Brandish 4 English Patch (v1.0) Is Out!

[Sardien]

I was talking about the Brandish 3 soundtrack there, Brandish 4 indeed never had a normal soundtrack release. Though there are 2 or 3 remixed songs from Brandish 4 on the Brandish Midi Collection CD.

[dawgtagg]

Quick update:

Seldane, your version of the game doesn't seem to be only a patched version of the game. Whatever distribution company got a hold of the game probably tried to get their logos and company name in somewhere.

I'm still busy with school (I thought second year of law school was easier than the first?!), but I'm figuring out a way to make the patch universal. Sorry for the delay. I will be back on the project in earnest starting October 1.

In the mean time, I've signed up a bunch of friends to do small cuts of the translation. Most lived in Japan for awhile, so knowledge isn't my concern. Consistency in terminology and style will be a problem until I Adoru gets some time to smooth it all to his liking.

At the very least, I'm expecting to have a new patch out by the first week of October or so. It will likely have some character dialogue, and hopefully the rest of menu screens. I'm holding off on giving out some of the integral gameplay text (e.g., plaque/puzzle text) because whoever does that needs to see it through to the end to make sure it's consistent and appropriate.

Whew! Lemme know if you have questions!

Dawg

[Sardien]

Seldane? Well, sure, we both have a thing for Brandish so I have no problem if you'd like to call me that.

At any rate, thanks for the comprehensive update. Let me know if you need anything else from the disc. Good luck with uni and the project!

(I think I accidentally hit the "report to mod" button before posting. It was of course a mistake. Honestly, why do we even have that button!)

[SkyeWelse]

I had a moment to sit down and install Brandish 4 this evening (version 1.0.0.0 from the Falcom Game Box Vol. 1 set) with the 400 meg install and went to run the patch file freshly downloaded tonight and unfortunately I encountered an error when I attempted to open it:

BR4Patch1.exe - Application Error

The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000135). Click on OK to terminate the application.

Anything I can try?

I am running it on Windows XP Service Pack 3 under Japanese Region Mode.

-Thomas

[dawgtagg]

interesting! So far, the patch works on all machine's tested, so I'm grateful for the feedback. I'd like to get it to work on all machines. Sorry you had to be the unlucky guinea pig.

First off, do you have the latest .NET framework update? I think you might need 3.5. Try that and see if that makes any difference.

Next, are you running the patch (.exe) in the same directory as the game executable? I imagine you are cause the program shouldn't blow up if that's the case, but give that a try anyway.

Again, sorry bout that. Let me know when you give it another go!

DTagg

[SkyeWelse]

Thanks for the info dawgtagg! Seems like my .Net framework was in need of a bit of updating. Instead of upping it to 3.5, I went ahead and upgraded to 4.0 and after a fresh reboot, I've run into the next error message:

BR4Patch1.exe - .NEt Framework Initialization Error

Unable to find a version of the runtime to run this application.

This patch has also been placed in the BR4_WIN directory under C:\FALCOM

What should I try next?

-Thomas

[dawgtagg]

T-Bones,

Sorry this is giving you so much trouble. Here's the problem:

Whatever version of the .NET framework you installed must not have been compatible with the patch released. This usually isn't a problem, because it's all supposed to be backward compatible--yet in this case it throws the error nonetheless. It might simply be because you jumped from 2.0 (or earlier) to 4.0.

If you wait a few weeks, I'll probably rewrite the patch from using managed (.NET) code to simple C. That means it will run on any windows machine without dependencies. I should have done it this way in the first place, but I have a larger library in managed code so it was easier at the time.

Lengthy explanation for not much. Sorry! Here's what to do if you want it to run right now: Uninstall whatever version of the .NET framework you have and reinstall 3.5. I think that should make it work.

Thanks again for the feedback!

DTagg

[SkyeWelse]

Heya Dawgtagg,

Unfortunately, I think I'll have to wait until you guys can design the patch to install under simple C. I'm still having some problems getting it to run correctly even after uninstalling the .net framework 4 and putting 3.5 in its place.

But hey! At least there are no error messages now. Instead, it wants to run the program, and then it just doesn't happen. No splashpage, gui menu, click here to patch BR4 and it doesn't seem to appear in the taskbar as an application running in the background either.

But, there's no rush. Take your time. Just figured I'd give you an update on the patch since I haven't had much luck getting it to work.

-Thomas

[dawgtagg]

Could anyone tell me what the text in the image on this page says? (scroll to bottom in the forum to find the image):

www.scribesslate.com/brandish4/

[kagemusha]

If you need spot translations for small amounts of text, romhacking.net is an invaluable resource for that sort of thing. If you don't have the whole interface of the game translated yet, a bunch of people over there could probably do it for you.

[Gu4n]

Hey dawgtagg, let's end this 3-year hiatus and get this show on the road again.

I've been poking around in the files friend jdkluv sent me and although I would be able to extract the strings, I wouldn't be able to properly reinsert them even if my life depended on it. You, on the other hand, appear to be an avid programmer and probably have some dedicated tool at your disposal to do the dumping/reinsertion of the strings in the uncompressed ._sy or compressed .lib files for you. From what I understood, you still have the files that have to get translated, right? Also, a few weeks ago veleskola indicated that he would be interested in helping me with the translation while jdkluv and Truner can probably get roped in for editing. If there's any image editing to be done, Truner and I would be able to help as well. I would like to supervise this translation project myself. If others feel like contributing one way or another, just let me know!

[SkyeWelse]

Just for the record, I'd be happy to beta test patches for this if the project should commence. I have two versions of Brandish 4 that I could try as well. I could never could get the first release of the patch to work properly. The two versions that I have are the original Big Box release and the smaller version released with Falcom Game Box Vol. 1.

Hoping to see this get picked up again! : )

-Thomas

[Shadowserg]

I hope to play someday Brandish 4 in English. Gu4n, I wish you good luck with this project!

[Gu4n]

The translation has started, but we could use a little of help from people who love playing Brandish (jdkluv hmm?). There is virtually no suggestion of context whatsoever in the script files, so basically I'm translating lines blindly, one by one, not knowing where conversations start and end, only to discover that the dialogue appears in a totally different context or that it's the protagonist who's talking, rather than some NPCs asking you to do something. I don't mind playing it myself - the music is fantastic and I also like the sprites - but it's not as practical as having screenshots.

If someone could take a character and play through the game while taking screenshots of dialogues, that would help immensely! We beginning of Dee's story had already been finished once I picked up the translation.

In term of length: Brandish 4 is roughly 14.000 lines (not strings) in length, making it significantly larger than The Dark Revenant but certainly doable with a bit of context - the dialogues themselves are fairly easy for that matter.

Here are two shots of the inserted translation at the beginning of Clare's playthrough.


Edit: The designs of the frame/menu are gorgeous as well.

[SkyeWelse]

Nice update Gu4n!

I'm not sure if I'll really have the time right now to play through it completely right at this moment, but I'll definitely install it again and take what screenshots I can. Are you mostly interested in dialogue screenshots or do you need other things as well such as text that might show up as popups in other places, perhaps a cut-scene or trap/puzzle/treasure chest dialogue as well?

Also, you are playing through Clare's playthrough right now correct? So if others are looking to play, we should choose a different character path right?

Edit: Just installed it just to see if it would run on my Windows 8.1 Laptop and it does. I started off just with the main character, Tei? If I remember reading his name correctly before renaming it. Having a bit of trouble getting the game to run in windowed mode and I don't see any settings in the Falcom.INF file for Fullscreen or Windowed mode set to 1 or something. Also tried the common method for creating a shortcut and launching the game with -w or -window or -windowed and this does nothing either.

Also, what are some good programs for taking instant screenshots and saving them to a directory?

-Thomas

[Gu4n]

Jul 30, 2014 7:46:52 GMT -5 SkyeWelse said:

I'm not sure if I'll really have the time right now to play through it completely right at this moment, but I'll definitely install it again and take what screenshots I can. Are you mostly interested in dialogue screenshots or do you need other things as well such as text that might show up as popups in other places, perhaps a cut-scene or trap/puzzle/treasure chest dialogue as well?

What I'm doing myself right now is taking screenshots of the first line of each speaker in a dialogue (so in Clare and Saphire's case, one of Clare's first line and one of Saphire's first line), and screenshots of shopkeepers and the wall plaques.

Also, you are playing through Clare's playthrough right now correct? So if others are looking to play, we should choose a different character path right?

I'm playing as Quien right now.

Edit: Just installed it just to see if it would run on my Windows 8.1 Laptop and it does. I started off just with the main character, Tei? If I remember reading his name correctly before renaming it. Having a bit of trouble getting the game to run in windowed mode and I don't see any settings in the Falcom.INF file for Fullscreen or Windowed mode set to 1 or something. Also tried the common method for creating a shortcut and launching the game with -w or -window or -windowed and this does nothing either.

It's Dee. The early dialogues for Dee have already been translated (see patch v1.0). You could try to use D3DWindower, it works for jdkluv and me.

Also, what are some good programs for taking instant screenshots and saving them to a directory?

Dropbox works for me. Everytime I ALT+PrtScn, Dropbox saves this image in its /Screenshots/ folder. This is an option in the recent versions of Dropbox.

[jdkluv]

Jul 30, 2014 7:46:52 GMT -5 SkyeWelse said:

Also, you are playing through Clare's playthrough right now correct? So if others are looking to play, we should choose a different character path right?

I've discussed this with DTagg (the hacker) via email, although I have yet to see his opinion on this matter. Yeah, it would be a good idea to have at least four testers - one for each character (Dee, Clare, Quien and Mermelada). Brandish 4 also supports multiple saves, which can come in handy for testing purposes.

I offer myself to test everything it could be needed in Dee's story - both providing screenshots with Japanese text for context and to test the translation. I assume Gu4n will do Quien's route?

Regarding D3DWindower: This is the configuration I recommend for Brandish 4:



Another really cool thing we could try to do would be two patches to replace the MIDI soundtrack that comes with Brandish 4 - one for the original PC-98 score of Brandish VT and a second one for its MIDI version from the Falcom Special Box '97 (which is completely different from the one from Brandish 4, and much better IMO). It also has an in-game option to choose between "Wave" and "MIDI" soundtracks.



*Edit* I'll also take a few screenshots from Brandish VT's manual.

[Gu4n]

Good one, jdkluv. I'll look into it as we get further along the line with translating the game.

Another thing that needs to get modified is the standard font for the name  you pick. It's serif, while the rest of the in-game latin font is sans serif, resulting in scenes like this:

SPOILER: Click to show

Not a major issue, but something we should address whenever we get the chance.

Edit: No need to screenshot the Dee playthrough anymore, jdkluv. I found this website which has the full transcription of Dee's playthrough, so that's what I was looking for. This should speed up the translation process significantly. Screenshots of shopkeepers are still very welcome, of course. I only found Gina so so far.

SPOILER: Click to show

[Gu4n]

After a busy month at work and a month worth of holidays, I'm back into translation gear.

For now, I've decided to focus solely on Dee's playthrough. It's the one that got partially translated as of patch version 1.0. However, there are numerous situations in which the strings are longer than the dialogue box allows them to be, so I'm trying to correct these as I'm playing through the game.

The stone tablets remain, just like in Dark Revenant, annoying to translate. They're cryptic and poetic, even in Japanese, and don't allow a lot of characters. My current translation for '真円の陣形 △は天への誘い', for example, is 'Perfectly shaped circles invite △ heavenward', referring to the teleport circles. The literal translation for '真円の陣形' is 'The formation of a perfect circle', but this neither fits on the tablet nor is a decent translation. So that's something I struggle with.

I've also contacted the hacker regarding the fonts mentioned in my previous post. He's going to look into it.

jdkluv: Have you managed to locate the music files within the game's files? The WAV files are on the disc and not installed locally on the PC. That means that the hacker would need to add an option to use music from a different folder. 

Edit:
Work's progressing nicely. I've cleaned the majority of strings that didn't fit into the dialogue box and I'm currently translating dialogues in the town. I've asked the hacker to deliver some additional tools for the text segments that don't seem to be part of the 'ordinary' text files, which are probably stored within the executable. We're planning to release an updated patch soon after that.

[asi85]

I'd like to thank you guys too for this translation! I hope Brandish 3 gets translated too so we could all play the entire franchise!