Tutorial: Translating Main Text

Translating the Main Game Text

Getting Started with CoilSnake

The first thing you'll need to do is get CoilSnake set up on your computer. This guide was written in the days of CoilSnake 2.1, but I would always recommend downloading the latest. The AWESOME thing about CoilSnake these days is it has CCScript and CCScriptWriter stuff baked right into it, so that's super helpful. Just go to that link, hit the download link, and follow the directions.

Creating your Translation Project

Now that you have CoilSnake, you'll need an EarthBound ROM. I can't tell you how to get one, but they're pretty easy to find. Just ask your pal Google and don't click on any questionable ads/links in the process.

1. Open up CoilSnake and select the Decompile tab
2. Click on the "Browse..." button next to the ROM: field
3. Select your EarthBound ROM
4. Now click on the "Browse" button next to the "Output Directory:" field
5. Choose where you want to save your translation project (YES, this is where all the files for your translation project will be stored, choose a good place!)
6. Now press the big "Decompile" button at the bottom

Watch a video of these steps: https://youtu.be/qxIq2JK-4Ms

Adding Text to Your Translation Project

Now that we have our base project created, it's time to add all of EarthBound's text to it

1. Back the project you just made somewhere - This helps if something goes wrong or you want to look at original files at some point
2. Click on the Decompile Script tab in CoilSnake
3. Click on the "Browse..." button next to the ROM: field
4. Select your EarthBound ROM
5. Now click on the "Browse..." button next to the Project: field and go to the directory of the coilsnake project we created above
6. Make sure that the path in the Project: field is to the actual folder where all your project files are stored
7. Now click on the big "Decompile Script" button

Watch a video of these steps: http://youtu.be/C6bkgrGB-n8

Another thing you will want to do now is go into your project directory and copy the CCScript folder and back it up somewhere. It contains all of the game text for EarthBound, and having an original copy somewhere will be an invaluable reference in the future.

Congratulations, you now have everything you need to start translating the main game text!

Translating the Main Text

All of the main game text is now located in the ccscript folder in your translation files. If you haven't backed up a copy of this folder I would recommend doing that before you edit it. Having the original English somewhere for reference is a good idea. Just put a copy of it somewhere outside of your project folder.

The ccscript folder now contains .CCS files, most of which are data_xx.ccs. Please don't worry about main.ccs, this is a file that allows the game to know where all your translated text is, which means you don't have to worry how long or short your translation is compared to the original English, it's all handled for you. This may sound standard, but back in the day this wasn't the case, and translating EarthBound back then was a PAIN!

In all the data files, you'll notice that it's not just plain text you're looking at. Here are some descriptions of what you're seeing:

• Normal Text: You can tell if something is normal text if it is surrounded by quotation marks AND doesn't appear between square [ ] or curly { } braces. The Normal Text is really all you need to worry about translating, at least for now. Keep reading to learn more.
• Labels: labels are what ccscript uses to organize blocks of text. They are a name, followed by a colon, such as l_0xc52d54: You do NOT want to edit these.
• Control codes: These are hexidecimal values surrounded by square brackets, such as [1C 02 00]. Again, you do NOT want to edit these, they tell the game all kinds of vital instructions. Later on, we will talk about how to move these around and better understand what they do to make your translation perfect.
• CCScript Commands: These are normal commands that ccscript uses to tell the game what to do. They are usually outside of quotation marks or between curly braces. The most common are linebreak, which tells the game to jump to the next line when printing out text, next, which waits for the player to press a button before going to the next line while printing out text (this shows the little downward arrow prompt), eob, which means the end of a text block, etc. You really don't have to worry about any of them right now, but I would recommend reading about the basic commands here.
• Comments: These occur after forward slashes // or between a /* and a */. They are meant to tell you what is going on in the script and can be left exactly as they are.
• @: The @ character simply represents the little circle dot that starts at the beginning of most sentences in EarthBound. You can leave these where they are for now.

So! Go ahead and open up each of the data files and edit the normal text that appears between the quotation marks, leaving all the labels, control codes, CCScript commands and comments just as they are. To get started, I would recommend translating a line or two. The first line you will probably want to edit will be the line Tracy says to Ness in the very beginning of the game, which can be found in the file data_21.ccs, line 463, just after the label l_0xc66aa4:

A Note on Editing Text

To edit text, you'll need a good text editor. In Windows, I would recommend using Notepad++ instead of the default program Windows comes with. When using Linux, I personally prefer gedit, but any good text editor you prefer will do fine.