Shenmue Dojo

awesome!...im excited

I think it's time for a little appetizer, considering we're still having difficulties with hacking the menus and the UI (We're still looking for hackers/SH4 dissasemblers).

Looking fantastic. Well done lads!

Really hope you find the people you want to help with it's progression.

Well, gentlemen, after nearly half a year of work, we can release the first version of our What's Shenmue translation patch.

Download link (v1.0.1)

And here's some nifty extras: Covers and manuals

And here's the men and women who have achieved the completion of this project:
ALL VERSIONS
Hacking/Coding: YZB, PacoChan, Indiket, IlDucci
Graphics Editing: BlueMue, IlDucci, Gin
Creation of the ShenTrad Toolset: SiZious, Ayla, Manic, ShenDream

ENGLISH VERSION
Translation: Brett "Switch" Chandler, Rakim
Proofreading: Merlin Fontana

SPANISH VERSION
Translation (Based on English Version): IlDucci, TheFireRed
Testing: Indiket, Releon
Contains material from the Shenmue I Spanish Fantranslation Project by Ryo Suzuki, IlDucci, el_capo, xulikotony & PacoChan.

GERMAN VERSION
(Based on English Version)
Main translator: BlueMue

See the readme file for the full credit list, including Special Thanks and other information.


We are doing the release as a patcher and not as a full image because of, more than legal issues, my personal policy as a romhacker/fantranslator. I'd like to keep things small and manageable. People who have the original GD-ROM and the SD Card Adapter should have no problems dumping their disc into a GDI image (.BIN or .ISO makes no difference), but I know this site doesn't go against releases, so: I know it's a bit hard finding a GDI image online, but it's possible. If you folks are going to do a full release, I know I can't stop you so I'd just ask you to do not make profit out of us.

That said, let's go to the details: The patcher has been tested with the following discs:
- 610-7179-0133A 11M1 o 11MB1 (TOSEC Version)
- 610-7179-0133A H1723E.

Both of those are the Blue Disc versions, any other Blue Disc or the Famitsu releases have not been tested. Should be fine if the data tracks are identical (We're fiddling with the audio tracks, but we're not needing an exact equivalent of them, which seems to be the biggest difference between versions).


And now the specifics. All the menus, texts and subtitles have been fully translated into English, Spanish and German. The patcher is multi-language, so you should be able to select your language there. The process lasts around 10 minutes or so. The patcher could be a great example that, with a little modification, we could have a Shenmue modding tool for small mods (Such as the Forklift one, bigger stuff like Undubs won't have that of a meaning).

The patcher takes a GDI image and turns it into a MDS/MDF image file that should run on a real hardware or in emulator. It has a dummy file for 700MB full size, all the CDDA tracks have been preserved thanks to the previous research by HyKan, and we've got a sortfile for reordering stuff (We've moved towards the inner part beta/unused stuff that's around). It's not the best optimization but it can be improved. Nothing is ripped or downsampled.

We've translated a couple of extra needed graphics here and there, such as the "Closed" signs in the shops that are not available for the demo (like Tomato Convenience Store), Yukawa's Business Card or the poster from the ending scene. There's a couple of things I'd like to improve in a possible future release, but for now, we've done all we could. The rest is like it was in the original game.


Some troubleshooting: We've used Demul 0.5.8.2. for the emulation testing, and so far the only major issue it has is that some graphics show borders instead of being transparent. That doesn't happen in real console. In real console we've seen some delays with the activation of lipsynch or subtitles, which I don't know if it's our fault or if it already happened in the unmodified game.

If the patcher dumps some error, please report it back here, on this topic. The patcher will usually allow you to copy the error to the Clipboard, and also generate a log.txt file in the same folder where the application is. Upload both and send them here.


And... I'm tired as hell, we've been working on the last issues until the last minute. If I'm missing stuff, it's either on the readme or you can ask me here, as I'll be doing the English troubleshooting on this topic. Enjoy.

Thank you for this great gem!

I'll update the Shenmue Translation Pack with your additions for translating What's Shenmue.

Keep up the good work.

Have been keeping my eye on this since you announced the project.

Amazing work. Even after playing 'What's' so many times in the past, it's nice to actually have a better idea of what is being told throughout.

Truly awesome! Thank you very much

Great job guys!

I just wanna give full credit on the English translation to Brett "Switch" Chandler. He's the man. My work was minimal.

If you're interested in taking a quick look at it, I uploaded a full playthrough of the German version.
Probably won't allow more people here to understand it then the original Japanese version, but like I said, good for taking a look the work.


(Man I don't know why Youtube ruins the framerate in places)

Great Job!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks for the credit in the Readme! I am sorry I lacked the time to help out more on this project.

Thank you all for working on this. It is amazing to see what we are able to do as a community!

Excellent job guys!

Any chance of getting a version that exports as a CDI?

MDS/MDF is rather tricky to work with.

I'm very interested to make a Greek translation of What's Shenmue. Please, can you guide me how to approach this endeavour? [More specifically: would someone need to take a different approach with What's Shenmue than the one is suggested at Shenmue Translation Pack?]

That process could also work as a training (tutorial-like) for doing later the major translations, like, for Shenmue I and II (it's understandable that it may takes years for those to happen, however, the first step is the seed to sow).

Here's a quick playthrough in English, great work guys thank you !

Great playthrough video!

I really wish I had a working ripper for my disc. Looks like I cant try this patcher out until I do.

AdamKoralik wrote: Excellent job guys!

Any chance of getting a version that exports as a CDI?

MDS/MDF is rather tricky to work with.

You might be able to get away with mounting the mdf/mds and repacking it as a cdi using bootmake.

AdamKoralik wrote: Excellent job guys!

Any chance of getting a version that exports as a CDI?

MDS/MDF is rather tricky to work with.

Just mount your MDS/MDF file with Alcohol 120% and use Padus DiscJuggler to recreate a CDI image from the virtual drive.