gosokkyu

GSK

@gosokkyu

エンド

  • 戦う人間発電所

owatte shimatta

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gosokkyu
@gosokkyu
upthorn
@upthorn
upthorn
@upthorn

_____ Translation Progress report and Recruitment Call

After about a month of reverse engineering the game to find and decrypt the text files, I've extracted all the strings from Platine Dispositif C87 stg (_____)

I've got a google doc set up with the alphabet, lexicons both firm and speculative, and autogenerated word-replacement based translations.

Also, a couple days ago, I discovered that the game data archive format is not bespoke, but a common format provided by DxLib (a Japanese open-source library for game devs).

As such, there are a variety of extraction tools online, many of which can even automatically determine the archive encryption key.

I have also discovered that the game can work with raw data files extracted from the archive, allowing for easy testing of translation accuracy.

What we have is:

  • A rudimentary lexicon
  • Some knowledge about the language's morphology (it has some suffixes and is read right to left)
  • Some python scripts to encode/decode the in-game string storage file
  • A small discord (send me an ask for an invite https://discord.gg/Kg7d2JkpPV)

What we need now is:

  • More eyes on this stuff to help guess at word meanings. @ApocalypticFish has been very helpful here, but is only one person
  • Someone who's better at playing the game than I am
  • Help compiling this information from the google doc and small discord I've created into a more searchable format, like a wiki
  • Anyone who's more literate in Japanese than I am to help scour Japanese fanwikis for any information about this game
    • known pseudonym: _____ based on its five-symbol unrenderable title
    • Known pseudonym:platine dispositif C87 based on its release at comiket 87
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in reply to @upthorn's post:

upthorn
@upthorn

Given that there are only 28 glyphs available to work with, if it's a cipher for Japanese, I would expect word lengths to be significantly greater than their standard written forms in Japanese. I've also investigated the possibility of certain glyphs being equivalent to specific kanji, but no two resulting words line up appropriately.

For instance, we've determined that Glyph X seems to be indicate "end" or "final" as it's used as the first character in the word that means "over" for "game over" and "total" for "total score bonus"

But, setting aside that I am not aware of a single Japanese word that works in both situations, Glyph X also appears as the first letter of the word for (killed/destroyed/terminated) and there is no single kanji that works as both the first character of "end/total" and the first character of "kill*/destr*/termin*"

Additionally, the word ordering appears to resemble English more closely than Japanese. Though either our assumed meanings are significantly off or the ordering does not match English exactly.

Addendum: I've made the discord link public, as I should have from the beginning.

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in reply to @upthorn's post:

mauve
@mauve

oh man, dxlib translation tools. that brings me back.

yeah, they use a pretty standard format and most of them didn't even change the default encryption key, which is usually just an sjis string of some sort. pretty easy to extract when you know what you're looking for.

i made a bunch of tools for various games wayyyyy back when i was still doing that sort of thing. They were pretty bespoke and not really meant for public use though.

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upthorn
@upthorn

Hey, longshot, but are you aware of any free libraries besides dxlib that were popular in the '00s? It just hit me that Bunny Must Die's archive files are essentially the exact same format (except the file magic is DA instead of DX)... but Bunny Must Die was published before DxLib added archive support.

Asking because I'm working on a tool to extract these archives, and create and apply patches for them, and I'd like to support these proto-dxlib archives if there might be more of them out there.

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mauve
@mauve

luna was one, desunoya games used it for a long while. hsp(hot soup processor) was one i remember seeing a few times.

most others were homebrew one-offs in my experience and required custom tools. (hellsinker used some pascal(!) derivative dev tool i don't even remember the name of)

back when i did porting work i made a library that could be compatible with both luna and dxlib stuff called dxportlib, i don't update it anymore but you may find something useful there.

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