translating a DC game - where to begin?

[skull_diggery]

Hi there!

So I've been somewhat inspired by the translation patches that people have managed to develop and was looking at attempting an edit of my own for a DC game that is mostly talking. I think it would be different from how most translation patches go as I'll have to edit the audio instead of writing. I assume that I'd need to extract the audio files and replace them as I go along. I haven't been able to find many resources or documentation about exactly what is needed to edit GDI/CDI files so was wondering if anyone knew where I could find such info? Derek Pascarella's website and tools will be useful but I'm not even sure what I would need to edit! I'm a software developer but haven't done any game development yet.

Any information would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

[fafadou]

What I have to learn before translating grandia 2 in french :
What is a font
What is a vwf
How the text is coding.

[skull_diggery]

I think these are things I won't have to look into as I'm hoping to translate "Kaze No Regret", essentially the game is a series of images with Japanese voice actors playing out a radio play with character input changing the story at different points. I'm trying to work out what is needed to extract files/audio from the GDI I have of it.

[fafadou]

I think these are things I won't have to look into as I'm hoping to translate "Kaze No Regret", essentially the game is a series of images with Japanese voice actors playing out a radio play with character input changing the story at different points. I'm trying to work out what is needed to extract files/audio from the GDI I have of it.

Ok you can use gd rom explorer, and finally gdi builder for build the gdi after your work.
for editing pictures you can add the pvr plug in to photoshop.

[cicadas]

i think, very generally speaking, the steps would go something like this:

1. extract the game data with Japanese-Cake's GD-ROM Explorer (or something similar)
https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/1459/

2. edit the text and audio accordingly

3. re-pack the disc image with the edited text and audio


"undub"-type hackers typically have an existing separate dub to swap out the files, but in this case you'd have to get new voice actors to read your translated lines.
i'm no professional voice actress, but i'd be happy to read a few lines if you want some placeholder audio to work with

the raw audio files probably won't be in .mp3 format, or anything easy to edit like that, so you'll have to figure out how to convert your new lines into the proper format.
(the raw audio files i have on hand from Skies of Arcadia are in .P04, .FOB, and .MLT formats)


i gave Kaze no Regret a skim on wikipedia - very interesting! this sounds like a pretty hefty project, but i hope it goes well. i think everyone on this forum appreciates new Dreamcast translations


EDIT: i found a youtube video that links to .PDFs of the japanese script and a machine-translated english one in play-style formatting, in case that helps.
video apparently discussing the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwF-PjJKagI
Japanese script: https://mega.nz/file/cHZhGAwL#Wqerkxxbh ... 8tga8qCvZk
English script (DeepL translated, edited by Devin Malone): https://mega.nz/file/degXyYQQ#CKox7Hf8g ... rE3KBtMiAY

[skull_diggery]

Wow! Thank you both of you

I think this will end up having to be a long term project for the reasons you said cicadas. The way i see this going is:

1.) explore the files and see where everything is etc.
2.) see if I can do replacements for the audio
3.) translate EVERYTHING
4.) Voice actors replacing the lines, re-package and release

Not sure if it will be doable so am excited to give this a start this weekend!

And I will drop you a message if/when I get to the voice over part cicadas thank you

[skull_diggery]

So the only things I can extract with the explorer tool appear to be track 1 bin file (others error out) and it houses 3 text files. Any pointers on how I can find and extract the audio from the files?

[fafadou]

I don't know this game but the datas are in the last track.bin not the track.01.

[skull_diggery]

Ah how annoying, track3.bin keeps erroring out with

"Unable to open image: no valid file-system found"

[fafadou]

Do you use gdi explorer made by @japanese_cake ?