Stiltzkinator
Evard's Tentacles of Forced Intrusion
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It's come up here and there, but it looks like this isn't quite common knowledge yet, so I thought I would do a little tutorial on how to translate a WolfRPG using WoldEditor. It's a rather involved process, and as you may expect, knowledge of Japanese is pretty much a must if you intend to start translating, but it can go a long way to enhance the quality of a game when you are playing it in your native language (and can be a boon for those who know no Japanese at all if you make your translation publicly available).
WARNING: HUGE wall of text behind the spoiler.
WARNING: HUGE wall of text behind the spoiler.
First off, you will need the WolfEditor. There actually is a partially translated version of this, which you can find more about here:
However, for ease of use, I'm providing a slightly modified version of the upload to make tinkering on your game of choice easier:
So now, for how to actually use this. The Wolf Editor is contained within a folder, as most WolfRPG games are. What you will need to do is take the contents of the Editor folder, along with the contents of your game's folder, and put them together. WolfEditor works best when it's reading data out of the same folder, so it's most convenient to put everything together.
Now for the next step, which is where things start getting technical. Most WolfRPG games use data in the form of an archive with a .wolf extension (I.E. "Data.wolf"). You're not going to be able to work with this very well, so you will need to extract it. I have included the tool you will need for this in the folder, called "arc_conv.exe". When you open this program, it iwll have you select an archive to open. Usually, just like the example I gave, this will be "Data.wolf", so select that to open. The program will convert this into a .rar archive, which you can then extract again using more comonly available tools such as 7zip. What you will need is a "Data" folder (NOT an archive) to work with.
Note that there are some special cases here. Rarely, WolfRPG games will not have any of their data archived at all. In such a case, you can skip this step without any worries. On the other hand, sometimes the Data folder itself will not be archived, but its CONTENTS will be, and individually. This is a bit of an annoyance, because you will have to convert and then extract each subfolder individually, but the general process remaisn the same. Just note that the folder structure is important!
Game\Data\BasicData,BattleEffect,BGM,etc
Note that you can extract CGs from WolfRPG games with this as well, and they will usually appear in the "Picture" subfolder, though sometmes the devs will name their folders differently.
So now that we have Data we can work with, the next step is to make sure the old Data doesn't get in the way. The easiest way to do this is to rename the old archive ("Data.wolf" to "XData.wolf" for example), or to move it to a different folder.
Now we're finally ready to start using the editor to make some edits! With everything setup, you will want to click on "Editor202aENG_v0025". It will take a moment to load, but once it does, you will have a lot to work with, and likely little idea on what a lot of it does. Fortunately, when it comes to translation, there's not a lot we need to use. There are four buttons we will geenrally use: 'User Database' (blue button, says "User" on it), 'Open Variable Database' (sickly green button, has "CNG" on it), 'System Database' (red, "SYS"), and 'Common Event Settings' (has EV and a little person on it).
The Variable Database is a good starting point, as it has the playable character information. Specifically, when you open the database, you will see a "Type" list and a "Data" list. For the variable database, the first entry under "Type" is almost always the data for playable characters. When you have it selected, the middle "Data" list will have the names of the characters, and when you have a character highlighted, you will see details on the right. The right side is where you will be making changes. The first two boxes there are the characters name and title. The next two boxes are the character's map and battle sprites, so don't mess with those. If you feel like cheating, the next several boxes pertain to the character's stats. However, it's worth noting that this database's data is called when you start a new game; in other words, changes you make here will not affect a saved game you have. Fortunately, character names and titles are the main translation needed in this database, so you can easily get it out of the way first (though you may not be quite finished with the names, but more on this later). The rest of the entries under the "Type" list you can usually safely ignore, because they never show up as text in the game (with some exceptions depending on the game).
Moving on, the User database is the fun one. The Type list here has skills, magic, items, equipment, enemies, elements, and status effects. Commands are important because that is your battle menu. Naturally, their submenus include items and magic, so you will certainly want to work on those ASAP as well. When you go to edit an item, command, or magic spell, you'll see a slightly different set of boxes on the far right. The first box is the name of the item/magic/etc ('Potion'), and the second box is a description ('Heals 100 HP'). These are pretty straightforward for the most part.
Status effects have the name as the first box ('Poison') per normal, whereas the second box is a function call, so do not touch it (it's not text you need to translate). The third box is the indicator: a picture or symbol that display near the character's HP in battle to show that they are currently poisoned/asleep/whatever. If a game includes images here, it may be best to leave it, but if it uses text, usually a short string of kanji, you may want to translate it. It works best to use the shortest groups of letters you can ('PSN' instead of 'Poison'), so get creative however you are able.
Status effects also have three boxes you will want to pay attention to, especially in some H-games where the effects are part of the H. Box 12 is what displays when a character is hit with a status effect (" was poisoned!"), box 13 is what displays when the character is suffering from the effect (" is still poisoned."), and box 14 is when the character recovers (" is no longer poisoned."). Note that each of the quoted parts starts with a space. The character's name is automatically displayed first, and Japanese does not normally require spaces, so you will have to add them in yourself.
Magic and skills have box 14 as what displays when someone uses that skill/spell in battle (" casts fireball!"). Note that this includes skills for your party as well as all of the enemies.
The System database isn't too different form the other two, but you will also rarely (if ever) have to use it. Most of the data in it doesn't actually show up in-game, but kepe in mind it exists if you absolutely can't find something you need to translate. However, if it wasn't the User or Variable database, you can most likely find it in...
The Common Events Editor. If you have little to no intial skill with Japanese, but somehow fumbled your way through the databases, this is where your translation goes to hell. However, using this tool becomes exponentially easier if you can RECOGNIZE and TYPE Japanese (especially kanji, but then, if you know Japanese fairly well, this whole process probabaly isn't that rough). This is because the common event editor has a search feature. When you click search (or hit Ctrl+F) it brings up the search window. The empty text box is where you type what you are searching for. The bottom two options are whether you search within the currently selected event (first option) or all of the events (second option). This makes it relatively simple to search for something you know is not yet translated ("金") and change it so that it is translated ("Gold"). Note that when you find the line you want ot edit, you have to doubleclick it to bring up a window in which you can do so. Youl will also have to become familiar with WolfEditor's somewhat unique way of calling variables (\cself[1]). Making translation edits to the Common Events is by far the most tedious part of a full translation, but it is necessary if you want anything beyond a very basic understanding of your options when in battle. Common events are not only story events (and H-scenes), but also your main menu and shop interface menus, directions on a sign, and NPC conversations. In other words, they are everything you didn't find in one of the databases.
They are also sometimes things you already found in a database but need to edit further. I mentioned that you can translate player character names in the variable database, but stopping here can cause problems depending on the game's coding in the common events.
Say the main character's name is 'アンナ', which you translate to 'Anna'. This is simple enough, but can cause issues with common events. This is because when a common event affects a character, it can do so in one of two ways. The first is for the common event to look for the character in variable database, knowing that it is the character in the first spot on the first list. This is fine, because no matter what you name the character, the event will know exactly where to go. However, sometimes the event will be setup so that it is meant to affect the character specifically named 'アンナ'. If you changed the name to 'Anna', the event will be unable to find the character, and return an error, which is the little green bar with a lot of Japanese text you see when some people translate WolfRPGs. What you have to do here is open the event editor and search for all instances of 'アンナ' and manually translate them to 'Anna'. This isn't limited to just the names of characters either, so it can be good to keep a list of the original, Japanese names for characters, equipment, etc. on hand in case you need to use the search function to find it in the common events. Then you can just pop 'アンナ' into the search bar, and translate it every time it comes up* until it stops finding the name.
NOTE: Do not translate filenames, or you'll just be creating yourself even more work. The common events are what call up pictures, so if you translate 'アンナ_1.jpg' to 'Anna_1.jpg' in the common event editor, it won't be able to find the file unless you go through the data folder, find the picture, and change its name as well. It's easy to know when you're looking at a call for an external file because of the file extensions, so just make sure you pay attention.
Working on the common events is again the most tedious part of the process, but changes here usually show their effects even in saved games. That means you can make a save before a particular event, start editing in the common event editor, and then load it up and play through it to make sure your edits are showing up without any problems. Note that you can test play the game you are working on by hitting the green arrow button on the main WolfEditor screen.
And that's all I can think of right now. If you would like to see a fully translated demo of a WolfRPG as a proof of concept, PM me (Do NOT put a PM request here in the thread, as I WILL NOT respond to them here, and I will encourage the moderators to delete such requests). If you have any questions or problems about this process, please DO post here in this thread (I will not respond to these issues via PM...).
For a Translated Demo: PM me
Questions/Concerns: Post in the thread
You must be registered to see the links
However, for ease of use, I'm providing a slightly modified version of the upload to make tinkering on your game of choice easier:
You must be registered to see the links
So now, for how to actually use this. The Wolf Editor is contained within a folder, as most WolfRPG games are. What you will need to do is take the contents of the Editor folder, along with the contents of your game's folder, and put them together. WolfEditor works best when it's reading data out of the same folder, so it's most convenient to put everything together.
Now for the next step, which is where things start getting technical. Most WolfRPG games use data in the form of an archive with a .wolf extension (I.E. "Data.wolf"). You're not going to be able to work with this very well, so you will need to extract it. I have included the tool you will need for this in the folder, called "arc_conv.exe". When you open this program, it iwll have you select an archive to open. Usually, just like the example I gave, this will be "Data.wolf", so select that to open. The program will convert this into a .rar archive, which you can then extract again using more comonly available tools such as 7zip. What you will need is a "Data" folder (NOT an archive) to work with.
Note that there are some special cases here. Rarely, WolfRPG games will not have any of their data archived at all. In such a case, you can skip this step without any worries. On the other hand, sometimes the Data folder itself will not be archived, but its CONTENTS will be, and individually. This is a bit of an annoyance, because you will have to convert and then extract each subfolder individually, but the general process remaisn the same. Just note that the folder structure is important!
Game\Data\BasicData,BattleEffect,BGM,etc
Note that you can extract CGs from WolfRPG games with this as well, and they will usually appear in the "Picture" subfolder, though sometmes the devs will name their folders differently.
So now that we have Data we can work with, the next step is to make sure the old Data doesn't get in the way. The easiest way to do this is to rename the old archive ("Data.wolf" to "XData.wolf" for example), or to move it to a different folder.
Now we're finally ready to start using the editor to make some edits! With everything setup, you will want to click on "Editor202aENG_v0025". It will take a moment to load, but once it does, you will have a lot to work with, and likely little idea on what a lot of it does. Fortunately, when it comes to translation, there's not a lot we need to use. There are four buttons we will geenrally use: 'User Database' (blue button, says "User" on it), 'Open Variable Database' (sickly green button, has "CNG" on it), 'System Database' (red, "SYS"), and 'Common Event Settings' (has EV and a little person on it).
The Variable Database is a good starting point, as it has the playable character information. Specifically, when you open the database, you will see a "Type" list and a "Data" list. For the variable database, the first entry under "Type" is almost always the data for playable characters. When you have it selected, the middle "Data" list will have the names of the characters, and when you have a character highlighted, you will see details on the right. The right side is where you will be making changes. The first two boxes there are the characters name and title. The next two boxes are the character's map and battle sprites, so don't mess with those. If you feel like cheating, the next several boxes pertain to the character's stats. However, it's worth noting that this database's data is called when you start a new game; in other words, changes you make here will not affect a saved game you have. Fortunately, character names and titles are the main translation needed in this database, so you can easily get it out of the way first (though you may not be quite finished with the names, but more on this later). The rest of the entries under the "Type" list you can usually safely ignore, because they never show up as text in the game (with some exceptions depending on the game).
Moving on, the User database is the fun one. The Type list here has skills, magic, items, equipment, enemies, elements, and status effects. Commands are important because that is your battle menu. Naturally, their submenus include items and magic, so you will certainly want to work on those ASAP as well. When you go to edit an item, command, or magic spell, you'll see a slightly different set of boxes on the far right. The first box is the name of the item/magic/etc ('Potion'), and the second box is a description ('Heals 100 HP'). These are pretty straightforward for the most part.
Status effects have the name as the first box ('Poison') per normal, whereas the second box is a function call, so do not touch it (it's not text you need to translate). The third box is the indicator: a picture or symbol that display near the character's HP in battle to show that they are currently poisoned/asleep/whatever. If a game includes images here, it may be best to leave it, but if it uses text, usually a short string of kanji, you may want to translate it. It works best to use the shortest groups of letters you can ('PSN' instead of 'Poison'), so get creative however you are able.
Status effects also have three boxes you will want to pay attention to, especially in some H-games where the effects are part of the H. Box 12 is what displays when a character is hit with a status effect (" was poisoned!"), box 13 is what displays when the character is suffering from the effect (" is still poisoned."), and box 14 is when the character recovers (" is no longer poisoned."). Note that each of the quoted parts starts with a space. The character's name is automatically displayed first, and Japanese does not normally require spaces, so you will have to add them in yourself.
Magic and skills have box 14 as what displays when someone uses that skill/spell in battle (" casts fireball!"). Note that this includes skills for your party as well as all of the enemies.
The System database isn't too different form the other two, but you will also rarely (if ever) have to use it. Most of the data in it doesn't actually show up in-game, but kepe in mind it exists if you absolutely can't find something you need to translate. However, if it wasn't the User or Variable database, you can most likely find it in...
The Common Events Editor. If you have little to no intial skill with Japanese, but somehow fumbled your way through the databases, this is where your translation goes to hell. However, using this tool becomes exponentially easier if you can RECOGNIZE and TYPE Japanese (especially kanji, but then, if you know Japanese fairly well, this whole process probabaly isn't that rough). This is because the common event editor has a search feature. When you click search (or hit Ctrl+F) it brings up the search window. The empty text box is where you type what you are searching for. The bottom two options are whether you search within the currently selected event (first option) or all of the events (second option). This makes it relatively simple to search for something you know is not yet translated ("金") and change it so that it is translated ("Gold"). Note that when you find the line you want ot edit, you have to doubleclick it to bring up a window in which you can do so. Youl will also have to become familiar with WolfEditor's somewhat unique way of calling variables (\cself[1]). Making translation edits to the Common Events is by far the most tedious part of a full translation, but it is necessary if you want anything beyond a very basic understanding of your options when in battle. Common events are not only story events (and H-scenes), but also your main menu and shop interface menus, directions on a sign, and NPC conversations. In other words, they are everything you didn't find in one of the databases.
They are also sometimes things you already found in a database but need to edit further. I mentioned that you can translate player character names in the variable database, but stopping here can cause problems depending on the game's coding in the common events.
Say the main character's name is 'アンナ', which you translate to 'Anna'. This is simple enough, but can cause issues with common events. This is because when a common event affects a character, it can do so in one of two ways. The first is for the common event to look for the character in variable database, knowing that it is the character in the first spot on the first list. This is fine, because no matter what you name the character, the event will know exactly where to go. However, sometimes the event will be setup so that it is meant to affect the character specifically named 'アンナ'. If you changed the name to 'Anna', the event will be unable to find the character, and return an error, which is the little green bar with a lot of Japanese text you see when some people translate WolfRPGs. What you have to do here is open the event editor and search for all instances of 'アンナ' and manually translate them to 'Anna'. This isn't limited to just the names of characters either, so it can be good to keep a list of the original, Japanese names for characters, equipment, etc. on hand in case you need to use the search function to find it in the common events. Then you can just pop 'アンナ' into the search bar, and translate it every time it comes up* until it stops finding the name.
NOTE: Do not translate filenames, or you'll just be creating yourself even more work. The common events are what call up pictures, so if you translate 'アンナ_1.jpg' to 'Anna_1.jpg' in the common event editor, it won't be able to find the file unless you go through the data folder, find the picture, and change its name as well. It's easy to know when you're looking at a call for an external file because of the file extensions, so just make sure you pay attention.
Working on the common events is again the most tedious part of the process, but changes here usually show their effects even in saved games. That means you can make a save before a particular event, start editing in the common event editor, and then load it up and play through it to make sure your edits are showing up without any problems. Note that you can test play the game you are working on by hitting the green arrow button on the main WolfEditor screen.
And that's all I can think of right now. If you would like to see a fully translated demo of a WolfRPG as a proof of concept, PM me (Do NOT put a PM request here in the thread, as I WILL NOT respond to them here, and I will encourage the moderators to delete such requests). If you have any questions or problems about this process, please DO post here in this thread (I will not respond to these issues via PM...).
For a Translated Demo: PM me
Questions/Concerns: Post in the thread
Last edited:
