Hacking Legend of Heroes Translation

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The Legend of Heroes. What can be said about these games for people who are not already familiar with the series. So far, as it stands, there has been 3 different universes in the series since it originally broke from the Dragon Slayer flagship. Here is a small breakdown of the series.

No Official Name Saga
Dragon Slayer - The Legend of Heroes I
Dragon Slayer - The Legend of Heroes II

Gagharv Trilogy
The Legend of Heroes III - Shiroki Majo
The Legend of Heroes II - Prophecy of the Moonlight Witch
The Legend of Heroes IV - Akai Shikuku
The Legend of Heroes - A Tear of Vermillion
The Legend of Heroes V - Umi no Oriuta
The Legend of Heroes III - Song of the Ocean

[These next ones take place in the same universe]

Liberl Kingdom Arc
The Legend of Heroes VI - Sora no Kiseki
The Legend of Heroes - Trails in the Sky (XSEED)
The Legend of Heroes VI - Sora no Kiseki SC
The Legend of Heroes - Trails in the Sky SC (XSEED)
The Legend of Heroes VI - Sora no Kiseki The 3rd
The Legend of Heroes - Trails in the Sky The 3rd (XSEED - tentative title if they release it)

Crossbell Arc
The Legend of Heroes VII - Zero no Kiseki
The Legend of Heroes VII - Trails of the Void (It will earn this name!)
The Legend of Heroes VII - Ao no Kiseki
The Legend of Heroes VII - *haven't given it a proper name yet... that I can remember what it was*

Erebonian Empire Arc
The Legend of Heroes VIII - Sen no Kiseki
The Legend of Heroes - Trails of Cold Steel (XSEED)
The Legend of Heroes VIII - Sen no Kiseki II
The Legend of Heroes - Trails of Cold Steel II (XSEED)
The Legend of Heroes VIII - Sen no Kiseki III
The Legend of Heroes - Trails of Cold Steel III (XSEED - tentative title if they release it)

There you have it. All of the games in the series to date. Now back to talking about it. The series is a very difficult bunch of games to work on due to the sheer amount of text involved. The games are constantly changing. You can do the smallest accomplishment in the game and the whole dialog from the NPC characters will change. There is a lot of background and relationship stuff happening in each of the games. It may not be as obvious as something like a Persona game but it is there. It is all about story telling in these games. No super high end graphics, no overtly sexy under aged girls (**well not as a selling point**) or any of the crap that has ruined the RPG genre in my opinion. They really are good games. Any game that you can get a good 50 hours of play time minus using a ton of movies, is all right in my book. Ready to play them yet!?

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This project started in May 2014 after the Falcom Trick (neoxephon first did it) was discovered. It let the flood gates open to work on multiple Falcom games. Myself (being the lunatic I am) decided to take on Zero no Kiseki. Shortly after my announcement, Flamethrower came on board as a programmer and we started getting traction. Various others have helped and a few random translators have chipped in but Guren no heya kara and yangxu (youtube videos of playing the Chinese PC version fame) are our main two.

Originally we had a very open project here. Spreadsheets in public view and all of the tools for working on the games were being posted. I like to share information and get feedback from people on certain stuff. But there is some touchy areas of romhacking that most sites don't want to deal with, so we went a little bit private to keep their noses clean and so we could have open discussions about stuff that could possibly spoil the game for those waiting on the English version coming out December 2016 (ETA). Then I started to notice some problems with the translations in the spreadsheets. Somebody was committing a HUGE no no when it comes to using machine translations. I have said it once, I will say it again, you CAN use machine translations for SIMPLE stuff (like items, weapons and etc.) and maybe get a good clean hit. Never for any kind of real dialog stuff. It just does not work. So we started moving the links around and just hosting them on our forum.

We started catching a few more eyes among the Falcom fan community and along comes SkyWeise (gonna be the graphic guy because he is a lot better at that stuff than I am. I hope he knows this!). He provided us with a new home and a better forum. People should really come by to talk to us. That is where the latest info is on the projects. Back during the summer, a fellow that I can't remember his name, thought he would just randomly start editing the scripts. I was furious about this and stopped the translation work until I could get everything back in order. So if you are ever wondering why they are hidden from public view and you have to login in to edit them... This is why. I am taking this project very seriously and I am a perfectionist. A lot of sleep is lost thinking about solving problems that arise in the game.

The good news. The previous 3 paragraphs were kind of small overview of what has been happening in the project. There is other bits of goodies thrown into all this information I posted here. Going to give a quick breakdown of the status now: LOOK BELOW IN THE SPOILER TAG ^_^

Spoiler

Script Translation - 60% (as of a few weeks ago)
Miscellaneous Files Translation - 100%
Script Insertion - No formal insertion has begun. Just private testing stuff.
Miscellaneous File Insertion - About 40% (a lot of testing going on while insertion is taking place).
Other random BS - Right on track!

We all have to take a break from this game sometimes. It is large and in charge! It requires a keen eye for details and patience. We are working hard on it though.

Formal Team Members
zero g monkey (zeromonkey) - Various positions but looking forward to writing the script and QC
flamethrower - programming and getting my ass out of a bind
Guren no heya kara - translation machine
yangxu - translator and youtube connoisseur
SkyWeise - graphics guy and lord of the domain (hosting)

We also have various other members on our team who jump into the fray when they are needed. I'm not gonna name them all because I have been sitting here for an hour and don't want to sit here much longer.

If you didn't see the announcement before, get your copy of the Japanese PC release if you want to play it on the computer. We are working on that one too!