Fire Emblem Gaiden Name Update Patch (v0.9)

[Jotari]

Hey, another person doing this! I've been working on this and FE1 myself for a couple of months, but it's been tough going. (I've been using a lot of abbreviations, because I have no clue how to repoint things; so DrFtr for Dread Fighter... yeah.) I've also been doing my best to remove the unnecessary swearing from the script. Unfortunately, I don't speak Japanese, so there's no chance of me doing a new translation - I'm just refining Artemis's work.

I'd recommend not doing this. Two people having the same first two Japanese characters doesn't mean they should be rendered the same way in a localisation. Especially in this case, since "Sieg" isn't a name, so there's no reason to prefer it over the equally valid "Zeke", which is a name. (Plus there's a Kamui in Gaiden - were you going to change that to "Corrin" because that's how Fates' localisation renders it? Thought not.)

Are you sure Sieg isn't a legitimate name? I'd be pretty surprised if at least a few hundred people in our world weren't called Sieg. Siegfried and other Sieg starting names are fairly common so I'd expect more than a few families shortened it to Sieg, unofficially first and officially later. I mean I don't have any proof, I imagine it'd be regulated to more German communities but I'd be quite surprised if it wasn't the case.

Edited July 31, 2016 by Jotari

[Seafarer]

In Gaiden, the pointers are the last 4 digits of the address being pointed to minus 10, formatted in little endian. I believe the first digit is implicitly treated as the same as that of the address of the pointer itself. For example, the pointer to the class name for Dread Fighters is located at 0x3DB95, and it's value is D9 DB. To get the address it's pointing to, you swap the bytes around to get DB D9 (since it's in little endian), then add 10 to get DB E9, and then add a 3 in front (since the first digit of the pointer's address is a 3) to get 0x3DBE9.

It's also important to note that blocks of text can be pointed to by multiple pointers (ie. enemy Dread Fighters might use a different pointer than the one for ally units), so you will need to locate all of them if you want to change things.

Another important thing is that class names with more than 5 characters don't display correctly in menus, so even if you do repoint things, you're still stuck with the same amount of characters. One way to get around this is to use a tileset editor to add characters that contain multiple letters. The best I've been able to accomplish with this method is D.Fighter (although I'm not too fond of how the h ended up looking).

This is helpful, thanks! I really should have realised about the five-character limit in Gaiden, though. Derp.

And the trouble I've had with squished characters is that Gaiden's script already uses them heavily, so it's hard to insert new ones without having to reshuffle large chunks of the script. Where did you find the space for them?

Are you sure Sieg isn't a legitimate name. I'd be pretty surprised if at least a few hundred people in our world weren't called Sieg. Siegfried and other Sieg starting names are fairly common so I'd expect more than a few families shortened it to Sieg, unofficially first and officially later. I mean I don't have any proof, I imagine it'd be regulated to more German communities but I'd be quite surprised if it wasn't the case.

Sieg literally means "victory"; it's also part of the infamous phrase "sieg heil", which I imagine anyone in Europe would rather avoid invoking. (It's also also the name of a river.) It's apparently a surname, too.

Really, though, my post was more about Hero of the Fire Emblems' insistence that "Sieg" is somehow official just because the characters that make up its Japanese rendering were localised as "Sieg-" in an unrelated name. I stand corrected on it being a name, though.

[Jotari]

This is helpful, thanks! I really should have realised about the five-character limit in Gaiden, though. Derp.

And the trouble I've had with squished characters is that Gaiden's script already uses them heavily, so it's hard to insert new ones without having to reshuffle large chunks of the script. Where did you find the space for them?

Sieg literally means "victory"; it's also part of the infamous phrase "sieg heil", which I imagine anyone in Europe would rather avoid invoking. (It's also also the name of a river.) It's apparently a surname, too.

Really, though, my post was more about Hero of the Fire Emblems' insistence that "Sieg" is somehow official just because the characters that make up its Japanese rendering were localised as "Sieg-" in an unrelated name. I stand corrected on it being a name, though.

That does seem to make it slightly more official than a spelling someone just made up though. After all Zeke and Sieg would essentially be pronounced exactly the same. At least the way I read them. Now I'm not saying that it has to be Sieg, just that I don't see any issue with the logic of changing it to that. I think a number of factors need to be included when deciding something like that (not that I have any experience whatsoever admittedly), what's already in the fans minds, what just seems aesthetically pleasing and what the original name was trying to reference (if anything), just to name a few.

[Seafarer]

Well, I've elaborated on my reasons for preferring "Zeke". It's not my call (at least for this patch); I'm just hoping to make it clear that "Sieg" shouldn't be considered official in the same way as, say, "Shanna".

EDIT: Okay, I still think that "Sieg" is a bad choice because of the Nazi association, but given that Rudolf gave Camus his new name, and most Valentians appear to actually have European-inspired names (as opposed to the multiple Biblical names in Akaneia), it does seem to be a fair choice based on official name localisations.

Edited July 31, 2016 by Seafarer

[Dingledoop]

This is helpful, thanks! I really should have realised about the five-character limit in Gaiden, though. Derp.

And the trouble I've had with squished characters is that Gaiden's script already uses them heavily, so it's hard to insert new ones without having to reshuffle large chunks of the script. Where did you find the space for them?

Here's what I did:

-I never saw the semicolon being used, so I replaced it.

-I never saw the character shaped like a person being used, so I replaced it.

-I got rid of the brackets and replaced them with square brackets in the few places they were actually used.

-There were two 'el' characters. so I replaced one of them.

-I noticed that the two characters used for the 'Cel' in Celica's name were unnecessary because the 'C' and 'el' characters worked fine, so I replaced them.

-I compressed the three characters that made up 'esse' so that 'ess' fit in the first two and I could use the regular 'e' instead of the last one, allowing me to replace it.

-I compressed the three characters used for 'ata' and 'atr' so that 'at' fit in one character, allowing me to use the regular 'a' and 'r' after and thus replace two characters.

-I compressed the two characters that made up 'yut' for Ryuto and Dyute so that 'ut' fit in one character. This both helped me to fit Luthier into 5 characters and allowed me to replace the first character.

-I compressed the three characters used for 'the' and 'thg' so that 'th' fit in one character, allowing me to replace one other character. (I only replaced the 'g' character, because the 'th' character (AB) needs to be followed by the 'e' character (AC) in dialogue, or alignment issues will arise for some reason. The 'thg' was only used in battles as part of an enemy name, so it didn't cause issues).

There's another thing I didn't do because it was unnecessary, but it would probably work. There are two hyphen characters with different lengths. This is unnecessary, and one could probably be replaced.

You may be tempted to change the quotation mark characters so that only one is used. Don't do this. Both of them have coding that places them on top of the previous character when used, instead of to the right of it like normal.

[Topaz Light]

I dunno how much this is worth, but when I was writing up poorly-thought-out plans to remake Gaiden, I had Zeke's name as "Ezekiel" (the name Zeke is short for, because Zeke sounds way more like the name of a Californian surfer dude or a jerk jock than a noble knight). I understand that's diverging a bit more than just calling him Sieg, but I also do agree that the basis on which the use of Sieg was argued for was a poor one.

Edited July 31, 2016 by Topaz Light

[Katie]

I noticed Mae is still May even though she was explicitly called Mae in Awakening. It's an official name that's easy to overlook, as she's only mentioned in Boey's LB2 death quote, but still an official name all the same.

[Seafarer]

-I never saw the semicolon being used, so I replaced it.

Part of my playing with the game has included proof-reading, which has involved using semicolons. The rest seems to check out, though. Thanks!

[Gaiden Guy]

I noticed Mae is still May even though she was explicitly called Mae in Awakening. It's an official name that's easy to overlook, as she's only mentioned in Boey's LB2 death quote, but still an official name all the same.

I changed that but then changed it back because I forgot why I made her name Mae. Someone else pointed this out and I appreciate you guys doing so. Her name will be fixed in the next patch with the fixed credits. Sorry this has taken so long, but I have not forgotten.

[Seafarer]

I noticed that the Blessed Lance is still called "Holy". I don't envy you having to put that in with a 5-character limit, but it is an official name. Also, have you changed the three special lances to Luna, Sol, and Astra?

[Dingledoop]

I noticed that the Blessed Lance is still called "Holy". I don't envy you having to put that in with a 5-character limit, but it is an official name. Also, have you changed the three special lances to Luna, Sol, and Astra?

Items have a 7-character limit. The 5-character limit only applies to classes.

[Seafarer]

Items have a 7-character limit. The 5-character limit only applies to classes.

...and this is why I wanted to know how to repoint things. The Blessed Lance only uses five characters as it is currently; that's what confused me. Thanks again.

EDIT: I'm still really confused on how the credits work. I've decoded them, but the names aren't in the same order as they appear in the gameplay, and there's this random bit in the middle that says "GREIBE"...

Edited August 3, 2016 by Seafarer

[Mega Koopa]

I'm wondering, are you going to change "M. Def" in the character status screen to "Res" or "Resist", and "M. Power" to just "Magic"?

[Dingledoop]

EDIT: I'm still really confused on how the credits work. I've decoded them, but the names aren't in the same order as they appear in the gameplay, and there's this random bit in the middle that says "GREIBE"...

I'm pretty sure the in-game ordering of the names depends on how often you used certain units or something like that. It definitely isn't consistent in every playthrough.

Ignore Greibe, that name doesn't show up in-game. It's a duplicate of an old translation of Clive's name that never got changed because it wasn't used. Force's name shows up twice as well, although only the first instance actually gets used.

Edited August 6, 2016 by Dingledoop

[SaltyBucket]

any updates on this?

[Hero of the Fire Emblems]

2 hours ago, SaltyBucket said:

any updates on this?

I feel like we should wait for Echoes and then if we still want an FE2 translation we can basically just copy/paste Echoes'/ English translation as applicable into the NES game. Then we'll have official English names across the board.

[FionordeQuester]

Btw, here's some name suggestions for fitting some of the longer names into the small spaces.  I thought of some of these while thinking of how I would've handled a Gaiden localization had it been localized in the 1980's-1990's...

 

Dread Fighter = Manslayer (or "Shinobi" or "Ninja" if you're feeling literal; that IS kind of what they look like)

 

Priest = Acolyte (gender neutral this way; Celica is most definitely NOT a man!)

 

Swordfighter = Hero

 

Hero = Lord

 

Nova Cemetary = NovaGarden (with "garden" being a real life euphamism for "cemetary")

 

Doma'sGate = Doma's Eye (as far as I can tell, the original text translated to something more like "Doma's Crest", or "Doma's Insignia")

 

Thief Shrine = ThiefHQ

 

Mountain Cemetary = YamaGarden (with "Yama" being the Japanese word for "mountain")

 

Mountain Shrine = YamaShrine

 

Grove Village = Grove Town

 

 

Edited February 14, 2017 by FionordeQuester

[Vaximillian]

On 14.02.2017 at 2:00 PM, FionordeQuester said:

Mountain Cemetary = YamaGarden (with "Yama" being the Japanese word for "mountain")

Mountain Shrine = YamaShrine

Why Japanese names for something decidedly non-Japanese?

[Jotari]

5 hours ago, Vaximillian said:

Why Japanese names for something decidedly non-Japanese?

To cut down the length. Yama is shorter than Mountain. That's the sort of limitations that are in place when translating old games.

[Vaximillian]

40 minutes ago, Jotari said:

To cut down the length. Yama is shorter than Mountain. That's the sort of limitations that are in place when translating old games.

Why not Mt. then? It's a usual contraction for mountain.

[FionordeQuester]

Because "YamaGarden" looks and sounds more interesting than "Mt.Cemetry"; and Yama still MEANS mountain anyway.  "Garden" would already be used for "NovaGarden", and the original Japanese name for "Mountain Cemetary" uses the same word for "Cemetary" as "Nova Cemetary".  

 

Besides, we've already GOT Japanese names in there anyway (for example, "Saizo", Doma, Mila and Shizas).  What's a few more?

Edited February 15, 2017 by FionordeQuester

[Hero of the Fire Emblems]

15 hours ago, FionordeQuester said:

Because "YamaGarden" looks and sounds more interesting than "Mt.Cemetry"; and Yama still MEANS mountain anyway.  "Garden" would already be used for "NovaGarden", and the original Japanese name for "Mountain Cemetary" uses the same word for "Cemetary" as "Nova Cemetary".  

 

Besides, we've already GOT Japanese names in there anyway (for example, "Saizo", Doma, Mila and Shizas).  What's a few more?

That's actually a pretty poor rational, especially since Duma would be the name it's corrected to. The only thing you really have to go in that direction is Nova Cemetary; but then I have to point something out

 

Luthier already makes translation FE2 properly a pretty much impossible prospect without ASM hacking in extensions for name length, so at that point the issue would be moot. I still say, again, we wait for Echoes if and when a fan translation patch is done and we automatically have most of the translation done at that point; at the very least we have names for items, characters, locations, and factions all laid out even if the script is altered durastically enough to prevent a 1:1 translation patch job.

 

i actually talked with Artemis (the guy who did the patch); he basically said it's possible to modify the game for the English names but it requires a lot of work and he's too lazy/busy to do so.

Project Naga did some very similar work so maybe someone from Project Naga can help with the coding aspect of fitting names in, but Luthier is very much non negotiable now that Echoes is coming and it's using it. (Not that Awakening names were negotiatable to start with).

Edited February 16, 2017 by Hero of the Fire Emblems

[Dingledoop]

22 hours ago, Hero of the Fire Emblems said:

Luthier already makes translation FE2 properly a pretty much impossible prospect without ASM hacking in extensions for name length, so at that point the issue would be moot. I still say, again, we wait for Echoes if and when a fan translation patch is done and we automatically have most of the translation done at that point; at the very least we have names for items, characters, locations, and factions all laid out even if the script is altered durastically enough to prevent a 1:1 translation patch job.

Luthier isn't particularly difficult to fit in with a few edits to the tiles that compose the game's text. It's basically the same thing that was done so that Matilda could fit.

[FionordeQuester]

In other news, I've changed my mind about "YamaGarden".  "Mt.Cemetary" is just fine; assuming that one can make a custom "t." character to fit it inside the 10 letter limitation (I'd imagine it'd be possible, considering all the Kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana characters that the original game would've had to include).

 

That said, there's another one, "Swamp Graveyard" that also definitely cannot fit in the spaces allotted.  How about calling that one "BogTumulus"?  That's another kind of burial ground.

Edited February 17, 2017 by FionordeQuester

[Hero of the Fire Emblems]

2 hours ago, Dingledoop said:

Luthier isn't particularly difficult to fit in with a few edits to the tiles that compose the game's text. It's basically the same thing that was done so that Matilda could fit.

The issue he brought up with this is there's not enough tiles left that he could edit without breaking the game in some way (like removing the The End from the end of the game) but if that isn't the case then bravo, I still think it'd be much more efficient to make the patch after Echoes rather than make a patch you have a 90% chance you're gonna have to change in 3 months, and I do think if it could be properly expanded/hacked without going over the NES file limit so it'll run efficiently and smoothly from a coding perspective that would be brilliant.

Edited February 17, 2017 by Hero of the Fire Emblems