Getter Love Translation

[ozidual]

Translator found.  Work advancing.

Save file:

The ED64 doesn't handle saving in Getter Love properly on its own.  Using the info from this post by Kerr Avon, you'll want to update the save_db.txt file in the ED64 folder with:

GL=1


Current Task List 2019 02:

 - Finish inserting text into the newly translated text sections
 - Update previously inserted text with updated translation
 - (Possibly make some slight changes to the lettering)
 - Figure out compression scheme(s) for compressed textures [partially done]
 - Find text in compressed textures [partially done]
 - Extract text in compressed textures [partially done]
 - (Possibly increase text box for singing game)
 - Intro animation, title screens and menu screens


Completed:

 - VWF 8/2018
 - Ascii hack 12/2017 Redone 3/2019
 - Extracting text 2/2019
 - Making space for English text (takes up more space than Japanese text) 2/2019
 - Calculator for text width 2/2019
 - First sweep of finding text in texture format 2/2019
 - First extraction of compressed text in texture format 3/2019
 - Replace the keyboard(s) with Latin character keyboard(s) 4/2019
 - Extract text in texture format for translator 4/2019

Getter Love links:

https://web.archive.org/web/20000504203622/http://www.hudson.co.jp/new/getterlove/index.html

Original Post:

I did some work previously in the Top 10 Japan N64 Thread, but it was a side project until a few days ago.  That's when a translator approached me interested in putting together a translation patch.  So, I dusted off my notes and started work on it again. 

Previously I had the VWF and Ascii hacks (my first Ascii hack ever in fact).  Right now I'm making space in the ROM for the new text, finding the pointers to that text, and shortly I'll begin adding the first pieces of translated text.  I'll put up a post with pictures once we get to that point.

Of course, Shiren is on hold for now.

-----

This is the part where I usually recommend purchasing the game or one like it to support the developer, publisher, etc.  That's a little difficult since this game is a one off and was only released on the N64.  Hudson Soft developed and published the game, but as of 2012 they merged with Konami and now sell as either Konami or Hudson. 

It looks like one of their most recent, widely available games is Super Bomberman R.  Otherwise, check here for a list of other games you could purchase to support the developer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Konami_games

It would be great if you purchased a copy of Getter Love (N64), but within the last year it's gone way up in price.  It was never cheap, but you're looking at a couple hundred for complete in box.  It also doesn't really support the developer anymore, but it's still good karma to own the original if you are going to use a digital copy of it.

[Immorpher]

Cool!!

[Shellshocker18]

Can't wait to see progress on it Ozidual, thank you for all the translation juggling work you've been doing. This is one of the few Japanese games I haven't played, but its pretty popular. I guess its partially because of the eye catching name, but its been popular for a long time. I was going to play it in Japanese soon but I may wait now for English now, though I bet it has a bunch of text for its cutscenes.

Forgive me but I so rarely have the chance to talk about Japanese N64 board games, figure no better place than here. Japan had quite a few exclusive board games, more than the rest of the N64 world got. Not that it matters but If had to rank the Japanese N64 board games, besides Mahjong, Shogi etc. based on how much I think they "deserve" translation, it would probably be

Goemon Monster Sugoroku
Getter Love & 64 Tamagotchi World,
64 Detective Club,
Laughing Life 64 Resort King & Jinsei Game 64

I've beaten almost all these games so I have a lot of reasons why I order the list that way (including quality for a general board game population, uniqueness as a board game, importance to the N64 library in the case if Tamagotchi 64 etc.), but I'd love to see them all done one day. Starting with Getter Love is good, Goemon I would bet has way more text than Getter Love. Though its hard to say, Jinsei Game 64 and Resort King 64 have so many random events told through text, I'd love to know how much text each game has if possible. Tamagotchi World I believe has the same ending no matter what Tamagotchi you win with, so I think it would have the least text, but that's just a guess.

Anyway I'm looking forward too it!

[nuu]

Oooh Reika will want to kiss you!
This is one of my favourite N64 games, it's very high quality and it's hilarious! It's made by the same people that made Mario Party, and that shows as it has the same general feel to it, although it has a Tokimeki Memorial-style ren'ai game theme instead. It got the charismatic host Alfonso Roberto Martini who is kind of like Koopa Troopa in Mario Party, but interacts with the game much more. And there are items to give your rivals diarrhea to ruin their dates.

Yes this was an excellent choice of a game to translate!

[Shellshocker18]

I just now remember, both Getter Love and Tamagotchi 64 are developed by Hudson Soft, though Tamagotchi was published by Bandai since they owned the brand. Hey Nuu, how similar is Getter Love to Mario Party? Have you beaten the game because I'm curious if it has credits? Mobygames doesn't have them listed, but I think due to both Mario Party and Getter Love being developed at the same time they actually have different teams.

Do you realize Tamagotchi 64 being a minor sales success (it was actually considered sluggish as apparently Tamagotchi's peak was over by the N64 game released) was the actual reason Nintendo contracted Hudson to make Mario Party? It's an often overlooked fact in the history of Nintendo and N64 that Tamagotchi 64 inspired one of Nintendo's biggest franchises. That's kinda why I hope it gets translated 1 day. It only has 10 mini games in the multiplayer, they aren't done every turn (Mario Party forcabily made them the focus and it was a wise decision), and Mario Party still did the rapid analog stick rotating and button mashing that Tamagotchi 64 had. I think it actually had mostly the same staff as Mario Party, but since Tamagotchi 64 I'm almost positive has no credits its hard for me to say. Getter Love I think was an all new team judging by all the interviews on Getter Loves website (https://web.archive.org/web/20000504203622/http://www.hudson.co.jp/new/getterlove/index.html) but I'd have to have more credits to find out, and unfortunatly many Hudson games don't have credits.

[nuu]

Mario Party and Getter Love are not too similar. Getter Love isn't played with dice and squares on a board. It's a digital board game that probably wouldn't work as a real board game unless it was highly complicated with lots of rules and stuff.
Each player makes a set of choices what to do each turn (which corresponds to a time of day: morning, afternoon or evening), what place to go to (park, restaurant, shopping mall, game center etc), wash yourself or rest. Then all characters will move automatically in real time on the board, and as each player reaches their destination events and stuff may happen (meeting a girl or Alfonso etc) in the order of arrival, arriving early is often beneficial. Then the player will be able to do choices depending on where he is. If you meets a girl you can ask for a date. There's also the horrible and clingy ganguro gal Reika that sometimes shows up and ruins all your dates.
It is not about minigames like Mario Party (there are a few minigames but they are rare) it's more a bit like a ren'ai game but played in a board-game manner with 3 other human or computer players. It does have a similar feel to Mario Party though with for example Alfonso appearing every game day and reporting the standings and sometimes giving freebies to the loosing player. Reika is basically Bowser. There are other things that I can't explain, maybe the music has a similar feeling to the Mario Party music. Maybe it was made by the same composer?

I haven't beaten it as in unlocking everything in the game (like in Mario Party where you gather 100 stars), but I have won many sessions. There is a fake credits roll when you complete a session but you can always see the real credits in the options menu.

I guess it's possible it's not made by the same people as Mario Party and Tamagochi 64, but it certainly has many similarities besides being a game in the digital boardgame genre. It could have simply been heavily inspired by it or it's really just a coincidence.

[ozidual]

Here are the latest screen shots:




In the first screen you can see we didn't have the text width vs screen space down yet.  I think the Japanese text is part of a compressed texture.  The second screen is during the karaoke game.  The text just changed slightly for the singing game so it fits better, so that screenshot may be considered "old" at this point  

Last night I finished the text calculator, so we should get better at estimating the amount of screen space available for text.  I was also able to find the pointers and insert the text for that first screen shot.  Work is progressing quickly right now, but I forsee some slowdowns once I get to the texture compression.  That could take some time to figure out.  In the meantime, I'm working on inserting text into the other untranslated sections so it's easier for the translator to see how it looks/context.

Shellshocker18 - I believe 64 Detective Club was translated by krom.  If you check his github he has his translation patch there.  Nice find on the Getter Love site - I'll add it to the main post.

[Shellshocker18]

Wow I had no idea about 64 Detective Club already being done, I'll check it out later. Wish I knew that before I originally played it. Also know that for our book I am compiling all N64 websites, including developers, publishers of each game on region by region basis, and extras like companies and contest sites etc. Eventually I'll post all of them online in 1 big table. They really aren't hard to find at all, if it's something you ever need just ask. They are cool and often have a lot of good historical info though I'm not sure if they are any help in translation aside from just understanding the game better. Probably 95% of companies made sites back then, and the webarchive still has most all of them. Unfortunatly every once in a while you get one that isn't archived and is fully lost which makes me sad.

[ozidual]

If I can, I like to make my main translation posts a one-stop shop for finding out about the games I work on.  With Sim City I was doing everything on my own and I posted any sites that helped me find out anything about the game along the way.  Those scenarios took 30+ minutes each and I needed any bit of help I could find   I have some sites to add to Shiren as I get further along too.  There are some nice Shiren fansites in English, and there's even a Japanese Shiren 2 fansite that has info about things like unlocking the debug options.

I know it may be a few years, but let me know when you put together your giant table of usefulness, and I'll link it on all of my translation pages too.

[tbpbird]

Here are the latest screen shots:




In the first screen you can see we didn't have the text width vs screen space down yet.  I think the Japanese text is part of a compressed texture.  The second screen is during the karaoke game.  The text just changed slightly for the singing game so it fits better, so that screenshot may be considered "old" at this point  

Last night I finished the text calculator, so we should get better at estimating the amount of screen space available for text.  I was also able to find the pointers and insert the text for that first screen shot.  Work is progressing quickly right now, but I forsee some slowdowns once I get to the texture compression.  That could take some time to figure out.  In the meantime, I'm working on inserting text into the other untranslated sections so it's easier for the translator to see how it looks/context.

Shellshocker18 - I believe 64 Detective Club was translated by krom.  If you check his github he has his translation patch there.  Nice find on the Getter Love site - I'll add it to the main post.

the onne i found on github is far from translated, some stuff are in english but most are in japanese

[Shellshocker18]

tbpbird are you referring to the 64 Detective Team translation? I noticed too its barely started, unless I compiled it wrong. But its not listed with other complete translations on romhacking.net so I doubt its far along. Only the title screen options and game setup are English. Everything after including the game hud and scenes are still Japanese. Still cool to see it started because I didnt know it had.

I guess real quick while on the topic here are those websites
(Publisher) http://www.imagineer.co.jp/imagi_n/n64/tantei/index.html

(Developers) http://www.pandorabox.co.jp/gaiyou.html

Just plug them into the webarchive. Imagineer's site is the actual game site, while Pandora Box simply lists it with their other games, it has no unique page or description since Imagineer handled that. I know way too much about both those companies. But I'm getting a little off the topic of Getter Love here so I'll stop before i start typing a history lesson.

[tbpbird]

Yes 64 detective team translation.
Me too i thought i patched it wrong or something but since we get rhe same result i guess we did it right.

[ozidual]

I picked up a cold this week, so this weekend will be a little slow.  Here's the only screen capture I've done recently:



Excuse the eyes and mouth.  I have PJ64 set for 64DD games since I work on a lot of those, and Getter Love apparently needs different graphics settings.  My program that converts text to hex malfunctioned slightly here and both the (times) symbol and the number after it disappeared.  This is for the Quiz mini-game.

As a side note, like many N64 games Getter Love has separate graphics for the face, the eyes, and the mouth.  That way it can save space when it loads different facial expressions or things like blinking.  That's what you're seeing made obvious in the image above.

Other than that simple fix, I found a major issue with the game that I fixed on Friday.  Basically, it was assuming 2-byte text, but the English text is 1-byte.  This becomes an issue when it assumes that 0x0A and 0x00 (Line Break and End of Line) will never be that 2nd byte.  It was a simple fix, and all sorts of things work better now. 

[ozidual]

Found this a little funny - I finally found part of the pointers for the main dialogue text.  Rather than loading a line at a time, it loads a section at a time.  That section can include multiple lines of text or just a single line of text.  One of the lines of text on its own in a section is:

TEST

another is:

fdlsafjlaf

Literally, just someone banging on a keyboard so they could make sure it printed out correctly   I'm not really sure what they were thinking since both lines were encoded with ASCII.  The game won't display ascii correctly without modification since it uses SJIS (Japanese 2-byte encoding).  It's possible they were part of some debug system since sometimes they implement ascii for debug menus.

[ozidual]

Latest screenshots:



I'm working on that first one right now.  The original text is centered, and the whole window slides in from the right.  Usually they'll hard-code the start point for everything and then use math to shift it in.  Not so much here.  Every frame is hard-coded in.  The second one is probably tied to pointers needing to be fixed.  We'll see.

I just finished putting together a system to automatically calculate pointers for all of the text.  There are still a few bugs in it but overall, it should speed the text insertion up quite a bit.  I think it took me a few days to insert the first round of text.  The second round took a few hours.  I have some ideas on speeding that up too.

EDIT:



Fixed it!