Dungeon Master Nexus for Sega Saturn - English translation

[ChristopheF]

I made a complete English version of Dungeon Master Nexus for the Sega Saturn console (the original version is Japanese only).
Full game: http://dmweb.free.fr/?q=node/251#toc12
Patch only (if you want to build your own translated version from the original): http://dmweb.free.fr/?q=node/1639

I made my best and I playtested the whole game with the translated version. However neither Japanese nor English is my native language so there might be room for improvement.
Please post your feedback here if you find any kind of typo or poor translation, even if it seems insignificant. Any help is welcome and will be greatly appreciated!

In particular, I'm not 100% comfortable with the current video subtitles. If you can help to transcribe what is said in the videos to Japanese or to improve the English translation, please check these YouTube videos where you can enable the subtitles and check their current state:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7k24qvVuIA0 Introduction
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLFiZh3t3_0 Midgame
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzZZhJ549Jo Endgame and credits
You can also download the subtitles (including Japanese/romaji/English) from the patch archive (link above).


Additionally, the Dungeon Master Nexus pages on the Dungeon Master Encyclopaedia were updated and now feature new detailed maps and updated lists of champions, items, spells and creatures.

[ParuNexus]

I was crying when i heard this news someone pointed out the sega extreme link you posted. Tested on satiator(one of the ODE for saturn) works flawlessly. there are a few emulators that should run this and might even have cheat codes you can enter(16:9 for 3d elements). No words can describe this feeling i had. Enjoy this game its a masterpiece! I'll try to show this off soon.

[ChristopheF]

Happy I made you happy!
I have only played this version with the mednafen emulator, so it's good to know you got it working on a real Saturn console.

[Gambit37]

This is incredible! I can't imagine how long this must have taken. I have no free time to try it out at present, but I hope to one day be able to play this in English and finally fully understand it! Thank you, what a gift

[ParuNexus]

Happy I made you happy!
I have only played this version with the mednafen emulator, so it's good to know you got it working on a real Saturn console.

speaking of of which not just our comminutes is talking about this and thats the topic of this message.
https://segaxtreme.net/threads/sega-sat ... ion.25411/ this just opened up about 3 weeks ago, this is kinda like your game jam for dungeon crawlers, as the title suggests this is for the sega saturn, I'll post the link in the nexus thread as well, there are prizes and of course others have also said just donate prizes before. Since you made an account at sega extreme i would look this up and submit this translation. they do accept partial translations and who knows maybe you can fix those things your mentioned.
either way you might see up spike for this translation or the site itself as poeple discover the other games as well.

[ParuNexus]

I'll try to give heads up as i discover people who are streaming this probally whatever link and time if i can find out before hand. most likely YT or twitch.

[Gambit37]

Out of interest Christophe, did you study Japanese and translate this yourself? Or was it machine assisted?

[ChristopheF]

Well, although technically I did study Japanese for 1,5 year during my studies and this gave me some very light basics, the reality is that I just can't read any Japanese.
So indeed I used multiple online tools for the translation (Google translate, Yandex, DeepL to name a few), cross checking various translations of the same texts, and also tried to match things with known DM lore. And also each text must conform to the various limitations in the game (like available screen space). I used a few tricks to make everything fit as smoothly as possible. You may check the readme.txt in the patch archive for all the details if you're curious.
I also played the game from start to finish (this was one of my initial goals, as I never played the game before except for the first level!) to check for any inconsistencies, in texts related to riddles for example.
The translation patch is fully automated, so it is easy to change some texts and make an updated version, so if you find anything that is wrong or sounds odd in English, please report.

[ParuNexus]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTFSWJ3xIWM this is the Sega Saturn shiro they do a weekly podcast Friday 3 to 5. They will be talking about this english translation its live now goes to about 4:30 and sometimes has a game session? i didnt ask if they will play it but perhaps they will.
you can always wait till it ends and catch it. just live now.

[ParuNexus]

@ChristopheF So part of what was covered about this was the way it was released, releasing a translation with the full game itself is frowned upon and the other patch options is a bit of work for some people. Also because this was your project people cant exactly have permission to make a patch. It would go a long way to make a SSP patch file and I'm not even sure either methods your release are acceptable for that contest TBH). SSP is Sega Saturn patcher a multi tool program for ripping files from the disc itself as well as patching, changing the region and various other things. Again praises for the amazing job it's just the method of how to obtain the translation. If you can't do the SSP I'd reach out and ask someone to make patch with your permission. I don't think linking to the files you need and how you built the translation gives people person to make an patch and as you said you wanted to fix a few things, having this other patch option might get people more interested in helping with those issues. Besides having the patch can probably help save space.

[ParuNexus]

https://segaxtreme.net/resources/sega-s ... atcher.73/ Sega Saturn Patcher 1.95

[ParuNexus]

for those interested the article of which the video talked about: https://www.segasaturnshiro.com/2023/09 ... o-english/ again even mentioned the bug fixes which is a nice touch.

[ChristopheF]

I'll look into this SSP thing, never used it before.

Someone is streaming a playthrough of the English version on twitch: https://m.twitch.tv/kaurtube/videos
Two videos so far, down to level 8.

[ParuNexus]

Advanced notice around 7:30pm PST Next Saturday Watch KingOfApoc on Twitch! https://www.twitch.tv/kingofapoc he said he will try Nexus translation out. Earlier tonight he tried the Japanese game. I think first time playing and probably mostly new to dungeon master series.

[Sophia]

I'm not sure if you already referred to this in making your translations but here is an old thread where I translated a bunch of text, as well as some of the video cutscenes.

viewtopic.php?p=109534

[ChristopheF]

I did not remember this old thread, so no, I did not refer to it while working on the translation.
I extracted all text in an Excel spreadsheet (supplied in the patch as Texts.csv), then translated all text with online tools, merged/selected the best result, then refined the translations several times to ensure consistency between texts, coherence with the riddles/scenario, usage of original DM vocabulary, etc.

If you have some time to lose, it would be great to have your opinion on the translations as English is your native language and you can read Japanese.
Even though I spent many hours on the actual translation, there might be things to improve because English is not my native language.

[ParuNexus]

Advanced notice around 7:30pm PST Next Saturday Watch KingOfApoc on Twitch! https://www.twitch.tv/kingofapoc he said he will try Nexus translation out. Earlier tonight he tried the Japanese game. I think first time playing and probably mostly new to dungeon master series.

sorry i messed up its not tonight it was last Thursdays and i complete missed it https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1937850421

[ChristopheF]

New year, new release:

Dungeon Master Nexus Translation Kit to allow anyone to create a full translation of the game to any language. Full documentation provided, no reverse engineering skills required.
English translation Version 2 (with lots of fixes and improvements)
French translation (made by PierreM with the translation kit)
Preview of the French translation of the manual (PDF, this is a work-in-progress made by PierreM, 20 pages translated so far)
Enjoy!

[Ksloth]

Hello! I am amazed at the hard work that surely went into the translation of DM Nexus, and so grateful for this!
I checked out Pierre's scans and translation to a French manual, and I would like to ask - is there any problem with me taking his French manual, editing the .pdf with an English translation, and then sharing that for others to use?
I have no interest in credit or offending anyone - just want to contribute something others might enjoy, so I wanted to make sure I wouldn't step on any toes if I took the time to do a nice translation job on it. Thanks!
Ksloth

[ChristopheF]

Hi Ksloth,
Your help is welcome, Pierre and I will be happy to help you.

Pierre is still working to complete his French translation of the manual. The current method relies on:

• Translating the text to French with online tools that perform OCR (like google translate) and manually improving the output text.

• Re-capturing all in-game screenshots using the French translation of the game (the screenshots in the original manual look washed-out and many contain Japanese text)

• Using cleaned-up scans where the original Japanese text was carefully removed. He kept only the background and some title bars or graphics.

• Using paint.net and multiple layers to lay out and align the background / new text blocks / screenshots.

The result looks very nice but has one drawback: the actual text data is lost in the process so the resulting PDF is not searchable (and you cannot select/copy/paste text).

We discussed about also doing a translation to English, and about another method. But we both lack the time to do it anytime in the near future.
Maybe you could give it a try:

• Of course, translating the texts to English and re-capturing all screenshots is still needed

• Instead of using paint.net, we thought of using scribus https://www.scribus.net/ because it is free (can be used by anyone to create other translations or refine existing translations) and would allow retaining the text in the final PDF file. This tool may require some learning, but we checked that is has the essential features needed to work on the translation:
  • Layers to manage easily different sorts of content (background, screenshots, text boxes)
  • Text boxes of any shape
  • Linked text boxes (where text that overflows from one box is printed in the next text box, allowing complex layouts where text must not overlap with screenshots)
  • PDF output capability

It seems using such a tool would also help for any potential future translation to other languages.
Pierre has already done a lot of work that he can share to help you get started, so you should send him a private message from here: memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=1138

[Ksloth]

Thanks for the info! This will be very helpful.