Metal Slader Glory FC: English Translation

About

This repository contains source code for patches and tools to compile an English translation of Metal Slader for the Famicom.

The translation project was originally managed with older versions of the tools supplied here. Files were everywhere, the script was stored in multiple XML files, the code looked bad, etc. For a release of this translation's source code, I thought using the newer forks would be more suitable. A script viewer coded in JavaScript is in the works, but for this release, I thought a Windows form program was more appropriate.

Support the Creator

Apparently, a prequel to this game was intended to be released on the 64DD but was cancelled. If you want the series to continue, consider showing your appreciation for it to the game's creator, Yoshimiru. You can do this by buying some Metal Slader Glory merch from his store and giving him a follow on Twitter:

Store: https://mc-berrys.booth.pm/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/yoshimiru_SS/

He sells books detailing the games' development, including the 64DD prequel. You can't find scans of these books anywhere online.

Folders

• asm
  • Contains the asm files which are to be compiled with xkas
  • There's also asm patch files that are commented out in the Write.bat script.
    • Seizure.asm: Reduces the color contrast for scenes with intense flashing. I'm not 100% sure if this patch will prevent seizures.
    • SlowSpeed.asm: Reduces the text speed. The mouth speed was never sped back up. Additionally, certain scene's music cues will be off. Consider this incomplete.
    • Metal_Slader_Palettes-Password_Orange.asm: This increase the contrast on the password screen's highlighting. In the words of jekuthiel:

      (Just looked at BETA3 on real hardware + CRT.)

      1. Greyscale vertical lines are not a problem on NES via composite. Colored ones are. So changing the color of a letter to that red highlight color causes it to look "gappy". In your defense, this is also a problem in the original Japanese version of the game. However, because the English alphabet has a lot more vertical lines in it, the effect is magnified. This may or may not have been the kind of thing that Hal would've caught if they had done the localization themselves.
      2. The dark red makes the letter very hard to read against the dark green background.

      • In other words, this patch is a must if you're playing on actual hardware.
• lua
  • Some lua scripts.
    • Mouth: This was used to debug the asm patch that slows the mouths down after implementing the patch to increase the text speed.
    • Text Id Displayer: Does what the name implies
• roms
  • Use this to store your roms
  • Apply the beat patch named Expand.bps
    • Dumps online commonly have an incorrect header which indicate the game uses a battery backup when it does not. Change 0x6 from $52 to $50 to correct this. The header should be as follows before patching:
    • 4E 45 53 1A 20 40 50 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
• script
  • Contains the dump script in Script.json. It contains the Japanese script and the English translation.
  • You can also store xlsx backups of the script here.
• tables
  • Contains table files
    • Files prefixed with "CHR" specify byte to character mapping.
    • Files prefixed with "Dictionary" specify dictionary mapping. A dictionary can be mapped to multiple character values.
    • Files prefixed with "SquishyText" do some find and replace functions
      • "SquishyText - New.tbl" replaces character patterns to be in one tile. For example, "ll" is converted to the character "[ll]".
      • "SquishyText - Original.tbl" merges the dakuten and handakuten diacritics into the Japanese characters to form a single character. The game is weird about diactrics. For one, the diactrics appear before the character they belong to. Also, dictionaries can contain diactrics that aren't associated with a character in the dictionary itself. This means we can't simply specify "が" in a table file, but apply the conversation after the script has been dumped.
    • Files with "Length" let you specify how wide, in pixels, characters are. This affects spiro.exe's autolinebreaking logic. For a game without VWF, most characters should have a length of 8.
• tools
  • cyproAce
    • A script editor
  • spiro
    • Script dumper and inserter
  • xkas
    • Applies the assembly patches

Manual

Check out the repo metal-slader-glory-fc-en-manual for manual resources. It contains two versions of the manual: one with all the Japanese text blanked out and one that is typesetted. Much thanks to ozidual from Gaming Alexandria for providing the scans of the manual. Check out the original scans here: https://www.gamingalexandria.com/wp/2020/07/metal-slader-glory/

Instructions

The tools are coded in C#. You'll have to mess with Wine if you want them to run in Linux. You'll also have to rewrite the bat files, which aren't complicated at all.

• If you want to dump the script for whatever reason (the Japanese and English script are already included in this repository), you can dump it by executing the bat file "Dump.bat" by double clicking it.
• To generate an NES rom file with the translation and patches included:
  • Apply the Expand.bps patch to a Japanese rom, rename the result to "Metal Slader Glory (Japan) (Trans).nes", and place it in the roms folder. (This should probably be handled by xkas...)
  • Execute the bat file "Write.bat" by double clicking it.

Translation Notes

The development team is willing to provide guidance and assistance for other translation projects, however, we ask that you at least have basic technical skills, knowledge about romhacking (6502 assembly language knowledge, the capability to use a debugger, etc.), and the ability to ask intelligence questions.

If you desire to use this repository as a base for another translation in a language other than English, some work will have to be done.

• To add support for more characters:
  1. Add the characters to some table files: CHR - New.tbl and CHR - Length.tbl.
  2. The translation currently assumes the top and bottom graphics for a character are on top of each other. Some 6502 knowledge is required to change this limitation. The routine to adjust is called Font8x16. You'll want to create a table which maps a character value to the desired tiles in the PPU.
  3. If you want new routines in banks 16 and 17, you'll have to make room in the jump table, which I believe was filled to the brim.
• You'll probably want to remove the asm code that disables the autolinebreaking on the top of the screen. This will let you have multiple lines for the top text for the final battle in stage 7. Having meaningful text all fit in one line for certain languages can be difficult.

You'll have to change the text on the following screens:

• Game Over
• Screen timing tweak
• Credits

The tilemaps are compressed. You'll either have to edit this by hand or create a compressor.

You'll want to create a script to verify if you accidently deleted or added control codes from your translation. The original Japanese and your translation are on the same node in the script json so it makes it a bit easier to programmatically compare. This translaton intentionally adds control codes. For example:

• Enkai's lines have a few added (WAIT) tags since he talks fast and uses complex vocabulary (because he's the stereptyical smart character)
  • You may wan to remove these and opt on slowing his text down. All character's text speed's are located in the namecard.
• Some control codes were added to the intro's green text to make it scroll.
• (CODE 05) is a control code for pauses. It was added or had it argument changed to adjust the timing of cutscenes.

A script that indentifies control code differences was developed for an older version of the utility. It returns an output once it encounters a control code difference.

Here's the output of the program (a handful of false positives were exluded as well as instances with (WAIT)):

0062: (CODE 03) (CODE 4B Green text)		Makes the text scroll in the intro to accomodate for longer text
0065: {86} {82}					Intro cutscene timing change
0157: {86} {84}					Opening credits timing change
0158: {83} {81}					Opening credits timing change
0159: {88} {86}					Opening credits timing change
0160: {83} {81}					Opening credits timing change
0161: {88} {86}					Opening credits timing change
0162: {84} {81}					Opening credits timing change
0163: {89} {85}					Opening credits timing change
0164: {85} {81}					Opening credits timing change
0165: {89} {85}					Opening credits timing change
0166: {85} {81}					Opening credits timing change
0167: {89} {85}					Opening credits timing change
0168: {85} {81}					Opening credits timing change
0169: {8A} {86}					Opening credits timing change
0326: (CODE 05) (STOP)				Timing adjustment
0360: [Heart] (End quote)			A heart was added to indicate Azusa talks in a similar manner as Ai does.
0493: (CODE 61 Azusa no namecard:) (CODE 40)	Utilizes Azusa's namecard that doesn't have a Japanese start quote.
0555: (CODE 05) (STOP)				Timing adjustment
0627: (CODE 05) (STOP)				Timing adjustment
1045: (CODE 10 Portrait) [Heart]		The ordering of the heart character is different. This is a false positive.
1087: (CODE 05) (CODE 03)			The text printing is slowed and then sped up with `(CODE 05){81}(CODE 05){80}`
						The game's engine has a glitch for typewriter printing text on the upper
						half of the screen. It will print a few character for a split second,
						delete them, and write them again. Yoshimiru must've be aware of this
						as the text in this cutscene, and other ones, have a two space indent.
						This issue can be alleviated by slowing the text speed to prevent the 
						characters from being printed and them returning the speed back to normal.					
1310: {03} {0F}					This speeds up the text speed slowdown when Elina's deep in thought.
2086: (CODE 05) (CODE 52)			Fixes the same issue in "1087"
2089: (CODE 05) (CODE 07)			Fixes the same issue in "1087"
2090: (CODE 05) (CODE 07)			Fixes the same issue in "1087"
2168: [Note] (End quote)			Added the note emoticon
2581: (STOP) (CODE 10 Portrait)			Some text was moved to adjust the cutscene music timing
2582: (CODE 10 Portrait) (CODE 20 Tadashi:)	Same as above
2587: {87} {30}					Final cutscene timing change
2588: (CODE 05) (STOP)				Final cutscene timing change
2617: {c8} {60}					This changes when the timer starts

Feel free to remove these control codes changes or adjust them to suit your needs. Don't remove the (End quote) control code. The end quote character is already invisible and there's a few adjustements that make this character as if it doesn't exist:

• The length table file has this character's length set to 0
• There's an asm code patch that disables autolinebreaking in the game's engine.

Removing the end quotes will messe with various character animations. Most apparent are the character's mouths never closing. Certain character animations won't play at times and in rare instances obvious onscreen graphical glitching will occur.

Changelog

• 2021 August 30th: 1.0
  • Initial release

Credits

Main Team

• FCandChill
  • Initial ASM work
  • Utilities
  • Localizer
  • Proofreader
  • Manual
• Her-saki
  • Advanced ASM work
  • Font
  • Initial translation

Support

• kartes
  • Maker of the script dumper tool in RHDN's abandoned section
• tashi
  • Character identification
• Matatabi#8541
  • Onspot translation checks
• danke#6948
  • Onspot translation checks
  • Localization feedback
• Pennywise#4430
  • Localization feedback
• kaio#4229
  • Localization feedback
• HGwells628#6941
  • Localization feedback
• Aerdan#3244
  • Localization feedback
• Kajitani-Eizan#9804
  • Localization feedback
• Gideon|Web#7436
  • Localization feedback
• Kadalyn#2959 (YasaSheep):
  • Manual feedback
• inactive#4484
  • Was there

Beta Testers

• ccmar#6676
  • Typos
  • Suggestions
  • Onspot translations
• blueskyrunner#6087
  • Typos
  • Suggestions
• marklincadet#0878
  • Typos
  • Suggestions
• ppltoast#5820
  • Suggestions
• jekuthiel#9153
  • Real hardware tester
• MrNorbert1994#5955
  • Header fix
• Satoshi_Matrix#4487
  • Suggestions
• ParadiseAlive#3928
  • Was there
• xWhyohwhyx#4581
  • Was there