Bug Fixes

[Antimatzist]

I'm planning on replaying the games soon, and I want to use your patch for that. As I play the German version, some translation things that you changed for the European versions in general I think or things that were just badly translated into Germa (square brackets indicate runes)

Circlet - Stirnreif
[Minotaur] - Minotauros
[Hunter] - Jäger
[Fero] - Phero
Speed-Ring - Temporing
Kettenpost - Kettenhemd

That's what I got of my mind and an incomplete German equipment list. It's just minor, but if you ever get the time to do it, the German Suikoden community (that's me + 3 other people probably) would be very thankful.

Also, just out of curiosity, what are a Goldlet and a Mangosh?

AHHHHHH I found the meaning of Mangosh. Main-gauche. Wow.
And a Goldlet is a piece of Gold in droplet form?

[Pyriel]

Kettenpost

For real?

Yeah, I don't know how they came up with, "Mangosh", at all. A main-guache is a dagger, but I guess as it's an off-hand weapon, it would fill the shield slot. I always assumed "Goldlet" was a portmanteau of "gold" and "circlet".

[Antimatzist]

Yep, the German translation is, like, the worst video game translation I ever played. And I'm not talking about the French dialogue in Gregminster and Rokkaku... I'm pretty sure they translated Scale Mail as "Schuppenpost" as well. I will look into this this evening.

I can also deliver a good German translation for "True Holy"/Godspeed, but I need to get home and play Suikoden V to see how they translated it in that game (iirc it's still mistranslated in IV and half-mistranslated in Tactics).

Googling Goldlet (or the Japanese, ゴールドレット) doesn't reveal any information, it really just might be a portmanteau. A German translation would thus be "Goldreif" (and for Silverlet, "Silberreif").

You know, I think the best thing would be if I would replay the game and take notes with every stupid mistranslation in the German version and give you a full list of things that would need change. Then you could decide if you want to include them or not. A lot of the enemies are also absurdly mistranslated at times.

[Raww Le Klueze]

It's kind of weird how when the translators didn't know what something was they sometimes changed it, Hecatoncheir into Abomination. and sometimes they left it as utter gibberish, like Gozu and Mangosh. Though I guess with the Abomination they had a visual reference to go on but what they have against Greek mythology in general I don't know.

[BrucePrintscreen]

I don't think there is an official French version of S1 and 2. I grew up in several Francophone countries and I only saw English versions.

Raww, thanks for telling me that the Abomination was called Hecatoncheir, it totally makes sense when you know about these mythological creatures.

If it were possible we should re-write the translations of S1 and 2 for an improved version, but I don't know if it's technically feasible.

I also remember S1 with Mathiu referring to himself as the "army surgeon"...

[Raww Le Klueze]

There certainly is a French version, cause they gave it the unique PID# SLES 02443. How many they actually made is a different matter though. For Suikoden I I'm pretty sure all EU copies are in English and only the box/manual is in the local language.

And it would appear that the German translation is based off the French one or they really messed up in some infathomable way to get French files in there. Which would mean the German versions is a translation of a translation of a translation, cause I'm damn sure the French would have been based off the English one and not the Japanese, which is a big no-no in translation.

[BrucePrintscreen]

I confirm there were no French version of Suikoden 1 (except the package and manual being translated, but indeed it is possible there were French versions of Suikoden 2 because I didn't live in the Francosphere anymore at the time. Most RPGs were translated in French. Final Fantasy VII and Secret of Mana were translated in French, albeit horribly (the French version of SoM makes absolutely no sense whatsoever).

[Antimatzist]

I'm pretty sure about a french Suikoden II version, because if there weren't any, the French part in the German version would make no sense.

And I don't think the German version is based on the French one, because there are untranslated English phrases in the game as well. I guess the translators were just uncoordinated.

And something I now noticed: The German manual is multilingual (which I knew) - French, german, Spanish, Dutch. Yes, no English. What a weird decision. But it's nice to read about the Keizerrijk van de Scharlaken Maan.

@Bruce: The German translation of Secret of Mana has become a legend and Claude Moyse, the translator, as well. In "recent" interviews, he states that he did not get the original Japanese texts (which would have been useless anyway because at that time, nobody in Nintendo Germany could speak Japanese), but only a very general outline what's supposed to happen in a scene. The English translation wasn't finished at that time so.. it's pretty obscure. It's somewhere between cute and stupid, with recent popculture references and stuff.

[Antimatzist]

I don't know if these bugs are known in other versions of the game as well - I only know about them in German PAL.

1) While defending Two River, you have to fight against some Highland soldiers. Then you get to make a choice between going to the Kobolds or to fight against more Highland soldiers. The game seems to crash after the last of these fights.

2) When you choose between Valeria and Kasumi at Gregminster, the game freezes when you decide to look at the stats of Valeria.

If you want, i can make videos of these (but it might take a while). 2) is very well known in the German community, 1) was recently discovered.

[Antimatzist]

So I finally made a video of the Valeria/Kasumi stat screen glitch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uauo6Gd ... e=youtu.be

If you choose to view their stats and pick the "third", invisible option to return, the game crashes. it doesn't matter which option you try. As I play it currently on an emulator, I don't know what'd happen on a real Playstation (one option just freezes the screen).

I dont know if this applies to any other version of the game as I don't have any other - here is the quicksave I took on epsxe maybe it helps? It's just before the decision. https://www.dropbox.com/s/0shgo2gvspkdrbo/sstates.rar

[Pyriel]

Regarding the S1 data import, has anybody ever noticed any differences if Cleo is dead (I don't know if that's even possible) or Apple is not recruited? There are checks for those conditions (I'm 85% sure anyway). Most of the high-level information from the Suikoden save is stored in a single byte at 0x8006AF6D, and breaks down as follows:

bit 0 - Set if Apple was recruited.
bit 1 - Set if S1 data was imported.
bit 2 - Set if Gremio is dead.
bit 3 - Set if Hero names match.
bit 4 - Set if Cleo is dead.
bit 5 - Set based on a byte from the first game ANDed with 8. I think this is "108 Stars Recruited". Although it's a bit redundant.
bit 6 - Unused.
bit 7 - Unused.

So the "23" value from the Unlock McDohl Plotline code tells the game Apple was recruited, data was imported, Gremio is alive, the hero names don't match, Cleo is alive, and some condition was met. Technically, checking to see if Gremio is alive constitutes checking that all 108 stars were recruited, but I'm guessing they flagged that independently. Otherwise, I'm not sure what that last condition could be, and it seems important for unlocking McDohl.

[Celes]

Cleo cannot be dead under any circumstances. Can we play S2 with that bit set to see what happens? You sure it is not about Pahn?

Apple is optional. perhaps some dialogs are different then.

Bit 5 may check if 108 stars are alive. You can ressurect Gremio and still loose stars at the final battle vs. Yuber.

[Pyriel]

I wondered about that too. I was looking at it more today, and I miscalculated at one point. This is more like what seems to be happening.

The byte at 0x8006ADC0 contains the count of living stars in the save.

bit 0 - Set if Sheena was recruited.
bit 1 - Set if S1 data was imported.
bit 2 - Set if Cleo is dead.
bit 3 - Set if Hero names match.
bit 4 - Set if Pahn is dead.
bit 5 - Set based on a byte from the first game ANDed with 8. Probably the Gremio resurrection event.
bit 6 - Unused.
bit 7 - Unused.

So the "23" value from the Unlock McDohl Plotline code tells the game Sheena was recruited, data was imported, Cleo is alive, the hero names don't match, Pahn is alive, and some condition was met, probably that the Gremio resurrection occurred.

[wataru14]

That is really odd. Why would it check to see if an unkillable character is dead?

[Pyriel]

Same reason it checks to see if a guy who can't change his armor was upgraded to a Windspun set, I guess.