So a while back I made a topic here about translating Lunar Silver Star Story for the Saturn. I got stuck early on and wasn't able to make much progress.
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Grandia Sega Saturn English Patch. Feb 25, 2018 - Hey guys, I figured with the rash of Saturn translation projects I've been seeing of late maybe it was best to start posting some info and progress. Shining Force III English translation. I know that there will be plenty of other Saturn enthusiasts who will be thrilled.
However recently members over at SegaXtreme such as Ms. Tea have been able to make headway due to a somewhat recent iOS port that is based on the Saturn port. So since it's now at a point where there's not much for me to really help with at the moment with that project, I've been snooping around in Grandia's files for the Saturn and PS1. Well that makes things easier to say the least:So really all that would need to be done here is find out the control codes as well as any pointers in the files that determine text position and length. With that figured out putting in the English PS1 script would be rather simple I'd imagine.Though I do wonder if there's a way to just modify the game to default to the 8x16 font instead of the 16x16 one so you don't have to waste a byte for each line of text with the 03 control code.EDIT:So I think I might be figuring out how the script pointers work based on comparing the PS1 versions, and then spot checking with the Saturn version.So here is what I believe to be one complete text routine from the file BA38.MDT at x05B4:This highlighted portion I believe is a header of some kind. It seems to change from text sample to text sample, so there's probably optional values that are in some text boxes but not in others.Now this next highlighted portion is the important part. This value I believe represents how many bytes until the end of this text box.
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In this example it's 5A:If we then move forward 5A that will bring us to the end of this block of data. The end of a block of text data seems to be tagged with this possible footer:After this the next text box starts. I've been able to keep following this pattern and consistently keep finding what appears to be the correct number of bytes and the start of the next text box.I'm going to keep testing this but so far it's looking promising.Also, another interesting thing of note is that it seems that the English PS1 versions files seem to be close to if not the same size as the Japanese PS1 files. It looks like Sony removed unnecessary padding to keep the files close to the same size from what I can tell.
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Ok, so I think I've cracked the code of the MDT/MDP file headers. Well my thought was use the PS1 script as a quick and dirty v0.1 kind of release. Just as a proof of concept that it can be done and works. Then if there's people fluent in Japanese who want to step forward and actually do a good translation once there's mature enough tools they can have at it.
I did think about using the old Project Alent translation for some spots, but if memory serves correctly that was never 100% complete.But I'd imagine for at least a v1.0 release using the PS1 Script I could go through and correct some errors and redo things like the coffee lines and what not. Though to be honest I'd probably need some help there as well to identify and correct them.
It would be possible, but probably a bit tricky to figure out. The Saturn audio is ADX encoded, and it's all in one big file called GM1.STZ The PS1 seems to have this same set up too, but I'm not sure if it uses ADX encoding. My guess would be no though since at the time that was more of a Sega Console specific format until post Dreamcast days. So this file would need to be broken down into it's original individual audio files first. Next would be re-encoding the PS1 samples into ADX and putting the.STZ file back together correctly. That I see being tricky.
I have an ADX Encoder/Decoder from years ago when I did music/voice modifications for Phantasy Star Universe, but I have no idea if it will be compatible with Grandia.
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