Issue #9: BREAKING THE CODE

[AtlusAram]

http://www.atlus.com/res/productiondiaries_100108.png (http://www.atlus.com/pd.php)

http://www.atlus.com/res/digitalrain.png (http://www.atlus.com/pd.php)

We've taken you into the voice recording studio. We've given
you insight into the QA process. We've shown you the nuances
of translation.

Now, Atlus Production Diaries dives into the code. No, we're not
talking about up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right-B-A-START...
These are the letters and numbers that make everything work.

http://www.atlus.com/res/clickhereforproductiondiaries.png (http://www.atlus.com/pd.php)

[TheMagicHat]

Very informative. It sounds like the editors can have quite the headache working on certain aspects of the games they put out. Thankfully, it's worth it in the end. You guys do an awesome job.

[jeffx]

Cool cool. I'm in the process of fan-translating an obscure Nihon Falcom game so this article was definitely relevant to my interests ;)

[cj iwakura]

Nice way to offer up some P4 English screens.

And I went with the manga 'canon' name for P3. I think I'll give this protagonist a unique name.

[Kakizaki]

Cool cool. I'm in the process of fan-translating an obscure Nihon Falcom game so this article was definitely relevant to my interests ;)

I don't suppose I could ask which game?

[dragonlife29]

Incredibly awesome :o

I especially liked this part, since it made me laugh:

This is vitally important, since there was a series of bugs where characters were accidentally being switched around and had wildly inappropriate facial expressions, like shouting "Don't you die on me!" with a huge grin.

Oh, and this:

Curse you, Mr. Period!

:D

Pah, I hate code. I've never really understood it, so it's really intimidating. It's great to have some insight--now--that untimely cues of music/portraits can be blamed on code; I found that the most intriguing, to be honest.

And yeah, unless it's a screw-up, I won't really bother to think about the complexity of code and what role it played...thanks to this I will now, though :D

I guess now I also know why sometimes text can be a little weird at times, like that period thing...and the whole width thing? Christ! I thought people had it bad enough with limits--but they also must consider width? Crazy, crazy stuff.

You guys are very good at teasing...English P4 screens and an unannounced title? Shupekyuleishion!

[MrPopo]

This reminded me of some of the example text dumps from the Mother 3 fan translation. Those guys have gone really in depth into some of the issues they've run in to while converting the game to use english text. Of course, since they're working in the raw assembly, finding the problems and fixing them is harder than for you guys, who I assume get the source code to modify if necessary.

One of the things the article touched on was the inserting of "item name" into a block of text, and needing to get things like a/an and plurals correct. Battle text can be even more of a headache, because while for things like quests, once you pick the item name you have a good idea of how to structure it. For battle text, you need to make sure it handles all cases.