Re: (Incomplete) Telefang English Translation

[Imaynotbehere4long]

Shouldn't the monthly progress update have been released by now?

...has any progress been made at all?

[kmeisthax]

Well, the next town's set of translations is still in draft. I've talked with DaVince and Kimbles, but they aren't ready to release their work yet. I personally have decided to pace myself between Telefang and Bugsite (and other random personal projects). So effectively Telefang is on a bimonthly release schedule; you'll get a new patch on December 15th primarily containing some bugfixes.

[kmeisthax]

Welp, in dishonor of AIM shutting down, and Ajit Pai selling America's Internet to Comcast, here's a new Telefang patch. Download it now before Comcast puts Tulunk Village in the "Advanced Super Premium Internet Plus" package.

Patch v114
Rolled by kmeisthax

Speed IPS: http://www.mediafire.com/file/6k49g0ov0b93k96/Telefang%20-%20Speed%20Version%20%28J%29%20%28Eng.%20beta%20v114%29.ips
Power IPS: http://www.mediafire.com/file/2u7f9rg2mxhugld/Telefang%20-%20Power%20Version%20%28J%29%20%28Eng.%20beta%20v114%29.ips

• Redraw the logo on the SGB border to our English "Telefang" logo
• Colorize the title screen for SGB operation.
• Colorize the title menu for SGB operation, sort of.
• Fix "Are you calling me over?" message getting formatted like an SMS.
• Fix item use messages getting corrupted by the overworld code.
• Fix centering of the item name on the pause menu inventory screen, and the species name on the pause menu contact screen.
• Remove a nickname draw that was ordinarily overwritten on the denjuu nicknaming screen, which was broken by the above fix.

[Imaynotbehere4long]

Comcast puts Tulunk Village in the "Advanced Super Premium Internet Plus" package.

The more likely event is Comcast adds a "don't load all other web pages" protocol and simply forgets to put Zetaboards in any of their packages, resulting in the website being completely inaccessible.

[kmeisthax]

Shoutout to new team member, obskyr, who is ripping through a lot of miscellaneous translation work on the project! They've been hard at work tearing through Denjuu descriptions, quiz calls, and so on. Normally, you wouldn't get a Telefang patch this month, 'cause I've been working on Bugsite, but here's a special MLK Day surprise!

Speed IPS: http://www.mediafire.com/file/l8d34mbommdx236/Telefang%20-%20Speed%20Version%20%28J%29%20%28Eng.%20beta%20v115%29.ips
Power IPS: http://www.mediafire.com/file/trohx9jk3616e6d/Telefang%20-%20Power%20Version%20%28J%29%20%28Eng.%20beta%20v115%29.ips

• Fix initial time selection reverting to 00:00 when starting a new game on non-RTC hardware. (Thanks, andwhyisit!)
• Change "ARRIVE!" to "ARRIVED!" when a Denjuu arrives to battle. (Thanks, obskyr!)
• Add a music note ♫ to the font and encoding. (Thanks, obskyr!)
• A buttload of question-and-answer phone conversations, A bunch of EXP item conversations, 123 Denjuu descriptions, A few battle text changes, Changes to a few attack and arrival phrases, A couple of story/NPC line fixes, Some unused lines (Thanks, obskyr!)
• Further improvements to overall system stability and other minor adjustments have been made to enhance the user experience.

[kmeisthax]

Due to a mixup and some major bugs I have to roll out v115 again. Here's version 115b:

Power IPS: http://www.mediafire.com/file/o8weekrsb5wgkmc/Telefang%20-%20Power%20Version%20%28J%29%20%28Eng.%20beta%20v115b%29.ips
Speed IPS: http://www.mediafire.com/file/k33bpay8duiy46y/Telefang%20-%20Speed%20Version%20%28J%29%20%28Eng.%20beta%20v115b%29.ips

[Imaynotbehere4long]

Hooray, progress! Keep up the good work, everyone.

[kmeisthax]

Trying a new thing: I decided to make a personal blog post with the patch notes here. This has the same content as this forum post, but with demonstrative imagery.

Patch v116
Rolled by kmeisthax, with contributions from obskyr, andwhyisit, and Kimbles

Speed IPS: http://www.mediafire.com/file/glq41dxe0v83urx/Telefang_-_Speed_Version_%28J%29_%28Eng._beta_v116%29.ips
Power IPS: http://www.mediafire.com/file/jizgqw91gipreob/Telefang_-_Power_Version_%28J%29_%28Eng._beta_v116%29.ips

This was originally intended to be purely a bugfix release, since andwhyisit did a bunch of useful QA work. But then, from out of nowhere, a new translator arrived and proceeded to clear out some of our translation backlog!

• All of the villages of the Denjuu World got together and slightly modernized their names. Most of Telefang's place names are actually plant-themed, so we've changed "Toronko" to "Tronco", "Kurinon" to "Krinon", "Burion" to "Bryon", and so on. (Thanks, Kimbles!)
• A number of Denjuu calls have been translated, including several quizzes that were surprisingly difficult to translate. There are still a few conversation chains that we haven't gotten to yet, or are still debating; but you should notice fewer instances of /0x134nnn/ whenever your Denjuu pals phone you up. (Thanks, obskyr!)
• Some of the Index entries have been revised now. (Thanks, obskyr!)
• Denjuu types now appear correctly on the Index page. We also changed the existing abstract type graphic out. Now, on the Index page, it says "Habitat:", while the Contact/Status screen says "Type:". (Thanks, andwhyisit!)
• Unlocking a move on level-up no longer references the old, unused moves table. (Thanks, andwhyisit!)
• The level-up screen no longer has garbage tiles or abbreviations (mostly) in it. (Discovered by andwhyisit)
• The names of Denjuu you enlist no longer get cutoff on the "Got X's phone number!" message. (Thanks, andwhyisit!)
• Denjuu that call you no longer have their names cut off on your D-Shot, and they will be centered.
• Fixed no-RTC mode (again) so that new games don't start at midnight anymore (unless you want them). (Thanks andwhyisit, Shokupanda!)
• Added a little music note glyph ♪ taken from one of the game's pre-release screenshots. Try and find where we hid it! (Thanks, obskyr!)

There's actually a fair number of changes we've planned, but haven't dropped yet. Most notably, we're planning to rename "Index" to "Field Guide". In Japanese, we use the word 「ずかん」(zukan), which roughly means an illustrated wildlife guide. If that sounds like a Pokedex, well, that's literally how Nintendo translated it. This oddly requires some programming work, since the menus are all graphical tiles and we've run out of space in VRAM, hence why it hasn't landed yet.

Also, in some number of months from now, we will start rolling German language Telefang patches courtesy of Shokupanda.

[kmeisthax]

Patch v117
Rolled by kmeisthax, with contributions from obskyr, and andwhyisit

Speed IPS: https://github.com/telefang/telefang/releases/download/patch-v117/Telefang.-.Speed.Version.J.Eng.beta.v117.ips
Power IPS: https://github.com/telefang/telefang/releases/download/patch-v117/Telefang.-.Power.Version.J.Eng.beta.v117.ips

For a fully illustrated developer commentary, check out my blog.
To contribute, check out our GitHub.

This is the "Field Guide" release, owing to a UI redesign of the field guide (previously "index") which could have been a full patch release on it's own.

• Our headline feature is a new UI design for the Field Guide (previously known as "Index" until obskyr pointed out that it's a terrible name) which was primarily motivated by text length concerns imposed by the original user interface. The Japanese language UI only has space for two lines of text, and longer messages will draw a non-functional continue indicator. The new design has room for three lines of text, along with unlimited numbers of pages. (Thanks, obskyr!)
• Adding paging support to a screen that uses script messages is a little difficult, since the text window wants to scroll up, and none of that animation is aware of the additional lines - nor will it ever be. So we had to disable that animation for paged screens that shouldn't have a scroll up animation, by carefully managing the text interpreter's internal state.
• The Denjuu name actually can't be vertically centered like that normally, because it's part of the background layer and needs to be aligned to the tile grid. An earlier version of the redesign placed the name right at the top, above the evolutionary stage indicator. obskyr didn't like this, so he created and added a sprite for the name to live in.
• For extra credit, andwhyisit and obskyr added a second set of evolution indicators just so that this screen could have better text centering.
• The base ROM has code to center text, but nothing to right-align it. Of course, that wouldn't do, and we added extra code to right-align the habitat.
• After redesigning the field guide, obskyr proceeded to complete all the translation work for it, so no more monsters with placeholder entries.
• Licorice is now Lycoris, and a number of other typos have also been fixed. (Thanks, obskyr!)
• We also redrew "Habitat:" to match the normal font more.
• We've switched our base ROM of Power Version to the correct dump. If you patch Power Version, and it fails to boot on real hardware, you will need to acquire the correct ROM from a Power Version cartridge.
• Fusion and lab evolution no longer cut off Denjuu names. (Thanks, andwhyisit!)
• We changed "Index" to "Field Guide" on the pause menu.
• This required completely reorganizing all of the Pause Menu's graphics, which were... a mess.
• Furthermore, we actually didn't have enough tile space to spare for "Field Guide". andwhyisit came through with a patch that allowed us to move tiles specific to the title-screen menu onto a separate graphics resource, which gave us enough room to fit all our text!
• ...Well, almost all our text. The confirmation screen for deleting a Denjuu has to share tiles with the confirmation screen for saving. So for the former, it's the slightly awkward sounding "Will you delete?".
• Speed Version's Melo-D Editor now has translated button graphics. (Thanks, andwhyisit!)
• After some deliberation we decided to change the tagline for the English translation to Telefang: Mobile Monsters. (Thanks, obskyr and andwhyisit!)
• We've massively improved our default font, which now looks better and gives us more space on average. (Thanks, obskyr and andwhyisit!)
• The thinner numerals caused problems with the shop windows, which doesn't like our VWF. Andwhyisit contributed a quick hack to fix it.
• The bold numerals are still retained in version 117's default font, but are now only in use for numbers the game calculates, such as battle damage, shop quantities, and so on.
• We're signing our work. The Tulunk All Staff logo now appears after the normal staff logos at the start of the game, so that people who obtain an old patch beta can find out where to get new ones. This is entirely skippable for now. (Thanks andwhyisit!)
• Noisy's name is no longer corrupted. (Thanks andwhyisit!)
• We implemented a condensed font for names that are too stubborn to fit. This gives about a 10-15% size reduction in exchange for some aesthetics. (Thanks, andwhyisit!)
• We then applied it to all table strings. Game-wide. This means that long names should automatically fit without additional help from us... assuming they're not too long.
• We fixed the centering on the calls and text screens - contact names now center correctly, and will even automatically condense if they don't fit this specific space.
• We also implemented status effect graphics to replace the text that was already there. Only 4 tiles were allocated in the original ROM, which isn't enough space to fit all the ailments your Denjuu can get hit with, so we drew our own. (Thanks, andwhyisit!)
• Centered text is no longer off-by-one pixel anymore, as we now account for the last pixel of tracking space. (Thanks, obskyr!)
• andwhyisit added some new text control codes that should help us fix options in text, since those have been broken for a while now.
• The screen that shows up when you get called by a Denjuu to be informed that they're late (late-arrival screen) now properly clears the Denjuu name. (Thanks, andwhyisit!)

[kmeisthax]

Patch v118
Rolled by kmeisthax, primarily developed by andwhyisit

Power IPS: https://github.com/telefang/telefang/releases/download/patch-v118/Telefang.-.Power.Version.J.Eng.beta.v118.ips
Speed IPS: https://github.com/telefang/telefang/releases/download/patch-v118/Telefang.-.Speed.Version.J.Eng.beta.v118.ips

Full developer commentary: https://fantranslation.org/node/114

Contribute on GitHub: https://github.com/telefang/telefang/tree/patch.

• Articles are now supported for encounter messages! This applies to all three kinds of encounters (random encounters, story Denjuu, and T-Fangers).
• We even have postfix articles; T-Fangers like "Kakuza Party" now are introduced as "A Kakuza Party member has challenged you!"
• This system may require additional tweaking for the upcoming German-language patch.
• Story encounters with nickname-bearing Denjuu now show that Denjuu's nickname in the encounter screen..
• Battle messages involving numbers now properly pluralize related words. e.g. "1 point" vs "2 points".
• Added control codes for formatting questions correctly. This means that the option selector no longer overlaps the question text in most phone calls.
• Added control codes for two-line questions. For questions with long answers, they can now sit on two lines.
• Reformatted pretty much all the Denjuu quiz calls to use the question control codes.
• Changed our text inserter to properly account for the width of our new message arguments.
• Further improvements to overall system stability and other minor adjustments have been made to enhance the user experience.
• This means that we removed potentially unsafe patch points which could have resulted in unreproducible phantom crashes. (Thanks, kmeisthax!)