Watercrown Productions

Watercrown Productions

The Countdown Begins!

by on Mar.11, 2008, under Breath of Fire 2, Watercrown Productions

…Well, not really, but work has resumed in earnest on the BoF2 retranslation. d4s has kindly given me the source code, so I’ve begun hammering out some tweaks that will make the finished product play much more like the original.

That’s a good thing, BTW.

For the sake of aesthetics, d4s intentionally broke a few features like the ability to buy items in bulk and the AP cost display in the magic menu. Basically, they just wouldn’t fit. It was a sacrifice he was willing to make to fit longer item and spell names into the space allotted with minimal effort. I decided the wrong things got sacrificed. So I went back and tweaked his work a bit further: we still have longer item and spell names, but now you can buy stacks of items just like in the original, and the AP cost display has been restored (though now it’s a single-column menu, and hence a bit harder to navigate). The item menu will undergo a similar change to restore the original HP displays.

But why listen to me prattle when you can see for yourself?

bof2stackbt8.png

bof2battlemagicdl2.png

Won’t be too long now. See you next progress update.

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The Wait Is Over!

by on Feb.25, 2008, under Breath of Fire 2, Watercrown Productions

…Or more accurately, it’s just begun again, this time with a different context.

That’s right…if you’ve been following the progress of the Breath of Fire 2 retranslation (or lack thereof), you know that the project has been indefinitely logjammed for the past 3 months owing to a bug in the string printing routines (fixed strings for locations and spell names would be truncated in certain contexts) and project mastermind d4s’ apparent disappearance from the English-speaking scene.

Today, just for the hey of it, I gave fixing the bug another shot. And this time, I squashed it, as far as I can tell.

So I really have no excuse now for not hammering out one more rewrite of my script, going over sundry details and making sure everything is in shape, and making preparations for beta testing in a month or three. All I’ll say is that it’ll hopefully be beta-ready before Fall, which gives me a fairly wide margin of error.

Oh, and if something seems missing, that’s because I’ve decided to clean up my front page. Older news is now relegated to the news archive, which you can reach from the link on the left. I’ve been repeatedly considering overhauling my entire site, but alas, Googlepages is a cranky beast to work with. That’s the price you pay for the convenience of 100MB free webspace to work with, I suppose. ^_^;

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Sylvanian Families – The Fairyland Pendant v1.1b Sneaks Out The Door!

by on May.19, 2007, under Sylvanian Families, Watercrown Productions

Version 1.1b fixes a glaring typo that somehow went unnoticed since the original release. Special thanks to Spinner 8 for pointing out that the Emperor was, indeed, naked.

This version also fixes the checksum, so emulators that are designed to voice a complaint (such as the immeasurably-helpful BGB) will complain no longer.

Get it from the link on the left, or here if you prefer. Enjoy.

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Do you have what it takes to bring TheCheat into the digital age?

by on Mar.14, 2007, under Tools, Watercrown Productions

I SURE DOES!

Pardon the intentionally bad English. In response to feedback regarding the functionality (and lack thereof) of TheCheat, I’ve been working on the next generation of the program, a complete rewrite from the ground up.

I call it…TheCheat 2.0. (Cue the laugh track.)

TheCheat was meant to be a VWF previewer and formatting tool. Problem is, formatting is a bigger chore than it has any right to be: the script loading functions are shambolic at best, making the single most effective way of using TheCheat as a formatting tool copying-and-pasting every single page of text into the viewer. In other words, it’s not very effective at all.

The new version of TheCheat is meant to do precisely what the original was meant to do…for reals this time. (Again, pardon the Homestar reference.) When it’s done, it will be possible to handle all aspects of script editing in TheCheat itself. TheCheat ignores comments and Atlas commands by default, and its dictionary of what to ignore and what to parse will be fully extendable. The preview window will show you exactly what the text will look like in game. All you have to do is tell TheCheat how to treat your tags.

I can’t make any release estimates at this time, but I’ve got most of the basic functions implemented. Watch this page for further details!

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Sylvanian Families – The Fairyland Pendant v1.1 Released!

by on Feb.11, 2007, under Sylvanian Families, Watercrown Productions

Special thanks to Shadowsithe for some vital bugtesting work.

Download it here, or at the link on the left.

Enjoy.

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This Is A Tiny Tale Of Time…

by on Feb.10, 2007, under Breath of Fire 2, Watercrown Productions

…concerning one of gaming history’s most infamously bad translations. Happy belated new year, Watercrown fans.

Thanks to Tauwasser’s help, I’ve gotten a handle on Sylvanian Melodies’ end credits, though I’ve been too busy on another project to delve into the finishing touches: a little SNES game by the name of Breath of Fire II.

Yes, you heard me right.

Not too long ago, d4s finished his German-language translation/enhancement patch…and what enhancements they are. His improvements are so unbelievably professional-looking, I might have thought they were part of the original game if I hadn’t seen the original myself. The title screen music is now a vocal piece, background artwork has been added to several screens, text boxes now have transparency and gradient effects, the world map now has a nice Mode 7 pseudo-3D effect (more like a scrolling sphere than the perspective background used in Final Fantasy VI), VWF has been added in numerous places…this is some genius work, and I’m proud to be able to make his work accessible to the English-speaking world.

Find out more at d4s’ homepage for the patch: http://bof2.blogspot.com/

This is the first time I’ve had the luxury of multiple translation scripts to help provide context: they’re not the perfect solution, but they help me work through the spots where my Japanese knowledge is imperfect.

Breath of Fire II’s localization is infamously weak, and I have every intention of rectifying this problem. Names were changed due to lack of space: since this is no longer a problem, you’ll be able to fight with Ryu, Bosch, Nina and Lin in both Breath of Fire V and Breath of Fire II now. And don’t forget Rand, Tapeta, Aspara and Sten. The demon who rips into you at the start of the game is Barbaroi; as it happens, this is actually the Greek word for “Barbarian”. The English script has been rewritten in my inimitable style: I’ve tried to give all the major characters distinct speech patterns to match their personalities, and I’ve added detail and flavor to NPC dialogue. Never again will you feel like you’ve wasted 10 seconds of your time talking to someone.

My translation effort is currently up to the Capitan scenario; I will probably need to make some edits for context and for textbox space, but things are going smoothly. Like d4s, I’m not ready to make any estimates regarding a completion date, but expect it sometime this year.

I really want to finish this. I like the story and I want to see it done justice. I just hope everybody is satisfied with the end results of my work.

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Bug Alert!

by on Jan.04, 2007, under Sylvanian Families, Watercrown Productions

Since the initial release of this patch, several bugs have been discovered including two that may potentially destroy save game data.

Until an update patch is released, do not attempt to use the Fairy Flute item, and please savestate before opening treasure chests.

The upcoming update patch will fix these bugs as well as several text formatting errors discovered. Thank you for your patience.

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Sylvanians are…GO!!!

by on Dec.16, 2006, under Sylvanian Families, Watercrown Productions

HEY! Mission: Zero Visibility? Cloudy Skies Ahead!

Now that I’ve gotten that gruesomely-mangled reference to Elite Beat Agents out of the way, I’d like to announce the latest member of the Sylvanian Families Fan Translation family: “Sylvanian Melodies”. If the Drum Bridge minigame from the first title wasn’t enough rhythm-action for you, this should more than satisfy: Willow Cottontail is recruited by the fairies (who bear no resemblance to Commander Kahn) to save Sylvania from their stupidity once again, and do it with smooth moves and elite beats. That’s right: in case you couldn’t tell from the title alone, Sylvanian Melodies is a rhythm-action game, and a pretty decent one at that. The game has minimal dialogue, all of it done as uncompressed graphics; problem is, almost all of the other graphics are compressed, but never fear: the decompressor has been written up, and a recompressor isn’t far behind.

You’ll also notice that this page is now officially the headquarters for all my Sylvanian Families-related fan translations, so watch this page for further details.

Oh, and if you don’t have Elite Beat Agents yet, or a Nintendo DS, consider this a shameless plug.

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Sylvanian Families – The Fairyland Pendant Translation Patch Officially Released!

by on Dec.11, 2006, under Sylvanian Families, Watercrown Productions

It’s done. It’s finally done.

Download the patch from the link above, or at the left.

It’s been a long road, gettin’ from there to here…

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The End of Something Big?

by on Oct.08, 2006, under Sylvanian Families, Watercrown Productions

Watercrown Productions now officially has a page for its first near-complete fan translation: Sylvanian Families – The Fairyland Pendant.

Feel free to laugh now.

Check the Project Background link at the left if you want to know what the heck possessed me to do something like this.

Granted, it’s coming very late in the production cycle: I’m considering, once again, removing the pesky Hanauranai Jiten/Flower Dictionary from the project entirely, replacing it with something the player can actually use. Yes, this was inspired by Atlus’ decision to remove the explanation-free Mahjongg minigame from “Raidou Kuzunoha vs. the Soulless Army”. Granted, this is a translation with a distinctly different target audience from most, so the chance to actually play the game in English despite the missing (mostly worthless) feature may go unappreciated…but then again, Atlus’ work on the Shin Megami Tensei games also inspired me to turn that pesky intro monologue into a poem, so when have they steered me wrong?

If enough people get ticked off, I’ll finish the Flower Dictionary and release another version of the translation. Don’t worry, I’ll figure out some way that players who have already finished the sidequest can get their Flower Dictionary anyway…

Check out old news on my DevBlog.

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