Rockman 4 MI re-translation project

[SatoshiMatrix]

Alrighty ~ moving along, I've fixed all the Engrish in the Dr. Cossack defeat cutscene:

Went from:



to this:



Let me know any suggestions or typos. Haven't had a chance to really go over the script. Keep in mind there's a 24 character per line, two lines per screen limit.

[SatoshiMatrix]

So good news! I contacted the author and he says there is plenty of free space in character code to support all 26 lower case English letters. I've also asked him to support eight additional special characters from Rockman 9's font:

" " + * & and ... [as a single character]

here's his asm code if this makes sense to anyone:

[SatoshiMatrix]

lower case characters have been implemented, so here's a preliminary look at a cutscene with the newfangled standard font.

ignore random Kalinka in tile data. that'll be removed of course.



I'm mostly guessing at the exact character spacing based on the spacing I've seen in other games with this exact font. I'm pretty satisfied with it, with the exception of the p's and q's. The characters look out of place, and it almost makes me want to try to rewrite the dialogue again to avoid the use of either character. Maybe that's just because I've been staring at this font for the past few hours.

[zzo38]

Alrighty ~ moving along, I've fixed all the Engrish in the Dr. Cossack defeat cutscene:

Went from:

...

to this:

...

Let me know any suggestions or typos. Haven't had a chance to really go over the script. Keep in mind there's a 24 character per line, two lines per screen limit.

I happen to think actually much of the first one is better, although not all of it; the second one does improve some things that are no good in the first one. (Also, there should be a space after the comma in the third frame of the second version)

[tepples]

The font could use "il" and "li" tiles, and possibly some changes to the glyphs for the lowercase letters. Post the font's tile sheet and I'll do what I can to make it more readable.

[tokumaru]

Lowercase characters that extend below the baseline look terrible... If you really want to combine uppercase and lowercase I think you should leave one empty line at the bottom of uppercase characters, and use that line exclusively in lowercase characters that need it, so that you have a constant baseline.

[SatoshiMatrix]

The font is from Megaman 9. I'd like the lowercase p and q to look better.

[tokumaru]

The font is from Megaman 9. I'd like the lowercase p and q to look better.

Notice how the uppercase characters are all 7 pixels tall. Since each tile is 8 pixels tall, you can place the characters at the very top of the tile, leaving a blank line at the bottom. Most lowercase characters will also have this blank line, but the few ones that extend downwards can use the extra line. You don't need to modify their appearance at all, just place them differently in the tiles.

characters.png (989 Bytes) Viewed 3352 times

[proveaux]

You could use the one I edited for Ghost Hunter. It worked well for me.

Edit... I'm slow. What tokumaru said is what I did.

[tepples]

Original and revised lowercase letters

wily8x8lower.png (1.68 KiB) Viewed 3360 times

Line 1: Original font
Line 2: Spacing corrected (gpqy moved 1px down, a few characters nudged 1px right)
Line 3: Minor pixel edits (a rounded, fhij raised to x-height, l distinguished from capital I, n made consistent with u, s looks less like an 8), and added a few ligature glyphs
Line 4: Reduce most lowercase letters to 6px width
Lines 5 and 6: Examples of character names in line 4's font

I'd move the comma ',' down 1px so that it's top is level with that of the period '.', and I'd do the same thing to the bottom stroke of the colon ':' and semicolon ';'. You can see this in line 4.

And I'd recommend one minor change to the script. You use the colon after the speaker's name, but English also uses the colon for addressing someone. For example, in the following line, is Camille speaking, or is Nemo addressing Camille?

Camille: Flip's gone.

Guess which game's screenshots first led me to notice this potential for confusion. I'd recommend adopting the IRC convention of surrounding the speaker's name in angle brackets. So change this:

Blues:Don't worry, I'm
Rock's... acquaintance.

to this:
<Blues>Don't worry, I'm
Rock's... acquaintance.

[SatoshiMatrix]

That might be a good idea, except that < > are two additional characters I don't believe are implemented into the romhack as of yet, (thought they could be) and they are also two characters, which is problematic as the Rockman 3/4/5/6 textbox is limited to 24 characters per line, two lines at a time. Adding in two characters every time a new character speaks is expensive in terms of the limited spacing.

I like what you've done though. Using your fonts, could you create some example words consisting of the following characters:

g j o p q ! ?

Perhaps

Megaman jumps over powerups quickly!?

[lidnariq]

Just a few ideas:
Do you have the CJK quotation marks somewhere? 「」『』 (Wild ARMs used them)
Spanish and French use —emdashes to denote quotes
English scripts put the speaker's name in ALL CAPS, although often on a line by itself
Just using “quotation marks” could also help.

[tepples]

the Rockman 3/4/5/6 textbox is limited to 24 characters per line, two lines at a time.

What I did for the textbox in Concentration Room and Thwaite is put the speaker on a separate line.

Code: Select all

<Blues>
Don't worry, I'm
Rock's... acquaintance.

This allows me to have a list of speakers, and then only one byte before each textbox to say who the speaker is.

Using your fonts, could you create [...] Megaman jumps over powerups quickly!?

Mega Man jumps.png (332 Bytes) Viewed 3353 times

[SatoshiMatrix]

That's great, but again, Rockman 4 is limited to just two lines per screen. Your example uses three and then four. The hacker already told me it would be far too difficult and time consuming to try to change this limitation solely for the English text.

[SatoshiMatrix]

Could someone please rip the other two capital fonts in Rockman 4 MI? They're present in the original game as well.

They are:

the 6x6 font used only in the pause/weapon select screen

and

the green font used in the get weapon screen after you beat the bosses.

These should be easy to find in the rom, especially in the original version of Megaman 4 or Rockman 4.

I need the entire fonts, all characters programmed in, not just the ones the game displays.

I need these to edit with. Thanks.