Translating Grandia 0.9.6-RC

[TrekkiesUnite118]

@retrodadandmodernlad - how did you patch in the English voices, is it simple file replacement from the PSX version?
[details if you please good sir ]

He didn't patch in the English Voices. That video earlier with them is the PS1 version. While the voice file is the same name on the PS1 version, I honestly don't know if it's still ADX encoded or if it's the same quality to know if you can just swap them.

 

[retrodadandmodernlad]

He didn't patch in the English Voices. That video earlier with them is the PS1 version. While the voice file is the same name on the PS1 version, I honestly don't know if it's still ADX encoded or if it's the same quality to know if you can just swap them.

I thought the original video he put up was him playing the game, to show his issue. It wasnt it was a YouTube example of the ps1 version to show were he was up to. I much prefer the Japanese voices with the english text myself the way it is currently, but that's just my preference.Great work on the new patch trekkiesunite . I will try it out when I get a chance.

 

[themadhaxor]

Haha - whoops! (FYI, I also prefer the Japanese voices...but there are some parts of the game with ONLY voice over - so it would be cool to have English voices sometimes, even if it's unnecessary)

 

[Ardiloso]

Hi @TrekkiesUnite118 I was trying to use Paul Met's widescreen hack in conjunction with your translation with no luck (it freezes after the ship intro with Bahl and Mullen). Would you incorporate it with your patch as an option? Shining Force Central did this with their SF3 patches and would be cool to play Grandia in english and widescreen on the saturn.
The files are here Модификация игр для Sega Saturn - Модификации - Ромхакинг - Каталог статей - Meduza Team and I made an xdelta patch (to iso files)for the first disc since his method is kinda rough (replacing files on the image).

 

[TrekkiesUnite118]

Hi @TrekkiesUnite118 I was trying to use Paul Met's widescreen hack in conjunction with your translation with no luck (it freezes after the ship intro with Bahl and Mullen). Would you incorporate it with your patch as an option? Shining Force Central did this with their SF3 patches and would be cool to play Grandia in english and widescreen on the saturn.
The files are here Модификация игр для Sega Saturn - Модификации - Ромхакинг - Каталог статей - Meduza Team and I made an xdelta patch (to iso files)for the first disc since his method is kinda rough (replacing files on the image).

I have no idea how that patch works or what it's doing so the answer is probably no for the foreseeable future. There's just other things that are higher on the priority list at the moment.

For what it's worth, did the patch work fine after the intro without the widescreen hack?

 

[Ardiloso]

I have no idea how that patch works or what it's doing so the answer is probably no for the foreseeable future. There's just other things that are higher on the priority list at the moment.

For what it's worth, did the patch work fine after the intro without the widescreen hack?

Yes, it works perfectly.
Oddly enough, I loaded a save in parm with the widescreen+translated disc and it worked fine. I've played till the ruins and didn't see any problems. Maybe it's stuck only after the intro.
I don't know how the ws hack works either but I know it modifies some files you might use like the svld.bin. Anyway, thanks for the reply just focus on the important things first.

 

[TrekkiesUnite118]

So I've been working on the Map Screens, and I think I've finally gotten this figured out.

• The tile data for the sprites are stored in the AMAP#.ADD files.
• Location tiles are 32 pixels tall
• Title tiles are 24 pixels tall
• Horizontal sizes vary, but for the first map it's 160 for the locations, and 152 for the title.
• The screen runs in the 352x448 resolution mode.

The resolution causes some issues with the text when it's drawn. The VDP1 sprites for the text are actually scaled down to half their horizontal size when drawn to the screen. So they're actually 80x32 and 76x24 respectively. This is why things were looking so poor.

So with this in mind I think I've gotten something that looks passable. Just using a larger font for the location data seems to have mitigating the scaling issues for the most part, however for the map title I had to draw the text at 76x24, and then column double it to 152x24 when saving it in the data file. Anything else I tried looked horrid. So while this works, it sadly means I only have half the horizontal resolution to work with in reality for the title of the map.

Here's a preview of Map 1 fully translated:

 

[Ardiloso]

I think it looks pretty good Trekkies, you could call it a day.

 

[TrekkiesUnite118]

I think it looks pretty good Trekkies, you could call it a day.

The thing is though, it looks so much better if I can get it to draw at it's native resolution:

That shot is from Mednafen when I went to address 0x06016B00 and changed the value from 0x80C1 to 0x80C3. That in effect changes the resolution from 352x448 to 704x448, which looks much nicer as no scaling is happening to the text. While this works in Mednafen without any problems from what I can tell, I haven't found a way to make it do it on it's own nor do I know if it will work fine on Real Hardware.

EDIT:

Found out what I needed to change. I needed to change a value in SEGAL.BIN for a constant that's used to set the resolution mode for the Map screen, as well as a value for another constant used in that calculation in AREAM.BIN. So far this doesn't appear to cause any other screen's resolution behavior to change, only the map screen. And it works on real hardware too:

 

[TrekkiesUnite118]

So I now have all the Disc 1 Map Screens translated and running at 704x448:

These should be in the next patch assuming I don't find some horrific bug from the resolution change.

 

[Ardiloso]

Great work! I'm slowly playing on real hardware and everything is fine (thanks to the fast reports from @retrodadandmodernlad -I love your chanel).

 

[themadhaxor]

Amazing stuff - thank you again for all your hard work @TrekkiesUnite118 :-D

 

[TrekkiesUnite118]

I've been able to pull the tiles for the characters names for the results screen from the PS1 version:

Unfortunately Guido's name wont fit for the space I have available, so if I can't find away to extend it I may have to shorten his name to Gido.

 

[retrodadandmodernlad]

Update on me playing the beta English translation of grandia on real sega Saturn hardware. so as you can see by the attached pictures I have now completed disc one. Just one minor issue I spotted towards the end of the game to report on. when on the boat heading to pirate island there is a scene with Justin and feena and the pictures on screen were getting mixed up with who was talking. also feenas picture was showing as the mermaid some times when she spoke and we hadn't yet encountered the mermaid. I can show you a video of it and also provide details from the debug disc for a save point 2 seconds before the boat scene starts if you need it. It has been a pleasure participating in the disc one beta and if you need any information just let me know. I would like to thank trekkiesunite for the brilliant job he is doing and I look forward to disc 2 and more updates of changes from disc one.

 

[TrekkiesUnite118]

That's great that you finished Disc 1, I'd say that probably means we're out of the woods as far as major crashes go for disc 1. As for the Portrait mix up issue, if you can provide a few screenshots of it that would be great, as then I can search the files for those specific lines of dialogue and try and see what went wrong.

 

[retrodadandmodernlad]

I just started taking pictures but it's quite a lengthy scene. The first half of the scene is fine but the second half nearly all the pictures are wrong. I have only saw this happen on the boat. It also happens again on the boat when you leave the island and both Justin and feel are again on the deck talking just before it says to swap to disc 2. What I will do because it would be a lot of pictuses is post a temp video and put a tranation in so you know when it's the second scene. Both scenes happen in the same place (on boat deck) but one is before you get on the island and the other is when you get off the island. Hope this helps.... video to follow. Thank you.

 

[retrodadandmodernlad]

here is a temp download link to a video which shows the wrong pictures being displayed in the 2 boat scenes. the first scene starts half way through were it starts to occur and then transitions in to the second scene. I have also put up two picture examples from the first scene. i hope this helps and thank you.

grandia pics and speach mix.MP4

1 file sent via WeTransfer, the simplest way to send your files around the world

we.tl

 

[TrekkiesUnite118]

That should be enough info for me to find the dialog in the files. I should be able to look at it later tonight and see what went wrong.

 

[TrekkiesUnite118]

I think I found the issue. This one script file is a special snowflake in that the dialogue for that sequence would be bigger than the the space allowed for a text sequence. The Max size is 0xFFF and this would be over that. So Sony split it up and moved it around to another sequence that had space for it. As a result my portrait corrector code that I wrote to correct portraits in a few spots where the PS1 version rearranged them got thrown for a loop and screwed everything up.

That said I believe I have it fixed with the attached patch. This should fix the portraits and also includes above updates to the Map Screens and Battle Results screens. I've only tested a few of the maps on real hardware so let me know if any act up.

Also with the news that disc 1 can be completed, I'm going to start focusing on trying to clean up the out of sync audio for the rest of disc 1 as well as any remaining uncompressed graphical text. Once that is done all that should remain is the compressed battle graphics, the FMVs, and the few sequences that are voiced with no text. At that point I'll begin shifting focus to Disc 2.

 

[retrodadandmodernlad]

I think I found the issue. This one script file is a special snowflake in that the dialogue for that sequence would be bigger than the the space allowed for a text sequence. The Max size is 0xFFF and this would be over that. So Sony split it up and moved it around to another sequence that had space for it. As a result my portrait corrector code that I wrote to correct portraits in a few spots where the PS1 version rearranged them got thrown for a loop and screwed everything up.

That said I believe I have it fixed with the attached patch. This should fix the portraits and also includes above updates to the Map Screens and Battle Results screens. I've only tested a few of the maps on real hardware so let me know if any act up.

Also with the news that disc 1 can be completed, I'm going to start focusing on trying to clean up the out of sync audio for the rest of disc 1 as well as any remaining uncompressed graphical text. Once that is done all that should remain is the compressed battle graphics, the FMVs, and the few sequences that are voiced with no text. At that point I'll begin shifting focus to Disc 2.

Great work on the update. I will load up my save from just before the scene and confirm if the pictures and text are okay on real hardware when I get home. Keep up the great work and thank you.