Translating game files

[anghi22]

Hey guys, I was looking through the forum but couldn't find any information on how to edit game files from rpgmaker/wolf games to edit the text. Since I know a bit of japanes I wanted to try and translate some games so that I could then pass them to some friends who don't like machine translations. Could you explain to me how to do this or link me to a guide? Thanks in advance

 

[habisain]

Re: Translating game files

For RPGMaker (excluding 2k3 and MV) games, RPGMaker Trans is pretty easy (Documentation at

You must be registered to see the links

) because it takes care of a lot of stuff for you. The caveat is that it may now work on the game that you want to translate, because there's a handful where it doesn't. If it doesn't work, open up a bug report and I'll try to make it work.

Otherwise, the other method is to use RPGMaker or WolfRPG to open and then edit the game. For RPGMaker games, this can be expensive as you'll need to buy RPGMaker (WolfRPG is free, if I recall correctly).

 

[clanfert]

Re: Translating game files

I don't really know how to either (ditto on being linked a guide because shitsucks) but I can offer that Habisain's tool found here:

bitbucket.org/habisain/rpgmakertrans/downloads

works well enough for rpgmaker. He also has a guide posted to properly use it, but the gist is that it can create a patch folder for a game that contains the data files in an editable text format with dialogue strings and whatnot separated by occurrences in the game. At this point, you just take the Japanese string, copy it to your translator(s) of choice, and put the translated line in the blank space right above the "end string" line. As a side note, try messing around with one map you can access from the game's start, to get a feel for the software and line limits in your game (the tool doesn't always recognize where the line stops and so you can have sentences trail off the text box without manually spacing them down).

(There are some special rules for editing stuff like scripts but this should get you through editing the maps. My only qualm is that some games keep the standard rpgmaker template IN the options and so on, meaning you have to either translate the same materials over and over, or use the rpgmaker editor to manually check the database and event occurrences for what items/characters/skills/etc they actually use.)

I hope that helps. I'm new at this stuff too (but the difference is I have literally NO knowledge of Japanese), so let's both try and do our best together!

 

[habisain]

Re: Translating game files

My only qualm is that some games keep the standard rpgmaker template IN the options and so on, meaning you have to either translate the same materials over and over, or use the rpgmaker editor to manually check the database and event occurrences for what items/characters/skills/etc they actually use.

I'm hoping that this Christmas I'll be able to start a project that will obliviate this issue - the Universal Partial Translation project. Once that gets going, you could use that as a base and any items/skills/menus which are common would be automatically translated.

Oh, and RPGMaker Trans doesn't do line limits at all, and probably never will as technically RPGMaker XP/VX/VX Ace all have variable width fonts (including the ability to change font size during a dialogue). This makes it somewhat difficult to work out what a line limit actually is. I've got a tool that can do it for certain games, but it's in no shape for release yet.

 

[freeko]

Re: Translating game files

Rpgmaker up to MV had a screensize limitation of 640x480 though it was more commonly 544x416 if memory serves me correctly by default. With MV removing the limitations of the screen size, I think you may need to account for the width of the game frame to ascertain the line limit.

Also MV does not use the standard issue things that the legacy rpgmakers did either, as it seems to so far be a completely different beast. It is not even programmed in Ruby anymore like the previous iterations of rpgmaker. It feels more like a Java based environment.

So this tool certainly will not help you with translation of any games made with MV. It is a totally different monster than the other rpgmakers.

 

[clanfert]

Re: Translating game files

Originally posted by Habisain:
I'm hoping that this Christmas I'll be able to start a project that will obliviate this issue - the Universal Partial Translation project. Once that gets going, you could use that as a base and any items/skills/menus which are common would be automatically translated.

That sounds awesome! I was just going to copy over the common files for each main category into base txt files and just use the English templates (Eric, Natalie, so on) from the English editors to make my own templates that I could copy paste from.

As for the line limit thing, I guess I just got confused over this paragraph in the documentation you wrote up:

"When translating dialgoues, you don't have to worry about line limits. RPGMaker Trans is smart enough to spread the dialgoue across multiple windows, if necessary. You do have to worry about character limits however, and as recent RPGMaker Games allow you to set a font, RPGMaker Trans cannot tell you what your line limits are. Just try to be reasonable, and hope for the best."

It makes more sense now, but I still don't get the line about spreading dialogue across multiple windows.

So this tool certainly will not help you with translation of any games made with MV. It is a totally different monster than the other rpgmakers.

I haven't used MV. Would translating dialogue through the editor work with it?

 

[habisain]

Re: Translating game files

So this tool certainly will not help you with translation of any games made with MV. It is a totally different monster than the other rpgmakers.

It doesn't yet, but it will in the future. MV is something I'm looking at; most of it is actually trivial to port (as Javascript parsers are more plentiful than Ruby, and all of the game data is now in JSON format but hasn't really changed since VX Ace). The big issue is the Enigma Virtual Box wrapper that MV uses, and which I haven't had a chance to properly hack into.

Once I get it going, first thing I'll be doing is to make a patch that enables text hooking...

As for the line limit thing, I guess I just got confused over this paragraph in the documentation you wrote up:

I haven't used MV. Would translating dialogue through the editor work with it?

Regarding that bit of the documentation - yeah, I understand the confusion now. I'll update the documentation when I get the chance, but it refers to the number of lines per dialogue rather than the number of characters per line. So basically if your translation requires more text than available in 4 lines, going over 4 lines will transparently insert a new dialogue window command.

In theory, translating dialogue through the RPGMaker MV editor would work, but you need to unpack the game out of the EXE file first, which is a bit of effort. It's also a very expensive option, given the price of RPGMaker MV at the moment.

 

[anghi22]

Re: Translating game files

For RPGMaker (excluding 2k3 and MV) games, RPGMaker Trans is pretty easy (Documentation at url) because it takes care of a lot of stuff for you. The caveat is that it may now work on the game that you want to translate, because there's a handful where it doesn't. If it doesn't work, open up a bug report and I'll try to make it work.

Otherwise, the other method is to use RPGMaker or WolfRPG to open and then edit the game. For RPGMaker games, this can be expensive as you'll need to buy RPGMaker (WolfRPG is free, if I recall correctly).

Thank you and everyone for the replies. unfortunately life got in the way and I completely forgot about this post until now(also I forgot to turn on notifications and tought no one had replied... Sorry for that, really...), so I came back to thank you and say that I finally had the chance to try my hand at translating and so far it is going great! I am translating 田舎生活サバイバルＲＰＧ「そのひぐらし」 since it seemed to be quite easy to translate and it actually is but I can't figure out how to apply the patch to test if the translation is working, I also looked at the guide on her on how to apply a translation patch but every time I apply it to the game it just resets all the progress I made in my translation making all the translated text go back to japanese in the txt files and the games is not translated. Is this a bug or am I missing something? Thanks again c:

 

[habisain]

Re: Translating game files

This is a fairly mistake that comes up every so often. Important point: read the documentation on the website and make sure you're putting the translations where you're supposed to, and not replacing the Japanese text.

 

[anghi22]

Re: Translating game files

This is a fairly mistake that comes up every so often. Important point: read the documentation on the website and make sure you're putting the translations where you're supposed to, and not replacing the Japanese text.

I had already read it but apparently not thoroughly enough, I followed it to the letter now and it is working perfectly, thank you very much and sorry again for the delay!