Author Archives: aquagon

Roundup of Changes

Hi everyone, I hope you’re all spending a good time now you’ve had the chance to play through a bit of the finalized patch!

And well then, we thought it would be a good idea to give you all a full breakdown of all the changes we’ve made to the game, which also includes things that aren’t strictly part of the script.

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Final Patch Released!

Hi, everyone,
I hope you had some Merry Christmas!

I apologize about the fact this project has taken so long, as no doubt several of you must have already lost your patience and interest on it as you were waiting, but despite that, I’m glad to announce today that the time has come. Yes, as you just read, the final release for this patch is finally here! You can get the patch for your respective version of the game over at the download page.

This patch is the culmination of all the efforts we have made during these last few years, and aside of containing everything that was covered in Betas 4 and 5, it also contains a few extra fixes and script corrections.

As for applying it, please keep in mind that you will need the .iso of the game to be able to use this patch.
While we don’t really care about how you obtain your copy, we ask you to refrain from asking for, or providing, any links to sources on the blog or on the forums.

Note: All save files from the US, undub and previous betas will work with no issues at all, except for the possibility of having the flags to some of the events we restored, missing. However, saves from the EU version are not compatible because your EU game will get patched to the US version as part of the patching process.

Warning: From the extensive testing we have conducted with the patches, all methods for playing the game, such as burned discs with a modchip, internal HDD and SMB through OPS2L, and PCSX2 should all work with no issues at all. However, we advise against playing through an USB loader due to bandwidth issues that lead to videos or game hanging.

Additionally, if you run into any issues or have any comments you want to make about the final patches, feel free to do so over at this forum.

And well then, I just want to say… It’s been a pleasure to work with everyone on this team. Despite having so many members come and go, it was a nice experience being able to work on a game I loved so much and get its script improved to the level we have now, not to mention delving into the technical parts of it and figuring out the minor bugfixes I did myself in addition to translating, as well as seeing RyleFury correct the most problematic bugs. Therefore, I want to express my thanks to everyone who was involved with this project in some capacity at one point: Ayulsa, fetjuel, Kari, TerraBreaker, Morganite, Cless, kWhazit, void, Soukyuu, RyleFury and finally, Zak Blayde, thanks for putting all the efforts you did in your own personal way to make this project a success.

Important Update Released

Hi everyone.

During our tests with Beta 5, it has come to our attention that a critical bug was detected during the event in which EXEC_METAFALICA/. is sung: right after the boss battle that takes place as the song is sung, there is a point in which the screen turns white and the music changes. At this point, the game locks up completely, preventing players from advancing further.

Therefore, we have addressed this and released a Beta 5a with the fix for this freeze. If you are playing Beta 5, please come over to the forums and download this update so you don’t run into this problem.

Large Update Incoming!

Hi, everyone! Aquagon here.

It’s been some time since Beta 3 got released, right? I know I said previously that no other large changes would be done aside of typo corrections and the like, as we had no means to do anything else. Or at least that’s what we thought…

Back in March, I contacted RyleFury from the Atelier Traduction team, which specializes in translating Gust games to French, because I was so impressed with his work on the translations for Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana and Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis to French that I thought he could be an invaluable help to the team given his programming abilities and ASM knowledge. He finally started helping us in April, and I’m very glad I took the decision to contact him, as this has allowed us to solve the few unsolvable issues we still had, and we’ve also fixed multiple bugs that were still remaining; not to mention this allowed us to add a few additional extras…

Below you all can see the complete changelog:


-Minor typo fixing in the script. Also, fixed a pointer mistake that caused Zodoma’s attacks to have incorrect names.

-The Deathlandia maps have got their unveiling sequences restored to how they were in the JP version, as well as the new area notification appearing now.

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-The inconsistencies between how the guard scores appear in battle and how they appear in the battle results and the battle log screens have been solved: they all show “Terrible” now.

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-All song magic and skills are capable of dealing two types of elemental damage at once, and all incorrect elemental damage and extra effects in both skills and items have been fixed. (The skills shown in the screenshots are the IPDs’ Elemental Break attack and Cloche’s Invert Brid song.)

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-The bug that caused the “Crash…” effect to appear in the Cosmospheres during a DP event even if the player had enough DP has been fixed.

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-The Boss Key feature has been restored in full (the illustration shown is just one of the set that are supposed to appear aside of the loading screen.)

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-The incorrect Hymn Crystal sprites for the EXEC_METAFALICA/. download flashback sequences have been changed to the one used for the proper crystal.

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-Most skipped dialogues in multiple events have been restored. This includes the voiceovers these lines had in the case they were voiced.

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-The English voice option has been excised completely from the game in order to solve the flag problem that made it impossible to unlock some of the anime FMVs for the Extra menu when the game was being played under a Japanese voice setting.

-The Hymmnos font has been reprogrammed so uppercase and lowercase letters can be displayed on the same text window and the glyphs from its 1.1 version have also been added in. This will allow the Hymmnos dialogues to be displayed properly, as the old routine allowed text windows to be only in uppercase or lowercase depending on the first letter used in the line.

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-The song “Emptiness” has been added to the Hymn Concert menu accessible under Extras.

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-Raki’s Fractal Change attack has been fixed further, as the original fix restored the attack’s functionality but nulled out the part of it that shifted her stats and attack patterns.

-The bug that caused the Replekia tutorial to be interrupted if the player started with a Blue song magic and then changed to Red song magic, forcing the player to reset the game, has been corrected.

-Infel’s diary won’t disappear anymore if the player doesn’t visit Promise Hill during Phase 4.

-The bug that made it impossible to continue progressing through Cloche’s Cosmosphere if the player gets kicked out during the Lv. 4 introduction event due to insufficient DP has been corrected.

-Sasha has been removed from the crowd in the introductory event to the Tower to the Heavens and her NPC form was also removed from the entrance to that same location due to causing a continuity error when she appears and talks to the party upon their return from Sol Marta after the final battle. The only line she got as an NPC was reassigned to an NPC girl.

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-A second Deathlandia map graphic has been added for Luca, as originally both Deathlandia versions used Cloche’s map graphic. Similarly, both map graphics have been edited to fix punctuation issues. (Any graphic issues you see in the 3D model at the left are due to PCSX2 not being able to render properly the world map models.)

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-The game displayed a fake value for the Sync Rate resulting from multiplying the number of Heroine Topics seen by the player by 100 to then divide that result by the total number of Topics, instead of the true one which adds together the Sync Rate given by each individual Heroine topic (each topic has a specific Sync Rate value, and there are even some that don’t add anything to the Sync Rate total), which is also the value actually used in the SP gained after battle calculations and Synchronity Chain activations. This has been changed so the game now displays the true Sync Rate. (Both screenshots were taken from the same save file.)

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-A glitched event in Cloche’s Imperial has been fixed.

-A glitched event related to the Sphilial Pose in Cloche’s route has been fixed.

-The dummied out events for repeating lost battles in Jakuri’s Cosmosphere have been reinstated.

-Some of the area names that appear next to the Encounter Bar have been pushed a bit to the left so they don’t leave the screen’s limits.

-The graphical bug that caused the encounter bar to refill itself after using the Funbun’s Crisis! item and triggering an event, yet still making it impossible to encounter monsters until the player left the area and returned or used Curse of Geugo item has been fixed.

-The purple portal in Dreamy Fields has been changed so it only appears after Shun activates it at the start of Phase 4.

-The circling light effect that appears at the top left of the Infelsphere Lv. 5 map after Nostalgic Home has been cleared has been removed.

-All the monster descriptions that remained only as unused text in the Japanese version have been translated and reinstated.

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-A few graphics have been changed in order to allow for some character and area name changes. These are the following:

  • Most Deathlandia areas
  • Sky Plains -> Celestial Plains
  • Goro -> Gengoro (includes removing the “nickname” compromise we made from the dialogues)
  • Big Sis -> Young Woman
  • Big Bro -> Young Man

-The dummied out events (one for each route) that allow players to access Deathlandia again from Lakra in Phase 5 have been reinstated.

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-The dummied out event that allows Shun to teleport the party to the Moon Culvert entrance after Reisha has been abducted has been reinstated.

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-The missing tutorial events for the Heroine Topics, Synchronity, Evolved Song Magic and the second missing half of the Jamming tutorial have been reinstated.

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-Dummied out events that show the shopkeepers berating the party if they haven’t synthesized in a long time have been added back.

-Events where Skycat/Sasha show concern about Luca/Cloche being absent from the party (depending on route) have been added back.

-All the dummied out conversations with Cynthia have been added back.

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-The dummied out barriers and switches that were supposed to exist in the Gyro Stabilizer and the Tower to the Heavens have been added back.

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-A mini dummied out event has been added back in Cloche’s Cosmosphere Lv. 1 in the Abyssal Darkness point. This disappears after the second event in the Tower of Life.

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-An event in which Cloche gets angry and the Song Magic tutorial is skipped has been added back. It can be activated by refusing to open the song menu three times.

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-Several prototype events that couldn’t be integrated into the game due either to storyline conflicts, design and structure clashes, or unknown requirements, have been added under an additional Prototypes section accesible under Extras.

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-A Hard Mode has been added. This features the following:

  • All enemy stats have been increased.
  • Some enemy attack patterns have been adjusted.
  • The guard timing leniency given by the Guard+ family of Girl Power skills that some IPDs bestow has been reduced.
  • The boost given by Replekia to Song Magic has been greatly reduced.

(None of the above affects at all anything in the Normal and Easy difficulties).

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Okay, that’s the extent of the changes made this time around.

Beta 4 will include all of them and it should be going up this weekend, so I hope you all will be looking forward to trying it out. I think you’ll really enjoy AT2 even further once you get to try out all these changes!

Beta 3 released

Hi everyone!

I know our update schedule has been pretty sporadic, but it’s mostly because most work has been done behind the scenes. But it’s thanks to all that and your efforts that I’m glad to announce the release of our third public Beta version.

This Beta fixes all the issues with the text you all have found and reported so far over at the forums, but I’m also glad to announce this also contains fixes for several things: songs that had wrong elemental damage in their descriptions, items that had incorrect or incomplete information on their effects description, and finally, we’ve also restored an optional event in Jakuri’s Cosmosphere Lv. 7-C thanks to void’s efforts in deciphering how the game unlocks events and also having noticed a little oversight Gust made while designing that particular Cosmosphere level.

If you’re interested, please go ahead and download the patch. We’ll be waiting to hear from you all about it! Likewise, if you find anything that seems off in the texts or any other sort of problem, please make sure to report it!

Start of the Public Beta Testing

Hello, everyone!
aquagon here.

I’m sorry we’ve been so long without posting anything on the blog, but since everything we’ve been doing ever since Soukyuu posted the details about his work on the graphics was playtesting the alpha versions of the patch, there was nothing interesting to discuss just yet.

However, I’m happy to say that has ended: the alpha tests are finished, and we’ve reached the conclusion that, since there were no glitches or bugs that hindered in any way the enjoyment of the game or that made it impossible to see the entirety of its content, we’ll be now initiating a public beta test period for everyone out there who’s interested in helping us with ensuring that the patch is as high-quality as possible, as we want to make sure that there aren’t any issues that went undetected by us before we release the definitive version.

Therefore, here’s the information that all prospective beta testers should know:

The beta patch will be distributed at the retranslation subforum of the A Reyvateil’s Melody forums, which needs registering in order to access it. Additionally, all testers should report any issues they find, might they be simple typos or any sort of bugs, as they play through the game in a thread we’ll be preparing specifically for that purpose.

It must be mentioned that the patch will only work on modded PS2 consoles and on computers that have enough power to run the PCSX2 emulator, so please keep this in mind if you plan to be a tester or to play through the full patch once this last round of tests is completed. If you fulfill either of these requirements, then you should be okay: the patch will include instructions on how to apply it to the game, and if there’s any kind of problem, we’ll be glad to assist with it. You are also required to have a copy of the game. However, don’t dare to ask about where to find ISO images of the game in any of its versions, as such questions will be ignored and the posts asking them will be deleted.

Anyway, good luck to everyone who wishes to join the tests, and thanks for your interest in the project!

Happy New Year! + IPD Names Poll

Hello everyone, I hope you had some nice holidays and this new year has found you all well!

The topic for today’s post is a little something that has been causing some minor problems among the retranslation team, which is why we wanted to ask you all. As you’re the people who will be using our patch in the end, and this concerns you all directly, we decided to make a little poll due to the following:

We have considered changing the names for several of the 100 IPDs in order to make them more accurate (and make them sound like proper names in some cases) and to correct the problem that some of the Hymmnos texts that were supposed to display their names in Hymmnos font didn’t match them, but instead matched the name of another IPD.

However, one of the points that was made by a member of the team against doing this was that these changes would cause confusion and gameplay problems to the players due to the different names making it hard to find the IPDs that are more useful during combat as well as complicating unnecessarily the Dive Therapy sessions needed to cure them due to making it harder to find in the guides the IPDs that have these skills as well as the choices needed to cure them flawlessly.

However, other members argued that the players could also refer to the IPDs by their catalog numbers, and additionally, given all the changes we’ve made in our relocalization in order to improve the quality of the translation (Talk Topic names, item names, location names, Therapy texts and Therapy choices wording), most likely the guides won’t be applicable in most cases anymore.

Given the previous arguments, it won’t be possible for just us to come to a consensus on this matter, so here I leave the poll for you all to help us decide which road we should take here, so make sure to vote for the option you find the best! Thanks for reading this, and we greatly appreciate your help and support!

[cardoza_wp_poll id=2]

PD: The first round of playtests is almost done, and so far, we’ve found and corrected pretty much all of the typos and grammar mistakes that escaped our editing process. However, we have also encountered a rather annoying bug we’re doing our best to fix.

Update 10/02/2014:  And the poll has been closed. Thank you for all your opinions and votes!

Beginning Playtest Period!

Hello, everyone! I hope things have been great the last few months for you all!

As you all can see, we’ve revamped the blog’s appearance, as well as added the logo we’ve decided to use to represent our retranslation project. It shouldn’t be news for anyone, but for those out there that don’t know, it’s called Project Metafalica, like a very certain important project that took place centuries prior to the game’s story.

And well, as the title states, we’re pretty much done with everything now. Right now, we’re working on the final touches for the patching program to then begin a closed beta-test period, after which we’ll finally release the retranslation for the enjoyment of you all. Currently we aren’t looking for volunteers, as we want first to ascertain for ourselves that there are no major problems with the game as we have it right now, but if we ever change our minds about it, this is the first place where we will be announcing it.

I know we have taken a long time to get to this point, but now, we’re right on the home stretch, so while I can’t give any release dates or anything like that, at the least I can say that the long wait should be nearing its end now.

Yet another step closer…

Hello, everyone out there!

Once again, I’m here to give you all an update on how the project has been going, although I think it shouldn’t be really necessary if you have been paying attention to the A Reyvateil’s Melody forum threads and the comments on the previous entries of the blog. XD

Still, now it’s time to officially announce we’ve finished editing the texts, so now the only step we’re still missing before moving on to the playtest phase is finalizing a few of the names of the Costumes used by the Reyvateils, as well as the names by a few of the characters summoned by their Song Magic, so we can subtitle the videos and modify the name graphics we still have pending. So yes, we’re pretty close to the end now, so expect to see some more updates soon.

I’ll come again to tell you all once playtesting begins, so keep an eye out on it! Once again, thank you all for your patience and support!

PD: Oh, I almost forgot about this. We’re still having one minor problem to which we haven’t been able to find a solution: the Dolby Surround version of the opening movie most likely won’t be subtitled because we haven’t found any tools that support the remuxing of .adx and .ac3 files into the .sfd video container used by the game, according to our graphics expert Soukyuu. If we can’t solve that before we have finished the tests, I’m afraid that it’ll have to stay as it is right now. However, the normal version will indeed have subtitles, like all other movies in the game that have voices or texts, so you won’t be missing out much.

Current Status Report

Hello, everyone! I hope this year has found you all well!

This time, I’ve come to report to you all how’s the current status of the retranslation project, given how much time we’ve left this blog inactive.

Currently, as you all know, all of the texts have been translated, and thus we’re currently in the review and editing phase. So far, we’ve done two passes on the main storyline, Cosmosphere, and Infelsphere texts, while the other texts, which go from parts of the menu texts to the NPC conversations and Talk Topics, have underwent one pass. Therefore, we still have some minor spelling and grammar mistakes in them that we have to fix, and our only active editor, void, is quite busy right now with real life issues, so that’s why it has been going so slowly. However, we’re pretty close to finishing the project, so once we have finished the second pass we’ll most likely begin with the beta-test period, and depending on how many things still need fixing at that point, we’ll see if there will be any need for additional revisions to the script. Once we’re sure that everything is as good as we can make it, we’ll make the patch and post it here so you all can enjoy the storyline as it should have been released in the first place.

That’s for the text, but for other matters, such as graphics and video, I think we have finished with it, as our graphic editor, Soukyuu, already took care of modifying the ones that had texts that required modifications due to name changes. Likewise for the videos, as they all have been subtitled so you all don’t have any problems following what happens during them. The only matter still remaining here would be subtitling the Cosmosphere outro videos due to changes in the costume names and to the fact that we changed Jakuri’s name, which will be done as soon as we have reached a consensus on which costume names will be changed and which ones will be left as they were in the official localization. However, that shouldn’t take too long to do.

Finally, on the programming and bug related-matters, I can only say that we fixed the bug that didn’t show some Hymnos glyphs in a few of the dialogues, the problem with the two tutorial entries I described in one of my previous posts, the text corruption in the IPD contact texts; and additionally, we fixed a issue with a wrong image being displayed in Luca’s Lv. 6 and upwards Cosmospheres in the Extra menu, both in the Event Replay and Reyvateil Catalog sections. We also restored the gradients to graphics such as the IPD contact graphics, which appeared colorless and hard to read in the official localization.

Well, that’s everything I have to report, so I’ll have to leave you all for now. As always, thank you to everyone for your support and for being so patient in awaiting for us to finish with this project. We’ll be sure to do everything we can so you’re satisfied with its final results!