Post subject: About the rule regarding usage of fan translations
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Kyrsimys wrote:
Sucks it's on the original, I'm just not entertained at all when I can't see directly what's happening. Good luck to you on your run anyway.
Any ideas for alternatives? [Thread parts moved from the FF5 WIP thread.]
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Kyrsimys wrote:
Sucks it's on the original, I'm just not entertained at all when I can't see directly what's happening. Good luck to you on your run anyway.
Well, it has to be on the original, otherwise it couldn't be submitted here. I also don't like playing with Japanese text if there's a patch, but oh well...
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Bisqwit wrote:
Any ideas for alternatives?
I don't know how many language patches there are but I'm sure there's one that's widely known to be pretty good. I don't see it as a problem that it's being updated, the version that's used could be made downloadable from the site.
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samurai goroh wrote:
Well, it has to be on the original, otherwise it couldn't be submitted here
And that's why I asked, if someone could think of a good enough excuse that allows making an exception of the rule. The rule exists to avoid version conflicts, because translators occassionally improve their work and it's not nice if we have here a movie for a three years old translation version. When the translation is superseded, immediately the movie becomes old and without meaning (the video content and timings all change), even if we still have the translation patch on this site, available for download. Also, translation is a very big work, and translators take great pride in their work. A translation is part of the translator's portfolio. If we publish a movie that uses a certain translation, and that translation becomes obsolete some day because the translator wasn't happy with some part of the translation, it means we are still distributing their old work, that they weren't happy with. It's bad publicity for the translator. They would much more likely to be represented with the newer translation. It's not a question of vote -- it's a question of reason.
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I strongly vote for using a language patch. I can't imagine watching a multi-hour run when I don't even know what's going on. The techniques used in the FF6 movie for example are hard to follow even when it's in English! I say let's decide on a certain patch (and patch version) that everyone should use when doing a run. I don't think the updates for the patches can be so significant as to make the movie obsolete.
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Well, I made some segmentes WIPs, it's not the same, but at least it's on English... You can get them from the link on my signature... Also, it seems that the Japanese version goes faster do to the language, I guess. Since I aim for speed, there's another reason to use the original version...
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samurai goroh wrote:
Also, it seems that the Japanese version goes faster do to the language, I guess. Since I aim for speed, there's another reason to use the original version...
I don't think there is an absolute policy for this, but personally I dislike using a different version to be faster. IMO it was a grave mistake to do MM3 with the Japanese version, it set a bad precedent. Of course, I'm not an authority on this.
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I don't agree with your MM3 example, but I do agree strongly with your message, Kyrsimys. We publish movies here for entertainment (at least that's my view), and gaining more speed by exchanging the game completely is a cheap, somewhat despisable, way to gain that speed, when it makes the movie less entertaining to watch. It is not an author's shortcoming to wait if the game simply offers no other way. It is not honorless. But choosing a different game version is a honorless way to gain speed. Yes, I know we have precedents -- precedents where even I'm doing the opposite of what I just said, such as Rygar. But in case of Rygar, it didn't sacrifice any entertainment value. So that's why I'd like if someone could counterargue my reason for the rule Samurai Goroh was referring to.
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Bisqwit>The rule exists only to avoid version conflicts, ... Is this the only reason? I thought it had more to do with the reason we don't allow other hacked games: they are not authentic and haven't been officially released. I think if someone has released a translations patch into public domain, they have no right to come whining if someone actually uses it. Kyrsimys>IMO it was a grave mistake to do MM3 with the Japanese version, it set a bad precedent. I agree with this. The important thing is of course not to have as short a movie as possible, but as efficient playing as possible.
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There is a GBA version coming out later this year, but who knows who many changes will be made to it? As for the SNES version, I think it's unlikely the translation patches are going to be updated at this point. If you take the most comprehensive english patch and make the run using that, making sure to link to the patch, there should be no problems and little chance the translators will come to it years later and say "Oh look we left these few errors, let's fix them". This works fine for games like FF5 that have had full english patches for awhile. For games that haven't been translated yet, or have patches currently being worked on, it would be best to wait until it was as finished as possible. And wait for some time after that to be safe. The same could be done for hacked roms, of course. A few updates to Super Metroid Redesign came out days after its initial release.
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Bisqwit wrote:
So that's why I'd like if someone could counterargue my reason for the rule Samurai Goroh was referring to.
I don't think there should be any counter arguments at all... it's like you said. Also, it's basically the same reason SRAM was such a big deal. How do we know that the timings and the RNG aren't changed to a point of impossibility? A patch feels just like a cheat code to me... if we can't trust submitted SRAM files how can we trust what an IPS file does to the game? It would be very easy for the file to change many things we don't know about. Take the FF6 patch for example, it can fix many bugs like the Evade glitch and the Cyan glitch. Besides, English isn't the only language out there... I'm sure we have many viewers coming to this site that can only speak Japanese and it honestly wouldn't be cool to say "Yeah, this video uses a hacked ROM to display things in English, rather than Japanese, because we out number you."
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I already made a run using the latest patch & linked to it (check the link on my signature). That run was segmented & I overwrote the first 17 minutes... This run won't varie much, except that I'll do things faster...
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Right, and how do you know the translation is accurate and gets all the meaning across?
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
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Wren wrote:
if we can't trust submitted SRAM files how can we trust what an IPS file does to the game?
Well as I said a specific .ips file should be used, not one supplied by the author of the run. If we just pick a .ips file and stick to it it's obvious that the movie would desync if another .ips file was used.
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I disagree with the "enthusiasts" point. The old NES/SNES games are almost impossible to understand without a _lot_ of knowledge, because they didn't have space for kanji. All hiragana is very difficult to read even if you know what to expect.
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Bisqwit wrote:
The rule exists to avoid version conflicts, because translators occassionally improve their work and it's not nice if we have here a movie for a three years old translation version. When the translation is superseded, immediately the movie becomes old and without meaning (the video content and timings all change), even if we still have the translation patch on this site, available for download.
Not to keep up the derailing this poor thread, but to answer you, there's a grand total of one complete Final Fantasy V translation on the net, and it was last updated eight years ago, in October 1998. I understand the need for this rule in other cases, but Final Fantasy V's fan translation is well-known as being as authoritative and official as such a thing can possibly be. And I'd greatly enjoy watching a FFV run, but would have no interest in sitting through such a massive run without understanding any of the text.
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samurai goroh wrote:
And I asked Bisqwit if pressing some extra buttons (or just longer time, in this case) would be ok, and he it doesn't mind, so it's not relevant to change them...
Actually, the question that you I understood you asked, was whether pressing buttons longer than necessary is ok when it does not change anything. When it changes something, i.e. does something noticeable, such as changing the character's pose from fighting into running, it's the matter of style. Just doing what happens to work is "no style". The guidelines recommend seeking style.
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Bisqwit: How hard is it to add the subtitles? 90% of the time, through the FF6 run, the text moves too fast to read anyway. With Subtitles explaining the plot, the need to actually see the text disappears. The only difficulty is that the subtitles can't be incorporated into the SMV file.
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DarkKobold wrote:
Bisqwit: How hard is it to add the subtitles?
Add what subtitles? Adding them is not hard (although they still need to be timed), but writing them is another story.
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What is this? A debate on whether we should use the translation patch or not? WHY are we talking about this when the messages are just scrolled through so fast you can't really understand what's going on anyway? A speedrun is to go through the game as fast as you can while trying to meet the main objective. It's not a walkthrough. Anyway, let's get back to the topic. The speedrun looks good so far. Keep up the great work.
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The question is over the translation hack, and I don't think that a lot of the TASers here speak Japanese, which would make making the TAS hard when having to make choices. It's just a convience issue. I personally don't care either way, just whatever will produce the fastest results! Subtitles would be COOL! Tell the story of the game as it happens so people know what the heck is going on! Unless you are able to read those quick diaolgue boxes (o.O)!
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No arguments were raised against the points that support the ban of unofficial translations at this site, hence Samurai Goroh can continue with the Japanese version hopefully with good conscience :) (Actually, I meant that I can continue to maintain that rule with good conscience.)
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I read through the thread a couple of times and could only find 3 points that support banning using fan translations: 1) The games are not authentic. FFV hasn't been released in English. 2) The translations are constantly being updated. 3) It's faster to use the Japanese verison. For point 1): We already have movies of games that are not real. Air, SDW and Mario adventure have all been published because it was decided that the movies are entertaining and deserve to be published. In this case (when I don't think watching the original being played is interesting at all for most people) the entertainment value of using the translation patch heavily outweighs any cons that using a patch could have. As for 2): As Simon said, the latest update for the complete FFV translation patch was made in 1998, which leads me to conclude that there are no more updates coming. Even if there were, I don't see how it could possibly be a problem. For 3): As I said earlier, this doesn't improve the quality of the movie at all. The dialogue boxes in the English version are not significantly slower than in the Japanese version. What I mean by this is that it's not any more annoying to watch the English textboxes go by than it is to watch them go by in Japanese. As someone said, we're not going for the amount of frames here, but for the quality of play and entertainment. Since the exceptions for hacks and translations are made on a case-by-case basis, I don't see the amount of hacks and translations as a problem either. Honestly I can't see any points that support the banning of translations at all.
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Kyrsimys actually has some good points. I can't reply anything that isn't either linguistically bigoted or also applicable to "official translations" made by noa. I still support the ban, though. And can we make a new thread for this, or maybe rename it? edit: I was reading another post which reminded me of something the rules said, viz.: "The movie should look like it could have been played with an authentic hardware. This makes it more familiar to the audience." Fan translations utterly fail on this point.
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Bisqwit wrote:
DarkKobold wrote:
Bisqwit: How hard is it to add the subtitles?
Add what subtitles? Adding them is not hard (although they still need to be timed), but writing them is another story.
Err, not so much subtitles, more like, story indicators. Just a line or two every time a big scene comes up. Yeah, writting them would be a pain in the ass, because you'd actually have to know the story well enough to make them interesting. Plus, like every final fantasy game, there are the story arcs no one gives a crap about.
Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.