Trails From Zero, Trails from Zero Updates

Trails from Zero: 90%

Posted on Author supremezerker

10% to go. Looking back, it’s amazing that we got this far to begin with. When I first joined the project, I don’t think I understood just how massive of an undertaking this was going to be. And yet, here we are. 10% until all of the dialogue has undergone edits. Wild.

I suppose that I should clear the air. For the past 7-ish months, I hardly touched the project. I could probably count the number of times I opened the spreadsheet on one hand. Why, you may ask? Well, a lot of burnout. A lot of life happenings. A lot of me shirking my responsibilities, too, I guess. I got engaged to the love of my life, and I’m also trying to get into law school. But, honestly, I think I’ve used those as excuses to push the project to the side. Without Ribose, Cata, and Jose always working on it, I don’t know what would have happened. You don’t need to worry, though. Trails from Zero is coming out, and it’s going to be damn good. With an extra set of hands and renewed energy, we’ve done nearly 10% in about a month. No, we aren’t rushing. We just want to deliver on what we promised. I want to.

Within the next month or so, we want to hit 100%. Unfortunately, that does not mean the patch is ready for release. We will have to go over everything, clean things up, and get ready for QA. Luckily, that should take a fraction of the time. Just be excited, okay? I’ll hand the mic over to Ribose now.

A Small Technical Update

While things may have been slow on the editing front, Jose and I (Ribose) continued to fix things in the background. There were a number of issues affecting the build, from issues running on Windows 7 (now fixed), and issues with the build configuration (we hope is fixed). Also, strange memory leaks and annoying crashes that generally had to do with our modifications to the texture loading, which we also hope are fixed.

We also took the time to implement what wasn’t implemented into our mod, so now we can show off one little thing that was hinted at in the last technical update.

Options Menu

In the previous update, I mentioned this at the start of the save menu replacement section:

A while back, Jose switched the UI library he was using in order to improve the options menu and expose them to players.

Here is how our options menu looks!

Jose and I have worked to make this options menu functional with mouse, keyboard, or controller input. I’ve gone so far as to make it respect keyboard/controller/mouse bindings as the game’s input system sees them. This means if you unbind the accept button, you might need another input method to bind it again…

The menu itself provides all of the options that the external config.exe tool did, but in both Japanese and English, and while the game is running! We chose to do it this way to avoid having to hack a second executable just for English strings, and to have a non-redundant location to easily add additional settings to. While the external tool may still work to a degree, it will not be patched and may not function well with a non-Japanese locale (or due to numerous observed bugs in the original, such as with rebinding). We recommend that players not use the external tool, and just select “OPTION” in the game, as you normally expect from a modern game. The startup process of the game has been adjusted to launch the game at your current default monitor’s resolution in borderless window mode, if the config.ini file (where settings are stored) could not be found.

Once more, this uses the amazing Dear ImGui library, which is a graphical user interface overlay system featured in other mods such as Special K. Mind you, ImGui itself doesn’t add any of the features of other mods using Special K, as it just provides the interface.

Other Technical Updates

We have also improved a lot of tiny details about the overall project in important ways. Please look forward to the completed patch containing:

  • XInput controller support (complete):  If you use Steam Input (that is, you add the game as a “non-Steam game” shortcut with Steam’s controller support enabled), a real Xbox 360, Xbox One, or Steam Virtual Controller (a.k.a. Steam Link), the game will detect it as XInput and will label the button names in the options menu appropriately. It’ll also work as other XInput-enabled games on Steam currently do (such as Trails in the Sky and Trails of Cold Steel). I recommend pairing it with the “Xbox/XInput” preset for a reasonable default button mapping. It will actually use this preset automatically if config.ini cannot be found and XInput is detected.
  • Controller button prompt replacement (working):  Currently, the game will replace the generic numbered button icons with those found on the Xbox, DualShock, or Switch Pro icon sheet (part of the included textures). This is a setting you can select from.
  • Xbox prompts on the state map.
  • DualShock prompts on the quartz menu.
  • Switch Pro prompts on the cooking menu.
  • Alphabetized Crossbell City Library material (awaiting editing):  One minor detail about the library was that the Japanese release categorized and sorted their entries about the lore in Japanese kana order. That is, the first category is “A~Z”, the second is “ア行” (meaning the “A line” of the Japanese alphabet, which includes words starting with ア, イ, ウ, エ, or オ– a, i, u, e, or o, in that order), and the third continues along that alphabet. This makes a lot of sense for Japanese, but almost none in English, when words are also translated into those with different starting sounds, or with English’s tendency to have deviations from spelling to pronunciation. Our solution was to reorder the menus entirely in this section, sorting it in English alphabetical order, and fixing the resulting haphazard letter-splitting that then occurs. So for example, the page containing 5 “カ行” items (“K” line, sorted ka, ki, ku, ke, ko, of course) was changed to contain 4 “E-F” items, as shown below. Do note that the most difficult part of this was changing the number of items in each menu.
  • If you know the game, then you’d be aware what it means when I say the Information Terminals are implemented properly now.
  • You’ll be able to press “1”, “2”, “3”, and “4” on your keyboard as quick-access to the S-Break feature, as well as to the four notebooks outside of battle.
  • Here’s a closing image of the save menu from the previous update, with minor updates and the functioning button to “Show in folder”. With keyboard or controller, you’ll be able to access those two options from the “Slot” menu on top (press the CAMP binding to toggle between the menu and the save items).

The Barrier

Listen: If you’ve played the old patch, that’s fine. If you played on the initial spreadsheet, that’s fine. If you can read Japanese, that’s fine. Hell, if you’ve waited all this time for us, that’s fine, too. (Also, you rock.) All I ask is that you look forward to experiencing the fan localization of Zero no Kiseki.

I cannot thank you enough for standing by us—a group of Falcom fans—all this time. We won’t let you down.

We’ll get over the barrier.

48 Replies to “Trails from Zero: 90%”

  1. This is great to hear! I can’t begin to understand what a mammoth task this has been, but I am hugely grateful nonetheless. I look forward to playing the final product!

  2. I have been holding out on playing the Crossbell games for the fan translation to properly finish. It’s great to hear you guys are so close to finishing the first editing pass, and it’s utterly amazing how much great work Ribose and Jose have been doing on the old Japanese PC port.
    I believe you guys can make something that can truly rival the output of XSEED on the Sky games, and that’s saying something.

  3. I have recently started playing the Beta patch (now on Chapter 2) and after seeing all these I’m starting to regret it..

    Anyways guys great work (or lack thereof eh Zerker? I’m kidding lol) all of these behind the scenes work you guys been doing and even going up and beyond just to make Zero more than just a fan translation project but an intense passion project that every RPG fan could enjoy.

    And jeezus! Don’t worry about it, we can wait until it’s finally done, I mean I was expecting it to be within this year so just turn that into your timeframe: Release Date: soon this 2019. XD

  4. I love you guys! You can’t event imagine how happy and excited I am to play your release. The enormous amount of work and passion you have poured into this project, just for the sake of delivering it for us, is incredible. Can’t wait for the 100% progress report. Best of luck.

  5. Oh man, oh boy, oh God, all these years waiting and resisting Satan’s evil influence so close to paying off! You guys are the best, ever!

    Also, getting into law school, huh, supremezerker?

    Welcome to the live of interminable paper work and form-filling!

    I’m half-kidding, it can be fun if you work with something that you can emotionally invest in.

  7. Hey, congratulations on that engagement! Don’t worry too much if work slows down while you plan the big day, my dude. Glad to hear you’re planning to finish first editing pass so soon, though! It’s Trails content to be excited for while I wait for the official team to miss me with PS exclusivity and bring CS3 to PC, lol. In all seriousness though, don’t worry too much about a timetable and just do your thing, we don’t mind waiting for life to settle down if you need it.

  8. Man each time I was tempted by the current translations I continued to hold the urge and wait for the translation. I am happy that I might not wait too much longer to finally play this game. Thanks 🙂

  9. Waiting was not a problem, but those all changes such as textures, menu, turbo mode, cursor icon, etc which aren’t on the real game makes me sad; my goal was to play Zero no Kiseki but only localized/translated, not “remastered”, so I’m very sorry but I’ll play the current patch until I know enough Japanese to play the original version of the game.
    I suppose you will provide the psp patch without all those “mods”, but I think I’ll pass for now.
    Thanks anyway and good luck with the remaining 10%.

    1. So let me get this right, you’re sad that they made fixes that make the game play better?
      Turbo mode is something that was also added to the official release of the Sky games once they came to PC so how is that a problem? And about the other “problems”, I don’t see how they can disturb your experience when playing the game either.
      Besides if your goal was to play a localized/translated version, these changes don’t affect you in anything since you apparently wanted to play the PSP version either way (or so it seems from what you said about them providing a PSP patch) and these changes are exclusive to the PC version.

      To sum up, this comment doesn’t really contribute anything to this post. These “problems” are basically things that were already told months ago and that you apparently decided now to criticise it.

      1. “That make the game play better” is something I don’t share, sorry. For me “better” is the most similar to the original version, no some change on the save menu because you don’t like the old one.
        The turbo mode is on the official release, like the sentences on the chests, but for me, is “better” not to have those and stick to the original version.
        It don’t “disturbs” the experience strictly speaking; simply I don’t like changes outside of the localization part.
        I think I read time ago they will give out a PSP patch too, yes, but I’m not 100% sure of it.
        “And you apparently decided now to criticise it”, well yeah, in the blog at least. I’ve talked with friends about these changes but I didn’t say it here because my English is not that good to make comments this long; I decided to do it on this post because they edited something more (the options’ menu).

        And don’t get me wrong; the patch seems to be of a great quality, both localization and those addons to make the user experience “better” as you said.
        It’s only that for me, “better” means another thing.

        1. I can respect if you want a game to stick close to the creators vision, but you should really take a much closer look at the Trails in the Sky games (https://store.steampowered.com/app/251150/The_Legend_of_Heroes_Trails_in_the_Sky/), which originally came out before Trails from Zero. The menu and the cursor you criticized, those were all part of the Sky games. The reason that’s not originally implemented here is that Trails from Zero came out for the PSP first, and when porting it to PC, Falcom didn’t have the resources to change the menus and everything to make it fit better to be played with a mouse and keyboard. In fact, before 2008, ALL games from Falcom were made for PC first, and their interface was always designed around being used with a mouse and keyboard. This only changed for their more modern titles.

          For fans of this series who played the previous Trails games on PC, this is some much needed work to bring the experience of playing Trails from Zero to be up to par with the Trails in the Sky games.

          So while I can respect standing up to the “original vision” of Falcom, it doesn’t seem like you ever played any of the previous games on PC and therefore have no way to judge how these additions match the vision Falcom had for Trails games being played with a mouse and keyboard.

          1. I played the xseed versions of the game (the three sora games) and as I stated before, I don’t like those changes like the chests captions, for example.
            And about the other part, I know which games came and in which order, but that doesn’t change the fact that Zero has another menu, another save screen, etc, so I prefer to stick to the original version as I said.
            P.S.: Obviously I would played sora games with a fan patch if it existed instead of the xseed version with those add-ons on it.

          2. Oh, and definitely you *can’t__* know the “Falcom vision” or “why Falcom didn’t make the menu like before”; you’re only summing up things which makes sense for you and take it as the truth of “why this is the correct vision of Falcom”.
            But there is one objective truth in all of this, and it’s that those games came without the add-ons xseed put on it, and obviously without the ones Geofront is putting too.

          3. A late answer from me but while your comments answer why you want to play the original version (because of wanted the original feel, it seems), it doesn’t explain why you are going to do this: “I suppose you will provide the psp patch without all those “mods”, but I think I’ll pass for now.”
            Specially after saying this in a more recent comment:
            “Obviously I would played sora games with a fan patch if it existed instead of the xseed version with those add-ons on it.”
            In that case, the PSP version of the translation would be perfect for you.

            The other things is that you haven’t really explained what makes things “better” for you.

            Also, since you would have played the original Sora games with a fan patch if it existed, I hope you have at least played the PSP version of said games since that’s as close to the original as you’re gonna get just with a few additions made for the PSP version.

            You said they changed the menu because they didn’t like the old one but I think they did it because the save menu was limited to the PSP standards and had limited utility based on the original console, it’s not so much about being better but about making use of the tools they could have used if the game was originally released on PC and they didn’t just make a really simple port (so a system as similar as they could to the original Sora no Kiseki PC release in 2004 since the only changes that XSeed did to the PC version were the HD textures, the Turbo, adding the PSP content and the chest quotes iirc).
            Also, changes like the chests captions or the turbo mode are something that you don’t even need to see unless you check them yourself so I don’t know what exactly is so different that you don’t want to use this localization outside of actually having the game translated.

            To sum up the previous text wall, I don’t get what your problem with this localization is.

            Even if you don’t like some of the changes, you could at least try to enjoy the translated game which is as intended originally outside of those optional changes (Turbo mode and the chest quotes) and the save menu which isn’t something that affects the gameplay or story in any way. I mean the original PC save menu is basically a copy paste of the PSP save menu that usually comes with all PSP games so it isn’t exactly an original of the game in the PSP either instead more of a forced feature for all the games that were on said console.

            TLTR: If you simply ignore all the changes which you don’t really have to see unless you purposely want to see them (except the save menu), you can play the game as intended but with a translation to english.

  14. It seems like i came into this series at the right time. With you awesome people finishing Zero no kiseki english patch and now CS3 coming out in october. What makes my timing even better is that im almost finishing Sky SC, so it seems like i’ll finish Sky 3rd before this comes out hopefully. Now the reason im actually commenting, where will i be able to download it? Will i need to pirate it from nitroblog or will this game come out on this website for us to download? Im really curious.

    1. Erm.. you can download the patch here in this site when it comes out, and no it’s not pre-patched with the ISO, as for nitroblog, They don’t upload PSP games there anymore.

  17. Dude. You’re doing this for free. Finding time for translating and editing in between starting a life with someone whilst entering law school. This is obviously a labor of love – you don’t owe us anything. If you get burnt out and need a break to refocus – take it. It’ll still be there to work on whenever you are ready. That goes for all of you on this project. I don’t know if I can speak for all the fans of the game watching your progress, but I’d like to think that all of us are more than willing to wait for you guys to finish an undertaking as massive as this one at your own pace. Keep on keeping on!

  18. I have waited so long, what’s another month or two? You probably don’t even want to think about this but what about Ao? Do you recommend just playing the already available translation? It would be difficult for people to hold out and play the series chronologically if CS4 comes out a year from now. Have you considered opening a patreon or something similar? It might be easier to devote time to it if you were getting paid for it. Even if there are no plans to do anything with Ao, I’m just glad Zero is getting a proper release. You guys are the best, take care.

    1. I thought Ao already had a decent translation, or so I’ve heard. I was planning on jumping straight to that after Zero. I definitely want to play Ao before Cold Steel 3, which I am going to keep assuming will get a PC release.

  22. Awesome work! As far as I understand,the patch will come out for the PSP version of the game too,correct? But I gotta ask,are you planning on porting your translation over on PS Vita version of the game (the Evolution one)? Thanks in advance!

  23. After digging a bit deeper it looks like there is a way I can legally buy the game so I can have it ready for Geofront when it’s done:).
    I’m confused though. Should I buy it through the Falcom store site, or use the Dlsite store reddit link that’s within these posts? The Falcom store version says it’s the Japanese version of the Chinese port that’s Windows 8 compatible (I’m running Windows 10) but I hear that Chinese port has some heavy DRM on it so I’m afraid that might cause issues when I try to patch it when the Geofront translation is done.

      1. Ok. Because main reason I don’t want to resort to a second hand copy, is the devs get NO money from it so I would not really be supporting them for this great game.

        One last question. I have a Steam link on my TV. After I installed the game with or without patch, would so be able to register it as a non-Steam game within steam on my gaming PC? Reason I wish to do this is so I can enjoy this via Steam link on my big TV.

        1. Another thing. It looks like after I’m done with zero, I’m gonna have to really go through some hoops to get Ao as it seems there are issues with the DRM and malware to get the PC version of that game. Might have to ultimately resort to hacking my Vita or PSP for that one, oof:( but at least I will be able to enjoy Zero.

  25. I’m looking forward to when this is done!!! I just started the game with currently released English patch.

    Btw, will I be able to transfer my data to this version of the game? I’m playing the PC version currently out and your guy’s version looks so much better.

  27. I’m fangirling right now! I’m sooo expecting this translation. I’m super grateful for your hard work, I will wait to play with your super transaltion!
    Thanks for everything 😀

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