Well, four days have passed since the release of the latest version of our DQ5 patch. In that time, we've received several reports of small bugs that we missed. This was more or less expected in a project as big as this one. Our current plan is to release a patch either tonight or tomorrow to fix all of the bugs we currently know of, and a patch a week or so after that to add some "finishing touches" to the assembly work, script, and what not.
Now, on to other things. There was a big to-do made about the "translation war" between Byuu and DeJap/me. This "war" was largely due to miscommunication and some initial hard feelings. Things have worked out quite well actually, both sides have conceded that they could have handled things a little better, and the world is once again a happy place. As such, posting on message boards with little jabs at one group or the other is not going to help the situation in the slightest. I know it's fun to start flame/troll threads on message boards, but I would personally appreciate it if you didn't.
In the past four days, a lot of talk has been thrown around about "script quality" between the two patches. I figure now is as good a time as any to throw in my two cents. Our patch has an item/monster name/spell name/character name script that was very much modeled after the NES Dragon Warrior series (and to a lesser extent, the recent Dragon Warrior Monsters releases for monsters not present in the NES games). Several months were spent scrutinizing various monster names, perfecting them to a place we are relatively happy with. Our dialogue script was synched with the 8x8 scripts. That was the only "Dragon Warriorization" done to it. The rest of the changes to the script you see in our patch were done by an excellent writer and proofreader, Geechyguy, who produced a finished script incredibly quickly and of extremely good quality. He however, wasn't the first script editor. We went through several branches of scripts by several different editors until we settled on Geechyguy's draft. His was the one that made the best changes to the original script without losing or clouding meaning, and yet still had an incredible flow from a Westerner's perspective. For those of you who thought the patch was catatonic during the past year and a half or so, now you know different. Revising a script the size of a novel takes a long time. Going through several different copy editors means multiplying that time. Producing a script that is comprehendible and true to the original is a very difficult task, and one I feel Geechyguy allowed us to live up to.
Which DQ5 patch should you play? I'm not one to answer that question. Both patches are of excellent quality, and represent hard work by those involved. I suggest you play through them for a little while and decide based upon your own tastes rather than just picking a patch based on what you hear from those around you. RPGs are a very individual thing. What one person likes, another finds boring and lame, or outlandishly silly.
Enough about DQ5 though, I'm sure you're all sick and tired of hearing about it. I know I am... of course having played through the game at least 300 times, I've been sick of it for quite a while longer than you probably have. ;)
On to other news! I'd like to take this time to announce that I have been quietly working on a lovely little anime game, Akazukin Chacha. It's a lovely little game for the Super Famicom which hardly anyone has heard of before, and fewer care about. It's a perfect title for someone as jaded with high profile projects as I am. Yay. I've already got a translator, in the form of my old friend Chojin, and a faithful sidekick in the form of Sir Satsu of Workshop. Not all that much as been done yet aside from making the tables and inserting some preliminary spell names, but I am working on a dumper and should have a lovely script for Sir Chojin to translate within a few weeks, assuming DQ5 doesn't keep me busy longer than that. Genjuo Ryodan (or it's proper romanization Genjuu Ryodan) tutorials will be returning shortly. Yay.
© 2001 Partial Translations - archive.is/5H1jl