[FE5] Lil' Manster – Translation and Quality-of-life Patch for Thracia 776

[Miacis]

Full Thracia 776 menu/script translation patch based on the Project Exile script, complete with many quality-of-life features

If you're here, I'm sure you've heard about Project Exile (or PE), this year-long project to bring Thracia 776 into English, using Zane Avernathy's tools and helpful guidance. I was the project's second and last Lead Editor, and with the power of teamwork, we brought this patch to release with a full script in June 2019. After a few hot fixes around June and July, the project went quiet for months before development was discontinued in January 2020.

However, a lot still remained to be done. The script never went through a full review. Planned interface tweaks had been abandoned. Portions of dialogues and menus remained untranslated. This patch aims to solve these issues, and so much more!

The improvements in this patch where initially my own, a gathering of useful discoveries from working on my own French patch for Thracia. While sharing these discoveries with the other translation teams, I teamed up with Expert Criminal and a few friends to work on the script revision. Then more people offered to add their contributions to our project: quality of life hacks, fonts, obscure japanese free-to-use patches. This patch wouldn't have gone as far as it did without them.

I'd also like to mention that this not a rewrite of PE by any extent, and a lot of smaller stylistic problems were left untouched, to keep the creative vision of PE's translator as close to the original as our professional conscience can allow. All credit for the former PE script obviously goes to the original Project Exile team. I'd say more, but since I was part of that team, it'd start to feel like I'm patting myself on the back.

 

Download here

Mirror download (registered SF users only)
 

Patching instructions

Screenshot gallery

PDF of the script edits

 

Our Discord server for updates, help, FE5 hacking, and FE5 talk

 

CHANGELOG
 

On the textual side:

Spoiler

 

Full script revision surgically fixing every little inconsistency one could expect from a fan script

 

Update to Fire Emblem Heroes's new official names

 

New dialogue font for maximum readability

 

Name changes! There's only a few. You can learn more about them in the PDF of the script edits. It's near the end.

 

 

On the menu side:

Spoiler

 

New profile layout that matches the Japanese layout more closely, including a WEXP, Ddg and FCM (Follow-up Critical Multiplier) display.

 

More readable menu font, complete with cool icons to indicate weapon locks, weapon effectiveness, and much more

 

Complete item/skill description revamp. With extended description boxes, those item descriptions have never been so... descriptive!

 

Translated sound room, options descriptions and various textboxes missing from PE

 

So much future-proofing. Updating this patch as new official names are released is now trivial, and using it as a base for other translations is entirely doable (more in the post below).

 

 

On the quality-of life side:

Spoiler

 

Implementation of most of Zane's QOL additions, including:
* Hold L to swap animation modes
* Equipped item preview
* Guard AI display
* Talk display
* HP bars

Global Enemy Range, Growth Rates Display and Weapon Experience Display, by Ultimage

Display and repositioning of your units during Preparations, by Min and Ultimage

Crt% display in battle, by ai and Lord1519

All of these options can be toggled on or off in the Options menu.

 

 

On the customization side:

Spoiler

 

Names and descriptions for all unused items, classes, skills and characters (for mods, randomizers, and people who like using cheats)

 

Restoration of all unused spell animations, including Naga, who doesn't even have a tome

 

Colorblind-friendly version of Zane's HP bars

 

Small optional patches altering the gameplay to adjust your difficulty, like 0% growths, Double WEXP or Easy Sound Room access.
 

Known issues:

- Character portraits may disappear when selecting the Items menu command with frame-perfect speed. Can't be fixed.
- The song that plays for the Epilogues may fail to loop depending on characters recruited/killed. Might be fixed in the future.

Thanks and Acknowledgments:

Text insertion, graphical edits and overall project management by Miacis

Based on Zane Avernathy's FE5 menu translation and compiled with his tools.

All credit for the original game goes to Intelligent Systems and the wonderful development team they had.

 

Lead Script Editors:
Miacis, Expert Criminal

Programming:
Ultimage

Graphic Design:
Ferris, Flasuban, Miacis

Lead Playtester:
CedAodh

Playtesters:
Advent, Lehran, Ferris, Lord Louie, Yuiz

Logo, Banner Design:
Ferris

Linguistics Consultants:
Straylize, Rosie the Riveter, Laivinia

Discord Administrator:
Xylonphone

Massive credit to the team that made Project Exile upon which this is based:

Spoiler

Script Translation, Localization, and Text Insertion by Cirosan
Based on a patch architecture first developed by Kirb
Incorporating Zane's FE5 menu translation
ROM expansion by Kirb and dn

Project Lead:
Cirosan

Lead Script Editor:
Miacis

Lead Playtester:
KrashBoomBang

Lead Programmers:
HidoranBlaze
Ando

Lead Graphic Designer:
Ando

World Map Editing:
Ando
Robert of Normandy

Title Screen Design:
EnDavio

"The Ballad of Yied" written by:
Sam Heitzer

Additional Script Editors:
Bartz
KrashBoomBang
NitroAssassin524
Shale
Expert Criminal

Additional Playtesting:
Ves

Additional Programming:
Cirosan
Miacis

Additional Graphic Design:
EnDavio
Miacis

Discord Administrator:
Xylonphone

Lead Script Editors Emeritus:
Alan Smithee
Shale

Special Thanks:
DDS
FireLizard
Kirb
Mekkah
Shaya
Zane
And everyone else who helped make this project a reality.

Both Kirb and Zane have continued to provide me with technical advice, and I'd like to stress that this patch would not have been possible without them.
This patch would not be possible without the ROM expansion performed by Kirb and dn, and I wish to thank them again.

 

Special Thanks:

Zane Avernathy & HidoranBlaze for their incredible help in working out the tools.

Horrabin, Sephie and EnDavio, the team leaders of the Spanish, German and Italian translation teams, for their inspiring work in their own projects.
Raymerald for always finding the most obscure (but helpful) Japanese hacks and tools.

542◆ruo0tlxqPQ, who authored the fix for the unused spell animations.

Ai, creator of the Blume patch, who authored the Crt% display in battle (with Lord1519), and helped us fix map battle/death quotes.

Min, who authored the Unit Rearrange Patch and made all our menu lag disappear.

Zane Avernathy who authored our cool new menu font formater, as well as a whole suite of Thracia QOL additions, and frequently helps us out for a bunch of smaller things.
I know I already credited Zane like 5 times, but he darn well deserves every last one of them.

Soul for their historical acumen, and their writing and emotional support. 🥰

ChimeraHardline for the small “SELECT” icon

 

So here we are. I hope you'll enjoy witnessing the world of Thracia 776 through our silly lil' patch, with its pretty silly lil' name. ~Miacis

Edited May 8 by Miacis
Credits username update

[Miacis]

Thracia 776 in other languages

While the following projects in progress are technically separate from Lil' Manster, they were all done in the same momentum as I've been more or less involved in their development. Consequently, a lot of fixes found in Lil' Manster will be found in those. And, you know, I also wanted to give them all a big shoutout, since they've been doing amazing work and you might not know about them.


Spanish

Led by Horrabin and Xabierín, the translation of Project Exile in (European) Spanish progressed by leaps and bounds and is now complete and released! All graphical elements of text are translated and inserted into the game. And if memory serves, Advent has been working on an Latin-American Spanish port.

Raymerald got me on the team to help out on text insertion, and I've done all graphic edits and tech stuff.

You can find the patch right here!


French
> GIVE [Shoutout] TO
> [Self]

I'm a native French speaker, so obviously I've been translating this game into French. It was a bit of a one-man project at first, but then The_Elfangor joined the team as translator and has been doing a great job so far, while I've taken a more editorial/tech position. We have our own small French-speaking chatroom for the project, too.

All menu text and graphics are done, and the dialogue has been translated all the way to chapter 9 so far. You can find it right here!


German

Led by Ultimage, who's so far been focusing mostly on menu text and graphics. He was doing good progress, last time I checked.

Ultimage got in touch with me early during planning for help about menu font issues, and I've continued to provide support on everything graphics, menus and tilemaps since then. These days, he's doing pretty fine on his own with tech stuff without my help, though.


Italian

Led by EnDavio, the patch is both doing menus and translating dialogues at the same time. My involvement with this project has been fairly minimal, but he and I have been sharing tech help since August for either of our patches, and it wouldn't feel right not to mention him in the same breath as everyone else. Development is still happening in our FE5 hacking server.


Turkish

This project is extremely early stages, but it's led by Kaiserbot, and my good friend Stormizer is part of the team, so they get a shoutout as well!
 

If you happen to be interested in the development of these translations and want to offer your skills, support, feedback, or just wanna come hang out, you can find us all in the same Discord server as in the above post.

This will also be where we'll be planning any future updates for Lil' Manster!

 

 

Edited October 13, 2021 by Miacis
Updated French patch link

[[account inactive]]

You didn't have my permission to release this! This is uncalled for, I'm still working on the final version right now, and I even gave a deadline of the 15th of next month! You have no right to release a project using my script without my permission or knowledge!

[Mekkah]

[delet this]

Edited April 20, 2020 by Mekkah

[Parrhesia]

Taking in the evidence, my judgement is that the Project Exile script was considered and publicly communicated to be complete and open for use by its team members, including Miacis. Creative control remains Cirosan's, and without having the time to do a deep reading of the text I take Miacis at their word that the script fixes were just that; fixes.

I would encourage Cirosan to re-open communications with Miacis and reach an accord with them. In the meantime, this thread is not about to become a public discussion on who holds the rights to the script, and warns will be thrown around freely and immediately.

We're six minutes into the 25th. Merry Christmas.

[Miacis]

Thank you for that. I'll be open to suggestions if it feels like this mod is painting a wrongful image about its aim or about Project Exile itself.

Edited December 30, 2019 by Miacis

[Miacis]

Just to be clear, this is the first time I hear about this 15th of January deadline. Last I heard about the state of the project, it was "complete" and nothing was done on it besides "minor fixes". It's been 4 months since then, and I don't think it was unfair of me to think there was not going to be any further releases.

If Cirosan wishes that some of his upcoming changes be added, I'll gladly do so when he releases. And if he wants to use my documented edits to fill the gaps in his script, he's free to do so as well.

[Parrhesia]

If you would like to post your hot take on why contact wasn't made, as multiple people have by now attempted to do, consider that you are very unlikely to be in possession of all the facts, and that you are, by contrast, very likely to have your post hidden and ten points of warning added to your history.

[AnonymousSpeed]

Considering this is a fan translation of a Japanese company's intellectual property, I don't see where "creative control" factors into things.

[Miacis]

Hey everyone. Here's a little update for this patch.

1) We've changed our name! A few people suggested we use a different name to make it clearer that this is not a release by the Project Exile team. Hopefully that helped to clear a few misgiving about this project.

2) A lot of descriptions have been tweaked to be a tad more consistent and descriptive. Bows also have proper generic descriptors aside from "good against fliers". And we've realigned all numbers and big letters so they're not sitting awkwardly a few pixels under regular menu text.

3) The terrain bonus numbers were weird, yet we somehow never noticed after all these years.

4) Flamesiegmund had been unjustly forgotten from the credits despite the tons of feedback he's been giving. Now he's on the credits.

5) (This had been stealthily added soon after posting the OP, so here's a proper announcement for it) Because quality of life stuff is always nice, visited (or unvisitable) houses and villages now have a unique terrain name, because staring at a 3x4 pixels door difference to tell if a house is visitable is kinda dumb.

6) Robert of Normandy's Unit Ordering patch has been added to the Optional folder and, thanks to Raymerald's bottomless supply of weird free-to-use JP patches, you can expect it to get fuller as time goes on.

7) There's a 0% growths optional patch included now, too.

Edited December 31, 2019 by Miacis
Added #7 to the list.

[Miacis]

Hi folks. Time for another, pretty consequent update for this patch. I can't believe it's been a month already. Here's all the new stuff you'll find in here:

 

1) As quality-of-life, Crit% is now displayed in-battle, instead of Level. This was a rather unpleasant leftover from FE4 that didn't help much, in a game where anyone can land critical hits (aside from telling you Pavise's chance of activating, I guess).

2) Speaking of QoL, have you ever wanted to reposition units in Thracia without looking up a map for it? Then check out Min's Unit Rearrange patch, in our Optional folder. It's pretty wild.

3) Heroes localization changes! The Yied Desert is now the Aed desert, and Ced's title is "Hero on the Winds". However...

4) We are not changing Manster into "Meath". At least, not until we get an idea of how the Manster Province and Meath itself are going to be named (or it turns out it was a mistake, which we kinda hope it was?). and no, we are not changing our patch name to Lil' Meath either

5) Leif has an angry portrait! Turns out it's used rather frequently during dialogue, something which was totally absent from PE and Lil' Manster, up until now. So we re-added them, even though the visual difference is very subtle, for our very srs boi. There were also a lot of minor dialogue scripting edits and a few tweaks to the intro crawl.

6) A number of mistakes have been fixed, most notably Hel's description which, contrary to popular belief, cannot actually kill in this game, even at 1 HP. Yes, really. There were also some "Comic Relief" music cues missing during Shannam's ch15 conversation. And two units in ch16B were named "Manster" despite being very much not in Manster.

7) There's a new icon for the Brave effect, which gave us enough room to tidy up item descriptions some more. We also made sure some staves don't go over in the shop description, and added a missing lock icon for Sarah on the Kaia.

8) Finally, for cheats/randomization aficionados out there, we've given a description to this weird-ass unused skill we discovered not too long ago. The wiki says it's the icon for the "Immortal" skill, but they're wrong, teacher, because the Immortal skill is actually invisible. This skill lets you go through some weird terrain like walls, even indoors, though at a movement cost. We've also implemented a patch that lets the game display Authority and Action stars even if there's more than 10 of them.

9) Some devices don't take kindly to BPS patches, so we've included an IPS patch in the Optional folder, for those who are 101% sure they have the right ROM.

 

The new patch can be found in the Download link in the OP. A changelog has been added to the zip file, and the image gallery has been updated to reflect the newer changes.

 

One last thing that I feel is worth mentioning for FE5 enthusiasts out there who may not have gotten the memo about it.
Project Exile, the patch that Lil' Manster is based on, has been discontinued until further notice.

Edited February 4, 2020 by Miacis
It took 17 attempts, but I've finally killed the dumb sunglasses emoji replacing my 8th bullet point.

[eyeballfrog]

On 2/3/2020 at 6:28 AM, Miacis said:

1) As quality-of-life, Crit% is now displayed in-battle, instead of Level. This was a rather unpleasant leftover from FE4 that didn't help much, in a game where anyone can land critical hits (aside from telling you Pavise's chance of activating, I guess).

As an additional quality of life, I don't suppose you could also replace atk and def in the battle screen and battle forecast with damage and crit damage. Constantly doing mental subtraction is obnoxious.

[Galap]

@miacis, just so you know, the DL links are down.

Edited March 21, 2020 by Galap

[Miacis]

On 3/21/2020 at 10:09 PM, Galap said:

@miacis, just so you know, the DL links are down.

It seems some lout of ill repute has issued a fraudulent DMCA claim against the files. Until my counterclaim goes through, I've set up temporary downloads.

Hopefully the person responsible is not going to try his luck at a second round of copyfraud (a crime punishable by law) for a video game translation...

(Next Lil' Manster update coming soonTM)

Edited March 23, 2020 by Miacis

[YourBoyRoy]

Looking forward to it! I've been keeping an eye on this patch for a while, I like the improvements a lot since I had some issues with PE, many of which are fixed up here. Shame about the situation with claims and whatnot but what can you do...

EDIT: Are there any plans to change Saias' speech to Mareeta to match the original script better? The PE script did a 180 on the meaning behind it as Cirosan said the whole 'weapons having a soul' would confuse western readers so the idealology was changed to be about free will instead.

 

Edited March 31, 2020 by YourBoyRoy

[Arbiter1272]

It seems like the download link has gotten taken down again. Whoever is doing this needs to stop, but in the meantime, for people who still want to download this patch I got a temporary download link to it.

EDIT: Download link has been fixed so I removed the link

Edited March 31, 2020 by TwistedMetroid

[Miacis]

17 hours ago, TwistedMetroid said:

It seems like the download link has gotten taken down again. Whoever is doing this needs to stop, but in the meantime, for people who still want to download this patch I got a temporary download link to it.

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AjciLv36ntOWgZkYAC9spqTD0lEmEw?e=zEcbv1

Oh, huh. I do appreciate the gesture, but don't get your account taken down by the rudelord-in-chief, man. I'm looking into options to make this stop more permanently.
 

Quote

EDIT: Are there any plans to change Saias' speech to Mareeta to match the original script better? The PE script did a 180 on the meaning behind it as Cirosan said the whole 'weapons having a soul' would confuse western readers so the idealology was changed to be about free will instead.

It's a popular request, but I'm afraid this goes beyond the scope of Lil' Manster. We're not really interested in touching on style issues and localization choices, especially when it'd require we rewrite large chunks of text.

I'm not a big fan of it either, especially since it drones on and on, but that's not something that's in our plans. I guess it's gonna have to be one of those localization choices that we have to accept and move on, like in dem Awakenings and dem Fates.

Edited March 27, 2020 by Miacis

[Arbiter1272]

4 hours ago, Miacis said:

Oh, huh. I do appreciate the gesture, but don't get your account taken down by the rudelord-in-chief, man. I'm looking into options to make this stop more permanently.

It's fine. I just posted the link so others can still download it. If the person who's doing this has a problem with me re-uploading the link to the patch, then he or she can take it up with me personally about it.

[Miacis]

Hey there. The more permanent solution to the download link issue is as follows: registered users can download the Lil' Manster zip from the attachment in this post.
Unregistered users can use the mirror link in the OP.

I hope you all have a wonderful time playing it.

Lil-Manster.zip

Edited March 29, 2020 by Miacis

[Arbiter1272]

On 3/29/2020 at 7:54 AM, Miacis said:

Hey there. The more permanent solution to the download link issue is as follows: registered users can download the Lil' Manster zip from the attachment in this post.
Unregistered users can use the mirror link in the OP.

I hope you all have a wonderful time playing it.

Lil-Manster.zip 553.08 kB · 11 downloads

Oh okay that's good that the issue has been fixed. Hopefully that won't happen again.

[vonmalvarius]

Wow! All those efforts and improvements are amazing. I really liked PE and wanted more of it. All the drama that's happening was a real bummer for me.

I just tried version 1.02. Used the bps and the rearrange patch. Looks and feels incredible.

Only problem, while using SNES9x 1.6 on retroarch, I encountered a few visual glitches here and there. Some flickering in the map screen and some corruption in the fight scenes.

Example:

After trying it with BSNES, it was perfect. No bugs whatsoever. In case it would help, I wanted to report it.

Please continue. The work that everybody is putting is the proof of how much you love this little gem.

Edited April 4, 2020 by vonmalvarius
Typos

[YourBoyRoy]

On 2/3/2020 at 11:28 PM, Miacis said:

4) We are not changing Manster into "Meath". At least, not until we get an idea of how the Manster Province and Meath itself are going to be named (or it turns out it was a mistake, which we kinda hope it was?). and no, we are not changing our patch name to Lil' Meath either

It appears that Munster is the official name actually. I checked FEH earlier and the mention of Meath in Ced's description has been changed to Munster, and the same goes for 'Manster' in the wiki. Then again, could be an error too.

[vonmalvarius]

On 4/13/2020 at 6:57 AM, YourBoyRoy said:

It appears that Munster is the official name actually. I checked FEH earlier and the mention of Meath in Ced's description has been changed to Munster, and the same goes for 'Manster' in the wiki. Then again, could be an error too.

In the changelog in the first post (textual side), it contains the script revisions file and the name Manster has been changed to Munster in it. That should be proof that they know about it already.

[YourBoyRoy]

12 hours ago, vonmalvarius said:

In the changelog in the first post (textual side), it contains the script revisions file and the name Manster has been changed to Munster in it. That should be proof that they know about it already.

Huh. Guess it'll be changed for the next version release, whenever that may be.

EDIT: The guess the same goes for the other name changes and that one different sentence by Eyvel at the end of the file?

Edited April 16, 2020 by YourBoyRoy

[Miacis]

Ah, damn, I didn't expect someone to go look into the PDF edits already. I guess I did spoil a few surprises by editing the link early.

But to answer the question(s), yes, we are changing Manster to Munster, as seen in Heroes. (No, we're not changing the project's name to Lil' Munster. We changed it once, and it was enough already.)

And the next release is coming soon! It's technically ready, but there's a little something extra that I'd like to squeeze in before what's going to be the last LM update for awhile. I'm aiming for a release by the end of the week.

Glad you're having a blast, though, vonmalvarius. I'm looking into these bugs, but I'm not sure what might be causing them... Perhaps an emulation issue. If BSNES works better for you though, then yeah, go for that.

Edited April 17, 2020 by Miacis