--------------------------------------------------------------------- NightWolve's "Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys" English Translation Patch Ys IV is a Super CDROM˛ Action Role Playing game released by Hudson Soft on 12-22-1993 for the PC-Engine/TurboDuo CDROM system. Version 0.95 Progress: ASM Font Hack: 100% Script: 100% Script Quality: 95% Dubbing (8/236): 3.4% (Will be available separately) Credits: NightWolve (Nick Livaditis) Project Manager/Programmer/Hacker/Script Editor, etc. (Plus, the guy missing the most hours of sleep here... :) It's ok, I'll catch up on my sleep when I'm dead.) Neill Corlett Programmer/Hacker; originally started work on this game and left us the Ys IV decompression code along with some notes/code analysis. The first to dump the script! Dave Shadoff Programmer/Hacker; wrote the Ys4 compression code and font hacked for 8x12 lowercase support!! Also, amazingly enough, he handled the adpcm dump/insert utilities to allow for re-dubbing. Akimaru (Mika Peurala) That crazy Finnish guy who provided some quickie translations and was the original founder of this project along with Neill. Shimarisu (Rachel) Our first translator. She's a loyal & hard working Ys/Falcom fan that's been a great asset. After a PC crash, she managed to recover her lost translation work which covered about 94% of the script. Deuce (Jeff) Final translator that handled the reviewing of Shimarisu's work and finished off any remaining untranslated strings. D-boy (Derrick) Courrier font tiles & font conversion tool. His knowledge on fonts was indispensable. Bravo, D! Justus A great unexpected asset that took on the task of dubbing!! Sometimes, you just get lucky and the right person shows up. mjmmx (Mike), ViperD BETA testing/script corrections. --------------------------------------------------------------------- For further information and patch updates, visit the "Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys" Translation home page: http://rigg.servegame.com/translations/ys4/ RIGG, our PC-Engine/DUO preservation group - Offering quality archives, as well as translation projects for both PC-Engine and PC games... http://rigg.servegame.com/mb/ikonboard.cgi Deuce's Ys IV FAQ/Walkthrough can be found here: http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/turbocd/game/10260.html http://db.gamefaqs.com/console/turbocd/file/ys_iv_the_dawn_of_ys.txt Ys IV Review: http://www.rpgfan.com/reviews/ys4/Ys_4.html --------------------------------------------------------------------- The patch may not be distributed unless accompanied by this documentation. See the Legal section for details. --------------------------------------------------------------------- CONTENTS --------------------------------------------------------------------- 0. What's new 1. Ripping a CD image of your Ys IV disc 2. Applying the patch 3. About the game 4. About the translation 5. Greetings 6. Legal / disclaimer 7. Before you contact us... 8. Contacting us --------------------------------------------------------------------- 0. What's new --------------------------------------------------------------------- Version 0.95 (December 25, 2004 - Christmas Special for the kids!) is a candidate release nearly finished!!! The only possible explanation for this marvelous achievement is talent on loan from Gooodddddddd! :) Lowercase font support was enabled and script editing is essentially complete. I expected the wrapping code needs to be very difficult, but it worked out well despite my concerns and the long drudgery I was expecting. Dubbs will come at a much later time and separately. I think the script is just fine, but I'll take any tweak suggestions from the masses after it's played before declaring it 100%. Well, enjoy the game! Ho ho ho... Merry Christmas! Version 0.57 (August 1, 2004) was the first public release. Just the first two towns were translated in uppercase font only. The rest was suspect and suffered from message box sizing problems. --------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Ripping a CD image of your Ys IV disc --------------------------------------------------------------------- First, you must have a bin/cue image of the CDROM. The .bin file size MUST be 771,213,744 or 772,634,352 bytes. If you have this already, skip to "Applying the patch" section. A quick visual guide is available here: http://rigg.servegame.com/pce_duo_ripping.htm a) Get/install CDRWIN at http://www.goldenhawk.com/download.htm b) Get/install latest ASPI drivers, if need be: http://download.adaptec.com/software_pc/aspi/aspi_v472a2.exe or, http://rigg.servegame.com/software/aspi_v472a2.exe c) Insert your original PC-Engine CD of "Ys IV-The Dawn of Ys". d) Run CDRWIN and Click on the Extract button. e) Select the CD Reader with your loaded "Ys IV-The Dawn of Ys" CD. f) Check RAW, Abort for Error Recovery, Enable for Jitter Correction, Quick for Subcode analysis, data/audio speed 1X, read retry 60, & SubCode threshold 300. g) In image filename, click the browse button(the one with "..."), choose a working dir location & save the image name to Ys4.bin. h) Click START. i) After the rip process is complete, make sure the Ys4.bin file size is 771,213,744 or 772,634,352 bytes. --------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. Applying the patch --------------------------------------------------------------------- a) Verify that your .bin file is named "ys4.bin" and the file size is exactly 771,213,744 or 772,634,352 bytes. b) Copy the contents of the patch (YsIV(US).cab) to the same directory as your ys4.bin file. c) Simply double click "PATCH.BAT" to begin the patching process. If it fails, use PATCHBAK.BAT. Now, you can either burn the image to CD-R & play the game on a real DUO/PC-Engine, or you can mount the bin/cue with a utility like Daemon Tools (http://www.daemon-tools.cc/), and play it with an emulator such as MagicEngine (www.magicengine.com) or YAME (http://rigg.servegame.com/software/yame038e.rar). Most of all, enjoy! --------------------------------------------------------------------- 3. About the game --------------------------------------------------------------------- "Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys" is the product of some confusion, since its Super Famicom/Super NES twin, Ys IV: Mask of the Sun, is not even remotely the same game. Falcom licensed out two versions of the game. One to Tonkinhouse for the Super Famicom, and one to Hudson for the PC Engine. They both have similar plots, virtually identical casts, and both sport a return to the overhead view favored in the original two games in the series. However, the plot progresses in vastly different fashions, the levels and bosses are totally different, and so on. The two don't really play very similarly, either... though the SNES version is much, much more difficult. The PCE game is commonly regarded as being the better of the two games, but the debate is still ongoing as to which is considered the "official" installment. (Evidence seems to point toward the SNES version.) "The Dawn of Ys" brings back everything that made Ys I & II so much fun, and cranks it up a little in the process. More great Falcom music (not as good as the first three, though), magic spells and rings, full voiceover, more anime cinemas, and so on. Like the rest of the series, it's not incredibly long, but it's a fantastic ride, and the ending is among the best ever. The story begins two years after the end of Ys II, and one year before the beginning of Ys III: Wanderers from Ys. Adol and Dogi return to Esteria after roaming around, looking for adventure... and sure enough, adventure finds them in what would seem to be the least likely place... --------------------------------------------------------------------- 4. About the translation --------------------------------------------------------------------- After I assisted NightWolve with a rather quick-and-dirty script translation for Ys I Eternal for PC, he came to me later, asking if I'd be interested in helping out with the translation for this game as well... as it turned out, Shimarisu had done preliminary work for a great deal of the game, and I was needed for editing and finishing up on the last several hundred untranslated strings. After some hemming and hawing on my part, I agreed, and worked much more slowly than he would have liked... finally finishing up on Sunday, July 25th, 2004. Personally, I'm not generally one to throw myself into projects of this nature, but given my enduring love of the Ys series, I make exceptions where I must. I'm quite pleased to see this game finally in English. More people deserve to be able to play it, without constantly wondering what the heck is going on. I hope you enjoy the work that everyone involved has put into it. And remember: An overly literal translation is a bad translation. See FF4, FF7 and Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner for examples. - Deuce --------------------------------------------------------------------- I've been in the PC Engine hacking scene for years, most recently working on game translations for some games that were never fully appreciated outside of Japan. Of course, the more appealing games tend to be much larger tasks, and more technically difficult... Ys IV is one of those epics that begs to be translated, and I'm happy to have participated with such a talented crew. I don't feel like I did a major amount of the work - but I will say that I was always around as a safety net when things stalled (and I did have a few tricks up my sleeve...). I have to hand it Neill for doing the trickiest bit (IMHO) - the compression breakthrough was all his; I just did some follow-up to write the compressors (I had a couple of different versions). I really enjoyed the assembly work that I did together with NightWolve in late-night online hacking session to get the font working well. And the ADPCM stuff came from an interesting idea coupled with a talented sound man, and the right timing. (I'm really interested to see how the world accepts the dub patch.) But probably the biggest impact I had on this project was my incessant hounding of NightWolve to see how the script was going (I'm probably the only person who can get away with it). ;-) It's been a lot of work, but I'm surprised to see how smoothly and quickly it all came together on the technical side, and I'm quite pleased with the outcome. For another game of this stature, I'd do it again in a minute, especially if a group of people like this were participating. - Dave --------------------------------------------------------------------- Why the hell am I writing to this? I didn't even do much to this project, except I breathed some life into it. I don't even remember how it started, must've been a late night chat with Shimarisu in winter 2001. I just remember that we thought of translating Far East of Eden - Tengai Makyo 2: Manjimaru and somehow we ended up starting Ys IV. We needed a hacker, so I got in touch with Neill. The project started up fine, but the project went on ice almost as soon as it was announced; I had serve in the Finnish army for the next 9 months. While I was in the bootcamp, I introduced Neill to NightWolve and they managed to get the text decompressed. The deal was that I'll start with the script from the end and Shimarisu starts from the beginning, but I couldn't do squat while I was away in the camp. I decided to leave the project to Rachel (and later Deuce) and Wolve to finish up since I wasn't able to do anything major for the project. I only did a few remaining translations to the 99% complete script in the end. Nice to see this one finally coming to end. All the kudos goes to Wolve, Neill, Rachel, Deuce and Dave. Awesome work guys and girls. - Akimaru --------------------------------------------------------------------- Where to begin? *Sigh* So yeah, Akimaru's recollection of history sets up the project's progression about right. He and Shimarisu had their eye on Ys IV since ~4/10/2001, but they needed a hacker. Neill Corlett came onboard around ~7/21/2001, already famous for his Seiken Densetsu 3 SNES work. But yeah, on January 2002, Akimaru had to head off for the army, so the the project took a back seat. Me, I found RIGG during the fall of 2001 while taking a break from work and looking for things to do. I took up searching for PC-Engine ISOs of games I never got to play. Around that period, I also became fascinated with the romhacking/translation scene. Later, 9-11 would leave an impact on me such that I delayed reentering the workforce. That made it easier to continue this new path of mine... I also became a political junkie, but that's another story. Anyhow, so I learned of popular imports having translation patches being released by fans. I was amazed at the very thought of it. FFV for SNES was one of the first I had tried, I believe. This whole scene just caught my interest and one thing led to another to a point where I took it upon myself to try my luck with PC-Engine imports that never made it here. I wanted to join the club too!! "The Legend of Xanadu" was my first pick for hacking, but that turned out to be too dificult. Later, Xak III came up and I found it to be the perfect candidate. It already had an 8x16 English font built-in and there was plenty of space to fit English. Thus, I was on my way to making a name for myself and filling a vacuum for a beloved, but not so succesful system that had little attention given to it in the romhacking scene as well... Moving on. So, I learned of Akimaru's work on Ys IV at some point during that period. With my Xak III translation project success, a little pride, and most especially a love for the Ys series, any chance to be apart of this crusade for De-Japanization I would waste no time to seize. I was itching to see the project move forward, so I wanted to lend a hand. I still remember the day I bought my Ys IV copy from tzd.com for $49.99 back in '93. Even though it was Japanese, you could tell it restored some of the magic of Ys Book I&II lost with Ys III. Anyways, Akimaru filled me in on the project status and later got Neill to put up a page with whatever work he had done. At this point, Neill was getting busy/distracted with other things. With his text decompression code made public, I decided to try my luck with advancing the project. Problem is my skills were nowhere near his so I didn't stand a chance... I talked with Akimaru more about it. He arranged for me and Neill to chat/trade what we know which got the ball rolling again. My small role was informing Neill that the script was S-JIS encoded, and I helped to narrow the search for a text block from the 65 MB ISO down to a 512KB state file from the YAME emulator. That led Neill to do what I had failed to do with his code: to find a text block! His decompression code was right all along despite doubts I had! Anyway, the great thing was that Hudson started out every text block with the text you see in the status message box. As a result, the first couple of bytes of every block are the same! So, presto! All text blocks of script could easily be found and dumped. (Later, I would discover there were two more blocks that needed manual work to uncover, but nevertheless, that day changed the course for the project.) However, it appeared to me that I was no longer really needed after that. The script was dumped, and around 6/13/2002, Shimarisu was set to begin translating it along with Akimaru. I was just happy it would be moving forward again. Surely now the project would proceed more smoothly, right? Think again! Neill moves on to other things while translation work proceeds. I contact Shimarisu on 9/2/2002 to casually ask how's it going. I find out she lost her work due to a PC crash. Months and months go by. All hope seems lost... On 5/30/2003, I decide to offer Neill $250 to finish the required hacking needs for the project. I was thinking of getting Deuce to translate the script who did great work for me on the PC remake Ys Complete I. Neill sounded interested but had to turn it down. More time goes by. Enter Dave Shadoff who was responsible for the Motteke Tamago translation project. As he mentioned above, he did act as a safety net for when things stalled. 8/17/2003, I chatted with Neill on Dave's behalf to obtain any translated script that he might've gotten from Shimarisu because she recalled emailing him files before her PC problems... He couldn't find any. No matter, the Deuce option was there and I had Dave. 8/24/2003, Dave succeeds in coding the compressor by examining Neill's decompression code! Our dream becoming reality came closer! FINALLY! The project was now viable. It didn't make much sense to let a translator continue working when you never knew if you'd be able to insert their work. But that all changed thanks to Dave! 9/25/2003, I achieved the best possible script dump and set Deuce up with an editor for it. Matter of wait now. Moving right along. 9/30/2003, while chatting with Shimarisu, she comes up with her translation work out of nowhere! I thought all of it was lost, but not entirely. Fantastic I thought. I'll import her work into my database tool, then give that to Deuce to review and finish off any remaining strings that weren't translated. 10/19/2003, I hand off Deuce the script. It would be 7/25/2004 before I would hear from him again... He took his sweet ass time doing other things... Finally, with that, I release a teaser patch on 8/1/2004. One slight problem though... The English font only supports uppercase!!! No worries. 8/9/2004, I find the font tiles are not compressed. With D-boy's help, I get a nice courrier font inserted on 8/10/2004. But we're not out of the woods yet. There were tricks involved in switching between the banks where the lowercase part of the font resides as well as uppercase. Dave & I worked on that together, finishing it off by 8/25/2004. I learned a little bit of PCE ASM too. Wouldn't you know, things just kept getting better & better. Justus arrives and wants to do dubbs. Well, hell, why not? BAMMM! Dave comes up with adpcm encoder/decoder utilities just for that very reason and I manage to find every single adpcm clip!!! That happened around 9/23/2004. Alas, here we are. I've crammed quite a bit in, but I think you get some idea of the adversities involved... Friends, I am so very proud and truly astonished that I and our team could bring this patch to you. I hope you enjoy it, and with knowing what was involved in its creation, appreciate it that much more. The countless hours, the loss of sleep, the skipped meals, the tired eyes, the shear exhaustion, etc. were all worth it!!! You'll never know and maybe it's for the best. =) Translation teams don't just sacrifice that, we also sacrifice some of the enjoyment you'd get playing the game fresh without having edited every damn line of script it uses. Well, God speed. - NightWolve --------------------------------------------------------------------- 5. Greetings --------------------------------------------------------------------- Special Thanks and Greetings to: - Tenchi-no-Ryu, for the Rendering of RIGG, software (PPF), and for being a good pal. Check http://www.rpgfan.com - his new home. - David Michel, for exchanging info now & then; the best PCE emulator, Magic Engine (www.magicengine.com); and, for pointing out that the S-JIS charset was in use by the PCE system. - Allanon - The emu community in general, for giving me the motivation to do this... - All those who supported the project. - Anyone I forgot. --------------------------------------------------------------------- 6. Legal / disclaimer --------------------------------------------------------------------- The "Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys" English Translation patch is UNOFFICIAL, UNAUTHORIZED, & isn't supported in any way by Falcom nor NEC. The Patch is freeware and may be redistributed freely as long as it is not modified, not applied to or distributed with any CDROM image, and this documentation is included and not modified either. No money, goods, or services may be charged or solicited for the Patch, in its original or applied form. Use of this patch is solely at one's own risk/discretion. None of those mentioned in this documentation, neither individually nor as a group, may be held liable for any loss or damage arising from its use. --------------------------------------------------------------------- 7. Before you contact us... --------------------------------------------------------------------- Regarding bug reports: If you notice a bug in the English version of the game (that wasn't already in the Japanese version), I'd like to hear about it. Make a state file using MagicEngine to email NightWolve, along with a reasonable description of the problem. --------------------------------------------------------------------- 8. Contacting us --------------------------------------------------------------------- NightWolve: nlivadit@yahoo.com My Homebase: http://rigg.servegame.com/mb/ikonboard.cgi Akimaru's: http://rigg.servegame.com/aki/ Neill Corlett: http://www.neillcorlett.com/ Dave Shadoff: http://www.interlog.com/~daves/pce_dev/translt.html Deuce: deucemugen@hotmail.com Justus: http://www.justusjohnston.com/