Guide for Playing Japanese Audiogames
Japanese Games Setup Guide:
By Bladestorm360
---
Introduction
This guide will cover, in detail, how to play japanese audio games without knowing a single bit of the language. It is my hope that after reading it, you will be able to pick up any untranslated japanese game and play it with no trouble. Japanese audio games are easily some of the best around, far above what we've got available in the english market, and I hate to see people missing out on playing these masterpieces. There are several utilities out there that make playing these games very possible without knowing the language at all, and this guide will show you what they are, and how to get and use them.
Note that this translation method is not perfect. Because japanese grammar structure is so much different than english grammar, words are often scrambled and ocasionally mistranslated. I can tell you from experience though, that it is very possible to understand the storyline, puzzles and mechanics of these games with a great degree of accuracy. I have beaten every game created by these 3 developers, and have understood the storyline of them all. Try not to be put off by the scrambled nature of the wording, it takes some practice but it can definitely be unscrambled into something that makes sense.
Things you'll need:
NVDA: http://www.nvda-project.org
InstantTranslate NVDA AddOn: http://addons.nvda-project.org/addons/i … te.en.html
Other Useful Utilities:
ProTalker English NVDA AddOn: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/106 … a-addon?dl
ApLocale: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download … x?id=13209
ClipBoard2Sapi: http://doratomo.ddo.jp/yokotakazunori/hrt/cp2sapi.htm
Translated Clipboard: http://translate.google.com/translate?s … p2sapi.htm
CoolSoft Virtual Midi Synth: http://coolsoft.altervista.org/en/virtualmidisynth
Text Game Patch: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/322 … -patch.zip
Games:
NyanChan: http://www.nyanchangames.com/
Translated NyanChan: http://translate.google.com/translate?h … mes.com%2F
Translated MM: http://translate.google.com/translate?s … abo.com%2F
Morokuma: http://mh0406.so.land.to/
Translated Morokuma: http://translate.google.com/translate?h … ;sandbox=1
Some websites are better browsed using NVDA and InstantTranslate, by selecting text and translating them line by line. However, most of them can be browsed just using google translate. NyanChan will not allow you to download through google translate, however. So you can either use instant translate, or browse to the download page with google translate, copy the link to the japanese website from there and find the link on the actual page that way.
Setup:
This will get you up and running with all of the japanese games. Some steps are fairly complex, so please only do what you're comfortable with. If something seems overcomplicated or you just don't want to mess with it, you shouldn't have to. Only the first 3 steps are necessary to play everything but the text games, all other steps are completely optional.
1. Install NVDA. If you've never used it before, you may wish to read a bit of documentation or experiment to get a feel for the screen reader.
2. Install the InstantTranslate AddOn package. If you have NVDA running, you can simply navigate to the directory you saved these in and press enter on it.
3. Go to your control panel. Select Region and Language. Go to the keyboards tab. Click add, and find the japanese entry. Install both the japanese keyboard and the Microsoft IME under this entry. Note that this will not do anything to your actual keyboard. even if you switch keyboards, you'll still be typing in english. It just helps characters translate correctly.
You should now have everything installed that you need to play games such as Bokurano Daiboukenn and Brave of Cloudia. If you wish to play Morokuma's text RPGs, you'll need to take the steps below:
4. Either download AppLocale, or change your system locale to japanese through the control panel.
To change your locale, you'll need to go to region and language, administrative tab, change system locale to do this under windows7. This requires a computer restart. It will not change anything about your computer's english display, it will only allow non unicode programs to display japanese correctly. This is necessary for displaying the menues in text games, since they are not output to the clipboard.
If you're using AppLocale, launch the wizard and select launch program. Use browse to find the game you want to play and press enter on it. If you're using the TextGame patch from the next step, remember to run launch. Now press next and select the language. Japanese is the language at the very bottom of the list. If you're using ProTalker English, NVDA will say Nihongo, or Nee Hohn go. Press next again. If you choose to create a shortcut, it's created in the start menu, under Microsoft AppLocale. You can move it to the folder of the game you want and it will still work. I recommend this if you plan to create shortcuts for each game. You can also just name the shortcut and run them from the start menu.
5. This step is optional, but will add a lot of atmosphere to the Text Games. Download and install Virtual Midi Synth. You'll also want to grab a good sound font. I recommend FluidR3GM, which can be found in the listing on the Midi Synth download page. Once you've added that, get the TextGame patch. Now, you need to put Hook.dll, and Launch in the folder of the text game you want to play. Make sure the executable that runs the game is named Play, and then run launch. This will remove the lag normally caused by Virtual Midi Synth and will make the music sound much better.
And finally, if you wish to hear the games spoken in japanese, one last step:
6. Download and install ClipBoard2Sapi. If you install it using AppLocale or you're otherwise trying to run it with your locale set to english, you will need to change the executable to an english name. I just called mine Clipboard. I don't know why this is necessary, but if you don't rename it, it says something about a missing file and will not launch the application. Now, you'll either need a japanese Sapi Voice, or ProTalker English. If you're using ProTalker, after you've installed the AddOn, press NVDA Control S to bring up the synthesizer list and select ProTalker English. the NVDA key is the insert key, or Num Pad 0. Now the synthesizer can detect english and japanese, and will switch to them accordingly. Finally, to tell Clipboard2Sapi to speak through NVDA, after you've launched the application, press enter twice. Press down arrow once, and enter, then up arrow and enter. Make sure you hear a sound between every key press, as sometimes the program lags and if you don't hear a sound, these instructions will not work.
Now you can go download any games you'd like to play if you haven't already, and prepare for pure awesomeness. I recommend starting simple. You can either start with Morokuma's text games, Tia Story 1 and 2, for something basic and turn based, or if action RPGs are more your thing, try Shadow Line from MM's site. The interface is simple for an action RPG, though beginners may have a little trouble with navigation.
How to Play:
Firstly, the japanese installers work somewhat differently from how you might expect. They're basically just self-extracting applications that put a folder containing the game in the directory you run them from, though some give you a choice of path. You can unzip a lot of them with tools like 7Zip. Extract the game you want to play.
If you're playing a game like Bokurano Daiboukenn or Brave of Cloudia, all you need to do now is run the application. When you see that it has launched, press alt shift. You will hear NVDA say, Keyboard Japanese. Try to do this before any text comes up, so you don't miss anything that needs to be translated. This usually isn't too hard, as most of these games launch with a logo.
The beauty of many of these games, is that text is automatically copied to the clipboard as it is output by the game. I think this has something to do with how some of the japanese screen readers work, but regardless, it definitely goes in our favor. So say you're playing Shadow Line for example. When you start the game, you'll hear the logo and you can press Alt Shift. After the logo, you'll hear the music start, and then you'll hear some brief beeps. This is text being output to the game, in an older RPG style similar to Dragon Warrior. Now, if you press NVDA shift Y, you will actually hear the title spoken, Shadow Line. Actually I believe the game prints Shadow Rine, but that's a common mix-up that japanese people make between L's and R's. Anyway, you see how this is going to work. The game automatically outputs text to the clipboard, you press a keystroke, and that clipboard text is translated. Simple, eh? This is pretty much all you need to play Shadow Line. If you press enter, you'll be taken to the menu. As you arrow through, you can press the same keystroke, Control plus NVDA plus Y, to hear the menu options translated. It's not as quick as if you could just hear the speech output as you hit the arrow keys, as you would in an english game, but it definitely works, and you just get used to it after a while. This is really all you need to know to play games like Shadow Line, BK 1 and 2, and Brave of Cloudia.
Now, for the text RPG's. These are made in a program called Text Game Maker, which just happens to complicate things a little. These include games like Tia Story, Alternative Magic and Momotaro's Adventure. For these, you need to take a couple of extra steps. Much of the text is still output to the clipboard, so that part still works. There's only two places where you need to do things a little differently.
The menues are displayed in convensional listboxes. So as you can imagine, as you arrow over the choices, they aren't output to the clipboard. To translate these, what you need to do is just hit NVDA plus num pad 5 3 times, and the item you're currently focused on will be copied to the clipboard. Then you just use the normal translation keystroke and there you have it, a translated menu option. This will get you through battles, shops, and anywhere else in the game that includes a menu, which happens to be a lot since these games are all based on choices and there's no actual walking around.
The second difference is the statistics screens. If you press tab when you're on a main screen, like the battle screen or the main screen of a town, you can enter the stats screens. The first one shows your money, and a brief overview of your characters vital statistics. If you continue to tab through, you can see each character displayed in detail. What you need to do to translate these, is select text using shift and the arrow keys. I recommend translating line by line, so just find the text you want and press shift plus down arrow. Then, press NVDA shift T to translate selected text. See? Not so bad. This way, you can read up on your characters statistics without having to copy the entire thing to the clipboard and listen to it in one ridiculously long, jumbled mess.
Finally, if you're using Clipboard2Sapi, pay close attention to the japanese and don't instantly translate every option. After a while, especially if you're good at picking up languages, things should start to relate in your mind. This will make gameplay much smoother and more like playing an english game, especially for going through menues quickly without having to translate every time or memorize the menues. Using Clipboard2Sapi, I am able to read the stats of weapons in bk3, go through menues quickly, even in the text games, read statistics without having to translate them and just generally play much faster. This only works, however, if you don't mind using the eSpeak voice, but I highly recommend it if you can get it set up.
Well, that's about all there is to it. You now know how to play japanese games using a translator. I only have one tip left to give you, and that's how to use the slot mach ines in some of the text games. In order to do this, the Clipboard2Sapi utility is absolutely necessary. Load it up if you aren't using it already and make sure it is speaking through NVDA or using a sapi voice that can speak very rapidly. Now if you find a slot machine in a game, when you start the slots, you'll hear a whole bunch of japanese characters going by at a fast rate. If ProTalker isn't fast enough, you can always switch your synthasizer to regular eSpeak and turn up the rate. You'll need to have your screen reader set very fast to play these slots. What you need to do is match up similars that sound exactly the same, by pressing enter as the symbol scrolls by. If you match 3 in a row, you win coins. This is actually one of the hardest parts of these games, but if you can master it, it'll make playing them a lot easier in terms of getting power and equipment.
In Closing:
That should be everything you need to know to play japanese games well. I'm going to finish this guide out with an audio demonstration of how everything works, and how accurate the translation can be.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/322 … 0Audio.mp3
One final thing. Please keep in mind that this guide is very much optomised for windows7. I am unsure how much of it, if any, will work under other versions of windows. If anyone has anything to contribute on how to set these games up under Windows8 or Windows XP, please let me know and I'll add it to the guide. Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy playing these great games.
URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=164100#p164100
_______________________________________________ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com http://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
