Fate/Extra Perfect Patch Release! (1/15 Update)

               Hello, Aria here! Hope everyone is staying warm and opening hundreds of loot boxes in FGO (wait, did we miss Christmas? Pretend it’s still Christmas! Padoru!). Not to distract you from the necessary grinding, but our Fate/Extra Perfect Patch is here, which includes battle dialogue, ruby text, berserkers going berserk, and more! This patch was a long time coming, so I thought I’d talk about the battle dialogue process a bit!

               When I first joined up with the project, I had never actually finished Fate/Extra before. I played on PSP when it came out and rage quit a couple rounds in after dying instantly to some mobs. So, my first task was to play through the game and subtitle the battle lines along the way. All the character voice lines are labeled like “ner_1700” without much additional context, which made things a little tricky. This includes non-battle dialogue as well, which we don’t want to translate. Thankfully, Kotcrab set up a debug message that appears on the bottom of the screen that displays the name of the currently playing file.

(You won’t see that message in the bottom left, but it made my life much easier~)

               With that, I was able to figure out the general number range of what’s battle dialogue and what’s story dialogue. I started by translating as many Nero battle dialogue lines as I could, then continued playing the game. From there, I’d beat a boss, then translate their lines. All was fairly smooth…

               …until this fucking guy.

               Now remember, I’m doing all the subtitles with audio only. I just remember sitting in the library on my laptop, shaking my head in utter confusion as to what the fuck this guy was saying. His dialogue blends several religions into one to make his “true” religion, also known as a nightmare to my ears. I was in such a desperate state of despair that I just googled what I could make out and prayed. What answered my prayers…

               …was a devote follower who created a Twitter bot that regurgitates his lines every hour or so. I managed to find the line in question typed out! It was a godsend, until the next line didn’t exist. But that one led me to a Japanese wiki with every line in the game typed out! (Well, it turned out to be more like 70%, but it was still an amazing blessing). Using that Japanese wiki, I was able to recreate it on my own local wiki and organize all my notes:

               Each line had context written out as well, and with its help, I was able to match line numbers to specific actions, such as break attacks, master healing servant reactions, and more! With this new tool, I was able to check my previous translations, then advance much more smoothly into the horizon, with the crazy fanatic Gatou now defeated.

               Now until that point, I was using our editor to translate without seeing anything in the game. Just before Gawain, everything was set up to add my translations into a patch. I pre-translated all of Gawain’s lines, then did his battle for the first time. It was the most intense battle in the whole game, improved immensely by having the battle subs working as he slammed his Noble Phantasm into me two turns in a row. I knew it was coming too because every enemy Servant has a “tell” line that announces their intention to use their Noble Phantasm that turn (it’s always line #1752 for anyone curious, with #1753 being a “you survived!?” follow-up). I had just translated Gawain’s, so I knew exactly what to look out for:

               I recorded the battle as an early test to show the rest of the team the subs. I should have died in that fight with how sloppy I played, but damn if I didn’t win first try white knuckling the entire time. You can watch that terrible test video here (Keep in mind that since it was an early demo, the lines are unedited with some technical issues present that are now fixed. Timestamp is when things start going crazy – https://youtu.be/jomlQ6cx9uw?t=238 .) There’s no mic audio, but you can feel my spirit break when Leo announces a second Noble Phantasm. It just gets worse from there.

               During the cutscenes before that battle, we also noticed an issue with battle subtitles playing during the pre-combat smack talk conversation. Turns out people say battle lines outside of combat for dramatic effect! Thankfully, Kotcrab had no issue hunting down a variable that would let us know if we were currently in battle. With that, subs would only play if we were in combat. BUT we also subtitled level-up lines post battle and those aren’t in battle! We settled on a set of flags in the timing, with one of the flags meaning “play only in battle” if true. Whew~

               After that, the game was defeated, Holy Grail obtained! No strings attached, they just gave me the Grail and wished me on my way~ Next steps were to translate the rest of Nero’s lines plus Archer, Tamamo, and the Rin route servants. Sprinkle on some sound effect translations as well (those ended up being stored separately as we learned, requiring some more code tweaks to get just right), then it was time for Archer!

               Wait that’s not right.

               There we go, that sounds more correct. At this point, I’m mostly getting to just enjoy the game, while spotting a missing line now and then. Most of these lines are battle victory lines, separated into “servant doesn’t give two shits about you” (first half of the game) and “servant will die for you” (later half of the game). When I got to Alice’s fight on Week 3, I asked if colored subtitles were possible.

               ItsumoKnight: “What’s so hard about it, it’s just Alice and Alice”

               Turns out the color codes should just work since the subtitles use similar code to the game!

               …okay not quite. It initially caused some interesting text glitches which made the following line even more creepy than before. With some quick debugging by Kotcrab, we got everything working:

               Along that same line, we wondered if we could do the Berserker scream, which ended up being easier than expected. There are 4 possible Berserker noise characters, so I wrote a quick python script to randomize different combinations at different lengths, then I matched them to lines that seemed to fit and added “!” marks as appropriate.

               The last major improvement we added was adding ruby text support. Kotcrab went into detail about this in an earlier post, but essentially it lets us add the small subtitle above certain skill names that CCC uses.

               In this case, it adds “Rho Aias” above the skill name for that extra touch.

               With Extra moving into an editing and playtesting phase, I was free to move onto CCC. It’s hard to give actual progress numbers with the battle dialog since there’s a lot of non-battle dialogue mixed in, but I’ve translated the lion’s share of Nero, Archer, and Gilgamesh’s dialogue. Once I finish with Tamamo’s (nearly there), I can play through CCC and translate missing lines as they come up. This will include the in-dungeon subtitles as well, with context! Sadly, the Japanese wiki for CCC is much more incomplete, so most of the lines will be by ear, but on the other hand, the line numbers have the same meaning as Extra! So with that, I’ll know when a line is a counterattack remark, an “I just died” line, or a “chiding the player for playing terribly” line.

               Lastly, thank you for all your patience! This has been a tough year for all of us, and I hope that you can enjoy the work we put into vanilla Extra while you wait for CCC!

               PS: I suppose you want to download this patch, huh? F-fine, it’s not like I want you to play it or anything!

UPDATE:

Now with Mac/Unix patching options and various Aksys translation fixes mentioned by the community!

https://mega.nz/file/3F0iUTDK#gHldA8BBZTXzcYjjZWd9urcWl9kb7h711I24sAzqKGY

(Editor’s note: Fate/Extra is very special to me. It was my exposure to Fate, and without it, I wouldn’t have become the fan I am today. It also lead to me neglecting a blind date, and in retrospect, the game was the better choice, but that’s a story for another time.

If this is your first go at F/E, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did and still do. Especially the amazing Shinji Hosoe OST. -cj)

68 responses to “Fate/Extra Perfect Patch Release! (1/15 Update)

  1. Great work thanks for going out of your way and figuring out how to do subtitles in battle.Happy New Year and good luck with CCC.

  2. Is there a way to to patch the EUR version? It’s the only version that works for me and doesn’t freeze during the first week.

  3. Extra holds a special place in my heart too as it is the reason why I became a fan of fate and anime/manga/games in general. Anyways, thank you so much for this perfect patch Aria! Hope you guys and the team behind CCC have a wonderful new year ahead of you! Aight time to replay this masterpiece.

  4. Hey I just stumbled upon this by chance but I’ve gotta say, the pure amount of effort you put into this is amazing! Seriously you should be proud. I’ll definitely give this a try!

  5. It fails to patch the official iso from the downloadable version of the game. Also idk what hash you’re using (some fnv?), but it would’ve been more helpful to use something standard like sha256 or the like.

    • Just patch the US ISO you’re using for Extra, and then run the new ISO the patch makes in ppsspp instead of the old ISO. Keep in mind that you’ll need to start over if you already have a save.

  6. Nice work. cant wait to try it out. however whenever i try to download it my virus protection flags it as a virus. Is this a false positive?

  7. Apparently my anti-virus detcted it having a trojan called win32/wactac.DF!ml. Is this a false positive as i just freshly installed my new OS and i rather not have it be comprimised so fast

  8. please finish the CCC been waiting for it for 3 years already, don’t care if the translation is not on point as long as its understandable thank you for hard work and happy new year!

  9. Looking at the read me instructions do we have to do both the Graphical Installer and Command-line installer or are they just two different ways to do it?

  10. This is pretty nice! It’s been years since I’ve played vanilla Extra so I took the release of this patch as an opportunity to do so. I’m pretty early into the game but I’ve noticed some things:

    – Seems like the image tutorials weren’t changed to reflect what was changed in the patch. The shop tutorial at the cafeteria still calls Mystic Codes by their localized name of Formal Wear.
    – The infamous mistranslation of “ghost in the machine” is still present. In the original script the character was essentially bragging about how he was a pretty big shot hacker for his hometown before being surprised that real big shots like Tohsaka have joined the HGW.

    Also, I haven’t gotten that far in, but does this patch restore the paragraph that was mysteriously cut out of Drake’s profile? The one that mentions she was possibly Elizabeth’s body double?

  11. I’m WAY late on this but first let me thank you so much not just for the patch but also this insightful post! Very interesting and fun.

    That said, I’m curious. Why did you change Saber’s “Praetor” to “Maestro” when referring to Hakuno/the player? Is it closer to the original Japanese?

    • I may be wrong but I think thats what they did in the english dub for Last Encore, again I might be wrong cause I’ve barely seen any of that anime.

      • I saw a translation of a clip of the Japanese Last Encore dub and it used “Maestro” as well. I think you hit the nail on the head. But what does the original Japanese mean, anyway?
        “Soshio”?

      • I found a reddit on it. It seems “Sousha” is the Japanese term Saber uses for Hakuno/the player (no idea if that’s how it’s spelled). In the narrative’s context it’s supposedly most literally translated as “performer” like of an art or music performer. Other translations would be “player” (like of an instrument) but supposedly that’s a poorer choice.
        In the games it was “Praetor” because that hinted to Saber’s true origin, fit with the mastership theme and fit with the idea of being the counsul or confidant to an emperor, I guess.

        Now here’s where this new translation kicks it up a notch:
        – “Praetor” is supposedly the old Roman word for an “elected magistrate”
        – “Maestro”, which literally means “Master” (Italian: great teacher, master of music, composer).
        – Maestro is derived from the Latin “Magister” or “Magisterium” which also means the same thing (“he who is greater” literally, mastership).

        If all this is true then the original Japanese term/context is meant to be a kind of double entendre, which “Maestro” fits well. It relates both how player/Hakuno is Saber’s literal Master but also her performer–with her being the instrument he/she uses to perform (or her musical conductor or play director I guess, so to speak).

        TL;DR Although “Preator” is what was used for a lot of translations after Extra’s English localization, it does seem that “Maestro” is just a clever way of bringing across a more accurate rendering of the original Japanese term’s in-context meaning.

        Tamamo has a similar double entendre. Tamamo refers to the player/Hakuno as “goshujin-sama” which literally means “Master” but archaically it also meant “Husband”. However this doesn’t translate into English well so everyone sticks with “Darling” because it carries the contextual meaning better than just “Master”.
        “Maestro” is like that, it seems.

  12. Um… Sorry, but I can’t seem to be able to use any of the patching options.

    I use a 32bits windows system and it says that it isn’t compatible… is there anything I can do to fix this?

  13. This is kind of a replay to what 67dreams but i cant reply to it so i put it here.

    Player at first seems like a poorer choice for a translation to what Saber calls Hakuno/the player until you you notice thats its likely more the devs referring to YOU ie the person playing the game. Nice little touch huh?

  14. I’d just like to take a moment to thank you guys for solving my qualms with Aksys’ localization with Fate/Extra. I’m really looking forward to CCC.

    Also, if anyone is playing this on a Vita using Adrenaline – if you’re using gePatch the ruby text fix for real PSPs is unnecessary, just an FYI.

  15. In the 1/15 update is there a list of the “various Aksys translation fixes”?
    I just finished a playthrough with an older version and I am curious what has been changed.

    • That said, love all the work put on this patch, and the further translation fixes! Can’t wait to see how CCC comes out!

    • one of the first servant matrix’s for Caster thats i think is shown from the start outright says her true name which is supposed to be kept secret until later in the game

  16. hello, so from what i can gather from this, it’s a patch for playing the entire game in english, right? i mean i don’t mind about the battle voices not being subbed since i played extra (i guess it’s the localized version) and they didn’t had subs, but can i just put this patch over a japanese version of the game or smth? i don’t see any tutorial here lol, or should i look the other posts?

  17. I just wanted to say please don’t drop this project if they’re thinking that.

    Sony will censor the shit out of the upcoming one if it ever gets announced because “lewd Japanese stuff = bad.”

  18. Hello, I’ve only recently discovered about your work on Extra ccc after wasting lots of time looking for a patch. I’ve read through all of your updates and noticed that you are getting really close to something many people could only hope for. If possible I’d like to join the dedicated Discord server to keep track of your progress and, at its release, somehow repay you (it appears the current invitation has run out). Thank you for your work and for taking your time to read this.

  19. Decided to play Fate/Extra and found this patch. Now my first expirience will be even more polished. Thank you for your hard work!

  20. I have a question. Which PSP would be the best version to play this patch on? Like I heard that the PSP 3000 doesn’t allow all homebrew software just want to make sure this one is compatible with it. I also would like to know if the upcoming Fate Extra CCC translation will be compatible with the PSP 3000 as it will effect if i get the 3000 or 2000.

    • Sorry one more question and this goes for the upcoming translation for Fate Extra CCC as well. Do i need to connect to download this patch on the Web Browser on the PSP 3000 or can I just download this on my PC and transfer it by a USB port to my PSP? I am just asking because I heard the web browser on the PSP has had some issues recently.

      • But can I still connect my PSP to my PC through a port or download the translation patch to the Memory card and still play it on my psp? This is also a question on if I can do the same with the Upcoming CCC translation as well where I would get a Japanese disc of the game, would I be able to play the translated version on a PSP using the above methods?

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