Moonlight Saga - English translation

Ascended (15187)

22-02-2003, 22:01

Some people think of this as the best game ever made for turboR and - as one of the happy few who owns the damn thing - I'm one of them. To those who don't know what I'm talking about: Moonlight Saga is a huge RPG with smooth-scrolling screens, big maps, fast enemies, MIDI and OPLL music and... an interesting story.

Takamichi Suzukawa translated most of the game scripts long time ago, but the creator of the game did not manage to get the English texts working as they should. Several people were approached to get the translation job done, but until now no one succeeded. Recently the hard disk of the developer crashed.

I happen to have most of (if not, the ENTIRE) source code of the game, including part of the translations Takamichi made. I am thus looking for someone (or more people) who can create this English version. Trust me, the game is worth it.

By anonymous

incognito ergo sum (116)

03-03-2003, 17:07

I do agree ML Saga is a great Turbo R game (I can only make this assumption on the basis of the demoversion of which I have the original). And I really do think this game is a great game to be translated. But there's something I don't understand...

Why wasn't the original programmer capable of implementing the english texts? Was it due to lack of room on the disks or something else? I ask that because he should have been able to do that (especially if Takamichi already provided the translation). He knows the structure of the game best of all, I should think.

What are the problems for translating the game at this moment? You have at least part of the translation so Japanese isn't the issue anymore. Furthermore there is a european characterset in the game so you don't have to make that (not that that is a major chore).
You also have the sourcecode so you could probably exchange the japanese texts with the english equivalents with reletive ease.

As far as I know there's no graphical data which needs to be translated.

Could you elaborate on what is the trouble with translating the game?

By snout

Ascended (15187)

03-03-2003, 21:26

The translation project was started a couple of years after MLS was made and the devloper more or less dropped MSX. As many coders, he had forgotten how part of his sources worked. After a few failures he lost all interest in creating the new game.

IIRC one of the problems implementing English texts was indeed the ammount of memory used. But I'm not a good Z80 coder and I did not even had a close close look at the sources yet.

By anonymous

incognito ergo sum (116)

04-03-2003, 14:44

If memory is the probelm there are some options to get more on the disk:

- remove the kanji-texts (if that is what they are) and replace them with ascii values
- use of libraries to store often used words
- perhaps use another disk to store more data

Are there any notes along side the source codes which can help you make sense of the code?

By snout

Ascended (15187)

04-03-2003, 15:16

mostly short abbreviations and Japanese

By snout

Ascended (15187)

04-03-2003, 15:20

...but I'm not looking to translate the game myself. If someone is willing to have a look at the sources I'm willing to send them.

By anonymous

incognito ergo sum (116)

04-03-2003, 15:51

Normally i would be verry much interested but I am working on some other projects at the moment. So at this stage I don't have as much time on my hands. But maybe I could take a look at it.

By snout

Ascended (15187)

04-03-2003, 16:07

Well the project has been around for years no, so no need to hurry all of a sudden

By snout

Ascended (15187)

24-08-2004, 22:07

But it's time to draw some attention to this again. Sunrise has recently released the game in Europe, I still have the full source code do the game (incl. map editor) on my harddisk over here. Who's willing to implement the English translation to this MSX RPG masterpiece?

By Sama

Ambassador (2068)

24-08-2004, 22:31

The Sunrise release is still in Japanese?

By Abi

Hero (600)

24-08-2004, 22:49

Yes the Sunrise release is still in english, i bought one copy of it.
It's a great game, but it's sad i dunno the story because i can not read any japanese