Translating a Shenmue Two game

Yu Suzuki's cinematic masterpiece returns with more spellbinding adventure and an even more immersive world. The epic continues as Ryo Hazuki arrives in Hong Kong on his quest to avenge his father's murder by the warlord Lan Di and unravel the mystery of the Phoenix mirror. Set in Hong Kong, Kowloon, and Guilin, you'll travel through breathtaking scenery, rich with mountainous wilderness, traditional Taoist temples, and stunning tropical landscapes. As you move through massive, highly-detailed 3D worlds, you'll interact with almost every facet of your environment as well as a whole new cast of characters.

Originally released on Dreamcast in Europe and Japan, this Xbox edition marks the sequel's debut in the US and includes the Shenmue Movie chronicling the first episode in the series.

Before starting, please check the prerequists.

Summary

To translate Shenmue II in your language, follow this guide.

1. Subtitles in cinematics
2. Subtitles in Free Quest mode
3. Textures game data
4. Loading screen
5. Title screen
6. Hacking the game font

Subtitles in cinematics

In the game data folder, go to the \SCENE\<DISC_NUMBER>\STREAM\ directory.

You'll see a lot of AFS and IDX files. Each AFS contains cinematics game datas, which means a SRF file (to be opened by Cinematics Subtitles Editor) and some AHX files (You can listen to them with the ADX Tools from CRI).

• AFS Utils
• Cinematics Subtitles Editor
• IDX Creator

Unpacking the cinematics game data

The whole example is based on the 0001.AFS file from the Disc 1 (it's the opening scene with Shenhua).

1. Run AFS Utils and select the File > Open files... command.
2. Select the \SCENE\01\STREAM\0001.AFS file and click OK.
3. Select the 0001.AFS on the left.
4. Click on the Tools > Mass extraction... menu item.
5. Select the output folder and press OK! The 0001 directory'll be created in the output folder, this directory'll contains each file contained in the AFS file.
6. You have succesfully unpacked the intro scene files. Great job!

If you use a pirated version of the game, you won't see the original files name in the archive. SO PLEASE DON'T USE PIRATED VERSIONS OF THIS GAME. You'll unable to recongnize SRF or AHX files.

Translating SRF file

To edit SRF files it's pretty simple. Open the Cinematics Subtitles Editor tool and select the File > Open files... command. Open the SRF file you want to translate and press OK.

You can modify the in-game cinematics subtitles in the window. To help you press the F3 key to open the previewer. When you have finished, don't forget to save your work!

After hacking our SRF file, the next step is to rebuild the original AFS file.

Rebuilding our AFS file

This is based on the 0001.AFS example file again. You should have modified the SRF file which contains the cinematics subtitles. Now, we must rebuild the AFS file with the updated SRF file. To do that, do the following:

1. Fire up AFS Utils and select the Tools > AFS Creator command.
2. In the AFS Creator window, select the File > Import XML list... and click OK.
3. Select the generated 0001_list.xml in the 0001 directory, and click OK.
4. The AFS Creator window should be filled with the original 0001.AFS filenames content.
5. Select the File > Save Afs... option... Done!

You can use the Tools > Mass creation... item to generate lot of AFS files.

Rebuiding the IDX file

Now we have an updated AFS, everything is ready to make the correct index file (IDX). To do that, it's pretty simple (0001.AFS is again the example file):

1. Launch IDX Creator.
2. In the Select the game to generate the proper IDX format, select Shenmue II.
3. For the Modified AFS field, choose the updated 0001.AFS file.
4. The IDX field will be automatically filled, but you can change the file location if you want.
5. Press the Go! button.

You finally have an updated AFS and IDX! Just copy these in the \SCENE\01\STREAM\ directory and run the image creation (for the Dreamcast version) or transfer these files on the FTP (Xbox version).

You can use the console version of IDX Creator to generate a lot of IDX files.

You can now skip to the next step, translating subtitles in the Free Quest mode!

Subtitles in Free Quest mode

In the game data folder, go to the \SCENE\<DISC_NUMBER>\NPC\ directory and locate the HUMANS.AFS file.

To translate NPC characters speechs in this version of the game, you only need the HUMANS.AFS file. The associated index file (HUMANS.IDX) is NOT needed.

• <NPC_CHARID>.PKF: Contains textures data (in PVR) for the model (face and body) ;
• <NPC_CHARID>.PKS: Contains the NPC model itself, some unknow data, datas for face morphing and of course, the subtitles table for this NPC.

A Character ID is always composed by a 4 chars code (like 00A_).

The HUMANS.IDX is a special index file containing all Characters ID (CharID) and the size of each PAKF file. We don't need to modify PAKF files so you don't need to generate another HUMANS.IDX file.

• AFS Utils
• Free Quest Subtitles Editor

Unpacking the HUMANS.AFS archive

The first thing to do is to extract all the NPC datas from the HUMANS.AFS file. To do that, do the following (example based on the Disc 1):

1. Run AFS Utils and select the File > Open files... command.
2. Select the \SCENE\01\NPC\HUMANS.AFS file and click OK.
3. Select the HUMANS.AFS on the left.
4. Click on the Tools > Mass extraction... menu item.
5. Select the output folder and press OK! The HUMANS directory'll be created in the output folder, and will contain each file packed in the HUMANS.AFS file.
6. You have succesfully unpacked the HUMANS.AFS file. Well done!

If you use a pirated version of the game, you won't see the original files name in the archive. SO PLEASE DON'T USE PIRATED VERSIONS OF THIS GAME.

Translating a NPC character speech

You have successfully the HUMANS.AFS archive? Great! So you can now translating NPC characters. To do that, you'll need Free Quest Subtitles Editor.

A lot of text is identical so to accelerate the translation you can if you want use the Global-Translation (allowing you to translate identical text in one time, using a very fast module) or the Multi-Translation (it's a little more slow but you can translate in the original context). Try them both to choose your prefered version.

You can take the 03E_.PKS file for the example. This NPC is located at the beginning of the game near the Freestay Lodge. He's wearing a blue suit. Here is a screenshot:

1. Run the Free Quest Subtitles Editor. If a window pop ups to inform you a newer version of the hacking algorithm, you can close it (I think that you never have used old versions of this editor).
2. Click on the File > Open files... command and select the 03E_.PKS file in the list.
3. The file will be opened on the editor. You can now edit your subtitles. Don't forget to save your file!

You can open the whole directory by clicking the File > Open directory... command. The program'll be scan every file to find valid NPC characters. With this functionnality you can edit multi files in the same time.

Repacking the HUMANS.AFS

The last step is repacking the HUMANS.AFS file with our hacked 03E_.PKS file. You can do this with AFS Utils or if you have only one file to replace, with AFS Explorer.

After creating new HUMANS.AFS, copy it on the \SCENE\01\NPC\ directory and run the image creation (for the Dreamcast version) or transfer these files on the FTP (Xbox version).

Run the game and talk to this NPC... Good job, you made it!

You can translate every NPC from every disc now! Good luck!

Textures game data

(Coming soon)

Loading screen

This part explains how to modify the "Now Loading" message at loading screen.

• IPAC Browser
• SPR Utils
• Sega PVR Tools

This operation is really easy to do. Follow the guide.

1. Open IPAC Browser and select the MISC/TEXTURES.PKS file.
2. In the IPAC Browser view, extract the LD_NL.SPR entry. To do that, right-click on the LD_NL.SPR, then select the Export... command.
3. Run SPR Utils, then select the previous extracted LD_NL.SPR file.
4. In the SPR Utils window, extract the only texture contained in this SPR package: the "loading" texture.
5. You can now edit the loading.pvr file.

Please note that for modifying the loading.pvr texture, you can use the Photoshop PVR plugin inside the Sega PVR Tools package. Keep it mind that when you save the loading texture, you must keep the original flags for the file. In clear: VQ3, ARGB 4444, MipMap: NO. Note that this loading.pvr texture have an alpha channel, so you must update it too.

After doing this you must repack the loading.pvr with SPR Utils, then update the MISC/TEXTURES.PKS with IPAC Browser.

Here is an example of the result:

As I said before, pretty simple, huh?

Title screen

(Coming soon)

Hacking the game font

(Coming soon)