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Wizardry SNES Wizardry - Bane of the Cosmic Forge accuracy?

rainponcho

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Hi, was asked about how accurate is the translation (text, graphics, sound) for this port compared to the Japan version. Told that it's based off the PC game, which is how this question cropped up.

Thanks for any info!
 
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aweigh

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The team who translated the snes rom simply utilized the original game script. The translation is as faithful as can be.

They did have to cut some irrelevant text strings, as in the PC version you can ask NPCs anything you want and they have a suite of stock answers, whereas in the snes version you are limited to asking them from predetermined options.

The only text missing is stuff, like say if you were to type "FUCK YOU!" to Queeg, or whatever. I've played through botht he snes and the PC version and while I didn't play the PC version to completion (was burnt out on the game, as I began the playthrough immediately after finishing the snes version), and my Expert Opinion as a Wizardry Fanatic is:

- wiz6 on snes is fine.

If you're looking for a project, I got one for you: I'm dying to translate Wizardry Empire 3 for PSP but it's impossible without implementing variable width.

How about it? You do that (heh), and I'll do everything else.

EDIT: Also, do you know how to "dictionary decrypt" text? I also want to translate Wizardry Gaiden: Prisoner of the Battles and Wizardry: Dimguil but, while non-NPC dialog text is no problem to hex-edit, the NPC-dialog (i.e. all of the text strings that NPCs spout at you, or the stuff you find written inside the dungeons) is garbled.

I've been told that it's one of two things:

- the text strings appear like that inside the hex-editor because they first need to be extracted from the container archive (i.e. they are compressed).
- they are "encrypted", and something about "dictionaries". I didn't fully understand this although I understand how encryption is done in a non-gaming context so I can guess what dictionary encryption means.

Problem is that I don't know how to extract the files from inside the game (it uses a ps2 file type and all of the game text is inside a file titled Wiz.ARC).

For example, (assume this is japanese):

"Hello! How are you!"

when you search for that in Wiz.ARC it appears as:

"xieWWiw""xx!"/n
 
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rainponcho

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Isn't PSP some risc, arm, mips, * processor? I hate working on those. Give me 5 years and maybe I'll touch it with a 10-foot pole. xD

Did you play the English or Japanese Wizardry SNES version? I was specifically asked about playing the Japan version and if it had any notable changes, mistranslations from the other versions. Sorry for not being more clear. :)

edit: Posted after reading your extended reply. Re-reading.

edit2: Okay.

If it's true compression like Ziv-Limpel variation (LZ), you're partly screwed for now. Could be. You'll see normal alphabet letters and then it's all gibberish down the line.


If it's dictionary, just hex edit a byte or two or three and only part of the string changes.

ex. (91h)(90h)art.

91h = 'The'
90h = ' c'

(91h)(90h)art. ==> The cart.
A(90h)art. ==> A cart.
Apart. ==> Apart.


Or you're dealing with an extended alphabet. The full 2-byte Unicode character type stuff. Or some mixed UTF-8 format.

Usually you can tell what method you're attacking after modifying a byte or two.
 
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aweigh

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Nah I played the already-translated-into-English snes rom of wiz6. Afterwards, specifically for the sake of comparison, I played up to the Mines area (around 40% mark of the game) of the PC/DOS version, and like I said, the experience was mostly identical.

So much so that I simply didn't want to continue playing it as I had already logged so many hours on the snes version.

I guess what I'm saying is:

- They didn't "translate from the japanese"...
- They removed the japanese characters and fit the already-in-English original game text into the game.

Don't know how to explain it better. For example, in my spare time I'm hex-translating the 3DS rom of Elminage: Gothic and all I'm doing is slowly, one-by-one, replacing the japanese text strings with the corresponding already-in-English text string from the localized PC version.

BTW, do you know what QuickBMS is and how to use it?

Oh, and yes, working on PSP roms is kind of a bitch. Anything beyond text-hacking is horrible. Implementing variable width on a PSP game is a nightmare from the very little research/studying I've done on assembly and I gave it up very soon.

It is, however, way easier than working with fucking NDS/3DS roms. There are many more PSP tools available. Hell, even graphics hacking is easier on PSP, and I've managed to do it and I don't even know how to use MS Paint. (I replaced Elminage 2's japanese menus with the English-language menus from the localized Elminage 1).

(Yes, that only worked because the sequel's menus were exactly the same as the first game's menus).
 
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rainponcho

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I get it. English just "copy-pasted" the script. NES => GB port. SNES => PSP Breath of Fire ports.

Guess have to wait for a native Japan gamer to come around and point out any differences from the original script or elsewise. Like a Lufia, Lunar Japan => English comparison site.

They could've used LZW, but that's pretty old-school. Guess I can't really tell.

QuickBMS is a library of compression algorithms. If yours is not in it, poof. Not so useful.
 
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aweigh

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Yeah basically what I was getting around to is asking if you know how to make QBMS scripts. Only reason I can even spend time (attempting to) translate PSP's Elminage 2 is because I begged Alluigi (QBMS creator) to write me an extraction script for the game's .BIN files.

Something to do with tokens, xor, and shit I don't understand. If I can get someone to write my a QBMS script for extracting the Wizardry Empire 3 PSP .Bin files then I can finally know if the NPC text is "garbled" due to being inside the container archive (i.e. attempting to edit the compressed text file by opening the .BIN itself, which is what I'm doing), or if it actually does feature text encryption.

Richard told me he made an xdelta patch for Empire 3 (PSP) which contains the text hacking I managed to do (spells, items, etc), to see if anyone in the romhacking community bites and offers to attempt to see what can be done.

it is so frustrating all of the obstacles in place when trying to translate a game:

- (obviously) language barrier, although for extremely simple games such as these Wizardry games machine-translation is usually good enough, since these games barely feature NPC dialog (with exceptions of course).
- some of the text strings being garbled whether due to still being inside the container archive (compression) or whether due to being ecrypted.
- character limitation due to the game using monospaced double-width or simply outright lack of support for latin-ASCII.

Even when all variables are perfect, i.e. all game text strings are in plain sight and the game files can be extracted with standard tools (or do not even NEED to be extracted and the container archives can simply be edited), AND the game supports latin-ASCII codification it is still an insane amount of painstaking work replacing text strings one by one inside the hex editor...

Then you have to deal with people who poo-poo on your efforts the second you say you're using machine-translation, even if the game features no NPCs, and nobody wants to help because it's not Final Fantasy or whatever.

I salute your efforts man, as these Wizardry games are as niche as niche gets, but for those of us who LOVE Wizardry this is a dream come true, and we are very grateful.
 
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rainponcho

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It's been awhile since I wrote qbms scripts. Maybe after my hacking workload calms down - it keeps piling on like a Wrecking Crew 98 match.
 

Monstrous Bat

Cipher
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Dec 30, 2011
Messages
638
I have played the untranslated Japanese version. It's a soild port, mostly faithful to the original. The translation was good too.

Some differences from the PC version:
* Bugfixes. HP regen being determined at the beginning of the game, encumbrance bug, levelling after class-changing only gives a piddly amount of HP, etc. Mostly made the game easier.
* Conversation with NPCs is much simpler, with very little player input.
* No difficulty setting.
* Automap.
* Much nicer graphics. The PC version used the same set of texture for every fucking dungeon.
* An intro that tells the background story. The same story is found in the manual of the PC version.

That's pretty much it, I think. I actually found the SNES port significantly easier than the original, but I was not sure whether this was due to my increased familiarity with the game on the second playthrough or the bugfixes. Or both.

Also, I believe there's no way to import your party from the SNES port into Wizardry VII of any version.
 

rainponcho

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Nice! Interesting changes. Sounds like there weren't any notable text mistranslations. Thanks for the detailed answer. I'll pass this along. :)
 

SCO

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Shadorwun: Hong Kong
There is a mips C assembler made by a translation guy (Kingcom). It supports to Allegrex intruction set so it could be used to hack on psp games with a 'kind of c'. Though i dunno how useful that is when you're actually trying to insert new code into a existing game. Probably not very if my experience with reflexil means anything (it's vastly easier to do this roundtrip in C# with the quality disassemblers and a saner 'assembly' but it's still gnarly).
 
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aweigh

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I think the Wiz 6 port for SNES (obv. using the fan-made English language patch, duh) is superior to the original DOS release, and the 2D art alone is so good and so far beyond the graphics of the original DOS release that I can't imagine playing it any other way.

Please note that I obviously went and played through the DOS version of Wiz 6 for the explicit purpose of seeing whether there was any actual cut content, specifically focusing on dungeon layouts and power progression, and while there were some tweaks made such as the SNES port featuring a more forgiving RESTING mechanic (SNES port's resting increases HP/MP regen twice as fast as DOS original), and the fact that the game script/NPC dialog was truncated and filtered to only give the player quest-advancing text, since on the SNES port you cannot type in questions or keywords--

--however the actual enemy and item stats are all exactly the same as the DOS original, with the SNES port being slightly easier solely because resting regenerates 2x the HP/MP. Items themselves are all unchanged stat-wise, nothing is changed in terms of dungeon layouts which is the #1 most important detail to know.

TL;DR play SNES version for a better time, better graphics, better music, then to avoid being called a weeabo scum faggot make videos of yourself LP'ing the DOS version so you can lord it over the people criticizing you and making your opinion on the two versions of Wiz 6 completely unassailable.

:)
 

Cross

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I think the Wiz 6 port for SNES (obv. using the fan-made English language patch, duh) is superior to the original DOS release, and the 2D art alone is so good and so far beyond the graphics of the original DOS release that I can't imagine playing it any other way.
From a technical perspective the art is superior, sure, but the sprite work in the DOS release has way more personality and is also better animated.

wizardry6-comp1-ibmpc.png
wizardry6-comp1-snes.png
 
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aweigh

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Did you play the SNES ver. though, so that I know you actually did see both versions sprite animations?

That aside, I agree the original Dos version's enemy sprites have a bit more "personality", and as is obvious in the pic are bigger in size (though that doesn't matter much to me).

As I said I played both and I never noticed any noticeable difference in the quality of the animations.
 

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