CFC2 English (Card Fighters' Clash 2 Translation)

Emulation News

2008-09-12T06:27:00.000-07:00

This isn't strictly CFC2English-specific, but there is some news about new developments in NGPC emulation that I thought I should mention.

First of all, a guy called FluBBa has been working on a new NGPC emulator that runs on the GBA. That's right, Neo Geo Pocket on the GameBoy Advance. My hope is that he will use the same emulation engine and build a version for the Nintendo DS. Based on what I know about the design of his emulator, I think it has a good chance to run near full speed on the DS. FluBBa's site (with downloads of his emulators) can be found at http://www.ndsretro.com/.

During development of his emulator, FluBBa noticed that certain games check a (previously thought to be unused) bit in the input status byte. Basically, there's a byte (8 bits) in the NGPC that contains the status of all the inputs. On a normal NGPC, there are 7 inputs (up, down, left, right, A, B, and Option). That leaves one bit unused. It seems that it's not totally unused after all. This bit seems to be the "D" button for debugging. Perhaps it is included as an input on the development hardware.

I made a quick hack to RACE! so that I could test this find. I tested it with several games, but I only found 3 that seemed to respond when I hit the "D" button. These games are Card Fighters' Clash, Card Fighters' Clash 2, and Dokodemo Mahjong. So, this news does relate to CFC2English. At the right, you should see a screenshot of CFC2English running the debug menu (which pops up when the "D" button is pressed). http://www.insertcredit.com/ also has a post about this find which has a link to download screenshots of all 3 games' debug features.

Speaking of RACE!, there is a new version of RACE! for the PSP. A guy named Akop (AKA Uberjack) has continued the RACE! project. He is known for porting emulators to the PSP. Here is his blog post about the release. Here is the link to download RACE! PSP. This new version has a nicer menu system among other user interface improvements. I don't plan to compete with Uberjack for RACE! updates. My current feeling is that Uberjack's version of RACE! is the official PSP version. If things (like the "D" button) need to be added to RACE!, they should show up in his version. At this time, I don't plan to release new versions of RACE! on my own.

It's Been a While

2008-08-07T06:42:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been a while since the release. I haven't heard much for complaints, which I assume is good. In my experience, if people are quiet that means there's nothing wrong. It could also mean that nobody cares, but in either case I don't have much else to do on the project.

I just got word that a guy called "drunkenmaster226" put up a YouTube video of CFC2 English. Thank you for that. It's nice because it shows the "old school style intro" and gives people a nice glimpse of what the game is like. It was obviously taken using an emulator because you can hear the audio slowing down in places, but it's still a nice introduction to the game. You can watch it here, or over at YouTube.

I'm not sure what else to discuss at this point. The interest seems to have fallen off quite a bit. Though, that's what I expected. I think most people that cared have already downloaded it. If you're enthusiastic about this release, though, maybe you ought to go spread the word around to other sites/forums/etc. where there might be other people that would enjoy it. There are probably a lot of people that played CFC on the NGPC that haven't even looked around for new NGPC news since they stopped playing their. They might not know about CFC2 English, and they might like to know that it's playable on the PSP and Nintendo DS. If they don't care, that's fine, but I assume there are people out there that would care if they knew to care.

As always, I enjoy the comments, so if you've got anything to say, leave a message.

Fame, Fortune, and a New Release

2008-05-04T18:55:00.000-07:00

Well, the day has finally arrived. This project is finally getting the type of mainstream media attention it deserves. With that, I expect we'll be the recipients of all the fame and fortune that come with such attention. I'm pretty sure that from now on, I won't even be able to shop for groceries without being recognized as one of the guys that brought CFC2 for the NGPC to the English-speaking masses. Oh, and the fortune is sure to follow.

Of course, I'm talking about the recent article posted over at GameSetWatch.com. I was interviewed by Alistair Wallis for a weekly column that he does. Here's an excerpt.

"To celebrate what is a pretty mammoth effort, we talked with Flavor about all the goings-on regarding the project, and received some astoundingly in-depth answers about topics such as his Card Fighter’s Clash fandom, why it’s all taken so long, and why the Lost Church is now a Rooster Church."

Head over to http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2008/05/quiz_me_qwik_card_fighting_with_flavor.php to read the full article.

Oh, yeah, there was a third thing in the title, wasn't there. Yeah, there's a new release. The graphical menus have finally been translated. You can find it at http://drop.io/cfc2english. I actually already have a couple of bug fixes that need to be applied to the graphics, so there may be a new update to the files in a day or so. I will probably only post an update to this blog entry when I upload the updated version.

We love to hear the comments, so if you're playing the translation let us know! Have fun!

The Day Has Finaly Arrived! Game On!

2008-03-19T09:26:00.000-07:00

This feels like a big relief for me. I hope there aren't much for bug reports. I need to get back to real life for a while. Enough about me, though, let's get to the good news.

SNK Vs. Capcom Card Fighters' Clash 2 English Edition is now available for download. It runs on PSP, Nintendo DS, NGPC, GP2X, PC, Mac, and wherever else NGPC ROMs can be played. Without further ado, I present to you the download link for CFC2English.

UPDATE: Okay, there was a bug in the CFC2English release. I have now fixed it (I hope). This link should now contain the proper files. I'm sorry for any confusion.
http://drop.io/cfc2english

The CFC2English ZIP file contains an IPS patch. You will need to have the original Japanese ROM file of CFC2 (and some IPS patching software) to apply the patch. FYI, the SHA1 hash of the patched ROM should be 5CF9428A6864802D26F59C2364F476012896628A and the MD5 should be E324C1CEB54080AE5BE1065B91243331.

If you want to play it on the Nintendo DS, you will need CFC2English, CFC2EnglishDS, and the original Japanese CFC2 ROM (to apply the IPS patch to).

I know that the patching is a bit of a hassle, but that's the way I must do it. I will not release a full ROM. Though, I'm guessing that, by the time most of you read this, someone will have patched the ROM themselves and put it somewhere on the web.

Also, I have added the PSP version of the RACE emulator in that file drop. That should allow you PSP users to play any NGPC ROM. If you want to play it on other systems, I suggest looking for NeoPop or whatever other emulator is available for your favorite platform.

If you have any problems or questions, please leave a comment.

Oh, and if any of you happen to make any videos (like YouTube or whatever) of this stuff running, I'd love to see them.

Alright, it's obvious that you already know about this project, but there are others out there that don't. Some of them would love to play this game. If you are a member of any forums, mailing lists, or any other sort of medium that would discuss this sort of thing, please spread the word. I'd prefer that our hard work be appreciated by as many people as possible, so go out and spread the good news.

Testing, Release Imminent (I Hope)

2008-03-07T09:19:00.000-08:00

There are some technical issues that I need to resolve, and I am waiting for some final files from one person. During this waiting period, testing has begun. I am hoping that the tests will go smooth and by the time I receive the files, CFC2 English will be ready for release.

I am planning to release this as an IPS patch which will require that you already have the original CFC2 ROM file. This is the typical approach for releasing translations, but please leave a comment if you have any issues with that or other suggestions.

Speaking of ROMs and what's going to happen when this is released, I know that there has been a fair ammount of interest in playing this game on an actual NGPC using a flash cart. Here is my suggestion. Go check out www.tototek.com. They guy that runs the show there has actually (years ago) made his own NGPC flash cart. As far as I understand, he never actually finished the project. He wanted it to be flashable via USB, but it never got that far. They have a forum there where they discuss new product ideas. Perhaps if they knew there was enough interest and that people would buy enough of the flash carts to offset the production costs they would actually sell them. It's just a thought.

I must let you know that I have been sidetracked lately with fixing up the PSP version of RACE!. It is now in a state that I think is ready for release. It seems to run all NGPC ROMs just fine, thought it does have a couple graphical and audio glitches with a select few ROMs. Hopefully, sometime in the next few days, I think you might find it in the usual PSP homebrew/emulator places.

Here's a little something that I think you might enjoy. I found this nice little CFC2 World Map when looking around the original NeoGeo site. If you click on a location in the picture, it will take you to a (Japanese) description of the location. It's kinda nifty, anyway.

CFC2 World Map

New Hardware and Emulation

2008-02-12T07:18:00.000-08:00

Well, to be blunt, there hasn't been much progress on the translation side of things lately. There really isn't a lot left to do there, but I've been a bit distracted by other things lately. There are some real life situations that are causing my hobby time to get cut down a bit, but that's not the whole story.

I have recently acquired two new (to me) consoles. I found a cheap Dreamcast at a local shop, so I hope to get CFC2 running nicely on the DC. I did set up the development environment and build RACE for the Dreamcast. It runs CFC2, but it seems that it doesn't save the save-game progress properly. I'll have to look into that.

The other console I picked up, thanks to Craigslist, is a PSP. I traded some unused stuff for it, and I'm very pleased at how the deal turned out. I set up the psptoolchain and had only some minor issues getting RACE to run on it. You can see a video of it here. It has sound. It's hard to hear, because I didn't turn up the volume until close to the end. I don't know why someone didn't port RACE to the PSP sooner.

CFC2 English Running on PSP

I know that most of the votes (on the right) have been for Nintendo DS and Neo Geo Pocket Color. First, it will always be made to run on the NGPC, but that will require a NGPC flash cart. The other systems are just icing, but it seems that DS is probablly the most likely to be utilized.

Text Extension Success

2008-01-31T07:42:00.000-08:00

I took a little vacation, so there was a period of inactivity on my part. Though, there was work being done by some of the others, so there has been progress since the last post. The variable-width font output code has been updated and is in the process of being tested. The problem here was that some text at the end of a string would get cut off. I had figured out which circumstances lead to this problem and came up with a workaround, but another coder has taken up the task of actually fixing the problem. He has also created a cool little intro that will be shown when the game starts up.

After vacation, I actually got something accomplished. When I announced that we reached the end of the storyline translation, I hadn't realized that this finally pushed us over the edge of available space for text in the game. Well, it filled the current buffer, anyway. I came up with a way to start using another unused area in the game to store the rest of the game text. It seems to work fine, now. It even looks like we will have enough room for the "origin text" to be included in the game. This, of course, is good, but it means more translating.

I have yet to decide what we will do with this origin text. My inclination at this point is to leave it out of the initial release and then see if someone wants to volunteer to translate it. Maybe Calden (our current translator) would want to do it, but so far it's not part of what he agreed to help with. If anyone else would like to try translating it, please go ahead and volunteer. Leave a comment and I'll let you know how you can help.

So, we're back at it and I feel like we're on the home stretch, now. There isn't much text left to worry about, and there are some bugs to fix up. I'll see if I can get a new video posted sometime soon. (EDIT: Soon = Now See video below)

CFC2 English on Nintendo DS Lite

Premature Party Time

2008-01-10T08:05:00.001-08:00

Well, I worked on this for the last two nights. This work, combined with new translations from Calden have brought us to the end of the storyline. There are still about 5-10 storyline strings that we need to go back and fix because of some translation issues. Then, there are some non-storyline strings that are still not done. Of course, there also are some technical issues to work on.

It is exciting to finally reach the end of the storyline, though. There are some interesting things in the text, too. I have had to read almost all of the storyline (even parts that may never come up in normal play), but you guys will have the pleasure of "playing" the storyline. It's probably more fun to play it than just read it, but you might miss out on some stuff, I guess.

Oh well, it will be revealed in time. For now the news is that the time is nearing, and I'm excited that we have just reached this important milestone.

Not Dead

2008-01-08T08:43:00.000-08:00

Well, unfortuntaly, I don't have much to say, today. I just felt like I should post and let you know that neither the project or myself are dead. You might say that we both took some time off for the holidays, though.

Here's the current status from my point of view. The file I have is now down to 278 strings of storyline left to translate. From what I understand, though, Calden has translated much of these 278 strings already. I've just not seen it. In fact, in his last message to me, he said, "I feel like I finished more than this. The story is done, all the rest is menu dialogue it looks like." ... "I am pretty sure I have one that is basically done, with a few exceptions. Cheers!"

So, that's great news. I just have to get that stuff from him and get to work inserting it into the game. Then, there will be some effort that needs to be put in to fix up some loose ends like the low-level stuff I mentioned last time.

Oh, and finally, "Neo Geo Pocket Color" JUST pulled ahead of "Nintendo DS" on the poll. It's now 36 to 35. I wonder if someone is stuffing the ballot box. :)

Happy New Year!

Nintendo DS Pulls Ahead

2007-12-11T19:12:00.000-08:00

To tell you the truth, when I put up the current poll, I assumed that everyone would want to play CFC2 English on the Nintendo DS. At the time, I had been putting in some extra work to get CFC2 running faster on the DS. I really did want to see what people thought, but I was also hoping for some validation.

It actually took quite a while for the NGPC to drop back to second place. At the time of my writing this, the NDS is only beating the NGPC by 24 votes to 22. That's not much considering how popular the NDS is and how old the NGPC is. I am rather surprised by the percentage of people that want to play this on their NGPC. Yeah, it's probablly skewed a bit by the fact that most of the people that know about this project are NGPC-fanboys, but it's still interesting that NDS didn't come out stronger.

I don't have much real news to post. I was out of town for a while, and I haven't had a lot of time to hack on things. I do know that Calden has been translating text still. That's still coming along at a good pace, but I still can't say when it will be completed. Comic-Kaze has gotten back into the project a bit, too. He was one of the original CFC Translation Team members back in the day. He's been working on some graphic hacks. There were some seldom-used menus and such that were never translated. He did a lot of that graphic hacking back when the "WIP" version was released in 2001.

There's also another coder working on some low-level stuff. We are getting a nifty intro and some much-needed text output code fixes from him. That doesn't sound like much because I don't care to elaborate much at this point, but it's important to get done.

Finally, I wanted to touch on the status of the NGPC flash carts that I had mentioned in an early post. A guy called "Fire" posted a comment asking about them. Well, I tracked down the developer that's working on them and the word is that there's not been any new development on them lately. That's how these things go. I (personally) have had the knowledge and understanding of the NGPC required to create these carts for quite some time, but I don't have the proper tools and hardware design skills to actually make them. That's why I've tried to get others to take on the project, but it always seems to fade away after a while.

Anyway, thanks for taking the time to write the comment and question, Fire. I'm glad you're FIREd up about the project. Unfortunately, at this moment, it's not looking like much of a Christmas present. Maybe you have a birthday early in the year, because it's just a bit odd for me to offer it to you as a Valentine gift.

Welcome Insert Credit Readers

2007-11-21T07:29:00.000-08:00

Well, I just noticed (thanks to some new reader comments) that Brandon at InsertCredit.com posted an article about this blog. Thanks Brandon!

Announcement: Lost Church officially renamed Rooster Church
Calden, the translator, has notified me that the church in CFC2 is actually called "Rooster Church." While this seems a bit odd, it's not much more odd than it being "Lost." I mean, it's right there on the East side of town. You can't miss it. I can only assume that "Rooster" is some insider reference to something Capcom, maybe? If you know or have any ideas, why don't you leave a comment to let us know. Oh, and if you want to see the original Japanese screenshot, you can see a picture of the church from the official www.neogeo.co.jp site.

2 Weeks, 250 Strings

2007-11-14T11:47:00.000-08:00

Well, there are approximately 535 strings of storyline left to translate. This means that, in about 2 weeks, the translator has knocked out about 250 strings. That's great progress, and if we can keep up that pace, it might be done by Christmas time. There's no deadline or release date set, but that might be a nice goal for another test release.

This progress is great, but we're running out of room in the game for all the English letters, because the English takes up more space than the Japanese. At the moment, it looks like the origin/flavoring text that shows up (as the second page) on the cards might get axed to make some more room. This text is often a quote from the card's character or some tidbit about the character. I think it's nice stuff to have around, but it's not an essential part of the game. It's removal will create needed space, and it will also mean that there's less text that needs translating. If you have a strong reaction to the removal of this, let me know.

We're getting low on topics to blog about. We need some more comments and questions so that we know what interests you and can have something new to blab on about.

Introducing the Stars of CFC2

2007-11-09T11:40:00.000-08:00

This is another real quick update. I wanted to upload this picture of the characters in the game. They can also be found (with Japanese descriptions) on the original CFC2 page archived from the old www.neogeo.co.jp site.

This isn't really translation news, but it might help pique some interest and it helps us keep track of the characters.

If you click on the image, you should get a larger (higher quality) view of it.

Teaser Video

2007-11-07T15:16:00.000-08:00

I don't really have time to describe this, but it doesn't need much explanation. It's just a quick video I made of the current build of CFC2 English. If you care, I made it with Growler Guncam. I know the guy that makes the software, so I figured I ought to try it out. It's very slick. My tiny video doesn't do it justice.

New Poll, Emulation Talk, and a Bit On Strings

2007-11-06T07:19:00.000-08:00

First of all, I wanted to mention that I put up a poll. You should see it over there on the right side of the page. Let me know how you'd like to play CFC2 English. Keep in mind that for some of the systems mentioned, you would need some way to play "homebrew" games on the system. For systems like NGPC, DS, and PSP, that might mean a flash cart or a modified BIOS or something. I don't think you'll ever see CFC2 English available at your local game shop. Wouldn't that be cool, though?

I've been putting some effort into getting it to run on the Nintendo DS. I'd say at this point, it's playable, but it's not full speed. It is, however, much faster than it was even a week ago. I have found some hacks that I can do so that specific sections of code don't get emulated. Since I have figured out what that part of code is doing, I can just build in the same functionality. Like, instead of emulating the NGPC CPU doing instructions that set a bunch of memory to 0, I can just do a memset(mem,0,count) and skip the code that would have been emulated.

Guys call this technique "static recompilation," but they take it to a whole other level. Some of them write code that turns a binary from an old arcade machine (or whatever) into C source code. Then, they can compile that C code into an executable to run on the PC (or wherever). I haven't done anything near that, but I've taken some pointers from their techniques and added in special cases for specific events that occur frequently.

I've also been doing some more hand optimizing of the emulation core. I am mainly doing this using inline assembly code for ARM processors like NDS, GP2X, etc. This gets a little extra speed out of the emulation because it's more efficient than the C code.

I know that none of this is actual translation news, but I feel that it relates to the project. I am anticipating that people will want to play this on some other handheld console (besides NGPC), and therefore the emulation of it is important.

I plan to get back to the actual translation work in the next couple days. I need to go through the new strings of text and make sure that they fit on the screen properly. I have created a tool that will notify me when strings are too long to fit on the screen. It spits out a list of strings that need to be fixed, and then I have to manually go and re-word the text to make it shorter or to fit in multiple lines. It's not very difficult, but it is a bit tedious.

Brief Progress Update

2007-11-02T13:16:00.000-07:00

I just thought that it'd be a good time for a status update. Today I received the latest translation data from the translator. You can see a sample of it on the left. Well, the news is that there is only about 785 strings of dialog left to translate. That doesn't count everything that's still in Japanese, but it also counts some trivial things that don't really need any translation. I'd say it's a fair estimate.

To me, though, it means progress. Things are still moving along, and that's what matters. I have no idea how long it will take to translate the rest of this, but I do know that it's getting done.

Tiles, Flash Carts, Emulators

2007-11-01T07:43:00.000-07:00

So, last time I briefly discussed the change of font tiles from Japanese to English. Here's a little view of what has been done. On the left is a table of tiles that are used in the original CFC2. Actually, there are 3 of these tables, but this is the only interesting one

On the right is the new English version of the table. Now, we are free to use English text (both upper-case and lower-case) in the game. Also, as you may notice, the upper-case letters have been made skinnier. That allows us to put more text on the screen than with the full 8-pixel wide tiles. All the Japanese tiles are 8-pixels wide, but they can say more with one tile than the English alphabet allows. I have also added some 8-pixel letters that may (or may not) be used in the final version.

Somebody left a comment yesterday asking about the need for flash carts. The quick answer is that you can either use a flash cart or an emulator. Here's the news on each of those.

Years ago, a company called Bung made a cartridge for the NGPC that would allow you to upload a game to the cart and play it on your NGPC. If you have one of these, you're all set to play CFC2 English on your NGPC. If you don't, then there are a couple of other options.

1) Hope that someone else creates a new flash cart for the NGPC. I know that this sounds a bit wishful, but I actually have been in contact with at least 4 different individuals that had plans to do this. In fact, one of them made a working prototype cart, but never made the "linker" device that uploads from the PC to the cart. As far as I know, the first 3 people that desired to take on this project this have either given up or shelved the project indefinitely. I am, however, in contact with one guy that we can call our "final hope" that is currently working on the project. He wants to make a flash cart that will hook up to the PC via USB. He also intends to make it hold multiple games and be able to switch among them.

2) Run it on an emulator. Well, you might think that it's silly to play a portable game like CFC2 on an emulator. I mean, who wants to play a handheld game on their PC, right? Well, as it turns out, I also work on a NGPC emulator called RACE! (Rather A Cardfighter Emulator!). RACE! runs on the PC, but it also runs on other systems such as GP32, GP2X, Gizmondo, DreamCast, and NintendoDS. It runs CFC2 at full-speed on all those platforms except NintendoDS. Lately, I've been doing some work on the NintendoDS version to try to speed it up. I really haven't gotten it to run all that much faster, but I'll continue to tweak it here and there. CFC2 doesn't really need to run at full-speed, anyway since it's all turn-based. If I could get it to about two-thirds speed, I think that would be good for portable CFC2 English on the DS. The other option would be to run RACE! on the PSP, but I don't own a PSP and I don't know much about the development scene there. It should be a simple thing to port to PSP, though.

Well, that's it for today's update. If you're interested in this project or have any questions, please leave a comment. I think you can do it easily without logging in or anything. As you can see, I'll try to answer and expand on the topic. It's also good for me to get an idea about what sorts of things people are interested in.

The status for 5+ years

2007-10-26T07:30:00.000-07:00

I don't know where to start, so my plan is to (over the next few posts) describe how the project has gone and bring you up to speed on where it currently stands. For now, I'm going to briefly describe the state of the project during the long hiatus.

When we released the WIP (Work-In-Progress) version in 2001, we had already done quite a bit of the ground work. Here's a list of things that we accomplished:
- Changed font tiles from Jap to Eng
- Added code to output variable-width font tiles (because some Eng letters like "i" are skinny)
- Modified in-game graphics from Jap to Eng
- Changed card names to Eng
- Changed card text to Eng
- Changed many menus from Jap to Eng
- Created some bugs

The project didn't change for about 5.5 years, so when I picked it back up, it still needed a lot of work. Here's some things that had to be done:
- Translate the rest of the game text (mostly storyline) from Jap to Eng: This constitutes much of the work, now. Though, it's worth noting that it's not all just a straight translation. Some of the work being done is to make sure that the Eng text fits where the Jap text used to be and that formatting comes out properly.
- Fix some of the problems created by the variable-width text output
- Shorten up some text (like card names) to fit properly
- Fix bugs: I'll try to go into this more in a later post. For now, though, let's just say that I'm either fixing or working around most of the bugs at the moment.

SNK Vs. Capcom Card Fighters' Clash 2 English Edition (Translation)

2007-10-24T11:38:00.000-07:00

Well, here it is, my first post. I've been working on translating CFC2 to English. In 2001, we released a "Work In Progress" version that you can
read about here. After that, we took a hiatus for about 5.5 years. The news of the Nintendo DS version reignited my interest in CFC2, and the subsequent disappointment that CFCDS brought made me realize that people might prefer CFC2.

I have found a (single) translator who is very helpful and is translating the entire game text. Though, this is a slow job. As you can immagine, this is not a paid position, and he has a lot going on in his real life. One of my desires is that we might raise some more interest in this project so that he realizes that his effort is important.

I plan to use this blog as a journal to keep track of progress on this project. This will help me to keep track of important things that I have done or that still need to be done. I hope it will also raise some interest in the project. Please feel free to ask questions or leave comments. Sometime soon, I hope to write a "state of the project" post as a basis for future posts.