Apparently nobody loves armips news. But I’ve been told everybody loves screenshots, so here we go.
Screenshots
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Category Archives: Xenosaga 1&2
Releasing… armips
As usual, it’s been a while! I apologize for my trademark silence, but as everyone knows, it’s nothing unusual.
The previous armips version was released in 2010, and it was very well received at the time. Over the years, I kept adding small new features to it, and I think it’s a good time to release an update now. The most notable additions are static labels, which act like global labels but can be redefined in every file, and the possibility to make all file paths relative to the file that uses them (as opposed to the working directory). Everything together makes for a decently sized update. This is probably the final armips release.
Here are the changes:
- added automatic optimizations for several ARM opcodes
- many bugfixes and internal changes
- added static labels
- new directives: .warning, .error, .notice, .relativeinclude, .erroronwarning, .ifarm, .ifthumb
- quotation marks can now be escaped in strings using \”.
[wpdm_file id=4]
Now that the exciting stuff is out of the way, let’s talk a bit about our translations! One game is often asked for, but it hasn’t been mentioned by me for quite a long time – Xenosaga 1&2. The translation is still progressing, and in fact, late last year, the story text was finished. However, there is still a lot of optional text left. The translation is progressing slowly, but the translator is as dedicated to the task as I am.
The game on the left hasn’t made a lot of progress lately, but hopefully that can change soon. I’ll try to at least upload some new media during the coming months.
Oh, I nearly forgot: We collaborated with Absolute Zero to bring you one of the most influential Tales games of the last decade, which just happened to be finished today – Tales of the Tempest! More about that on their site.
Update
I guess it’s time for a status update on my projects. I don’t tend to update very often, so better not expect another one until a project is finished.
Before anything else, I want to clarify which projects are affected by KaioShin’s retirement. This does only affect projects in which he is the lead (as can be seen on this page). SRWJ will continue, as will Xenosaga, Oriental Blue, Dragon Quest Monsters 1&2, Tales of Innocence and all the other SRW games.
It has been quite a long time since the last status update, so I’ll give a report on everything. Tom has been constantly editing and improving Oriental Blue’s script, and he also took good care of locating the remaining problems. The quality of the script is nothing short of amazing! Tom is also making progress translating Dragon Quest Monsters 2 (the first part is already completely translated), but it’s not his focus right now.
Super Robot Wars J is almost done. All status and battle graphics are translated and inserted, and the script has been given awesome and thorough editing by deets. His editing makes the game much more enjoyable, there’s such a huge difference between the original engrish-y script and the improved version. So for any naggers who believe that the long editing phase wasn’t worth it, it was. By now, there are basically only more graphics left. The title screen animation has to be reprogrammed, and some ingame graphics also have to be redone (for example, the Naze Nani Nadesico event). It’s been quite a long time since the last technical problem arose, so I’m positive that there aren’t many bugs left either. Tyria is also translating the FF script now, having finished the F script some time ago.
Xenosaga is also well alive, but as many of you may have guessed, it’s been on the backburner for quite a long time by now. I really feel bad for this, but there are so many projects that are almost done… so some have to take priority over others. But the translation continues steadily. The project isn’t in any kind of danger, and I don’t intend to drop anything. There is no need to worry. Once SRWJ, ToI and OB are finished, I can give more attention to other projects that aren’t as advanced.
And lastly, Tales of Innocence. I’ll just say that we started the beta test last friday. All big problems have been fixed, and the editing is also pretty much done. I’m not sure how long the testing will take, but it will definitely be the first game to be released.
I have limited time, so I have to concentrate on finishing one project after another. Innocence has been in the focus since the beginning of the year, and it will be followed by SRWJ and then Oriental Blue.
News Round-Up and a Little Request
Dear readers, this will be a BIG update. Not only do we have lot’s of news, no, to commemorate the event we also have a ton of pretty pictures to look at. We hope you enjoy them.
First off, we have a new project to announce, one that should please especially our long-time fans who are with us since this was just my personal little site about my newb attempts at hacking Caravan Heart.
Dragon Quest Monsters 1+2 (PSX Remake)
The hacking is currently being handled by Kingcom and none other than Tom (who also translated Caravan Heart) is working on the translation part of it. So far the project is already going very smoothly. As you can see in the screenshots a VWF is already implemented and working. Menu hacking is a different beast and will surely cause some headaches later on, but when did we ever let that stop us? I’ve been told the translation is progressing smoothly, although Tom will be moving to get a new job soon, so progress might slow down for a few months.
Xenosaga I+II DS
Yes we know, it’s been ages since we talked about this one. Translation is steadily going forward though and we also got a help offer from another translator, so things might move along even faster soon, if the original translator gives the OK. Here are some screenshots of translated scenes from the game:
Oriental Blue
Oriental Blue has been completely translated for a little while now. The news about that was eaten by the server crash, so here it is again. Kingcom also continued hacking work on it, so it’s getting closer to completion all the time. There is still a fair bit of stuff to be done (lot’s of minigames that’ll surely require lot’s of annoying image hacking) but this project is propably the second closest to completion apart from SRWJ. Speaking of which, it’s still in editing. We now started to edit the chapter graphics too.
Anyway… back to Oriental Blue. Yeah it’s going great and to apologize for the lost news entry here is a bunch of screenshots:
Devil Children – Ice Book
This one has also been translated for quite a while already, but the hacking of this game can only be described as a neverending nightmare. So don’t give me too much flak for slacking off on this one. It will be finished though, even if I’ll lose my soul in the process (not unlikely). We noticed we never showed any menu screenshots of this game either, so enjoy these. I paid for every single correctly menu label and every single correctly printed string with blood.
Tales of Innocence
Absolute Zero’s throughhim413 made a few special progress reports. Instead of just writing about it, he created two videos with commentary by himself. Pretty neat, be sure to check them out:
And before you ask, no I won’t do such a thing for any projects here. My accent is why too thick for you to understand anything anyway =P
Also… Could anyone create a new site theme for us?
Together with this news, the Project Overview page has also been updated. There has been some, ehm, critique, that we shouldn’t make such a page if we don’t update it often. It’s purpose is not to give you 0.01% exact live updates updated directly whenever we receive 2kB of text from one of our translators. The page is intended for new visitors who want to get a overview over all the projects combined into one page instead of reading up on all the news entries of the last two years. In that spirit we’ll probably update it only when we also have a front-page news like this.
Last but not least, we have a little request from you. We’d really like to have a new theme for the website. Is there a fan out there with webdesign talent who could help us out with this? Both Kingcom and I are pretty much n00bs when it comes to web stuff. As you can see on the Xenosaga screenshots, the current theme has some problems with pictures for example. 800×600 really isn’t up-to-date anymore, we’d really like a 1024×768 optimized design. There isn’t much we can offer in exchange for any help, other than access to our betas when they are done (might still be a few months off before we get to the first).
It would really be kick ass if someone could create something for us. We don’t have any fixed ideas on how it should like, I guess the only parameters are that it’s a WordPress theme, compatible with the newest version of WordPress and that it should handle pictures better than our current layout. Leave us a comment with a valid mail address if you’d like to help.
That’s it for today, thanks guys and look forward to more news whenever it’s ready.
Not dead yet
It’s been a while, isn’t it? We didn’t die, quite on the contrary, we have a ton of progress to report on several projects’ fronts. We just didn’t feel like writing much. Fortunately you aren’t e-mail bombing us when we don’t post something for three days unlike the poor Mother 3 guys. *ahem* On to the news!
Image editor post:
I’d like to thank everyone who volunteered to help. A lot of people sent in the first batch of trial images, that really surprised us. The second one was a bit harder and only two people replied with an edited one. I guess we were pretty demanding after all. In the end we decided to give the post to death_seraph. Welcome to the team! I’ll try to have screenshots with his work in action soon.
Super Robot Wars Judgement:
Unfortunately, the editor we had presented to you in the last update left shortly afterwards due to time constraints. Not all is lost though, since we got a competent replacement just a few days ago. The new editor is YuushaFan, a friend of our translator Tyria. The very good news is that he seems to be as insanely fast as Tyria. I’m positive we’ll see lots of exciting progress on the editing soon.
The translation is progressing smoothly as well. Last I heard everything to mission 20 or so is already translated. Kingcom hopes to crack the last few remaining hacking issues soon as well.
Devil Children:
Translation is about a good 70% done. Story dialogue is already completed, what’s left is misc stuff like devil descriptions. Tom promised to have the translation finished soon! I have been working on the hacking again too, fixing a ton of minor menu problems. Kingcom helped out too, so we’re looking at good progress here. The game is a convulted mess though (only programming wise of course), so there is still lot’s to do.
Tales of Innocence:
Hacking should be mostly complete and the translation is progressing smoothly. You can find more detailled progress reports on Absolute Zero’s blog.
Xenosaga & Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei:
No news is good news. Translations are progressing smoothly.
Magical Vacation:
One of the two translators vanished. I don’t know what’s up with him, but I haven’t heard from him or seen him online in 2 months or so now. Anororn is making slow but steady progress though. The translation might progress somewhat slower, but it IS progressing. If someone else would like to fill the blank and help out with the translation contact me.
I’m also still looking for a translator for the Shin Megami Tensei GBA remake! If anyone is interested, you know where to find me. The game is awesome, it really needs to be translated!