences anyway. Finally, if you don’t trust me, it may make you feel better that I have compared my scripts with Lee’s scripts (unfortunately, some of his scripts are lost). This will make the translation more accurate.
(Why do I need to make all these
explanation anyway?)
The dialogue translation and most VLT are made as accurate as I can. No text is cut for the sake of fitting. I try to utilize as much empty space as possible, but still it is not enough. So some compression techniques and pointer modifications are done to fit all the text, thanks to Disnesquick’s program which shows me how the pointers work.
Still item names and the like can only
be 10 to 15 characters long (compared to 8 before this is
an improvement), so something like "Fish Scale
Armor" is not going to fit. This is not only limited
by the space in the rom, but also by the width of the
menu screen, so further expansion would be too tedious
for me. Thus for many weapons, items etc., the names are
shortened. For example, the "Devil King Armor",
"Devil King Shield" are both named as Devil
King. You will have to look at the icon to determine if
it is a shield or an armor.
By the
way, if you don’t like it, you are more than welcome
to stay away from it. This translation is for those who
want to play the game so much that he/she can ignore a
few flaws that exist.
If someone want
to thank me for translating with money, I would say
thanks, but I don’t need it. This project cannot be
justified by money. Even if someone gives me $1000,
I’m still underpaid. As a product of my hobby, the
best way to thank me is to show appreciation to my work
so I know that it is not a mistake to release it. I
don’t know what my other team members are looking
for, but they are probably not looking for money from
this project either.
Besides, I need rest. After working on RS3 for a
year, I’m both mentally and physically deteriorated
(a bit exaggerated, that is). So I won’t translate
or hack in short term, or may be forever, who knows.