Eadmaster continues to make progress on his English fan translation patch for Saturn action RPG Princess Crown, updating it twice in the last month to fit more text on screen, translate signs and more.
The latest version, 0.9, uploaded Feb. 16, can be downloaded from the project’s GitHub. The patch should be applied to the data track — track 1 — of Princess Crown using the XDelta patcher.
Since SHIRO! last covered the translation patch with version 0.8 in January, there also was a 0.85 release Jan. 29.
Eadmaster has gotten some help for the patch’s latest improvements. Mentil contributed a lot of script edits, including fixing strange-sounding text in Notice Drop enemy banners, the opening and some names.
Meanwhile, Paul Met provided a new, narrower font that eadmaster has switched to. It’s five pixels wide, which not only allows for more text to be visible at one time but it also is more readable than the previously used font, according to eadmaster.
On the left is the new, narrower font. On the right is the older font, which was from font is from Traysia, a Sega Genesis JRPG.
Paul Met also created a hack to increase Princess Crown’s screen resolution to 352 by 224 — the original game is 320 by 224 — and improve its transparency effects, such as adding transparency to dialogue boxes. That hack is included in a separate translation patch called the EX version distributed by eadmaster for those who want it. It’s also available on the Team Meduza website along with many other Saturn game hacks.
A comparison between the original game’s resolution and the higher resolution provided by Paul Met’s hack.
Eadmaster also added three item icons to the EX version: a heart icon for restorative items, an hourglass icon for items with temporary effects and a bolt icon for attack items. The original game only has a single icon for the equippable items.
According to the GitHub, these are all the improvements made in the last couple patch updates:
v0.8.5
- switched to a smaller 5-pixel font (contributed by Paul Met)
- re-split all script with a 45-character limit
- added and improved several doorway signs (some contributed by Mentil)
- lot of script fixes (some contributed by Mentil)
- better fix for softlocks and text overruns (text files are parsed again)
- added alternative “EX” patch build featuring GFX enhancements (contributed by Paul Met)
v0.9
- fixed a regression in the Notice Drop dialog in v0.8.5
- manually re-split the remaining speech bubbles with little text
- improved some items descriptions, added a few icons in the EX build
- fixed Engrish in the Notice Drop enemy banners, opening, and some names (mostly contributed by Mentil)
- lot of script fixes (mostly contributed by Mentil)
- added a few missing signs, redrawn all the rest using the new font, cleanups
A Japanese Saturn exclusive at its release, Princess Crown was published in December 1997 by Atlus. It was developed by an internal Atlus team that would later break away on their own to form Vanillaware. Sporting Vanillaware’s now-famous two-dimensional storybook art style, Princess Crown follows a teenage royal named Gradriel who journeys across her kingdom to help people and fight villains. While it was later ported to the PSP and PlayStation 4, it’s never been officially translated into English.
Eadmaster first released a Princess Crown translation patch in October last year. He’s working off of a fork of a translation patch made by SamIAm and CyberWarriorX, who briefly made their work publicly available in 2014 to solicit outside help before making it private again. While he’s legally within his rights to use their work based on the license under which it was uploaded to GitHub, eadmaster did not ask for their blessing to use their translation — nor would they have given it, they told SHIRO! last year.
SamIAm and CyberWarriorX continue to work privately on their Princess Crown translation patch, a project that’s spanned 13 years. Earlier this month, they created a thread on Romhacking.net’s forums to discuss their recent progress, and in October they uploaded a video showing off what they’ve accomplished so far.