Hoping to make your life's design a bit more dynamic!

It is currently Thu Mar 28, 2024 12:42 pm

All times are UTC [ DST ]




Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 46 posts ]  Go to page Previous  1, 2, 3, 4, 5  Next
Author Message
Post subject: Re: Aretha Translation and Production
PostPosted: Wed Dec 04, 2013 3:33 am 
Offline
Site Admin
User avatar

Joined: Fri Oct 09, 2009 11:54 pm
Posts: 2340
Location: Virginia
filler wrote:
So a little more info on this. I got curious so I booted up the game. It uses this character strangely. It's used after the speaking character's name is displayed, but it's also used at the start of some lines by the same character.

It almost seems to act more like a paragraph indicator than a colon or quote. That is the best I can figure. I'm thinking maybe we should leave it out?
I wish I had seen this exchange back when, but I was taking possession of a house in Oklahoma that whole time frame.

I am expunging all of the [X=$07] codes and Japanese quote mark conversions (「 to ") in both Aretha games.

Thus, translated text: [HIDE][PINK]Weaponsmith[WHITE][SHOW]"Welcome![X=$07]What would you like?

ends up this in the insertion file:

[HIDE][PINK]Weaponsmith[WHITE][SHOW]: Welcome...! What
would you like?

and looks like this on a game screen:

Weaponsmith: Welcome...! What
would you like?

Except "Weaponsmith" is pink and the spacing around the colored text may end up any which way.

Therefore, in regard to character spacing around colored text, any given situation tends to be different than another, randomly. In the Aretha games, I have given up trying to find a standardized method of producing uniform spacing around colored text. I believe the spacing on the game screen is frequently variable because we use a VWF. So, to have uniform spacing in every string, the choice seems to be either giving up colors or giving up the VWF. Personally, I prefer the VWF and don't care one whit about the spacing. I've noticed that every game we've ever done with both color codes and VWF usually fall short of color shading or else bleed over in many instances. That's why I threw out 90% of the colored text I had planned for Burning Heroes.


Image


Top
 Profile  
Reply with quote  
Post subject: Re: Aretha Translation and Production
PostPosted: Wed Dec 04, 2013 5:16 am 
Offline
Site Admin
User avatar

Joined: Tue Oct 20, 2009 3:58 pm
Posts: 1276
Location: Korea
Sounds like a good editing plan to me! The simpler/cleaner way is usually the best… However, I feel for you having to edit out all those annoying code strings. That said, even with the weird spacing around the names, those pics on the main site look mighty fine.


Top
 Profile  
Reply with quote  
Post subject: Re: Aretha Translation and Production
PostPosted: Wed Dec 04, 2013 3:21 pm 
Offline
Site Admin
User avatar

Joined: Fri Oct 09, 2009 11:54 pm
Posts: 2340
Location: Virginia
Draken wrote:
Sounds like a good editing plan to me! The simpler/cleaner way is usually the best… However, I feel for you having to edit out all those annoying code strings. That said, even with the weird spacing around the names, those pics on the main site look mighty fine.
Yep, but I bet the most noticeable spacing aberrations will drive Red Soul nuts! He and Recca are the reasons I tossed so many in B. H.! They both preferred uniform color shading with the [red] codes.

Now, I do have one instance I can fix. This is the colon after the speaker at the top left of screens - when present. With some names, the colon appears normally spaced - that is - no space between it and the name. In others, the control codes and VWF somehow place the colon further to the right of the name, making it appear that a writer has hit the space bar after the name.

The fix here (already implemented in 50% of Aretha-II) is to place the colon inside the control codes. This means the colon takes on the color of the name, but at least it's in its natural position.

Here are examples of the variations possible when the colon is placed outside the control codes.

Image Image

I believe the gap occurs in the Elder string because the "l" is narrow and the routine adds in the "left over" space between the "r" and the colon.
"Samantha", however contains no thin letters, and the colon appears spaced more normally.

If my theory is correct, the same problem seems to occur before the name "Jack". The comma before "Jack" is narrow, and the extra space seems to be "added in".
The question mark following Jack could be pulled in closer by placing it inside the control codes, but that wouldn't look right to many (a pink question mark).
As I said, if someone wants perfect spacing, go with either no color, a fixed width font, or redesign the routine to "slick this up pretty"!

Image Image

Aretha-II's example shows the pink colon next to the pink name with normal spacing - which I believe is the best trade-off. If you agree, I'll go back and set all of the Aretha (I) colons that way, too. As you may recall, the colon replaces Matt's double quote that replaced the Japanese quote mark that was placed outside of the color codes to the right of the second set of those code pairs that bracket every name that displays with colored text.

Also, regarding Aretha-II, the developers gave generic names: man, woman, boy, girl, dog, cat, etc. to all townies and color-coded them.
Aretha (I) does not have that added features. People in towns just start talking, dogs barking, etc. These could be manually introduced in Aretha (I) - a lot of work - but they look nice to me in Aretha-II.

Another alteration I introduced in Aretha-II was to use blue-colored text only the first time a name was introduced in the body of a string or to emphasize that colored name again, occasionally, in certain places for clues and/or to foreshadow action. This cleaned up hundreds of "space" glitches in one swoop. Then again, I could manipulate the worst gaps, sometimes, by typing no spaces between the brackets for the color codes and adjacent words. If I had tried to do this with thousands of colored name repeats, fooling with the spaces endlessly would have driven me crazy. They wouldn't have been uniform anyway, and Red Soul would have caught every one that was off by 1/10,000 of an inch!

I did not, however, eliminate any pink-colored speakers names in Aretha-II. As mentioned, putting the colon inside the color codes fixed that spacing issue. Finally, notice that "Port City of Mulintz" spaces nicely because the first and last words contain no narrow characters. Also, whenever I can arrange a colored text word at the beginning or end of a line, all is well. I have actually changed the syntax in many instances of Aretha-II for the purpose of slicker spacing. It can be a real pain folks, to try to make everything as perfect as possible.

BTW, I've divided Aretha into about 105 chapters. This does not include instances wherein Ritchie says, "Pass through this desert or return to that forest just to keep transiting onward to a town," or what-have-you, where something actually happens that propels the game forward. A chapter is moving directly into a new or previously visited area where something new indeed happens. This is far and away the most chapters I've encountered. Usually, our projects run between 40 and 60 chapters, but many of Aretha's chapters appear to be "quickies" compared to Lodoss, for example. So, we'll see...


Image


Top
 Profile  
Reply with quote  
Post subject: Re: Aretha Translation and Production
PostPosted: Thu Dec 05, 2013 8:30 am 
Offline
Site Admin
User avatar

Joined: Mon Oct 05, 2009 9:49 am
Posts: 1381
Location: Oklahoma City
After a quick talk with Bongo`, let me see if I can explain the situation in simple terms. When you switch colors, the game moves on to the next tilemap block. These blocks are aligned on an 8 pixel grid. It is no use asking for a fix, because this is not software controlled, this is a hardware issue. Without getting too technical this means that a 0-7 pixel space can be left over from where the old routine ended.

This leaves you with 4 options.

1. Don't use color.

2. Don't use VWF.

3. Use color very sparingly (such as only for names with the colon colored) and don't worry about the extra space.

4. Don't give a crap about the spacing and use colors anyway.

The main thing to understand is, VWF was not natural for these old consoles. They weren't ever designed with VWF in mind. VWF is a *trick* programmers play while they're filling out tile data, but this *trick* is not perfect. And color is one of the situations that isn't ideal for this *trick* to work smoothly. I keep mentioning *trick* so that you have it in your mind that this isn't natural to the console and understand that drawbacks are hardware related, and not an unintended bug of the VWF routine.


Image


Top
 Profile  
Reply with quote  
Post subject: Re: Aretha Translation and Production
PostPosted: Thu Dec 05, 2013 3:16 pm 
Offline
Site Admin
User avatar

Joined: Fri Oct 09, 2009 11:54 pm
Posts: 2340
Location: Virginia
I'll quit beating my head against the desk trying to make color usage look perfect, then.
I still like option 3. That seems to be the best trade-off.

A few years ago, I suggested to Bongo` that we eliminate the colored text in Aretha-II altogether, but he said it was what
gave Aretha a sort of special distinction. I don't mind the visual effect of the extra space, but some people seem to dislike
that, so your option 3 seems like a suitable compromise. I will establish the same pattern in both games and explain in the
release notes that a few scattered spacing anomalies are normal for the methods of construction we chose.

A. Pink will never be a problem for lead speakers.
B. I'll use pink in the middle of a screen when someone new is introduced or for added emphasis.
C. I'll use blue when a new place name is introduced and at special junctures for added emphasis.
D. I'll try to arrange syntax so colored text falls at the beginning or end of lines as often as possible.

The color [teal] is used in this game. I've yet to see how, but we'll pick a best approach.
Right now, I'm trying to spot translate this crazy-looking short string that Matt's eyes jumped over.
I haven't seen this string in the game yet.

; [NEWL]
; [NEWL]
; [HIDE][SHOW][WAIT$08][TEAL]そ[WAIT$08]し[WAIT$08]て、[WAIT$08]数[WAIT$08]年[WAIT$08]後[WAIT$08]・[WAIT$08]・[WAIT$08]・[WAIT$30][WHITE][$FE1F]

Edit:

Put together, it's this: そして、数年後 And, a few years later...

Oh, I get it. Teal is used for a transition of time in the game.
Spoiler! :
Ariel and the newly-hatched dragon baby she just found and named probably grow up, and the real action starts when she is well past the age of ten.


taskforce wrote:
After a quick talk with Bongo`, let me see if I can explain the situation in simple terms. When you switch colors, the game moves on to the next tilemap block. These blocks are aligned on an 8 pixel grid. It is no use asking for a fix, because this is not software controlled, this is a hardware issue. Without getting too technical this means that a 0-7 pixel space can be left over from where the old routine ended.

This leaves you with 4 options.

1. Don't use color.

2. Don't use VWF.

3. Use color very sparingly (such as only for names with the colon colored) and don't worry about the extra space.

4. Don't give a crap about the spacing and use colors anyway.

The main thing to understand is, VWF was not natural for these old consoles. They weren't ever designed with VWF in mind. VWF is a *trick* programmers play while they're filling out tile data, but this *trick* is not perfect. And color is one of the situations that isn't ideal for this *trick* to work smoothly. I keep mentioning *trick* so that you have it in your mind that this isn't natural to the console and understand that drawbacks are hardware related, and not an unintended bug of the VWF routine.


Image


Top
 Profile  
Reply with quote  
Post subject: Re: Aretha Translation and Production
PostPosted: Sat Dec 07, 2013 2:32 am 
Offline
Site Admin
User avatar

Joined: Fri Oct 09, 2009 4:53 pm
Posts: 875
Location: South Florida
While we are talking about this game, I have dumped the ailments that appear in battle. Sheesh! These things suck to translate. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

EDIT: What I have so far...

Inability
Poison
Deadly poison
Sekika
Paralysis
Sleep


Sad Ruri
Hallucination
Confusion
Chisomoku
Fear
Blinding
Swoon
Curse


Attachments:
Ailments.png
Ailments.png [ 1.8 KiB | Viewed 14475 times ]
Top
 Profile  
Reply with quote  
Post subject: Re: Aretha Translation and Production
PostPosted: Mon Dec 09, 2013 3:51 am 
Offline

Joined: Wed Oct 21, 2009 2:24 am
Posts: 215
I think sekika is petrification, and "chisomoku" is actually "chinmoku" or silence.

I'd say if possible using one color for the speaker text, remove the colons, and use another color for all important terms.


Top
 Profile  
Reply with quote  
Post subject: Re: Aretha Translation and Production
PostPosted: Mon Dec 09, 2013 4:47 am 
Offline
Site Admin
User avatar

Joined: Fri Oct 09, 2009 4:53 pm
Posts: 875
Location: South Florida
KingMike wrote:
I think sekika is petrification, and "chisomoku" is actually "chinmoku" or silence.

I'd say if possible using one color for the speaker text, remove the colons, and use another color for all important terms.

Thanks for your assistance. Nowto fit each word in 3 or 4 8x8 tiles. :(


Top
 Profile  
Reply with quote  
Post subject: Re: Aretha Translation and Production
PostPosted: Thu Dec 12, 2013 7:29 pm 
Offline
Site Admin
User avatar

Joined: Fri Oct 30, 2009 4:43 am
Posts: 742
Sad Ruri is actually カナシバリ or 金縛り. This is "bound". Apparently this can also be a feeling of paralysis, like sleep paralysis, but in this case, since there is already a paralysis, this is the meaning of being tied down or bound.


The Devil takes notes from Lina Inverse? That sounds about right.

My projects
RHDN Community DB


Top
 Profile  
Reply with quote  
Post subject: Re: Aretha Translation and Production
PostPosted: Fri Dec 13, 2013 1:03 am 
Offline
Site Admin
User avatar

Joined: Fri Oct 09, 2009 4:53 pm
Posts: 875
Location: South Florida
filler wrote:
Sad Ruri is actually カナシバリ or 金縛り. This is "bound". Apparently this can also be a feeling of paralysis, like sleep paralysis, but in this case, since there is already a paralysis, this is the meaning of being tied down or bound.

THANK YOU!!!!!! that damn "Sad Ruri" one was kicking my butt.

Bill: we have to make sure that the items and descriptions match these ailments in a way that the player knows which to use. I will update you will the ailments once I am done with the hacking.


Top
 Profile  
Reply with quote  
Display posts from previous:  Sort by  
Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 46 posts ]  Go to page Previous  1, 2, 3, 4, 5  Next

All times are UTC [ DST ]


Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 5 guests


You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot post attachments in this forum

Search for:
Jump to:  
cron
Powered by phpBB © 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007 phpBB Group