------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ReadMe-DvD_Translations-Cleopatra.txt This file should be viewed using a mono-spaced font like "Courier". Use a font size where 79 columns are visible. Please don't distribute the ROM file in patched form. Please don't distribute the DvD_Cleopatra_revA.ips file without this file. Thanks. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE CURSED TREASURE OF CLEOPATRA for the Nintendo Famicom Disk System Copyright 1987 by Square English Translation Copyright 2018 by DvD Translations Patch Version: Rev A Release Date: April 9, 2018 DvD Translations dvdtranslations.eludevisibility.org GAME Script Translation: NintendoComplete Script Translation Editing: aishsha, harmony7 Script Editing: DvD Code Editing: DvD Graphics Editing: DvD Alpha Testing: DvD Beta Testing: RadicalR ReadMe: DvD MANUAL Manual converted to HTML by: www.geocities.jp/frnyanko/setsumei Manual Translation: aishsha, Ryusui, DvD Graphic Editing & Formatting: DvD Production Support: Pennywise ----------------------------------- CONTENTS ---------------------------------- INFO (1) Historical Significance of the Game (2) If You Read Anything, Read This USING THE PATCH (3) Patching the Disk Image file (4) Playing the Game on a Flash Cart or Emulator TRANSLATION DETAILS (5) Why DvD Chose to Translate THIS Game (6) Why YOU Should Bother Playing THIS Game (7) DvD's Hacking & Script Editing Comments (8) Nintendo Complete's Translating Comments (9) aishsha's Translation Editing Comments (10) RadicalR's Beta Testing Comments (11) Project Timeline (12) Software Used In This Translation ------------------------------------- INFO ------------------------------------ (1)------------------ Historical Significance of the Game --------------------- The Cursed Treasure of Cleopatra is not part of a game series; it was the only Cleopatra game that Square made. Cleopatra is the last RPG that Square made before Final Fantasy. Final Fantasy was so titled because there was a good chance it was going to be Square's last game. The had stopped work on every other game they were working on and put all their effort into one last game. Had they failed, they would have gone bankrupt. Instead, their gamble paid off. But why did they think this gamble was going to pay off? The Cursed Treasure of Cleopatra is also the last game Square made before Nasir. Nasir was a legendary Iranian American 6502 programmer who Square hired. He saved Square. After Cleopatra was released, Square released three 3D games, all programmed by Nasir: Highway Star, JJ Tobidase Daisaksusen, and JJ Tobidase Daisaksusen II. The first two are better known by their US names: Rad Racer (released in the US by Nintendo) and The 3D Adventures of Worldrunner. (DvD Translations has translated the third.) The next game Nasir programmed was Final Fantasy. He then went on to program Final Fantasy II and III as well. One of the RPG games Square was working on that was cancelled for Final Fantasy was to be a whopping 5 disk FDS game called Seiken Densetsu. Square went as far as releasing a screen shot, copyrighting the name and selling pre-orders for the game. Every store that had pre-ordered Seiken Densetsu, had their orders switched to Final Fantasy. Less than 3 years later, Square released their first action RPG for the Gameboy titled Seiken Densetsu (released in the US as Final Fantasy Adventure). Seiken Densetsu's sequel is better known by its US name: The Secret of Mana, Nasir's only SNES game and his last game for Square. (2)-------------------- If You Read Anything, Read This ----------------------- For this game, DvD Translations has released a fully translated html version of the manual. Please read it before playing the game. It's available from our website on the web page where this patch was found. What the HTML manual doesn't explain is that a new function has been added to the game to allow font substitution on the fly. Any time the main menu is displayed, the font for the menu and body text can be changed to one of three different fonts. The can be changed independently of each other. To change the menu text, simply hold the SELECT button and press UP. To change the body text, hold SELECT and press DOWN. The menu text will change immediately. The body text will change the next time any new body text is shown. The SELECT button is not used for any other function in the game. The SAVE file will not save the fonts chosen. The three fonts are: - Arabic - Since this takes place in modern Egypt, it looks lower case because that better matches what real Arabic letters look like - Unknown Upper Case - It's a nice easy to read font - Final Fantasy Lower Case - because this the English font that Square actually used The fonts are single case because we consider the Arabic font to be the main font and Arabic script is only one case. But, this is also done because single case fonts compress much more than mixed case. ------------------------------- USING THE PATCH ------------------------------- (3)---------------------- Patching the Disk Image file ------------------------ For this translation, before patching the ROM file, you'll need to expand the ROM file first using a ROM expander. Game file size: One 2 sided disk 65,500 bytes on each side (36 bytes less than 64k) = 131,000 bytes = 72 bytes less than 128 kBytes How to patch the FDS (Famicom Disk Image) file: You need: 1) A FDS file. The file may or may not include the standard 16 byte iNES header followed by the program disk image data. With header, the FDS file is 131,016 bytes in size. The data in the header doesn't actually matter because ROM Expander Pro is going to replace it anyway. I'm not telling you how to get the FDS file, but once you do, call it Cleopatra no Mahou.fds. 2) "ROM Expander Pro.txt" which is included with this patch. 3) For PC users, use ROM Expander Pro.exe, which you can get from the DvD Translations website. It's pretty self-explanatory. Just make sure your FDS file, called "Cleopatra no Mahou.fds", "ROM Expander Pro.txt" and "ROM Expander Pro.exe" are all in the same directory and then run ROM Expander Pro. Regardless of whether your FDS file has a header or not, always choose "Expand and Add/Replace Header" as that is what the patch is expecting. You will get an error saying your MD5 is doesn't match if you don't have a blank save file in your game. It will still expand the FDS properly. Now, if you save the game right after starting a new game and then try to use that for expansion it still gives you a MD5 error, your file wont patch properly. Headers are pretty silly on FDS games as all the information is stored in the FDS file, but we've standardized on releasing FDS patches with headers as the patched FDS files with headers are better supported by flash cardts. ROM Expander Pro will not modify your original FDS file. It will instead make a copy of the file and modify it calling it "The Cursed Treasure of Cleopatra.fds". Keep your original file for backup purposes. This is normally where in the ReadMe I explain how to expand the game manually. Well, this game is not easy to expand manually. If you don't own a Windows PC you'll have to run a Windows virtual machine on your host to run Rom Expander Pro. 4) Patch File: DvD_Cleopatra_revA.IPS 5) An IPS patching program Remember to patch the file only AFTER it has a been expanded. Recommended IPS patching program for IBM PC: Lunar IPS.exe by FuSoYa Recommended IPS patching program for Mac: UIPS by Lucas Newman Using Lunar IPS / UIPS: a) Double-click "Lunar IPS" / "UIPS" b) Click "Apply IPS Patch" / "Apply Patch" c) Choose "DvD_Cleopatra_revA.ips" e) Choose "The Cursed Treasure of Cleopatra.fds" (4)------------- Playing the Game on a Flash Cart or Emulator ---------------- All emulators and flash carts that can play the original FDS file can play the translation. The game is a single 2 sided disk. Even if your emulator or flash cart automatically flips the disk when necessary, no content will be missed because disk flips only occur after the user takes an action. The PowerPak flash cart emulates it perfectly, automatically flipping the disk when necessary. The EverDrive-N8 flash cart unfortunately cannot properly display the title screen of the original FDS file and so it has the same problem with the translation. But, after the title screen there are no other issues. ----------------------------- TRANSLATION DETAILS ----------------------------- (5)------------------ Why DvD Chose to Translate THIS Game -------------------- The translators I normally work with were not interested in taking on the primary role of translator in a new project especially since while we were still trying to complete Pocket Zaurus. So, I looked to see who wanted hacking help. NintendoComplete was asking for help with Square's Tom Sawyer which was a game I was interested in working on. I contacted him and he was interested in working with me, but someone else had already started working with him on Tom Sawyer. So, I listed the four Square games I wanted to see completed which included Cleopatra, Hanjuku Hero, and Romancing SaGa 1 (now completed by others). We talked and decided that we'd also both like to see Cleopatra done. No one had tackled Cleopatra at the time, it was the most historically significant and it was the oldest, so we chose to work on it. I had messed with Cleopatra in the past and knew it wasn't going to be easy, but since I'd have some dedicated translator support I was willing to give it a try. This was the oldest Square game that wasn't translated that I wanted to play. I also really wanted to see what game must have been so terrible that it caused Square to almost go bankrupt. While translating the game, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the game was actually pretty good. (6)---------------- Why YOU Should Bother Playing THIS Game ------------------- It is a fun, short, unique, RPG by Square with nice graphics and good music that we never got to play in the US. The music was done by the same composer as Final Fantasy. (7)---------------- DvD's Hacking & Script Editing Comments ------------------- I dumped the MTE compression table, the menus, the items, the location, and the scripts from each of the 8 locations. I gave these to NintendoComplete and eventually he translated everything. Other things in my life kept me from working on the project for about a year. I had come up with an Arabic looking font that I liked, but it was difficult for others to read and it was suggested that maybe the game took place in the time of Cleopatra, so I made a classical Roman font, which proved to be even harder to read. I realized that I could hack the game to swap between the two fonts. But, then I wanted a font that was easy to read, so I added in the Final Fantasy lower case font. As I played through the game I could tell it took place in modern times, and so the Roman font didn't really make sense, so I replaced it with an all caps font. The funny thing is I can't remember where I found it! When I came back, NintendoComplete was unavailable, (tuns out his email program was blocking my emails) but aishsha stepped up and offered to help with any lines that I felt seemed off. After I played through the whole game, I went back to write a custom disassembler for the context which allowed me to know exactly which pieces of text were used in the game, and how to display them. It also made it so I could re-insert all the unused text back into the game that made sense (which was most of it), by hacking the context scripts. Fun times! After finishing that, I added a final hack to the game that made the text 8 single spaced lines instead of 4 double spaced lines. What a change this made! It made everything look much better and the battles flow much more smoothly. (8)---------------- NintendoComplete's Translating Comments ------------------- It was quite awhile back when DvD first contacted me as I was looking for someone to help with a translation of Square's Tom Sawyer. If my memory serves me correctly, I had just found some to start Tom Sawyer when he messaged me over at ROMhacking.net, but since he had a few other Square titles that he wanted help with, and given my love of Square's old games, I decided give this one a shot. I wasn't terribly familiar with the game at the time, but I was up for a challenge. It was fairly straight-forward and easy to hash out the first pass of Cleopatra's translation, though I did do a bit of research to ensure that I had a grasp of what the gods represented in Egyptian culture. I thought it important to handle the text in a way that was both contextually appropriate and respectful of a culture entirely foreign to me. Because of this, instead of merely transliterating the names from Japanese, I was careful to ensure that names remained consistent with their accepted English renderings. For me personally, the biggest hurdle that the translation posed laid with deciding on the player's agency within the narrative. The original script was often ambiguous on whether it was discussing things in the first or third-person, so for tonal consistency and keeping everything true to the spirit of the original text, I chose first-person whenever the player was directly involved in the action. Replaying the English version now for the umpteenth time, I'm still think that it was the right call. I was really pleased with how the game turned out, and thanks to DvD's in-depth work on the game's text display routines, the full translation was able to be inserted with no lines butchered or lost to technical constraints. I really hope that all of you enjoy the game. It was a lot of work, but I'm pretty proud of what we accomplished here, and I'm happy that our efforts will allow a whole new audience to experience one of Square's earliest RPGs for the very first time. Happy Gaming! NintendoComplete If you'd like to contact me, you can find me at: http://www.nintendocomplete.com and http://www.youtube.com/NintendoComplete. (9)----------------- aishsha's Translation Editing Comments ------------------- I joined this project on the pretesting stage and did some polishing as well as spot on translation works to the text on DvD's request. That's all about my participation in this project, apparently :) (10)------------------- RadicalR's Beta Testing Comments ---------------------- When DvD asked me to beta tested this, I was initially skeptical until I found out that this game was from Square. As a long time fan of Square, I agreed to try it out. I first completed it on a flashcart for the NES (Note: the title screen doesn't render correctly on some flashcarts. This is not a fault of the patch.) Then I was sick for several months, holding up the testing. My apologies to DvD for this. I completed the second run on an emulator, so it should work fine any way you try it. All in all, this is an interesting piece of history that is finally available in English! Very grindy at parts, and frustrating when I was trying to figure out what the hell to do next. All in all, not a bad game. (11)---------------------- Project Timeline Highlights ------------------------ Mar 9 2014 - Contacted NintendoComplete to work on Square's Tom Sawyer May 22 2014 - Menu, Town & Shop original translations completed Dec 12 2015 - DTE compression table made Project took a year and half break Jul 16 2017 - aishsha started helping with the script editing Nov 2017 - DvD's first alpha test play through complete Dec 3 2017 - Table Dumper Pro modified to dump context Dec 30 2017 - All text context identified - Missing text added back into the game completed Jan 1 2018 - Single spacing hack completed - First beta test version completed - Beta testing started by RadicalR Jan 3 2018 - RadicalR passed the game Jan 5 2018 - ROM Expansion file completed Jan 7 2018 - Manual translation completed Mar 25 2018 - RadicalR completed beta testing the final version Apr 1 2018 - IPS patch file completed Apr 9 2018 - Comments received from contributors - ROM & manual translation released along with Burnin' TwinBee (12)------------- Software & Hardware Used In This Translation ---------------- * Emulator FCEUX 2.2.3 by zeromus, adelikat * Disassembler, Table Dumper, Script/Items/Menus Inserter, File Comparator Table Dumper Pro (ver 17.12.03) by DvD * Hex Editors WindHex32 2005.4.20 by Genecyst East Software Beyond Compare 4 by Scooter Software * Tile Editors Tile Layer Pro 1.0 by Kent Hansen * Disassembled code manipulation, script editing, ReadMe creation, & ROM Expander Pro file editing Notepad++ by Don Ho and the rest of the Notepad++ team * Project management Excel 2010 by Microsoft * IPS Patch File Creator Lunar IPS by FuSoYa * ROM Expansion ROM Expander Pro 12.8.12 by DvD ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 987654321098765432109876543210987654321 123456789012345678901234567890123456789