Saturn Translation Guide?

[segareplay]

Does anyone know of a guide to translating a Saturn game? If not, would someone be willing to write one?

I have C knowledge from way back in the day and a daughter in college learning to code. Basically, if I can get a basic outline of where to start and what to do, we'd like to get our feet wet by attempting to translate an untranslated Saturn game. I know it's a big task but I thought this might be a good way to re-learn old skills and learn new ones. Eventually I'd like to be a bigger participant in the community.

Thanks to all for your hard work in bringing home so many titles we were robbed of back in the day.

 

[nando]

there's not going to be a guide, because every Saturn game is unique and runs on it's own engine. However, Malenko wrote what is probably the closest you will find to a how-to guide, and he has done a bunch of tranlsations to date:

Let's replace Sega Saturn graphics.

Preamble: This is *A* technique, and not the only one. This assumes a lot of things about the game you're working on specifically that the graphics are uncompressed and on VPD1. There is a chance this will work for the project you want to start but there is also a chance it will not. Consider...

segaxtreme.net

C knowledge might be helpful, but if you have to make code alterations (since we are unlikely to have the source), you'll want to look at the hardware documentation. Fortunately, we have extensive documentation on how the Saturn hardware works.

 

[Malenko]

The only real way to do the translation is to find the print commands with a debugger / Ghidra . Mr Conan is documenting the hacking of Terra Phantastica in an effort to show the methodology and tools. As Nando stated, there is no "one-size fits all" translation guide because every game is different. Lots of super smart people in the Discord.