infidel
StarInfidel
- Joined
- May 6, 2019
- Messages
- 494
油断するな。
迷わず撃て。
弾を切らすな。
ドラゴンに手を出すな。
───ストリートの警句
Don't let your guard down.
Don't hesitate to shoot.
Don't run out of ammo.
Never deal with a dragon.
-- Street wisdom
After finishing my album (shameless plug) I've taken some time to rest before continuing to do gamedev, and a wondrous new tool came into my view. I'm a fan of machine translation because it allows me to play ye olde Japanese games without the hassle of learning the language. The previous tool I used was a text hooker, as in it injected a DLL somewhere into the game process or something like this to grab the text. A lot of games did not work with that approach but it was still better than nothing. This new tool however is next level. When pressing a hotkey, it a) takes a screenshot b) uploads it to Google OCR service c) uploads the text it found into Google translation service (it can do DeepL now, too); and d) shows it in the overlay on top of the original text.
Preliminary tests showed that it worked excellent with PC98 640x400 art so I've finished the VN I was playing. But now it was time to try out an actual RPG. I'm a fan of the cyberpunk genre and I've had Japanese Shadowrun for Sega CD available so it was a no-brainer. Unfortunately, the OCR results are significantly worse because Sega CD is in a shit 320x224 resolution but it's still good enough to get the gist of what's happening. Also, vertical text is way harder for the machine (I think that the more text is there on screen the better it works). So in another effort to promote machine translation and specifically UGT (Universal Game Translator), I'm going to start the Shadowrun Sega CD LP.
I'm recording the supplementary video footage and I will upload it to my Youtube channel. Be aware that it will sometimes be hard to understand the machine due to mistakes, the forum LP will feature the names, explanations, plot outline, and a little guide if you want to play the game yourself. My intent is for you to read the text and then optionally watch the video for more.
So let's begin.
世界規模で
取り替X了が誕生
Xルフはどと呼XXも
I will mark with an X the places where neither OCR nor I could find out wtf that hieroglyph was. Hopefully, some accomplished moonspeaker out there will help to complete the picture. According to Shadowrun wiki 2011 is when "the first baby is born with the condition that will later be described as Unexplained Genetic Expression." So I assume it's talking about that.
激怒の夜
各Xで大規模な種族間
X動
The first line is "Night Of Rage" and indeed, in 2039 there were widescale anti-metahuman riots in the Shadowrun universe which are known under that name.
Scrolling text:
21世紀初頭
世界は大いなる変化を迎えた
きっかけは、伝説の中の存在だ
った『エルフ』や『オーク』い
わゆる『メタヒューマン』が誕
生したことだ
やがて、さまざまな奇跡を引
き起こす『魔法使い』が登場し
世界は<覚醒>を迎えた
いままで長い眠りについていた
魔法の方がよみがえったのだ
だが、世界を変えたのは、魔
法による奇跡だけではなかった
肉体の改造によって、飛躍的
に能力を高める『サイバーウェ
ア』の登場
プログラムと一体化し、電子
の世界に意識を送り込む電脳空
間『マトリックス』の成立
魔法の覚醒に弾かれるように
テクノロジーもさまざまな奇跡
を産み出していった
だが、それらはバラ色の未来
をもたらしたわけではなかった
メタヒューマンと人間たちの
衝突。世界を牛耳る巨大企業の
せめぎあい
奇跡の産み出す光が明るくな
るほど、投げかけられる影も濃
くなっていく
その影はやがて、特殊なプロ
フェッショナルを誕生させた
魔法とテクノロジー。現代の
奇跡を身にまとい、さまざまな
せめぎあいが産み出す影の仕事
を引き受ける
影の世界を駆け抜ける彼らは
『シャドウランナー』と呼ばれた
世界は大いなる変化を迎えた
きっかけは、伝説の中の存在だ
った『エルフ』や『オーク』い
わゆる『メタヒューマン』が誕
生したことだ
やがて、さまざまな奇跡を引
き起こす『魔法使い』が登場し
世界は<覚醒>を迎えた
いままで長い眠りについていた
魔法の方がよみがえったのだ
だが、世界を変えたのは、魔
法による奇跡だけではなかった
肉体の改造によって、飛躍的
に能力を高める『サイバーウェ
ア』の登場
プログラムと一体化し、電子
の世界に意識を送り込む電脳空
間『マトリックス』の成立
魔法の覚醒に弾かれるように
テクノロジーもさまざまな奇跡
を産み出していった
だが、それらはバラ色の未来
をもたらしたわけではなかった
メタヒューマンと人間たちの
衝突。世界を牛耳る巨大企業の
せめぎあい
奇跡の産み出す光が明るくな
るほど、投げかけられる影も濃
くなっていく
その影はやがて、特殊なプロ
フェッショナルを誕生させた
魔法とテクノロジー。現代の
奇跡を身にまとい、さまざまな
せめぎあいが産み出す影の仕事
を引き受ける
影の世界を駆け抜ける彼らは
『シャドウランナー』と呼ばれた
In the early 21st century, the world underwent a profound change.
It all started with the birth of the elves, orcs, and so-called metahumans, who had existed only in legend.
Eventually, wizards appeared on the scene to perform miracles, and the world began to awaken, reviving the magic that had been dormant for so long.
However, it was not only the miracles of magic that changed the world, but also the emergence of "cyberware" that dramatically increased abilities by feminizing the body.
(WHAT??? Oops, a single wrong kanji. It becomes "but also the emergence of "cyberware" that dramatically increased abilities by modifying the body.")
The establishment of the Matrix, an electronic space that integrates with programs and sends consciousness into the electronic world.
As if propelled by the awakening of magic, technology has also produced various miracles.
However, these did not bring about a rosy future, as metahumans and humans clashed. A conflict between the giant corporations that control the world.
As the light produced by these miracles grows brighter, the shadows cast by them grow darker.
The shadows are the magic and technology that eventually gave birth to these special professionals. Clad in modern miracles, they take on the work in the shadows that the various conflicts produce.
These people who run through the world of shadows are called "shadowrunners".
(a cool animation sequence follows, watch the intro in the video if you haven't already)
More scrolling text:
そして、2053年
<覚醒>による混乱を乗り切
った日本は、まさに巨大企業が
支配する国へと変貌していた
そんななか、東京は、製品の
市場や実職場として、どの企業
にも属さない中立都市となって
いた
だがそれは、この街でいくつ
もの巨大企業がせめぎあうこと
を意味している
『影』を集める都市、東京
そして、その影の中で生きる
ランナーたち
物語は、はじまりを告げよう
としている
<覚醒>による混乱を乗り切
った日本は、まさに巨大企業が
支配する国へと変貌していた
そんななか、東京は、製品の
市場や実職場として、どの企業
にも属さない中立都市となって
いた
だがそれは、この街でいくつ
もの巨大企業がせめぎあうこと
を意味している
『影』を集める都市、東京
そして、その影の中で生きる
ランナーたち
物語は、はじまりを告げよう
としている
And in 2053, after surviving the chaos caused by the Awakening, Japan was transformed into a country dominated by giant corporations.
In the midst of all this, Tokyo has become a neutral city, a market for products and workforce that does not belong to any single company.
However, this means that many huge corporations are competing with each other in this city.
Tokyo, a city that gathers shadows, and the runners who live within those shadows.
Their story is about to begin.
A familiar logo appears:
Followed by the menu:
There are two items in options:
データのXー - Do something with data
データの削除 - Delete data
The word "tsujigiri" has a full-on Wikipedia page of its own (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsujigiri). Quote: "Tsujigiri is a Japanese term for a practice when a samurai, after receiving a new katana or developing a new fighting style or weapon, tests its effectiveness by attacking a human opponent, usually a random defenseless passer-by, in many cases during nighttime. The practitioners themselves are also referred to as tsujigiri." Lovely people, those samurai.
3ケ月後 - 3 months later
Every shadowrunner party needs a base of operations. In our case it's a bar:
The girl is having an internal monologue. Or maybe it's the narrator:
Her name is Mao and she's one of the party that we'll be playing as (as is tradition for JRPGs, there's no character generation in this game).
And here's the first gameplay screen:
On the bottom left we have our party. On the bottom right there are images of NPCs present on the scene. There's only one now, our bartender buddy. Let's introduce the characters (using the descriptions from Japanese Wikipedia because I don't have a manual (I'd be grateful if anyone knows how to obtain one) and they're not introduced in the game):
A human street samurai. He has vowed to take revenge on the runner "Onikaku" (Demon Horn) who once defeated him. His hobby is buying firearms, and he eventually became quite heavily armed with assault rifles and grenade launchers.
This human is a former company worker (weirdly written in Katakana as ヒューマンのフォーマー・カンパニーマン - "hyuman no foma kanpaniman). Previously an employee of Aztechnology, he is the calm and collected chief strategist of the team. He is a good friend of Rokudo, perhaps because they are both in charge of the vanguard. His policy is to conduct his work as a professional business.
An elf decker. His handle means "deckhead" in Japanese. Chronologically, he was introduced to the team by Jane in the second part of the series, and joined the team instead of her, playing an active role in the first part. At the end of Part I, he gets involved in a conspiracy with the Humanis Poly Club. His icon in the Matrix is a faceless magician.
(i'm actually not sure it's him or her and what series are they talking about, it sorta looks like there were some Japanese-only books)
A human street shaman. She serves a cat totem and is very curious. She works as a clerk at a magic store called Tokaido, which is run by her master in Ueno, but she tries to get her nose into everything. A runner with the same name also appears in the Tenshi Tachi series, but he is a different person.
(perhaps they're referring to so-called replay books, where they publish recaps of their gaming sessions as prose. anyway, i can't find anything relevant on Google with 天使たち シャドウラン query)
And now for the UI. The investigations are done through the visual novel part. The menu is the following (only three first options are available now):
- 見る - LOOK (opens up a submenu of topics to look at)
- 話す - TALK
- 仲間 - PARTY (this one is always the first, your party can chat between themselves)
- whatever other people are on scene
- 仲間 - PARTY (this one is always the first, your party can chat between themselves)
- 移動 - MOVE (opens up a list of locations)
- アイデム - ITEM
- ポケットセクレタリー - POCKET SECRETARY (this one is the settings menu)
- セーブ - SAVE
- メシセージ - MESSAGE SPEED
- 遅い - SLOW
- 普通 - NORMAL
- 速い - FAST
- 遅い - SLOW
- セーブ - SAVE
- ポケットセクレタリー - POCKET SECRETARY (this one is the settings menu)
- コンタクト - CONTACT
- ナツト _ NATSUTO (your main information contact, chat him up whenever your party suggests it)
- データネット - DATANET (stuff the media says)
The evening starts slow. Rokudo wants some action, Mao is playing word games with the bartender, but then our inevitable Johnson comes in.
Rokudo knows the guy - his name is Hajime (ハジメ) and he's a member of the Shibuya street gang called Metal Labyrinth (メタルラビリンス). Hajime needs some help. "Heh, if you need a yojimbo, then no dice", replies Rokudo. I'll use this term without translation because though it is usually translated as "bodyguard" or "bouncer" in the case of machine translation in the video, it doesn't really mean that.
Yojimbo means something like "quality hired muscle", in my opinion. The best example of what yojimbo does is, of course, in the famous Akira Kurosawa movie:
Anyway, Hajime tells us his story - someone's been killing his guys one by one. Rumors call it "the tsujigiri murders". He wants the culprit found and dealt with and, of course, no police involvement because they will lose face with other gangs. He offers 4000 nuyen for the job. We agree to hear the deets. At first, the tsujigiri attacked only gang members but lately he's become more indifferent. The attacker looks like a crazy samurai in a kimono.
He shows us the hologram:
(it's also worth noting that in true Japanese fashion they use the term "street gang" as literal ストリート・ギャング - sutorito gyangu)
When asked about their recent fights with other gangs, Hajime tells us about a fight with the gang called Wizard's Edge based in Yokohama (ウィザーズ・エッジ, incorrectly translated as Wither's Edge in the video). Apparently, they used magic a lot but Hajime's got their asses kicked. Another one he remembers is called 『武空』, pronounced either Takesora or Busora, or Takeku, or sometimes even Wukong. Yeah, the machines have divisive answers on that one. It's translated literally as something like "armed air forces". Hajime says if they need anything, to find him in OnFall (オンフォール), a Shibuya club, and then bugs off.
All right, we've got our first job. Shiun suggests calling our informant for any clues, who goes either by Natsuto or Nat, however you may want to read that as: ナツト.
Nat tells us that this culprit, he's very "shinsukibotsu" (神出鬼没), elusive as a phantom and might be a magician. So far, there have been two survivors. One is a street samurai by the name of Izo (以蔵), and the other one is named Cholo (チョロ), a street kid. Izo was a Metals' yojimbo and quit after he was attacked. When asked about the Busora, he tells that they hang out in an old bar Gyakushimaya (逆島屋).
All right, now that we have our clues, let's move. Actually, I wanted to watch the Datanet, too, but I forgot, so I'll come back to it in the next update. The move menu has two options:
- 渋谷 - Shibuya
- 横浜 - Yokohama
Ah, the sweet Tokyo nightlife!
"Shibuya is a very glamorous town. But step into the back streets and you'll see its other side. The other face of Shibuya, a dangerous neighborhood where gangs gather. In the shadows, the gangs are waging war."
渋谷はとてもきらびやかな街だ
裏通りに一歩足を踏み入れればもうひとつの顔が見える
渋谷のもうひとつの顔ギャングたちが集まる危険な街
影のなかではギャグたちが戦いを繰り広げている
裏通りに一歩足を踏み入れればもうひとつの顔が見える
渋谷のもうひとつの顔ギャングたちが集まる危険な街
影のなかではギャグたちが戦いを繰り広げている
Let's start by looking around and chatting with passers-by (通行1/2/3 - Passerby 1/2/3):
The second one is most useful, he tells us where OnFall is. The rest is just flavor or repeats. Now we can move to somewhere else:
Those are:
シルバームーン - Silver Moon
現場1/2 - Scene 1/2
オンフォール - OnFall
横浜 - Yokohama
Let's just investigate them one by one in the offered order, starting with Scene 1:
There's a hobo here:
We are offered a choice on how to talk to him:
打ち解けるように - Friendly
取り引する - Business-like
ごく普通に - Normally
関わりにならない - Non-chalantly
I've tried the business-like and paid him 50 nuyen before and in the video I use the friendly approach with the same result, just different flavor text. My guess is it doesn't matter, he still spills the beans: the tsujigiri attacked people here for some time but then stopped. It coincided with the city starting a new building here when all the bare earth was paved up. Coincidence? He also tells us about Cholo but we already know that. Time to move to scene 2:
Scene two has two Metals waiting for tsujigiri to appear. Mao notes that the earth is bare here.
The gangers are bored but they do tell us that Cholo is likely a magic user. "Once I pulled a prank on him but he just disappeared, man!" Time to visit the next location:
Some asshole tells us to fuck off (とっととうせな):
Mao immediately runs off to dance and Rokudo starts asking Hajime about Izo. He tells us that Izo got all upset when he somehow survived the encounter with the tsujigiri and now stopped being a yojimbo. Currently he hangs out in Shinjuku bar called Dawn (暁). So let's go there:
Turns out, Dawn is a charming oldschool place:
Everyone grabs something to drink, and in case of Mao, oden to eat and the friendly proprietor points us to where Izo's sitting. Trying to chat with him, we stumble on this dude:
We've two choices here:
威圧する - Intimidate
無視する - Ignore
Spoiler: the first one gets us talking to Izo, but the second one gets him and his buddies all riled up:
この野郎
いい度胸だ!
表に出な!
Rokudo just goes outside to teach them some manners single-handedly like a boss:
And we proceed into the very first combat of the game!
Is Rokudo as badass as he behaves? Can he kick those three guys' asses? Wait until the next update to find out!
UPDATE 02: ALL ROADS LEAD TO YOKOHAMA
UPDATE 03: WASHI WO OSOREYO, SHI WO OSOREYO
UPDATE 04: SHOPPING
UPDATE 05: ORCS IN THE BASEMENT
UPDATE 06: THE ONE LED BY CAT
UPDATE 07: ERUFU TO DOWAFU
UPDATE 08: DWARVEN QUARTER
UPDATE 09: ELVEN MOP-UP
UPDATE 10: WHAT D-HEAD REALLY THINKS
UPDATE 11: FEMME MAO-TALE
UPDATE 12: GEOLOGY 101
UPDATE 13: MASSACRE IN UENO! TEN PEOPLE SHOT DEAD BY A LONE MANIAC! #EndGunViolence
UPDATE 14: RUMBLE IN IKEBUKURO
UPDATE 15: SAEGUSAAAAAAAAA!
UPDATE 16: WHEREIN CURIOUSITY GETS THE CAT INTO TROUBLE
UPDATE 17: TO THE RESCUE!
UPDATE 18: LOTTA TALKING
UPDATE 19: CALLING IN FAVORS
UPDATE 20: PREPARATIONS
UPDATE 21: FINAL SHOWDOWN
UPDATE 22: THE TRUE ENDING (SCOUT'S HONOR)
SHORT GUIDE TO PLAYING THE GAME
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