Hoping to make your life's design a bit more dynamic!

Just an FYI, I recommend cheat codes for anyone who is planning on playing La Wares to completion.

The last dungeon requires a ridiculous amount of level-grinding. I wasn't able to find any cheat codes online, but hopefully someone good at hacking can come up with some.

I'll bet Bongo` has some already and just "overlooked" sending them along. He normally incorporates these into a file with a .cht extension. When I have them I'll upload and provide a hyperlink.

Ah, well then, I'll be glad to help out with this role. By script formatter, do you mean editing any possible mistakes within the text and spacing the lines according to the characters per line limit (CPL) or just re-saving every text file into a Unicode format as I did with Burning Heroes years ago? In any case, just let me know when to start and the details of my assignment. I'll try my best to keep up.

Edit: By the way, shouldn't La Wares be added to the "Ongoing English Projects" list?

Good. I mean, you should use a tool such as EditPad, set to Japanese support. Open whole blocks in that and do whatever seems logical to make it fit the screen and read well as you play along through the game. You'll have "custody" of the insertion system until you finish the game and have worked it into a more developed state, same as you do when you use an insertion system to translate a game into Romanian, except you'll be working 100% in English.

Give me a few days to get settled in where I am. I have some doctor appoints, family activities, and such that may tie me down until about Sunday night. I may be able to send it to you sooner. Are you still using the same e-mail address? Taskforce will get the LW support pages all set up in due course. If a bit of time passes, a gentle reminder is fine.

Yes, it's the same address. Ah, so after I'm done formatting the script and beta testing the game, I should send it to you for polishing. Alright then, I'm looking forward to starting, but I do have a few quick final questions to ask. Is there a known general CPL limit for La Wares yet and does it have a variable width font (VWF)? For example, Silva Saga-II had it around 26-30 depending on the size of the letters. And last, is there a deadline for this project or will it be released whenever we're done?

Speaking of inserters, are there any more available for any of the previously completed projects? Namely, Record of Lodoss War or Mystic Ark? Not that I've given up on the Burning Heroes or FEDA Romanian translations, but I'd rather tackle some games with a smaller script first. Silva Saga-II took less time to translate than Chrono Trigger after all which was nice as I have less free time these days.

After finally getting some issues settled in my personal life, I can look at this a bit.

Recca, we do have a VWF in LW, so the CPL will vary. After a while, you'll get almost a sense of feel for this as you write and build lines, but as you refine text, the only way to visualize how it will appear to a game player is to repeatly adjust and play scenes over and over until it flows smoothly and "feels" right to you. This process may require 10 to 20 passes.

Yes, you may use just about any of the inserters for Romanian ports. Lodoss should work elegantly. MA is a little snaky since Bongo` changed the structure to make the patch work in real hardware, but you may debug this as you proceed and wind up with a good Romanian version. Yup, the MA system is just a bit more fragile than most.

Recca, I well get what you need sent out to you soon. Glad you're up for the project!

For everyone, take a look at this silent translation of the intro and see if it lends any good evidence of what the heck the titles mean! The PC I'm using lacks the architecture to process sound in the capture software I'm using.

Edit: Oh, I forgot to mention... All of the wizards who appear in Zhoma's circle appear female to me, including Zhoma. As with Burning Heroes, where we had a bit of confusion about the gender of some characters in Ryuu's world, maybe we can refine these ambiguities later and adjust the pronouns, as indicated.

http://youtu.be/Xb0mM9m48oY

Geez, that text is really hard to read. I'm sure it was like that in the original game, but perhaps bongo' can make the text a different color, give the font a shadow, make it bold etc?

Lol, nevermind. I somehow watch it with the lowest video quality. It looks more or less fine now.

Although one constructive criticism is that it feels like there's just enough time to read everything on the screen before it disappears. That might be a problem for those who like to take their time reading. You might want to consider adjusting the timing.

@Wildbill and Recca: Bongo' has a special editor that displays the way a vwf will look in-game. I'm sure he can hook you up with it (wb, you can find it in the package I sent you recently).

I'm always up for improvements. The starting intro scan over the logo is indeed machine-timed. Everything after that is "A" button-controlled. The dialogue text scrolls after using up to quatrain entries. I love four-line boxes, but I dislike broken scrolls (something remaining in the subsequent box that I've already seen). I prefer having the [clrs] control code (or equivalent) after 1, 2, 3, or 4-line boxes have displayed, so that a [newl] appears at the top of the next dialogue box.

On the video resolution, I captured it at HD-level. Youtube made it whatever it made it. I'm not really into all of this technical grapical-rendering craft - just a simple writer.

Now, I need to contact flashpv (Pascal), if he has time, to redraw the logo so that the Kanji graphic reads "La Wares" and the Roomaji "La Wares" is blotted out. We'll be all set then, and Recca can fly with this.

Can't wait to experiment with it. He's been talking about such a tool for years. Next up: I load GR and get rolling. I will still hit Minerva a lick here and there - to stay fresh with it.

Writers are strange ducks. We all multitask in inexplicable ways that we sort of make up as we go. And we all hate outside real-world distractions, but that is the fate of people with one foot mired in a boring normal world and the other firmly planted in the endless morass of captivating and much more interesting fantasy stories. (Unless the fish are biting!) Thank goodness the military taught me to be adaptable to new and sudden input. Even as I age, the wife keeps me well-exercised in this skill. A lot of drama I would love to avoid so I can write! (Or fish.)

Heh, my oldest son is getting married in a month. Need I say more?