I too would like to see English versions of Russian games.
And if someone needs an English version of a Spanish or Portuguese game, please PM me and I'll see what I can do.
Hi Bruno,
there is really a game I would like to see. It was a spanish game and it was something like "Name of the rose". It was very famous in Spain and I once tried to translate it. But I failed as I am neither Spanish nor English. However, somebody surely know the game I want, I just can?t remember the name now.
Hi Bruno,
there is really a game I would like to see. It was a spanish game and it was something like "Name of the rose". It was very famous in Spain and I once tried to translate it. But I failed as I am neither Spanish nor English. However, somebody surely know the game I want, I just can?t remember the name now.
They're just taken from BETA5 snapshot so nothing new other than the music.
They make it easier to update the language fixes.
Save Binary File in ZXSpin.
Select RAM Page : Bank 4
Start Address : 0
Data Length : 16384
Save as diz14.bin
Then in ZXBlockeditor delete 'diz14' standard data, open data block composer, select datablocks tab and Standard Data, press 'Open' to load new 'diz14.bin'. Click Insert.
Save new tap.
I'll assemble the cheat enabler next and insert it in a rem line in the basic loader of these tap's.
22 means 'print at' and the next two numbers are the location y,x (down, across).
16 mean ink and the next number is the colour.
255 is the end marker.
Because its now shorter than the original, and I was replacing only one message, I padded the rest after the '255' end marker with spaces '32'.
Thanks for this tip, FrankT. I had already altered many of the "PRINT AT" control codes in the game and also moved some of the INK specifiers around (as the formatting after translating was even "more out of whack" in the versions I never released, before doing this :D ).
Now it's not too bad in the BETA versions as also row/column values had been changed by me, but as you have noticed, some dialog boxes still have excess space in them, or still not formatted in the best way.
However, you have to be very careful when padding extra spaces after the $FF end of string marker, because if you do that then the extra spaces will get pre-pended onto the following string in memory. (Until now I had avoided doing this).
I haven't exactly dissassembled the game, but the text strings are surprisingly not at fixed addresses (they are totally dynamic at runtime - dependant on the positions of the $FF bytes), so for example if you move an $FF byte lower down in memory say eight bytes, then you have effectively made the following string in memory eight bytes longer. The newly pre-pended characters also will come first in the adjacent string, before the "PRINT AT" control codes and therefore will just be placed on the screen wherever the "text cursor" happens to be.
In other words, an $FF byte should preferably be followed by a "$16 $YY $XX" sequence before any printable characters occur, even spaces. On testing cases where printable characters occur immediately after an $FF, the extra characters introduced into the following string often get printed outside the text box. If they go either off the right hand edge of the screen or the bottom of the screen, then it will crash the game.
You won't notice any problems on the string you are actually editing, but the string after it will possibly have this problem, and the problem may only show up depending on the position on the screen of the previous text box which was displayed. (You can see the problem by replacing some of the space padding with some other visible character after the relocated $FF byte and notice how it gets placed in an unpredictable area.)
For example I have a test snapshot in which an $FF byte has been moved as you described, and the game plays fine when you look at the rocket. However if you read the scroll on the first screen first, then the game crashes, because the text cursor has moved and the next padded string does not start with a "PRINT AT" sequence.
Hope all this makes sense as to why I never used the above technique. :)
So, that's why a few of the boxes still have more space in them than I'd ideally like. I decided to retain the padding in the text box I was actually working on rather than shunting it into the next string in order to avoid the above potential problem.
Also, you can't use two $FF bytes to seperate strings either as doing so introduces effectively an extra string into the game, causing various messages not to be printed out, or worse the wrong message gets printed out.
So, in summary, moving the $FF bytes around is OK, but you must also move the entire adjacent string back in memory too and so on, like a very long chain. :)
Or of course you could pad them with some sort of "non-printable" character intsead, but it as of yet untested.
EDIT: Just to say, I also found today that surprisingly the BETA 5 tapefile runs fine in SPIN 0.62 & 0.66 if emulating a +2/+2A or +3, but crashes to 48K mode if the emulator is set to simply "Spectrum 128K" mode. This way a very surprising result and I was using flash loading.
In SpecEmu however, it works fine on any 128K model as expected. Pretty strange that one!
EDIT2: In any case I will now perform the outstanding translation fixes on a SNA file I just derived from the BETA5 version. Hope to start this this evening. Will post the corrected snapshot when ready.
So, that's why a few of the boxes still have more space in them than I'd ideally like. I decided to retain the padding in the text box I was actually working on rather than shunting it into the next string in order to avoid the above potential problem.
This is just a hunch, and may or may not work - but have you tried padding out the messages with CHR$ 9 instead of spaces?
This is just a hunch, and may or may not work - but have you tried padding out the messages with CHR$ 9 instead of spaces?
Thanks for the reply, I just edited my post above before reading this, to mention the possiblility of using a non-printable character, as the thought co-incidentally also occured to me. I wan't sure which one to use though!
I just tried it with CHR$ 9 in the test snapshot, crashes also. There may well be though some other control character which would not crash it? Needs further testing. Cheers!
"Having summoned the great force the plating moves" :) lol
so the plating had tightened trousers and summoned the force? haha :)
obviously there should be "Dizzy moved the plating"
Well, the original translation in English would clearly imply that DIZZY had summoned great force and moved the plating.
Very often in English, we can drop the pronoun - it is implied (in this case that DIZZY is the actor). So it did make sense in this case.
But yes I totally agree it is was poor use of grammar by me, simply trying to make it fit well in the available space.
I have now changed it to "Using all of his might, Dizzy managed to move the plating". Which admittedly reads better. There's just so much space to use up in that particular dialog box!
"DIZ, а ты что здесь делаешь?" means "Dizzy, what are you doing?", not "DIZ, can you do anything?"
Thanks I've fixed this mistake.
and the answer is "тебя спасаю, придурок!", which means "I'm helping you, idiot!".
So like this it have sense :) Like it is now in game - it do not have any sense i think.
"ок. хватит грузить" means "ok, stop (i forgot how is it in english the word for stop talking about unneeded things. blabbering? or just 'talking' maybe)"
Thanks for that one, it was an idiom I totally missed, so I had used a sentence derived from the literal translation!
Yes you are right, blabbering or rambling, jabbering waffling prattling etc.. all mean pretty much similar things.
That string happens to be filled up to maximum length in the binary so in English we can simply say "OK, That's Enough", which fits in the available space.
"что, DOZY, не спится там, внутри, а? -поинтересовался DIZZY" means "Hey, Dozy, you do not sleep inside there [or "do you sleep inside there", no big difference for the plot]? - asked dizzy"
Fixed it "Hey, Dozy, do you sleep inside there? asked Dizzy"
and the answer: "But Dozy did not listened to him [to Dizzy] and continued to yell something unintelligible"
will critic other later
It was already translated as "Dozy didn't listen and continued to shout, muffled". Which is quite possibly as near as I can get in this case. The admittedly more accurate "something unintelligible" just isn't going to fit in the space. I'll try to think of something more suitable. If not, then the current wording will certainly suffice for this one. Cheers!
Well, Shadow Maker has inspired me to follow suit and point out the one thing that was bugging me slightly... :-)
One of the scrolls says something like "Hey, stop reading adverts and get on with your job". "Adverts" seems like a mistranslation to me (it's not really an advert) - I think "notices" would fit better.
Thanks gasman, the original Russian word in question is рекламу which can mean "Adverstisement" or "Advertising" I think.
I think "flyer" or "blurb" may be more appropriate here though.
Certainly "notice" would also be OK.
I have changed it to "..stop reading notices.." which certainly does seem more suited in the game. Cheers!
This is a temp version. Next time I look at it, I'll have to playtest again and also possibly reformat some of the changed strings.
Also, would like to try FrankT's idea in conjunction with Jonathan's suggestion of using some sort of "nul" non-printable characters for padding on some of the dialog boxes.
So it's possibly not worth embedding this one in a tap file just yet. :)
I'll post another one after the next batch of minor alterations, but I've finished working on it for today. Cheers!
Just got back online tonight after bt suspending my broadband until I payed the bill.
Anyway, about the padding of text.
The $FF is an end marker for the strings. And if padding is needed, just print over the text with spaces before the $FF end marker. Spaces are invisible, they don't blank out anything.
So for this message which has 5 bytes left over after editing,
ORG RAM4:5204
DEFB 22, 13, 5, 16, 6, "RUMMAGING THROUGH"
DEFB 22, 14, 5, "THE ROCKET AGAIN,"
DEFB 22, 15, 5, "YOU FOUND A HAMMER"
DEFB 22, 13, 5, 32, 32 ; prints 2 spaces over 1st line (5 bytes)
DEFB 255 ; end marker
What happens when its completed?
Do you get the message for the outro or does it just go back to the title screen?
Maybe I could do some more hacking and get it to load the outro from tape.
I'd need a snap just before its completed though.
Just got back online tonight after bt suspending my broadband until I payed the bill.
Anyway, about the padding of text.
The $FF is an end marker for the strings. And if padding is needed, just print over the text with spaces before the $FF end marker. Spaces are invisible, they don't blank out anything.
So for this message which has 5 bytes left over after editing,
ORG RAM4:5204
DEFB 22, 13, 5, 16, 6, "RUMMAGING THROUGH"
DEFB 22, 14, 5, "THE ROCKET AGAIN,"
DEFB 22, 15, 5, "YOU FOUND A HAMMER"
DEFB 22, 13, 5, 32, 32 ; prints 2 spaces over 1st line (5 bytes)
DEFB 255 ; end marker
What happens when its completed?
Do you get the message for the outro or does it just go back to the title screen?
Maybe I could do some more hacking and get it to load the outro from tape.
I'd need a snap just before its completed though.
Thanks FrankT, that's a good idea about the spaces. You are right, when spaces are encountered in a string they aren't actually written to the screen so this solution should be fine!
When the game is completed, it enters an animated routine with graphical effects, which takes a little while to run. When that routine has completed, eventually it does indeed return back to the title screen again. The "game won" graphical routine was crashing in an earlier version, forcing me to roll back an entire day of work a few weeks back, but as far as I know the currrent version dervied from the rollback does not have that problem. However, as the game has been modded much further since last play through, I really need to test it again in the final released version, just to be 100% sure.
I'll certainly try and get a snap together over the next few days. The one we have is pretty close, it just needs a few formatting fixes now as per your above suggestion. Again, it's the actual playing through the game to double check each and every dialog box on demand that takes the time - editing the binary only takes a matter of minutes.
What I'll do is start playing the game through again from the beginning today and when completed I will upload the snaphsot. Hopefully it'll be sometime next week.
Then finally, if you can again apply all of your efforts like the loader and the trainer option etc.. to that snap, it should give us a good enough version for a "final" release. I admit it may still contain a small number of phrases which may possibly have not completely accurate translations, mainly if there is an idiomatic expression I missed or joke I misunderstood - but if an English speaker can play the whole game through and it consistently makes sense without anything confusing, then it's better than no release at all I suppose. :)
Of course the translated version will always be open to possible further improvements, although I fear if I tried to get it 100% perfect then we'd be waiting a very long time before a release, so I'm aiming for reasonably good instead. :D
Just a quick "head's up" to say I haven't disappeared and also I'm still intending to release a "final" version English snapshot of the Dizzy game with the latest formatting corrections etc... so that FrankT can apply his loader to it :)
However, due to many ongoing activities in real life, as it turns out I have not been near an emulator in the last ten days or so.
So, unfortunately I had not even the chance to start on this over the last week as I'd originally hoped.
I do have some free time again this weekend, but am quite honestly too tired to play through the whole game again at the moment.
But, I will certainly reply back when the situation changes and I am able to work on it again. Until then, I just wanted to pop in and say I definitely haven't abandoned the "final" version or anything, rather it's just that I can't be exactly sure when it'll be ready. Of course, when it is, I will post back here! :D Cheers.
'Tis cool, man....Take your time! We appreciate what you've done so far....
:)
Thanks deadpan666! I did at least make a start on the formatting corrections on the first screen this morning:-
In each case I have managed to remove the excess space between the text and the outline box, thanks to FrankT's suggestion above:-
This one is centre-justified. Looks OK.
This one is exactly as FrankT specified, looks really neat.
This one is not quite so neat, although the excess space found in the previous version has been removed. Here it is left justifed, although I can't help but wonder if it wouldn't appear better if it were centre justified, or if re-formatted as "YOU ALSO FOUND", "A USEFUL", "SCREWDRIVER".
I'll continue to play around with the formatting at next opportunity. Other Dizzy games I have noticed use centre justification or left justification, sometimes both styles are found within the same game.
I guess the layout doesn't have to be perfect, but when neater it undoubtedly does look better.
Hi Digital Prawn, any chance that we will see the final snap? ;-)
Hi Pavero,
Thanks for the interest. I haven't posted for a long while on any speccy forums/newsgroups because truthfully I haven't even loaded up a speccy emulator since I last posted here!! Since I don't post in chit-chat too much either, I only really tend to get into the forum-posting habit when I'm actively doing something in the speccy scene. If I'm not, then no posts. :) Of course I still keep half an eye on the WOS forums though.
The best I can say at the moment is that perhaps I will get back into it sometime next year. If I do, I'll be sure to post back here. Unfortunately, this year is not possible for me due to other commitments.
It would be a shame for me not to finish that translated snapshot though. Although the current BETA translated version is completable there are still a few "howlers" i.e. completely wrong translated bits that really do need fixing (as described in this very thread) before I could release it into the archive.
I also know FrankT has a custom loader and everything ready so I must apologise that I did dissapear for a while.
When I last worked on the game a few months back, I'd play-tested it constantly every evening and weekends for something like three weeks - I must confess I became a little bit sick of it due to overplaying (similar to "Tetris effect" on Wikipedia) and I don't think I could have carried on playing it any more at that time. So, I had to do other things for a while instead. :) Of course it is a most excellent Dizzy game though!
So, hopefully I will get back to finishing what I started, but can't really give a time. I'll see how things work out for me next year and if possible I will try to finish it.
So, hopefully I will get back to finishing what I started, but can't really give a time. I'll see how things work out for me next year and if possible I will try to finish it.
Cheers!, DP
Cool cool......Been playing this again the last couple of nights actually! Just finish it when you can find the time, DP...I understand how annoying it must be to play something over & over & over again!!
I'm just enjoying the fact that I can play it and at least have some idea of what's going on!
Oh, and while this thread is back at the top of the forums, there are still loads of other games that could do with someone else giving them a translation...any takers???
Resurecting this thread. I have changed the Cyrillic to Latinic font in "Escape to Kharkhan" and ripped out all the texts in the game. Unfortunetly I don't speak Russian to attemt the translation, but if anyone here could then please do. The zip file containing the game and the ripped text of the game is here :
All three fonts were converted to latin style, so the only thing left is the actual translation of the texts. You will need a hex editor of some sort to edit the file (I use Ultraedit which has a nice hex editor).
Hope someone can translate this great game for everyone to enjoy.
Used google translate on the first few screens and invenotry and got this translated a bit :)
(bastante pratico, principalmente para os jogos que n?o s?o em ingl?s, eu lembro-me que em puto tinha sempre dificuldade com os jogos espanhois e franceses... mas era sempre uma festa quando aparecia a palavra "pu?etazo"!)
Okie, the translation of "Escape to Kharkhan" is now complete... here is the "beta" version since I didnt yet have a chance to go through the whole game (it is huge... you can get RZX from TipShop - search for harhan) but it should be OK throughout :) Everything is translated :
I too would like to see English versions of Russian games.
And if someone needs an English version of a Spanish or Portuguese game, please PM me and I'll see what I can do.
Bruno, do you know if there are many Portuguese games? back in the day (when I bought the games for my +3 in Triudos) the few games I could remember that where portuguese (or portuguese convertions) where Arkanoid (I wonder if someone can find that version, where the text was in Portuguese), System 2000 and Paradise Caf?...
I've been able to sort of half-play the Russian Dizzy games, thanks to being able to read the Russian alphabet. I can't understand Russian though. Just the odd word that comes up like фотокамера which reads as FOTOCAMERA (hmmm, wonder what that could be...).
I have absolutely no idea where this knowledge of the cyrillic alphabet comes from. I didn't study it in school or anything, and I have absolutely no ties with Russia whatsoever.
I can gladly help with this translation if someone provide me with all the texts.
But I should tell you that this particular game is just awful and sometimes even stupid in terms of storyline and character lines. For example, author thinks that Dozy is the girl! And there are too many stupid anecdotes and exclamation marks. It's like it was written by some 12 years old guy.
So it's not the best choice. But I can help anyway.
I can gladly help with this translation if someone provide me with all the texts.
So it's not the best choice. But I can help anyway.
Any help you can give translating any games would be greatly appreciated! As I mentioned when I started the thread, I'm afraid I can't be very helpful as my programming knowledge isn't great, but if any of the other spec-chums want to send you stuff, then I'll be sitting here ready to play the finished products!
The more Spectrum games I get to understand and enjoy, the better! Oh, and if there are people whose English isn't so good that want games translated to their language, feel free to use this thread to try and make things happen!
There are so many Russian games, not only Dizzy clones, which look very nice. Some examples:
Vera, winner of Your Game 2008;
Stalker - an adventure/strategy hybrid cloned from Laser Squad;
the two UFOs, inspired by the X-COM PC games ;
the Black Raven series, inspired by Blizzard's Warcraft;
and many others...
Unfortunately the majority of us cannot play them due to language barriers :( Could someone who a) knows Russian and (at least) English, and b) has the time and necessary skills - not necessary the same person - translate them? A very good job has been already done with titles such as the very interesting Twilight, so why shouldn't that be done again?
Any help you can give translating any games would be greatly appreciated! As I mentioned when I started the thread, I'm afraid I can't be very helpful as my programming knowledge isn't great, but if any of the other spec-chums want to send you stuff, then I'll be sitting here ready to play the finished products!
Well, OK, I'll be waiting for somebody to actually start translation and then I can offer my help. My english is far from perfect, but I believe that any english-speaking person can polish my translated texts.
So now we can start with Return to Magicland. Is there anybody want to actually change the code of this game?
Well, here are all dialogs and other texts from Return to the Magicland translated by Ralf.
So I would like to ask some native speakers to look at them. And of course you can also improve those two silly jokes :)
BFCA: YOU TICKLE SKELETON'S LEG WITH THE QUILL
BFEB: YOU RAISE THE COVER WITH THE HOOK
C00E: YOU BREAK THE BRIDGE WITH THE AXE
C02B: WITH A KEY YOU OPEN THE HATCH LEADING TO A CAVE
C056: YOU TIE STICKS TO THE SPRING
C077: YOU SUCCEED TO DEPLOY THE FOLDING BRIDGE
C0A9: YOU GIVE THE BOOK TO DENZIL
C0DA: THANKS DIZZY FOR THE INTERESTING BOOK! TAKE THIS TRUSTY AXE
C114: "GRANDPA GIVES ME THIS AXE"
C12C: "YOU WANT TO HEAR A JOKE?"
C14C: "SURE, TELL ME"
C16B: "WINNIE THE POOH FINDS A RIFLE IN THE FOREST, WHAT A NICE FLUTE HIS THINKS.
HE MEETS PIGLET ANS SAYS "LET'S PLAY, YOU'LL BLOW AND I'LL PRESS BUTTONS"
C1F0: PIGLET AGREED AND THEY BEGAN. SUDDENLY THE RIFLE FIRED AND PIGLET HEAD WAS
BLOWN AWAY. "DON'T FOOL" SAID WINNIE "MY HEAD IS BLOWING TOO"
** this joke should be replaced with something else as I can't find it funny
in original and in translation it's even worse :) **
C27C: SOMETHING CRACKS AND THE DOOR CLOSES BEHIND YOU
C2AE: YOU KEEP WALKING BUT SUDDENLY A SKELETON ATTACKS AND KILLS YOU
C2E2: YOU TURN THE SWITCH AND BREAK IT!
C306: YOU PULL THE SKELETON'S LEG AND SOMETHING CRACKLES
C32F: SKELETON LAUGHS FOR A LONG TIME UNTIL HE GETS TIRED AND GOES TO SLEEP
C34D: YOU ARE KILLED BY A VAMPIRE!
C362: YOU CAN TELEPORT TO MAGICLAND FOR TWENTY COINS
C393: WELL DONE! YOU ARE TELEPORTED TO MAGICLAND
C3BC: "HELLO GRANDPA!"
C3D1: "HELLO DIZZY"
C3E4: "HAVE YOU SEEN DAISY?"
C3FC: "I SAW HER WALKING NEAR MY WORKSHOP"
C42D: "I'LL GO TO SEARCH FOR DAISY"
C448: "GOOD!TAKE THIS BIG HOOK,YOU'LL NEED IT"
C47E: "THANKS GRANDPA!"
C493: "I WORRY IF SHE WON'T BREAK ANYTHING IN MY WORKSHOP"
C4C9: "HELLO DENZIL,HAVE YOU SEEN DAISY?"
C4F6: "HI DIZZY,DON'T WORRY FOR HER,LET'S HAVE SOME FUN INSTEAD"
C5D2: "BUT NO,I HAVEN'T SEEN HER SINCE MORNING"
C548: "HELLO DOZY, HAVEN'T YOU SEEN DAISY?"
C568: "HI DIZZY, I SAW HER AROUND THE WORKSHOP"
C5A1: "GOOD, I'LL GO TO LOOK FOR HER"
C5C2: "HI DYLAN, MAYBE YOU HAVE SEEN DAISY?"
C5E8: "HI DIZZY, SHE WAS NEAR THE WORKSHOP AND THEN THERE WAS SOME BIG NOISE THERE"
C6C2: "GOOD! I CAN TELL YOU A JOKE IF YOU WISH"
C657: "SURE! GO ON!"
C670: "LION GATHERED ALL ANIMALS AND ORDERED THEM TO TELL JOKES
IF SOMEBODY WON'T LAUGH, WE'LL EAT THE TELLER!"
C6C8: "A RABBIT TOLD A JOKE AND EVERYBODY LAUGHED EXCEPT GIRAFFE,SO THEY ATE THE RABBIT
C701: THEN A FOX TOLD A JOKE AND NOBODY LAUGHED EXCEPT GIRAFFE
C73D: SO THEY ASKED HIM WHY HE'S LAUGHING.GIRAFFE ANSWERED "YOU KNOW, THAT RABBIT'S JOKE
WAS REALLY GOOD!"
** another corny joke that could be replaced with something else :) **
C786: "HA HA HA!WHAT A GREAT JOKE! LONG TIME SINCE I'VE HEARD A SIMILAR ONE"
C7BF: "DYLAN IGNORES YOU NOW"
C7FC: "HI DORA! HAVEN'T YOU SEEN DAISY?"
C81D: "HI,SOMETHING TERRIBLE HAPPENED!WHEN DAISY WAS WALKING BY THE WORKSHOP, SUDDENLY
GRANDPA'S MACHINE STARTED"
C876: "TELL ME NOW WHAT HAPPENED THERE!!!"
C89E: "DAISY DISSAPPEARED! SHE MUST HAVE BEEN TELEPORTED TO MAGICLAND"
C8D0: "SO WE MUST USE THE MACHINE TO RETURN HER HOME!!!"
C912: "WELL, BUT AFTER THE TELEPORTATION THE MACHINE EXPLODED!"
C944: "WHAT TO DO NOW?"
C95E: "THERE ARE RUMOURS ABOUT A SORCERER WHO CAN TELEPORT YOU THERE"
C9A0: "SO WHERE IS HE?"
C9B7: "I'VE HEARD HE'S SOMEWHERE UNDERGROUND"
C9DE: AND DIZZY TRAVELLED TO MAGICLAND TO RESCUE DAISY
the Black Raven series, inspired by Blizzard's Warcraft;
Black Raven is opensource now, and yet there's not so much text (all you may need for a stable gameplay is to know the original Warcraft's logistics and what to do on this or that mission) to translate, although considering the way the intro movie puts the text in (which is, written a-la old Russian folk), that may need some work.
Another thing I'm aware of is that the mission briefings are implanted right into the maps (all of which are on disk 2). And that the only typeset available here is in Russian (excluding a couple or two of letters in English).
Comments
Hi Bruno,
there is really a game I would like to see. It was a spanish game and it was something like "Name of the rose". It was very famous in Spain and I once tried to translate it. But I failed as I am neither Spanish nor English. However, somebody surely know the game I want, I just can?t remember the name now.
Regards
Thomas
That's La Abadia del Crimen (Abbey of Crime)
http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0000047
and there is an English translated version. It was never formally finished, only released at a beta stage, but I've heard it is fully translated.
There are two files I know of:
http://rapidshare.com/files/247038555/AbbeyOfCrime-English_Beta_.zip
http://rapidshare.com/files/247038494/AbbeyOfCrime_WorkInProgress_.zip
I don't know if one is more advanced than the other, please post up if you find that one is better than the other.
The English instructions are on the WOS page above.
Edit: Forgot to say, the game was based on a book, whose title (when translated to English) was something like "The name of a Rose".
http://frankt.co.cc/spec/DizzyXII_BETA5_mus1.tap
http://frankt.co.cc/spec/DizzyXII_BETA5_mus2.tap
http://frankt.co.cc/spec/DizzyXII_BETA5_mus3.tap
They're just taken from BETA5 snapshot so nothing new other than the music.
They make it easier to update the language fixes.
Save Binary File in ZXSpin.
Select RAM Page : Bank 4
Start Address : 0
Data Length : 16384
Save as diz14.bin
Then in ZXBlockeditor delete 'diz14' standard data, open data block composer, select datablocks tab and Standard Data, press 'Open' to load new 'diz14.bin'. Click Insert.
Save new tap.
I'll assemble the cheat enabler next and insert it in a rem line in the basic loader of these tap's.
Edit:
Turbo tzx version with cheat enabler.
http://frankt.co.cc/spec/DizzyXII_turbo_cheat.tzx
My ZX Art Music Page
Carlos Michelis Theme
Thanks for this tip, FrankT. I had already altered many of the "PRINT AT" control codes in the game and also moved some of the INK specifiers around (as the formatting after translating was even "more out of whack" in the versions I never released, before doing this :D ).
Now it's not too bad in the BETA versions as also row/column values had been changed by me, but as you have noticed, some dialog boxes still have excess space in them, or still not formatted in the best way.
However, you have to be very careful when padding extra spaces after the $FF end of string marker, because if you do that then the extra spaces will get pre-pended onto the following string in memory. (Until now I had avoided doing this).
I haven't exactly dissassembled the game, but the text strings are surprisingly not at fixed addresses (they are totally dynamic at runtime - dependant on the positions of the $FF bytes), so for example if you move an $FF byte lower down in memory say eight bytes, then you have effectively made the following string in memory eight bytes longer. The newly pre-pended characters also will come first in the adjacent string, before the "PRINT AT" control codes and therefore will just be placed on the screen wherever the "text cursor" happens to be.
In other words, an $FF byte should preferably be followed by a "$16 $YY $XX" sequence before any printable characters occur, even spaces. On testing cases where printable characters occur immediately after an $FF, the extra characters introduced into the following string often get printed outside the text box. If they go either off the right hand edge of the screen or the bottom of the screen, then it will crash the game.
You won't notice any problems on the string you are actually editing, but the string after it will possibly have this problem, and the problem may only show up depending on the position on the screen of the previous text box which was displayed. (You can see the problem by replacing some of the space padding with some other visible character after the relocated $FF byte and notice how it gets placed in an unpredictable area.)
For example I have a test snapshot in which an $FF byte has been moved as you described, and the game plays fine when you look at the rocket. However if you read the scroll on the first screen first, then the game crashes, because the text cursor has moved and the next padded string does not start with a "PRINT AT" sequence.
Hope all this makes sense as to why I never used the above technique. :)
So, that's why a few of the boxes still have more space in them than I'd ideally like. I decided to retain the padding in the text box I was actually working on rather than shunting it into the next string in order to avoid the above potential problem.
Also, you can't use two $FF bytes to seperate strings either as doing so introduces effectively an extra string into the game, causing various messages not to be printed out, or worse the wrong message gets printed out.
So, in summary, moving the $FF bytes around is OK, but you must also move the entire adjacent string back in memory too and so on, like a very long chain. :)
Or of course you could pad them with some sort of "non-printable" character intsead, but it as of yet untested.
EDIT: Just to say, I also found today that surprisingly the BETA 5 tapefile runs fine in SPIN 0.62 & 0.66 if emulating a +2/+2A or +3, but crashes to 48K mode if the emulator is set to simply "Spectrum 128K" mode. This way a very surprising result and I was using flash loading.
In SpecEmu however, it works fine on any 128K model as expected. Pretty strange that one!
EDIT2: In any case I will now perform the outstanding translation fixes on a SNA file I just derived from the BETA5 version. Hope to start this this evening. Will post the corrected snapshot when ready.
This is just a hunch, and may or may not work - but have you tried padding out the messages with CHR$ 9 instead of spaces?
Egghead Website
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Thanks for the reply, I just edited my post above before reading this, to mention the possiblility of using a non-printable character, as the thought co-incidentally also occured to me. I wan't sure which one to use though!
I just tried it with CHR$ 9 in the test snapshot, crashes also. There may well be though some other control character which would not crash it? Needs further testing. Cheers!
Well, the original translation in English would clearly imply that DIZZY had summoned great force and moved the plating.
Very often in English, we can drop the pronoun - it is implied (in this case that DIZZY is the actor). So it did make sense in this case.
But yes I totally agree it is was poor use of grammar by me, simply trying to make it fit well in the available space.
I have now changed it to "Using all of his might, Dizzy managed to move the plating". Which admittedly reads better. There's just so much space to use up in that particular dialog box!
Thanks I've fixed this mistake.
Thanks, fixed this too!
Thanks for that one, it was an idiom I totally missed, so I had used a sentence derived from the literal translation!
Yes you are right, blabbering or rambling, jabbering waffling prattling etc.. all mean pretty much similar things.
That string happens to be filled up to maximum length in the binary so in English we can simply say "OK, That's Enough", which fits in the available space.
Fixed it "Hey, Dozy, do you sleep inside there? asked Dizzy"
It was already translated as "Dozy didn't listen and continued to shout, muffled". Which is quite possibly as near as I can get in this case. The admittedly more accurate "something unintelligible" just isn't going to fit in the space. I'll try to think of something more suitable. If not, then the current wording will certainly suffice for this one. Cheers!
Thanks gasman, the original Russian word in question is рекламу which can mean "Adverstisement" or "Advertising" I think.
I think "flyer" or "blurb" may be more appropriate here though.
Certainly "notice" would also be OK.
I have changed it to "..stop reading notices.." which certainly does seem more suited in the game. Cheers!
http://java.cms.livjm.ac.uk/homepage/staff/cmspcar1/sinclair/beta5-corrected1.sna
This is a temp version. Next time I look at it, I'll have to playtest again and also possibly reformat some of the changed strings.
Also, would like to try FrankT's idea in conjunction with Jonathan's suggestion of using some sort of "nul" non-printable characters for padding on some of the dialog boxes.
So it's possibly not worth embedding this one in a tap file just yet. :)
I'll post another one after the next batch of minor alterations, but I've finished working on it for today. Cheers!
Anyway, about the padding of text.
The $FF is an end marker for the strings. And if padding is needed, just print over the text with spaces before the $FF end marker. Spaces are invisible, they don't blank out anything.
So for this message which has 5 bytes left over after editing,
What happens when its completed?
Do you get the message for the outro or does it just go back to the title screen?
Maybe I could do some more hacking and get it to load the outro from tape.
I'd need a snap just before its completed though.
My ZX Art Music Page
Carlos Michelis Theme
Thanks FrankT, that's a good idea about the spaces. You are right, when spaces are encountered in a string they aren't actually written to the screen so this solution should be fine!
When the game is completed, it enters an animated routine with graphical effects, which takes a little while to run. When that routine has completed, eventually it does indeed return back to the title screen again. The "game won" graphical routine was crashing in an earlier version, forcing me to roll back an entire day of work a few weeks back, but as far as I know the currrent version dervied from the rollback does not have that problem. However, as the game has been modded much further since last play through, I really need to test it again in the final released version, just to be 100% sure.
I'll certainly try and get a snap together over the next few days. The one we have is pretty close, it just needs a few formatting fixes now as per your above suggestion. Again, it's the actual playing through the game to double check each and every dialog box on demand that takes the time - editing the binary only takes a matter of minutes.
What I'll do is start playing the game through again from the beginning today and when completed I will upload the snaphsot. Hopefully it'll be sometime next week.
Then finally, if you can again apply all of your efforts like the loader and the trainer option etc.. to that snap, it should give us a good enough version for a "final" release. I admit it may still contain a small number of phrases which may possibly have not completely accurate translations, mainly if there is an idiomatic expression I missed or joke I misunderstood - but if an English speaker can play the whole game through and it consistently makes sense without anything confusing, then it's better than no release at all I suppose. :)
Of course the translated version will always be open to possible further improvements, although I fear if I tried to get it 100% perfect then we'd be waiting a very long time before a release, so I'm aiming for reasonably good instead. :D
However, due to many ongoing activities in real life, as it turns out I have not been near an emulator in the last ten days or so.
So, unfortunately I had not even the chance to start on this over the last week as I'd originally hoped.
I do have some free time again this weekend, but am quite honestly too tired to play through the whole game again at the moment.
But, I will certainly reply back when the situation changes and I am able to work on it again. Until then, I just wanted to pop in and say I definitely haven't abandoned the "final" version or anything, rather it's just that I can't be exactly sure when it'll be ready. Of course, when it is, I will post back here! :D Cheers.
:)
Thanks deadpan666! I did at least make a start on the formatting corrections on the first screen this morning:-
In each case I have managed to remove the excess space between the text and the outline box, thanks to FrankT's suggestion above:-
This one is centre-justified. Looks OK.
This one is exactly as FrankT specified, looks really neat.
This one is not quite so neat, although the excess space found in the previous version has been removed. Here it is left justifed, although I can't help but wonder if it wouldn't appear better if it were centre justified, or if re-formatted as "YOU ALSO FOUND", "A USEFUL", "SCREWDRIVER".
I'll continue to play around with the formatting at next opportunity. Other Dizzy games I have noticed use centre justification or left justification, sometimes both styles are found within the same game.
I guess the layout doesn't have to be perfect, but when neater it undoubtedly does look better.
http://www.zx-spectrum.cz
Hi Pavero,
Thanks for the interest. I haven't posted for a long while on any speccy forums/newsgroups because truthfully I haven't even loaded up a speccy emulator since I last posted here!! Since I don't post in chit-chat too much either, I only really tend to get into the forum-posting habit when I'm actively doing something in the speccy scene. If I'm not, then no posts. :) Of course I still keep half an eye on the WOS forums though.
The best I can say at the moment is that perhaps I will get back into it sometime next year. If I do, I'll be sure to post back here. Unfortunately, this year is not possible for me due to other commitments.
It would be a shame for me not to finish that translated snapshot though. Although the current BETA translated version is completable there are still a few "howlers" i.e. completely wrong translated bits that really do need fixing (as described in this very thread) before I could release it into the archive.
I also know FrankT has a custom loader and everything ready so I must apologise that I did dissapear for a while.
When I last worked on the game a few months back, I'd play-tested it constantly every evening and weekends for something like three weeks - I must confess I became a little bit sick of it due to overplaying (similar to "Tetris effect" on Wikipedia) and I don't think I could have carried on playing it any more at that time. So, I had to do other things for a while instead. :) Of course it is a most excellent Dizzy game though!
So, hopefully I will get back to finishing what I started, but can't really give a time. I'll see how things work out for me next year and if possible I will try to finish it.
Cheers!, DP
Cool cool......Been playing this again the last couple of nights actually! Just finish it when you can find the time, DP...I understand how annoying it must be to play something over & over & over again!!
I'm just enjoying the fact that I can play it and at least have some idea of what's going on!
Oh, and while this thread is back at the top of the forums, there are still loads of other games that could do with someone else giving them a translation...any takers???
Resurecting this thread. I have changed the Cyrillic to Latinic font in "Escape to Kharkhan" and ripped out all the texts in the game. Unfortunetly I don't speak Russian to attemt the translation, but if anyone here could then please do. The zip file containing the game and the ripped text of the game is here :
http://pc.sux.org/tomcat/EscapeToKharkhan_ToTranslate.zip
All three fonts were converted to latin style, so the only thing left is the actual translation of the texts. You will need a hex editor of some sort to edit the file (I use Ultraedit which has a nice hex editor).
Hope someone can translate this great game for everyone to enjoy.
Used google translate on the first few screens and invenotry and got this translated a bit :)
http://pc.sux.org/tomcat/EscapeToKharkhan_128_FirstScreensTranslated.sna
I really wish I knew Russian, this would go really fast...
Edit: Added texts.txt file which is a txt file with all texts from the game that need to be translated. So you dont need an hex editor.
Edit3: More changes to the main screen : http://pc.sux.org/tomcat/EscapeToKharkhan_128_LatinMenuTrans2.sna
Best regards,
Tomaz
good link!
(bastante pratico, principalmente para os jogos que n?o s?o em ingl?s, eu lembro-me que em puto tinha sempre dificuldade com os jogos espanhois e franceses... mas era sempre uma festa quando aparecia a palavra "pu?etazo"!)
http://pc.sux.org/tomcat/EscapeToKharkhan_128_English.tap
Thanx to Shiru for majority of the translation work and Kyv for helping out. It was a LOT of work to get this working as we did
Best regards,
Tomaz
http://www.yolkfolk.com/site/games.php?game_id=133
http://www.zx-spectrum.cz
Bruno, do you know if there are many Portuguese games? back in the day (when I bought the games for my +3 in Triudos) the few games I could remember that where portuguese (or portuguese convertions) where Arkanoid (I wonder if someone can find that version, where the text was in Portuguese), System 2000 and Paradise Caf?...
I have absolutely no idea where this knowledge of the cyrillic alphabet comes from. I didn't study it in school or anything, and I have absolutely no ties with Russia whatsoever.
I can gladly help with this translation if someone provide me with all the texts.
But I should tell you that this particular game is just awful and sometimes even stupid in terms of storyline and character lines. For example, author thinks that Dozy is the girl! And there are too many stupid anecdotes and exclamation marks. It's like it was written by some 12 years old guy.
So it's not the best choice. But I can help anyway.
Any help you can give translating any games would be greatly appreciated! As I mentioned when I started the thread, I'm afraid I can't be very helpful as my programming knowledge isn't great, but if any of the other spec-chums want to send you stuff, then I'll be sitting here ready to play the finished products!
The more Spectrum games I get to understand and enjoy, the better! Oh, and if there are people whose English isn't so good that want games translated to their language, feel free to use this thread to try and make things happen!
:)
- Vera, winner of Your Game 2008;
- Stalker - an adventure/strategy hybrid cloned from Laser Squad;
- the two UFOs, inspired by the X-COM PC games ;
- the Black Raven series, inspired by Blizzard's Warcraft;
- and many others...
Unfortunately the majority of us cannot play them due to language barriers :( Could someone who a) knows Russian and (at least) English, and b) has the time and necessary skills - not necessary the same person - translate them? A very good job has been already done with titles such as the very interesting Twilight, so why shouldn't that be done again?Well, OK, I'll be waiting for somebody to actually start translation and then I can offer my help. My english is far from perfect, but I believe that any english-speaking person can polish my translated texts.
So now we can start with Return to Magicland. Is there anybody want to actually change the code of this game?
So I would like to ask some native speakers to look at them. And of course you can also improve those two silly jokes :)
BFCA: YOU TICKLE SKELETON'S LEG WITH THE QUILL
BFEB: YOU RAISE THE COVER WITH THE HOOK
C00E: YOU BREAK THE BRIDGE WITH THE AXE
C02B: WITH A KEY YOU OPEN THE HATCH LEADING TO A CAVE
C056: YOU TIE STICKS TO THE SPRING
C077: YOU SUCCEED TO DEPLOY THE FOLDING BRIDGE
C0A9: YOU GIVE THE BOOK TO DENZIL
C0DA: THANKS DIZZY FOR THE INTERESTING BOOK! TAKE THIS TRUSTY AXE
C114: "GRANDPA GIVES ME THIS AXE"
C12C: "YOU WANT TO HEAR A JOKE?"
C14C: "SURE, TELL ME"
C16B: "WINNIE THE POOH FINDS A RIFLE IN THE FOREST, WHAT A NICE FLUTE HIS THINKS.
HE MEETS PIGLET ANS SAYS "LET'S PLAY, YOU'LL BLOW AND I'LL PRESS BUTTONS"
C1F0: PIGLET AGREED AND THEY BEGAN. SUDDENLY THE RIFLE FIRED AND PIGLET HEAD WAS
BLOWN AWAY. "DON'T FOOL" SAID WINNIE "MY HEAD IS BLOWING TOO"
** this joke should be replaced with something else as I can't find it funny
in original and in translation it's even worse :) **
C27C: SOMETHING CRACKS AND THE DOOR CLOSES BEHIND YOU
C2AE: YOU KEEP WALKING BUT SUDDENLY A SKELETON ATTACKS AND KILLS YOU
C2E2: YOU TURN THE SWITCH AND BREAK IT!
C306: YOU PULL THE SKELETON'S LEG AND SOMETHING CRACKLES
C32F: SKELETON LAUGHS FOR A LONG TIME UNTIL HE GETS TIRED AND GOES TO SLEEP
C34D: YOU ARE KILLED BY A VAMPIRE!
C362: YOU CAN TELEPORT TO MAGICLAND FOR TWENTY COINS
C393: WELL DONE! YOU ARE TELEPORTED TO MAGICLAND
C3BC: "HELLO GRANDPA!"
C3D1: "HELLO DIZZY"
C3E4: "HAVE YOU SEEN DAISY?"
C3FC: "I SAW HER WALKING NEAR MY WORKSHOP"
C42D: "I'LL GO TO SEARCH FOR DAISY"
C448: "GOOD!TAKE THIS BIG HOOK,YOU'LL NEED IT"
C47E: "THANKS GRANDPA!"
C493: "I WORRY IF SHE WON'T BREAK ANYTHING IN MY WORKSHOP"
C4C9: "HELLO DENZIL,HAVE YOU SEEN DAISY?"
C4F6: "HI DIZZY,DON'T WORRY FOR HER,LET'S HAVE SOME FUN INSTEAD"
C5D2: "BUT NO,I HAVEN'T SEEN HER SINCE MORNING"
C548: "HELLO DOZY, HAVEN'T YOU SEEN DAISY?"
C568: "HI DIZZY, I SAW HER AROUND THE WORKSHOP"
C5A1: "GOOD, I'LL GO TO LOOK FOR HER"
C5C2: "HI DYLAN, MAYBE YOU HAVE SEEN DAISY?"
C5E8: "HI DIZZY, SHE WAS NEAR THE WORKSHOP AND THEN THERE WAS SOME BIG NOISE THERE"
C6C2: "GOOD! I CAN TELL YOU A JOKE IF YOU WISH"
C657: "SURE! GO ON!"
C670: "LION GATHERED ALL ANIMALS AND ORDERED THEM TO TELL JOKES
IF SOMEBODY WON'T LAUGH, WE'LL EAT THE TELLER!"
C6C8: "A RABBIT TOLD A JOKE AND EVERYBODY LAUGHED EXCEPT GIRAFFE,SO THEY ATE THE RABBIT
C701: THEN A FOX TOLD A JOKE AND NOBODY LAUGHED EXCEPT GIRAFFE
C73D: SO THEY ASKED HIM WHY HE'S LAUGHING.GIRAFFE ANSWERED "YOU KNOW, THAT RABBIT'S JOKE
WAS REALLY GOOD!"
** another corny joke that could be replaced with something else :) **
C786: "HA HA HA!WHAT A GREAT JOKE! LONG TIME SINCE I'VE HEARD A SIMILAR ONE"
C7BF: "DYLAN IGNORES YOU NOW"
C7FC: "HI DORA! HAVEN'T YOU SEEN DAISY?"
C81D: "HI,SOMETHING TERRIBLE HAPPENED!WHEN DAISY WAS WALKING BY THE WORKSHOP, SUDDENLY
GRANDPA'S MACHINE STARTED"
C876: "TELL ME NOW WHAT HAPPENED THERE!!!"
C89E: "DAISY DISSAPPEARED! SHE MUST HAVE BEEN TELEPORTED TO MAGICLAND"
C8D0: "SO WE MUST USE THE MACHINE TO RETURN HER HOME!!!"
C912: "WELL, BUT AFTER THE TELEPORTATION THE MACHINE EXPLODED!"
C944: "WHAT TO DO NOW?"
C95E: "THERE ARE RUMOURS ABOUT A SORCERER WHO CAN TELEPORT YOU THERE"
C9A0: "SO WHERE IS HE?"
C9B7: "I'VE HEARD HE'S SOMEWHERE UNDERGROUND"
C9DE: AND DIZZY TRAVELLED TO MAGICLAND TO RESCUE DAISY
http://www.zx-spectrum.cz
Black Raven is opensource now, and yet there's not so much text (all you may need for a stable gameplay is to know the original Warcraft's logistics and what to do on this or that mission) to translate, although considering the way the intro movie puts the text in (which is, written a-la old Russian folk), that may need some work.
Another thing I'm aware of is that the mission briefings are implanted right into the maps (all of which are on disk 2). And that the only typeset available here is in Russian (excluding a couple or two of letters in English).