Three things:
A) I agree with everything Kyrsimys said,
2) This topic should be split to not detract attention from the WIP by goroh, and
III) Since the Japanese version is allowed, and goroh prefers working with that one, there's not a lot that can be done about it.
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 version.
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.
As for point (1), the issue between different translations of the game is different than between hacks that create entirely new games (such as Super Demo World).
Translations masquerade as the original game (the player expects to be seeing the original game), but in fact there's no guarantee that something else hasn't been changed too.
(2) If you read my post more carefully, you notice that my claim wasn't that the translations are being "constantly updated". Although that I agree that for a 8 years old translation, chances of new updates are quite small.
(3) I agree with your argument on this one. "Not for the amount of frames, but quality of play" is an excellent way to put it.
However, I do point out that by the number of hits on the web server, over 10% of our audience comes from Japan, and thus the amount of audience who can read Japanese is considerable.
Also, the amount of audience who would pause&unpause the movie to read all the English text (that otherwise often appears too fast to be readable) is unknown, but I don't believe it to over 50%.
Hence, percentually speaking, the favor/disfavor being done to audience by the choice of language in the game, is not as major as you let us believe.
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 believe that the original reason to ban hacked/modified games is that using them may raise the suspicion that if they have been modified in one way, how can people be sure it has not been modified in other ways too, eg. in ways that allow making impossible stunts. IOW suspicion of hack-cheats may arise.
Well, this argument would be valid for a site that doesn't collect movies that already can be suspected in everything possible on Earth…
And it's not like the hacks allowed here are totally unknown or something.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Also, the amount of audience who would pause&unpause the movie to read all the English text (that otherwise often appears too fast to be readable) is unknown, but I don't believe it to over 50%.
Hence, percentually speaking, the favor/disfavor being done to audience by the choice of language in the game, is not as major as you let us believe.
I don't actually care about the dialogue and the story textboxes. For all I care they can be in Japanese. I think anyone who watches a TAS for the story is missing out on the game. My beef is with the textboxes in battle.
Not many of us know everything about the game. When I'm watching the Japanese version being TASed, I can really only see what happens AFTER the commands have been input (ie. the animation and the damage numbers). I can't see what the commands are and I would probably have no idea of what's going on. I'd probably just wonder how the hell the player was able to do such massive damage.
If for example the FF6 run was in Japanese, I'd have absolutely no idea what was going on in most battles. You don't need to slow the game down to see the commands used in battle, so I don't think the point in the quote is really an important one.
EDIT: Oh, and I'd like to add that it's nowhere near as satisfying to read what's happening from subtitles or a submission text after/before watching the movie. I'd really like to be able to follow the game when it's actually happening, not afterwards.
A random idea:
Bigame movie working with patch and without.
Everone happy?
Sounds impossible, or at least the resulting movie would be much slower than one that worked with either patched or unpatched alone. Making two separate movies that do nearly the same things would achieve something closer to what it seems like you meant.
EDIT: Or someone could make a hack that only translates text that can be translated without changing the game's timing, such as in-battle commands, so that any movie that works with the hack would work without it. (But, while I have no idea how feasible that is, it sounds like a lot of work.)
Joined: 4/8/2006
Posts: 64
Location: Giran Castle town
As for the integrity of the run, the author should take care of or purge everything that may make the movie look impure.
It's always best if the player goes for the original version of the game.
Fact: There's not a official translated version of FFV.
So, for a TAS run, that is apreciated as a masterpiece of this game, fan translations should be considered only for playing the game and enjoy and understand dialogues and plot. because of this, any unofficial translation will be corrupting he movie as well.
(Besides, it's imparcial to judge, wich is the best translation.)
eg. When watching a movie, the original version is just one. Translated versions are just adaptations of that movie, The only thing that approachs to the original film, will be subtitles.
Besides, most of visitors who will watch this movie, will be ppl who had played FFV and know the game as well, and may be able to know what's going on all the time.
And for the people who want to see this with subtitles. An english subtitles project may be the answer.
Since here are available both emulator movie and video file, It'll be insane have both original and patched on video file, beacause of their oversize.
*Not only for this one, just imagine having 2 versions of lots of RPG games movies.
#Edit: Subtiltles can be just notes of each important part of the game.
Fact: There's not a official translated version of FFV.
Actually there is, if you count the one in Final Fantasy Anthology. It's probably out of the question to TAS it, and it comes packed with another game, but it is an official translation of FFV.
As for the rest of the topic... I don't mind where it's heading (or staying), so I won't raise any objections.
As for the integrity of the run, the author should take care of or purge everything that may make the movie look impure.
How is it impure if it's in English? I understand that the original game is in Japanese, but I'm sure that for many of us the English version is much more familiar than the Japanese version. I'm sorry but for me it's just hard to understand how using the English version corrupts the movie.
Enrai wrote:
So, for a TAS run, that is apreciated as a masterpiece of this game, fan translations should be considered only for playing the game and enjoy and understand dialogues and plot. because of this, any unofficial translation will be corrupting he movie as well.
This I don't really understand. Does it somehow ruin the game if it's in English so that it's not a masterpiece anymore?
Enrai wrote:
eg. When watching a movie, the original version is just one. Translated versions are just adaptations of that movie, The only thing that approachs to the original film, will be subtitles.
I can appreciate the movie comparison since I absolutely hate dubbed movies. Here however I don't see the English text taking away anything. It might of course be different (and almost certainly it is) for people who understand Japanese, but do you want to make the movie only for those people? I'm sure that the majority of the watchers can understand English but not Japanese.
Enrai wrote:
Besides, most of visitors who will watch this movie, will be ppl who had played FFV and know the game as well, and may be able to know what's going on all the time.
I don't agree. I am familiar with the game and have played through it many times but I could not keep up with Boco's WIPs, for example. And even if I hadn't played the game I still might be able to understand what's happening if it were in English, but there would be no chance of that were the movie in Japanese.
I really think manually making .srt subtitle files for these movies is the best solution to please everyone.
Reasons:
- I can't keep track of everything you guys have said about genuine shelf games, hack cheat worries, or updated translations being released, but this solves all of those problems.
- Subtitles can be made for games for which we already have TAS movies in Japanese, rather than asking the author to redo the run.
- Making subtitles takes time, but less time than it takes to make a good TAS.
- Anyone familiar with the game--such as the author, fans of the TAS, or a judge/encoder person willing donate his/her time--can write these subtitles.
- Writing subtitles for a TAS of a Japanese video game is generally easier than writing something like an anime fansub. Instead of having to think up your own natural-sounding words, you can just use already written lines from your favorite translation hack, or an official translation as nitsuja pointed out does exist for some games.
- Furthermore, by using the framecounts in the emulator it's easy to estimate the proper timestamp for each line without going back to repeatedly test how it looks.
- After publication, the subtitles can be iteratively revised (by anyone) without affecting the actual TAS.
- When a movie is obsoleted, it takes little effort to repair the subtitles because usually time is saved in distinct spots so we can just timeshift those parts.
- Instead of pausing or using slowmode to read the dialogue, a viewer can have the option of manually reading the .srt text.
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.
I guess that is true for every media anyways right?
Wether it be a VHS or DVD there is always going to be old translations avalible mate. And I don't tend to like the work less just because there is a new translation avalible. Unless the translation is very bad. Like in old asian flicks, such as Story of Ricky. Hillarious movie with crap translation that makes it even better. ;)
Anyways. What I'm saying is that it would be foolish not to go ahead to use translation packs. Translators may be sorry for releasing bad translations. But if they release it at all I think they have to deal with the concequences of people using it. Thats what it's like everywhere. Why should we be any better than that?
Old work will always be distributed when it comes to movies, hence old translations as well. Go to the retro section at your local video store.
I don't know what my opinion is on the use of translations. It's a hard balance.
The main complaint I have is that translation hacks - especially of RPGs - are not frame-compatible with the original game, so movies won't work. In FF5, text is drawn gradually, and the English text is somewhat longer screen-wise. Also, there are frequently multiple pages of text where there were not in Japanese. This clearly will change the action of PRNGs and make the movies incompatible.
However, speed runs of Japanese games heavy on text are uninteresting to American players. Nobody cares about this if you play Resurrection of Hitler and Akumajou Densetsu instead of Bionic Commando and Castlevania 3, but people care if you play Final Fantasy.
The converse is likely true as well; Japanese players making movies would want to use the Japanese version so their friends can read it.
Melissa, reverse engineer, FF5 translation
Maybe we should consider allowing established translations; i.e. translations which are near-perfect in quality and have been around for years.
Whether they should be published as hacks or official movies, is another debatable issue.
Joined: 2/28/2006
Posts: 2275
Location: Milky Way -> Earth -> Brazil
Yeah, The Legend of Zelda - Link Gets Laid would make a nice TAS!
"Genuine self-esteem, however, consists not of causeless feelings, but of certain knowledge about yourself.
It rests on the conviction that you — by your choices, effort and actions — have made yourself into the
kind of person able to deal with reality. It is the conviction — based on the evidence of your own volitional
functioning — that you are fundamentally able to succeed in life and, therefore, are deserving of that success."
- Onkar Ghate
Bisqwit wrote:
I don't understand why we can't just use subtitles. They don't have to be on every non-english video and can be made as requested by whoever has the interest/knowledge in it to make them.
Then I'd like to see who the poor bastard will be that is going to translate a 3 hour long movie from japanese to english by his/her own. :D
It's better to use a translation than subs, really. Because then someone woulden't have to do all the work all over again by translating stuff.
If a translation already exists, wouldn't it be possible to just copy the text from that to sub on the Japaneese version?
Often the translation text is not available. The translations are published as game patches, which are just codecodecodecodecode. No readable text, except when you patch the game and run it in the emulator. And still not copypasteable.
Speaking entirely for myself here, but assuming the text was at least skimmable as it was skipped by player input, I'd be more likely to check out an RPG speedrun if it was in English than Japanese. It's usually a mild point of interest, but when the run is upwards of four hours long, there's entertainment value to be had in maintaining a tentative grasp on the story as the runner is also manipulating the game and finding shortcuts. It's also a neat way to quickly breeze through the highlights of an old RPG without having to play its ~20-40 hour length (or play its ~20-40 hour length again). The Star Ocean run is a good example for me: I've never had a chance to play it, and don't have much interest in getting into it now in 2006, but the speedrun would be a neat way to get a 1:53 overview of where the series started if an English hack had been allowed. As I said, though, this is just my personal observation.
It's your site and your rules, Bisqwit, but if you're looking for a good argument to allow translation patch runs, here's my attempt. :)
a) The game must have no current translation projects being worked on.
b) The translation patch being asked about must be fairly well-known and accessible. i.e. the definitive unofficial translation patch for the rom.
c) If possible or it seems necessary to make sure conflicts won't arise in the future, the translator could be contacted to confirm no updates are in progress or would be likely in the near future.
d) All these checks should be confirmed before the run begins, to avoid misunderstandings or wasted hours of work.
On a case-by-case basis, I think this could work pretty smoothly. Obviously, it's up to you, but that's my suggestion.
Well as for FFV, there will soon be an English version for the GBA, so there can be a TAS run in Japanese for the Snes version & an English one for the GBA. (But that doesn't mean I will do the later, unless no one will, but I rather pass...)
