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Translation of Tengai Makyou for Saturn underway
himasaram - Feb 10, 2008
  himasaram Feb 10, 2008
I am working on a full translation of the Saturn RPG "Tengai Makyou - Daiyon no Mokushiroku" a.k.a. "Far East of Eden - The Apocalypse IV" (sic)


Some highlights of this game includes:


- Very high production values, with top-notch voice acting and anime cutscenes over two CDs.

- Set in an alternate-reality version of late 19th century USA.

- Brilliant tongue-in-cheek humor.


The translation is proceeding well and about 157 KB of the 788 KB script dump is finished. So now I'm looking for hackers who are familiar with the Saturn and are willing to help me start reinserting text and hacking whatever needs to be hacked! Cyber Warrior X has already done some great work identifying fonts and pointers, but has stated that he doesn't have the time resources to be the only hacker on this project.


If you want to help out bringing this quirky and charming game to the non-Japanophone masses, post here or send me a PM! Original announcement and more info at this romhacking.net thread:


http://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php/topic,55...

 vbt Feb 10, 2008
Really great news, it's one of the Saturn game which deserves to be translated. I don't know how to contribute, at least for testing. Actually, I work (slowly) on my C4 entry.

 DjoeN Feb 10, 2008
Coool, One of the games i always wanted to play on Saturn

Love to, but i can't read/write japanese and i don't even understand how all this hex/etc..; works (can't even program basic stuff :/ )

 gamer_boy Jul 3, 2008
Hi Himasaram, perhaps you can contact the guys of the SNES FEOEZ


http://www.yntproject.net/index.php?section=feoez...

 pusscat Jul 3, 2008
I've never done this on a saturn game but I'm assuming the process goes something like this:


1) hunt down refs to the original string in code (pointer)

2) follow pointer to original japanese string

3) replace japanese string with english string (this assumes japanese strings are longer than the english - who cares about unused space)


or


1) Create new english strings block

2) walk code finding refs to old string block

3) replace old refs with pointers to where the new corresponding strings will be

4) remove old ref block and insert new OR just tack new string block onto the end of the bss if there's space to do so


Either of these should be able to get done with an idc script. If people can point me at the prefered method, and my ida has sh support I'll write a script to take the manual labor out of this.

 DBOY Jul 30, 2008
gamer_boy: I really wouldn't bother contacting kammedo. I mean, really. He's a cool guy and all, but he's probably just about the slowest around at getting things done.

 keano83 Dec 6, 2017
hiii guys any updayte!!??

 himasaram Feb 24, 2019
There hasn't been any work done on this project since late 2008, unfortunately.

I made some decent progress on translating the script (~12% of all strings), while others carried out some investigations and POCs on how to modify the game. However, all progress was lost when Google shut down file storage for Google Groups some time in 2010.

Anyhow, I happened to finish my first playthrough of the game the other day (only took me 11 years!) and am pretty motivated to start over with the translation. If there's someone out there who would like to help me dump the script again let me know!

 vbt Feb 24, 2019

himasaram said:

it's really fully lost ? you kept nothing on your computer ?

  
	
	

		
		

			Anyhow, I happened to finish my first playthrough of the game the other day (only took me 11 years!) and am pretty motivated to start over with the translation.  If there's someone out there who would like to help me dump the script again let me know!

come on the discord chan and you'll find some help!

 himasaram Feb 25, 2019
@vbt... I looked through my personal backups the other day but couldn't locate the files. I'm pretty sure I took a backup at the time, but this was >9 years and several computers ago. Anyhow, it's probably a good idea to start over regardless. I've gotten a lot better at Japanese since then.

Thanks for the advice about the Discord channel. I'll check it out.

 paul_met Feb 26, 2019
himasaram..., Are you a translator from Japanese?

 himasaram Feb 26, 2019

paul_met said:

Correct.

 paul_met Feb 27, 2019
The developers of this game are much overdone with the code. In addition, it is very difficult to work with the packed resources of this game. I would not advise to undertake it.

 himasaram Feb 27, 2019

paul_met said:

Thank you for sharing the insight. I take it that this assessment is based on an attempt to hack the game on your part?
Would you mind elaborating what challenges that you're foreseeing in concrete terms? Unpacking the resources, modifying them, repacking them, all of the above, etc.

 paul_met Feb 28, 2019

himasaram said:

Almost all the graphics in the game are compressed. And there are several types of compression. Shared game resources (graphics, text, and even code) are duplicated for each room. For example, all HUD elements and their coordinates for each room are individual. This is really stupid. In general, the game is very unfriendly to hacking.