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It would be great to get Snatcher translated. Long ago this was discussed. There are some details in the texts that refer to Japanese topics, difficult to translate. Have luck anyway.

Well, here you go, have fun!

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By the way, are you talking about Snatcher or SD Snatcher? I know Snatcher for Mega CD (it has quite some differences in the texts from the Japanese one), but never heard of SD Snatcher...

We're talking about SD Snatcher, which is based on SNATCHER but actually very different in gameplay... (and in storyline too, for that matter)

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Toby, weren't you also involved in the whole oasis translation projects back then? (together with those 2 other dudes, uhm can't remember names) So if you've done that job before, ye must have some resources already.

I was somewhat involved indeed, but I never really got to doing a lot of work. The other two you're referring to are probably Marcel Kok and Dennis Lardenoye, they did the actual work in Oasis. Most of the experience I have comes from the Bazix titles sold on w00mb. (Xak being the biggest project)

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I'll be willing to help with text input, sure no problem. I'd be honored.

Great! The more the merrier... If you have to do this type of thing alone it's a real bitch, but it looks like you're the second volunteer already making this job a lot lighter...

moahi: Snatcher has already been translated.

EDIT: oh, this has already been said in the mean time...

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moahi: Snatcher has already been translated.

Too slow!

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Like you said, the first thing is to get the text in a readable format. Usually I skip the extraction process and just write a disk-viewer the translator can use to view the disk.

Ah ok, but then you already know where on the disks all Japanese text is stored.

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Then it's up to the person who'll enter/edit the text to put pointers to the new text strings on all the old offsets. Usually the length of the original text is also required in order to point back to the old text.

Ah such task isn't problem for me then. I have ARM-assembly as a hobby so I know a lot about pointer and offsets.

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I tend to go for more memory in favor of compression by the way. Since Japanese text tends to have extremely short expressions no amount of compression is going to ensure a 1:1 fit, so I just claim an extra 64kB of RAM.

Extra RAM is not problem in these days but what I'm worried about if there's enough free space left on the disks to put the new text.

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I'm really referring to the most common crack in circulation which has a bug when you launch a rocket.

Yes I think know that one, the graphics gets distorted and you some rings in the target grid. You mean that one?

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I wouldn't want to use that version, nor would I want to use the original version which will probably just say "please don't copy our software" if you run it on an emu. I think I may have found a suitable version already tho...

Was there really a copy protection preventing it to run on a emulator, can't believe that. Ok good to hear that you already have found a suitable version.

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Ah ok, but then you already know where on the disks all Japanese text is stored.

Nope, this tends to be pretty much randomly, with text corresponding to a certain map/event being grouped. Anyhow, I let the translator hunt for the text since I may miss certain (small) phrases.

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Ah such task isn't problem for me then. I have ARM-assembly as a hobby so I know a lot about pointer and offsets.

Well, then you know how childishly-simple this stuph really is. Hack the text-routine, scan for a special character combination, if found, swap old string-address with new string-address, when done restore with position where old string-address would've ended... Basically the text-editor is the poor guy who gets to copy/paste everything into the source and set up the pointers to everything.

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Extra RAM is not problem in these days but what I'm worried about if there's enough free space left on the disks to put the new text.

Doesn't really matter. We can use compression for on-disk memory issues (I saw at least some space on disk 1) or just add a boot-disk if required and load everything into RAM at boot time.

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Yes I think know that one, the graphics gets distorted and you some rings in the target grid. You mean that one?

Yup, and we wouldn't want that one to end up in our patch!

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Was there really a copy protection preventing it to run on a emulator, can't believe that. Ok good to hear that you already have found a suitable version.

Well, it doesn't check for an emu of course, but I think it might do a rudimentary disk-check apart from checking for the SCC+ of course.

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Doesn't really matter. We can use compression for on-disk memory issues (I saw at least some space on disk 1) or just add a boot-disk if required and load everything into RAM at boot time.

Ah ok thanks for the info.

Anyway good luck with creating the disk viewer.

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Quote: Doesn't really matter. We can use compression for on-disk memory issues (I saw at least some space on disk 1) or just add a boot-disk if required and load everything into RAM at boot time. Ah ok thanks for the info. Anyway good luck with creating the disk viewer.

Disk viewer is done, well, something workable at least... Let me know if you'd like a preview. (be sure to put an e-mail addy in your profile)

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[Disk viewer is done, well, something workable at least... Let me know if you'd like a preview. (be sure to put an e-mail addy in your profile)

That's fast. Yes I would like to see a preview of your disk viewer and yes I have an email address in my profile. Couldn't contact you by PM because I can not find any button in this forum to send a PM.

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That's fast. Yes I would like to see a preview of your disk viewer and yes I have an email address in my profile. Couldn't contact you by PM because I can not find any button in this forum to send a PM.

It's not in your profile, you probably entered it in the 'administrative use only' email field. I'll abuse my admin powers here and check the user db though.