[v1.2 RELEASED!] New English translation project (Nakoruru: The Gift She Gave Me)

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ateam
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[v1.2 RELEASED!] New English translation project (Nakoruru: The Gift She Gave Me)

Post#1 » Fri Aug 20, 2021 8:23 am


UPDATE (2023-08-30):
Patch v1.2 has been released! Click here to jump to the post.
________________________________________


Hi all!

So since I just can't stop myself, I've begun another English translation project for our beloved SEGA Dreamcast! The game in question is Nakoruru: Ano Hito kara no Okurimono (ナコルル〜あのひとからのおくりもの〜), which I have dubbed "Nakoruru: The Gift She Gave Me". When completed, this will be (to my knowledge) the one and only English language visual novel for the SEGA Dreamcast, aside from the indie title "Divi-Dead". It's actually a spin-off of Samurai Shodown/Spirits, which makes this even cooler.

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You can also see the modified VMU icon containing the English title in the screenshot above. For context, here's the original logo:

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This game is a BEAST, coming in at almost 12,000 individual unique lines of dialog text. Funny enough, the 12 individual story modes from "Sakura Wars: Columns 2" was actually only slightly shorter than this. However, as this is one contiguous story, testing is going to be quite a bit more tedious. There's also plenty of images that need to be translated, 90% of which are using stylized text that cannot be identified via OCR and this requires somebody with legitimate Japanese reading/writing/speaking skills. Also, this game features tons and tons of little mini-games scattered throughout the story, all of which will require various degrees of creativity to translate effectively. There's even a typing portion in one of them, which makes me laugh, as it would seem I just can't escape the typing games!

Moving along, I have written a number of custom tools to successfully extracted the entire game script and even created nice, easy-to-use spreadsheets in order to make the translation process as organized and easy as possible.

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One of the cool things about this game is the way the scripts are formatted. Similar to something like Policenauts (or other games with general purpose scripting formats), there are control codes scattered throughout that do things like control which images are displayed, which music is played, and more. In fact, the developers even left comments inside these scripts!

Check out the example below, where everything after a "//" is a comment, and everything else is controlling what is seen on screen. The areas highlighted in red are the actual dialog text.

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And here's a machine translation of the above text, just for example purposes:

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I've even got a nice little custom disc art PVR for GDMenu users:

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All of that said, from a technical programming/hacking perspective, I've got my bases covered. In fact I'll probably even do all of the graphic work myself, too. However, one area where I'm still trying to gather resources is for the JAP->ENG translation. Unfortunately, my usual crew is tied up with other projects. Thankfully, I have garnered a fair amount of interest already, but so far do not yet have a team committed to the project. That may change very, very soon, but I wanted to put this out there...

...if you're interested, and I mean REALLY interested, in working on translation for this project, please get in touch!
Last edited by ateam on Wed Aug 30, 2023 1:58 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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SG6K
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Re: New English translation project (Nakoruru: The Gift She Gave Me)

Post#2 » Fri Aug 20, 2021 6:41 pm

Amazing. Looking forward to to this!

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Retro-45
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Re: New English translation project (Nakoruru: The Gift She Gave Me)

Post#3 » Fri Aug 20, 2021 7:26 pm

Well when this is done looks like I got a excuse to try out a VN

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SpaceHoliday
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Re: New English translation project (Nakoruru: The Gift She Gave Me)

Post#4 » Tue Aug 24, 2021 9:32 am

Excited to be involved with this as an editor :D
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ateam
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Re: New English translation project (Nakoruru: The Gift She Gave Me)

Post#5 » Tue Aug 24, 2021 1:16 pm



Just a short video preview of the translated intro! The project is really starting to shape up. Script translation has begun, and my lead translator (and only translator, so far) is top-notch. I'm very fortunate. Additionally, Lewis from the DCJY has joined the ranks as an editor! He's perfect for the job.

In the graphics department, I'm still doing it all myself, which I honestly don't mind. It's the type of thing I prefer to have creative control over, anyway. That said, one kind soul is working on creating a newer and better version of the main "Nakoruru" logo. I'll share when it's done!

All in all, me and the team have A LOT of work ahead of us. However, we are dedicated to see it through!
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Re: New English translation project (Nakoruru: The Gift She Gave Me)

Post#6 » Tue Aug 24, 2021 5:26 pm

One more quick update showing the new logo from Nico which goes a long way to really replicate the original logo's look and feel:

Image
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Re: New English translation project (Nakoruru: The Gift She Gave Me)

Post#7 » Tue Aug 24, 2021 5:35 pm

Fabulous !

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ateam
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Re: New English translation project (Nakoruru: The Gift She Gave Me)

Post#8 » Fri Aug 27, 2021 2:31 pm



Main menu mostly complete.
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Re: New English translation project (Nakoruru: The Gift She Gave Me)

Post#9 » Tue Aug 31, 2021 4:35 pm



Just a little gameplay preview footage :D
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Re: New English translation project (Nakoruru: The Gift She Gave Me)

Post#10 » Tue Aug 31, 2021 5:42 pm

Awsome job !

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