Sim City 64 (64DD) Translation

[ozidual]

Quick update before heading to bed.  Most of the code is finished and the font textures are pretty close to finished.  There is still some spacing that needs fixing, and I need to make sure we can write a little over twice as much ascii text into the text boxes without overwriting important code.  That last part is what I spent the night working on.  No good answer yet, and this may be the piece that takes some time.  Here's the latest VWF Snapshot #2:


EDIT 2018 08 14: Replaced the link to a picture with the actual picture.

[krom]

Hi ozidual,

I just read your latest update, & tried the patch that shows off the new textures, great stuff!
Also the screenshot of the VWF looks really ace, & shows lots of progress, thanks so much for sharing.

Your work will help the translation look really polished, thanks so much for doing this =D

Also if you or anyone else wants to learn about the GPU capabilities of the N64's RDP, you can check the SGI – Nintendo Ultra64 RDP Command Summary V2.0 PDF document here:
http://ultra64.ca/resources/documentation/

Good luck with your VWF work =D

[ozidual]

I think it's final.  I had a few breakthroughs that dominoed into a final patch.  I'm a little sleep deprived, so it is possible I missed something, but I tried to double check as much as possible.

The variable width font + ascii font fix + krom's latest English patch is here


A few things to note:

1. I upped the max number of letters per line to 0x3D (61 letters), which can only be accomplished with all i's or all l's:


2. You have to be very careful to use 0x0A's to end each text line.  I'll try to add a counter to the text editor I'm working on so you know exactly how much is available.  It's possible that this change may break some of the existing Japanese text if they didn't code it properly.  It looks like they did, but who knows.

3. In order to deal with the choice text screens, I turned 0x2020 (i.e. space, space) into a tab.  Anytime you put 2 spaces together, it'll turn into a tab.

4. I had to add a table and some extra code for the VWF.  They're in a different place for the Cart and the Disk because each of them had some issue with the place I chose.  It's possible that the game could get angry with these locations.  I tried to place them in the error text area, but I guess for some reason it's still sometimes used.  I may try to disable that to free up some space.

5. It may need some further tweaks as we do English text for text boxes besides Dr. Wright since it may use different intial values.  The max length variables were buried in the code as addiu's, and there were two of them because why trust just 1

Partially because of the things mentioned above and partially because it is untested with non-Dr. Wright text boxes, I decided to call this patch VWFv0.5.  Despite that, it seems to be pretty solid.  As usual, let me know if you run into any problems.


Changelog:

1. Upped the max number of characters per line
2. Variable Width table and code added
3. Modified the code to allow the unchanged Ascii characters to be displayed
4. Modified the Ascii character textures to display properly
   a. Within the textures, 0xF and 0xE were replaced with 0xD
   b. g, p, q, and j were modified to fit better 


Still to do (after a short break):

Sim City 64 text editor
Texture converters


EDIT 2018 08 14: Replaced the link to a picture with the actual picture.

[krom]

Hi ozidual,

I just tried out your VWF patch, it looks really great, thanks so much for doing this =D

[ozidual]

I'm just happy to help

By the way, I figured out one of the texture compression functions.  It's very similar to the Japanese character texture compression function.

It starts with 1 count byte. 

If the count byte is less than 0x80, lets say 0x07.  Count the next [count byte + 1] (e.g. 0x07 + 1) bytes and copy/paste them directly. 

If the count byte is over 0x80, lets say 0xFD.  Take the inverse of that count byte (e.g. 0xFD -> 0x03).  Now repeat the next byte that many times + 1 (e.g. 0x03 + 1) times.

The next byte in line becomes the new count byte.

So, 0x00FA0200FEBB00FF becomes 0xFA000000BBBBBBFF.

This is the compression scheme for at least the following: Dr. Wright's facial expressions, the icons for the Left Menu, and the text for the Left Menu.

I think I also found the byte that defines the width of the Left Menu text texture since it varies depending on what is selected.  I was going to finish the text converter, but I think I may have stumbled into doing this first.  More to follow another day

Edit: and today I learned about RLE (Run Length Encoding).  This is a variation on that.

EDIT EDIT: Noticed a bug in the VWF in the help menu table.  I'll look into that shortly.

[krom]

Hi ozidual,

Thanks so much for all these progress updates, sounds like you are getting a very good grip on how all the GFX compression works, which will be so amazing to see.
You are doing great work, as these were all the main things I needed help with, to be able to get this translation looking professional & polished!

Thanks again for doing all this =D

[ozidual]

hey krom, no problem at all  

Would you be able to translate the in-game Left Menu?  It's the menu that comes up when you hit Z or L.  Just the initial layer with the categories, not the subcategories where you can choose things to place.  Basically, the text next to the trees/lake icon, the purple/blue/yellow/green icon, the power icon, the transportation icon, ..., down to the save icon, and possibly the 4 speed options.

Feel free to use full text, not abbreviations or anything.  I think I have a way to compress the textures even further which should allow full text, but I'll need to do them all at once.  All of the Left Menu items are in a group on their own and each of the subcategories are stored elsewhere.  Once I have that coded I think I can expand it out to the rest of the text textures.

The current way they compress with RLE isn't really suited for text.  My plan is to use RLE for just the text bubble background behind the text.  Then store the text separately like the Japanese characters are stored.  This way each letter will be 8 bytes at most, and can be written over the background.  The text shadow can be added with code.

Oh, and I have a fix for the Help Menu text.  I just need to change a piece of code, and then we'll need to add a 0x2020 before the first word in each of the lists.

[krom]

Hi ozidual,

Yeah sure I'll get this done for you ASAP =D
Cool you have a fix for the help menu, great work.

** EDIT **
Here is the translation you requested:

整地 = Level
区画 = Section
電気 = Electricity
交通 = Transportation
公共・特別施設 = Public / Special Facilities
教育・娯楽施設 = Education / Entertainment Facilities
緊急 = Emergency
Dr.ライト = Dr. Wright
都市の詳細 = City Details
ファイル = File
待止 = Pause
低速 = Slow Speed
中速 = Medium Speed
高速 = Fast Speed

[ozidual]

krom - you are awesome!  Thank you so much for getting those!  I'll get started on it tonight   It may take a few days to get it going right.  At least a few of these textures will have to be done by hand before I get the hang of it.

[ozidual]

OK, I caught up on some sleep, created a few programs to help me, created a font, and ran into a snag here:


It's supposed to be blank as a first step.  That's part of the new compression scheme where the text will be compressed differently from the background.  You'll notice the text box is cut off on the right side.  It's also cut off on the bottom because I was going to extend it to better facilitate g's, j's, p's, q's, and y's.

I'm trying to decide if it is worth it to redo large sections of code, or just use some abbreviations to make everything fit.  Education/Entertainment Facilities is the only one so far that might cause trouble.  I had planned to remove Facilities from this (also from Public/Special), but it is still a little too large.  Everything else should be fine as long as my calculations are correct.  I'll also need to modify my font a little more or do away with text shadows.

EDIT: Skimmed through the other Left Menu textures, and realized that money needs to fit in there too.  Hmm..

EDIT 2018 08 14: Replaced the link to a picture with the actual picture.

[Kerr Avon]

Could 'Education/Entertainment Facilities' instead be 'Schools and leisure', and maybe 'Public/Special Facilities' could be 'Public & special' or just 'Special facilities', or 'Public Interest'? If re-wording for any problematic text would work, then it would save you the effort of having to recode the text output code.

[ozidual]

I've done most of the coding for the Left Menu textures, and I need some input. 

Here is the latest screen capture:


What do you think?  Is the text too cramped?  The box will be shrunk so it fits the text better - that's just the max size for the text box.  I crunched the text a little because I want to be able to fit 'Residential Light' and 'Residential Dense' in the sub menus.  If it isn't readable though, I'll find a better way to do it.  Eventually, I'd like to add back in the shadows (the Japanese text has shadows), but I need to see how much space I have as I go through all the textures first.

That being said, krom, I made some changes to your menu translations.  I kept most of them, but I changed the following:

Level is now Terrain
Section is now Zones
Electricity is now Power
Public / Special Facilities is now City Services
Education / Entertainment is now Education / Recreation

I went to Sim City 2000 (SNES) as a starting point for the Left Menu's new font texture.  While I was there, I had a thought.  Sim City 2000 was programmed in English.  It was then converted to Japanese, and a version of that was modified to create Sim City 64.  That means that with the menus, you are translating Japanese that was already translated from English.  I decided to pull the menus from Sim City 2000 (PC) since the SNES version has abbreviations and such due to space issues.  It is still your translation though, so if you want me to switch that back, just let me know.  I'm still a ways away from a final version of this

I read a little on Sim City 2000 (N64) in wikipedia, and it looks like there are some abilities such as monster training, horse racing, and other mini-games not in Sim City 64.  I might look into SC2000 when I finish with SC64.

EDIT 2018 08 14: Replaced the link to a picture with the actual picture.

[Kerr Avon]

I've done most of the coding for the Left Menu textures, and I need some input. 

Here is the latest screen capture. 

What do you think?  Is the text too cramped?  The box will be shrunk so it fits the text better - that's just the max size for the text box.  I crunched the text a little because I want to be able to fit 'Residential Light' and 'Residential Dense' in the sub menus.  If it isn't readable though, I'll find a better way to do it.  Eventually, I'd like to add back in the shadows (the Japanese text has shadows), but I need to see how much space I have as I go through all the textures first.

That does look a little cramped. I think the letters 'c', 'e', and 'a' could definitely do with being wider, and the middle bar of the 'E' could do with being one pixel lower. When you've done more work on it (so there's more to see) could you perhaps put up a version for download, for us to look at and comment upon? It's difficult to gauge from a screenshot how it might look on a real LCD TV, since of course modern TVs don't have the versatility than a CRT has, and so lower resolution consoles like the N64 don't display perfectly. Why is it with technology, it's so often two steps forwards, and half a step back?

That being said, krom, I made some changes to your menu translations.  I kept most of them, but I changed the following:

Level is now Terrain
Section is now Zones
Electricity is now Power
Public / Special Facilities is now City Services
Education / Entertainment is now Education / Recreation

I went to Sim City 2000 (SNES) as a starting point for the Left Menu's new font texture.  While I was there, I had a thought.  Sim City 2000 was programmed in English.  It was then converted to Japanese, and a version of that was modified to create Sim City 64.  That means that with the menus, you are translating Japanese that was already translated from English.  I decided to pull the menus from Sim City 2000 (PC) since the SNES version has abbreviations and such due to space issues.  It is still your translation though, so if you want me to switch that back, just let me know.  I'm still a ways away from a final version of this

I read a little on Sim City 2000 (N64) in wikipedia, and it looks like there are some abilities such as monster training, horse racing, and other mini-games not in Sim City 64.  I might look into SC2000 when I finish with SC64.

I didn't know SC2000 on the N64 had those features. I've never played it because of the language barrier, of course.

The changes you've made to the text seem fine and logical.

[nuu]

If it look like in the screenshot on a real TV it's fine.

[ozidual]

Here it is: Left Menu v1.0 (aka VWF v0.5.1)

All of the base left menu has been translated except for the speed controls.  The boxes around the text will still be shrunk to fit the text - what you see is the max box size.  As a bonus, I threw together a few lines of code that added the shadow back.  Terrain is slightly messed up.  I was playing around with it last night and forgot to revert it.  I made no changes to the font that was in the screen cap for my previous post.  Let me know how it looks.  I tested it on my UltraHDMI and it looks decent.

Again, krom, this is still your translation.  If you prefer the exact menu titles that you translated just let me know and I'll revert them.  Check my previous post for an explanation on it.