With the release of the Chrono Trigger Retranslation patch, a glorious chapter in the Compendium's history draws to a close. Little can be said here what hasn't been stated on the Retranslation page already. However, for curious readers, I've written a small historical guide here to making the project. It's sort of a behind-the-scenes look! So let's get started. Another big thanks goes to JLukas and Geiger, who prescribed and assisted with most of the actions taken here.
Making the Retranslation
Step One: Translation
The Retranslation project started as a collaborative effort recruiting several translators from all over the community. The idea was that several people could translate one or two dialogue offsets at a time and produce a completed script. Back then, we didn't have the big four-column Excel file -- just JLukas's ripped text script. Ultimately, this effort failed because a) volunteer translators were in short supply and b) the effort and translations were not cohesive.
Enter KWhazit! I discovered around May 2006 that he had been translating Chrono Trigger for his own enjoyment for several months prior and entered talks to present his work at the Compendium. He agreed, and to facilitate whole game translation, I created an Excel spreadsheet listing the NA script in the first column, JP script in the second, and retranslated KWhazit script in the third (with a fourth for footnotes). Every line with no corresponding retransation was marked "TRANSLATION NEEDED", making it easy for KWhazit to find his targets amidst the walls of text. Beginning in June 2006, KWhazit tackled dialogue offsets one at a time and sent the finished lines to be added to the master spreadsheet. As his skill grew, he reviewed old work (including a comprehensive review at the end of the project). The Dream Team Programmer's Ending was the last offset to be translated, mainly so that KWhazit could give himself time to improve over the year to tackle the difficult colloquial phrases there.
At the end of March 2007, he completed work and I took the finished product, created a new comprehensive spreadsheet based on game order, created 30 or so HTML files of each game chapter, and made the comprehensive text scripts. Over time, I had been adding material to the Translation Differences article and in turn filtering that out to the Compendium's encyclopedia, so that was already ready for release. The final release was a momentous event.
Step Two: Organization
I was thrilled to have finished a project which had taken hours of my time (and considerably more of KWhazit's). Despite a poll stating that fans wanted a playable patch, I was exhausted and suggested someone else get it together. A few months passed with little progress other than a project using Chronotools which encountered difficulty and corruption. In August 2007, I gave some thought to the subject and surmised that a collaborative effort based on editing locations in Temporal Flux and exporting could be accomplished by several people and make for rapid patch completion. I trolled around for help, but unfortunately the school semester had begun. Notwithstanding, I began working alone.
Step Three: Insertion
The first and hardest part of building the patch was script insertion. This involved going through and editing every location in Chrono Trigger with Temporal Flux to replace lines with their retranslated counterparts. Having Temporal Flux was an incredible luxury of utility which no other retranslation projects enjoy. Flux also allowed ROM expansion to contain the increasingly bigger event packets. Let's go through an example. I'd open {006} Gato's Exhibit and find the lines in the spreadsheet.
You'll notice that in the script, lines do not have the necessary {null} tags, nor {line break}s or other important material. I couldn't simply copy lines from the script into the event data. These things had to be checked:
- A {null} command at the end
- A {line break} where necessary for named NPC / PC dialogue
- {PC1}, {heart}, {note} commands where necessary
- PC names encircled in brackets
Concerning that last point, PC names have to be in brackets so they can appear differently if the player does not use default names. This is a lot of stuff to juggle around, and it was a pain that the script used different commands than those. On top of everything was the difficult task of guessing how long each line should be so that they did not run out of the text box's bounds. All this constituted a sort of headache, but I knew we'd rigorously beta test the project (so I didn't worry about it too much). As I went through each location, I'd export the event .Flux files as backups independent of the ROMs. The really rough spots were Guardia's Thronerooms, the End of Time, and Zeal Palace (which had a staggering amount of NPC dialogue). A small reprieve came in the form of null or duplicate locations. I also edited all the strings, involving a lot of inventive name-shortening.
Step Four: Beta Testing
Oh, wow...abandon all hope, ye who enter here. Once again, due to school occupying everyone's time, I beta tested the project myself. And there were tons of errors, like this one:
On the left is a classic period error. Chrono Trigger takes three periods and turns them into proper ellipsises. Well, due to the fact that I was selecting and replacing the old lines with clipboard pasting, extra periods would sneak in and make everything ugly. On the right, you can see a classic case of lines running off the screen. Two other common mistakes were forgetting to put PC names in brackets or accidentally leaving in the script's [char1]-type notations (those type brackets would cause a line to terminate immediately). A more problematic error came in the form of question-and-response dialogue. Sometimes, I'd bump down the "Yes" and "No" answers one line each to make room for a longer sentence at the top. Well, this also requires event editing to tell the game to look a line down for the answers. I periodically forgot to change that up. Finally, some of the tech and item descriptions were long enough to crash the game if highlighted in one's inventory. Thankfully, these were easy to spot.
In total, I made three complete run-throughs of the game. The final was done with character names using W, w, or m characters exclusively. These are the widest letters Chrono Trigger has, and these huge names provided a nice stress test for line length. I had to edit around 40 locations in light of this; it was a headache. Rounding out the edits were a couple corrections to enemy and tech names accidentally caused by a small quirk of Flux to be fixed in the next version.
Step Five: ROM Hacking
The dialogue is the bulk, meat, and backbone of the project. Still, a bit of polish and hard changes were needed to produce a truly complete patch. The first was simple: Sky and Dark. Those are the magic innate names corresponding to Lightning and Shadow in the NA version. Replacing them was a simple process in Tile Molester, but actually creating the new graphics was a job I'm just not cut out for.
Next came adding in our ASCII credits. That proved simple; at the end of the Localization section, I replaced three names who were, now that their work had been replaced, no longer needing of credit. I left Ted Woolsey in since we had the space. So the credits now read "T. WOOLSEY, KWHAZIT, ZEALITY, C.COMPENDIUM".
The next small hack dealt with the Epoch. While all the PC names are the same, the Epoch should by default be the Silvard, or "Silvr". This was done easily enough by editing a MemCopy command in the Load Screen events; JLukas pointed out the correct sequence to edit. Piece of cake!
But things got a little harder after that, as we needed to add in the a) Japanese ending art, b) a title screen, and c) {CronoNick} functionality. As you may know, CronoNick is a special event dialogue command used by Ayla. In the Japanese version, it shortened Crono's name by one character, leading to "Kuro". Well, the ASM was unfortunately absent from the US ROM, but JLukas found a way through a small hard edit and the creation of a MemCopy command at Mystic Mts Base, where Ayla asks Crono's name. This now leads to a second naming screen, in which the player can name Crono something only Ayla will refer to him as.
This brought us to the Japanese ending art. As you're aware, special art is displayed in the Japanese ROM if you complete the game as Marle (with Crono dead and the Epoch intact).
Pulling this off wasn't as difficult as it sounded, because the basic architecture existed in the US ROM -- just the graphics and location data was missing. This is probably because the US ROM began its life as a copy of the Japanese in the last stages of its development before this bonus was finished. The work involved three tasks:
- Export JPN version GFX packets at: 368000, 368BC3, 3D8E64
- Import to USA version free space and update pointers located at:
362484:362486 (old 3D8E64) 362499:36249B (old 368000) 36249C:36249E (old 368BC3)- Update the USA version 14 byte location data to match the JPN version: 3604D0-3604DD
I did just that, importing the data starting at offset $500000. Being a bit of a newb, I accidentally reversed the correct order of the pointers. Still, this was a relatively painless process, and my error was easy to catch. Meanwhile, Vehek inserted the simple A-button activated title screen, complete with our Frozen Flame logo, URL, and credits.
There you have it! Seems a little easy with that description, but inserting the script involved two weeks of pure, springtime of youth hard work late into the night. I again extend my thanks to everyone who contributed in some way. Congratulations to KWhazit; you are now a bona fide patch translator! Three cheers for the Chrono Compendium and Zeal.
