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VIP 4 2018 - That was fun

this is the place where lps are being talked about. it's important to talk about games being played on the internet.
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This Eye o' Mine
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Re: VIP 4 2018 - Only two questions? I was expecting more like fifteen lol

Post by This Eye o' Mine »

rainwizard in the YT comments wrote: Saying that two gases have the same volume does nothing to tell you which is heavier.
Yeah, we messed that textbox up. The original textbox did say "when all variables besides humidity are the same".
This was actually the very first textbox we discussed after I did my original read through of the game script, and in my notes I did point out that the textbox said 'all other variables', whereas lion's textfile had 'volume', and I'm sure we did discuss this. I don't remember why we quietly decided not to change it in the final hack, but it might have had to do with space. Space wasn't an overall issue due to certain bit of ASM coming up soon that would've allowed for more room, but we might have considered that overkill at the time, and just made the concession that 'volume' would have to suffice. It's also very possible we just didn't have a good feel yet at the beginning for how far to go in modifying what lion had, and it just fell off the radar in our later revisions.
This is something we'll address in the next update, with credit to rainwizard.

Zach808 wrote: 5 years ago Wasn’t there also a cutscene where the text looked like some sort of slot machine? Did you have to translate that, or was it meant to be art?

Overall, were there ever any “I AM NOT TRANSLATING THIS!!!” moments like we got with Oyster? Or did you somehow manage every bit of text?
This depends on how you look at it. Textboxes that just gave straightforward information were pretty much always translated in full, mostly thanks to some ASM that should make its first appearance in the next video or the one after that. There were a couple messages that proved a bit confusing due to them requiring knowledge of references and context. There's also just cases where you need to put in some grammatical information, or take some out, due to how the English and Japanese languages work. Deciding how to handle situations like those also involves contextual knowledge, and we prioritized bringing across the original author's probable intentions, emphasis, and an approximation of their style more so than the exact phrasing they used. This sometimes involved taking out a bit of information, and sometimes adding a bit, though we did aim to keep it as accurate as reasonably possible. Of course, this went a bit wrong in today's video, as mentioned above.

So, trust me when I say that we never just looked at a bit of text and went "well that doesn't make any sense to me, let's just ignore it and pretend it never existed". Whenever localization of a joke would be impossible or too intrusive we put in a note, though without going overboard with walls of text explaining every enemy. There was only one example of outright dropping stuff due to a combination of lack of space and stumping us as to the intention, even after a significant amount of research. This was the yellow switch message. I was actually intending to post about that but forgot, so I guess I'll just put it below this wall of text. Besides that, there's of course always a chance that we missed something or mistook the intention of the message, but that's just the nature of doing translation without direct access to the original authors' minds. VIP 4 has proven to be quite a beast in that regard, since over the course of the two months I have been on the team we have been constantly finding new references and gaining new insights through testing and research that completely changed our interpretation of already-translated stuff.

Castle cutscenes can be pretty tricky, since we couldn't extend the character limit on those. For this hack, we only ran into some problems for this once, which I will be pointing out when it comes up. The cutscene you were referring to is probably the castle 3 one, which should make more sense in the translation, though I won't spoil how.

Belated translator's note: Yellow Switch palace
The message that comes up when you press the yellow switch is the only box in the game that actually stumped us to some degree in regard to meaning.

It starts with the word "power" transliterated into Japanese (パワー), and the rest of the message is written with extremely honorific verb forms, with a lot of sentence elements left vague or unspecified. My best guess is that it's a reference to something, but this was pretty much the only case where I just couldn't find anything even remotely resembling the style of this message when googling the phrases used or checking the usual sources on memes and stuff. When I asked a Japanese acquaintance to give me their impression of the language style used, it stumped them as well, but they eventually said it sounded like something a personal servant like a butler or maid would say. Considering that in most hacks the switch palace messages tend to be used for dadaist jokes and anti-humor anyway (remember the pufferfish one in Hyper VI?), this could very well just be the textbox putting on a very cultured and vague tone for the heck of it. Either way, we felt that going with the butler interpretation, and emphasizing that kind of polite tone shouldn't lose too much of the feel, even if the message turns out to actually be a reference that we missed. To that end, we did end up having to fill in some blanks in regards to what certain parts of the message were referring to, but given the context I think "press switch -> blocks change" and "you should save" do make a pretty reasonable fit to the linguistic information we had to work with. Finally, I think this is the only case in the game where we flat-out dropped a sentence, due to the extremely limited amount of space in palace messages. It says something like "please rescue", though without specifying what to rescue.
Actual translator's note: Question 1
The first question in the quiz was probably more difficult in Japanese than it was in our localized version. Stroke order for Japanese characters is a thing that's taught in schools pretty strictly, though of course most students don't give a lick of care about it, and they tend to be pretty lax in how they end up remembering and writing it anyway. The stroke order of this character '右' in particular is kind of tricky. The question asks which of the lines in the top left part to write first. However, the character means 'right', and is often paired up with '左', the character for its opposite: 'left'. The trickiness comes from the fact that, although they both have the same element in the top-left, the stroke order of this element for 'left' is the reverse of that for 'right. From my experience the reason for this is that it lets you alternate stroke directions while writing the character, giving a better flow. However, it can be a pretty confusing rule, and it probably makes this question a bit trickier than "what part of 'Q' do you write first".

In the end though, if you mess up you just try the other option without penalty, so you take what you can get really.
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Re: VIP 4 2018 - Only two questions? I was expecting more like fifteen lol

Post by Leet »

On the other hand, stroke order being a thing that's actually taught strictly means that the japanese question has an actual answer.
Well it is a decent hack but sometime its just too repetitif there no level that actually pop in your face and your like oh yeah that level they all ressemble themselves and just monster along the way.
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Re: VIP 4 2018 - Only two questions? I was expecting more like fifteen lol

Post by morsel/morceau »

I like to think rainwizard created his YouTube account for the admirable task of combatting ignorance of meteorological science among the home vlogging community.
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Re: VIP 4 2018 - Only two questions? I was expecting more like fifteen lol

Post by Blue »

This video made nostalgia hit me like a ton of whales, holy crap. This was the first level I saw raocow playing.
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Re: VIP 4 2018 - Only two questions? I was expecting more like fifteen lol

Post by Paragraph »

morsel/morceau wrote: I like to think rainwizard created his YouTube account for the admirable task of combatting ignorance of meteorological science among the home vlogging community.
I'm glad he did because I was about to explain it myself but I'm only so-so in thermodynamics, so I was afraid of getting it wrong (I'd have gotten it right, though 8-) ).

Very simple explanation without the "but what about pressure/ideal gases" around it: water is actually lighter than oxygen and nitrogen, so if there's the same amount of molecules in dry vs. humid air, the humid air is lighter.
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Re: VIP 4 2018 - How are you all making it before the block vanishes?

Post by Whimsical Calamari »

This Eye o' Mine wrote: 5 years ago A Boon from the Heavens
No, that pun obviously wasn't in the original title, but come on, it's too good to pass up. Give us one moment where we can be a bit clever in the naming.
for that, i am eternally grateful

alright let's episode 6 it up. i'll see if i can watch 7 and 8 tonight but no promises lol

DailyMotion run
short and gimmicky :/ (continued) - March 6, 2008
6:20 - Grab Block
SKIP

Time, my nemesis! (continued) - March 8, 2008
2:00 - Heavens
7:36 - Storehouse
SKIP

THRILL LIFT FIVE!!!! - March 10, 2008
0:00 - Swamp

YouTube run
take care of your friends :) (continued) - January 5, 2009
5:54 - Grab Block
SKIP

malfunctions - January 7, 2009
2:00 - Heavens
9:09 - Storehouse
SKIP

you shall be missed world 2 - January 9, 2009
0:00 - Swamp
Dragon Fogel wrote: 5 years ago So someone in the comments linked [cinematic parallels]
dang youtubers stealing my thunder

Watching this episode's "equivalent" in the DailyMotion run helped me finally realize what was "different" about rao's commentary there compared to what I'm used to. He's mainly treating VIP4 as an old-school tutorial-style LP. It's been there all along, but I think the reason it took me so long to identify it is because it's been so long since I've encountered it. Seeing raocow doing one is almost kind of an alien feeling. Bizarre how that used to be The LP Style (to the point that Arin Hanson angrily denied being a Let's Player in the early days of Game Grumps for that exact reason), but now it's such a rarity that I couldn't even notice it when I saw it at first.

It's really a heck of a thing to see how much the LP environment has changed over the past ten years. From a time where the idea of Let's Playing to showcase the LPer's commentary style as much as the game was almost a novelty, to an environment where playing games on camera is now a serious career prospect, where editing styles can contribute to the LPer's "brand", and where generally so much more is expected of someone who may just want to sit down and play some games for a few people. The internet's changed so much, even here.

Oyster->2018
Take That! Shivering Block -> Take It! Grab Block
Blessing of the Heavens -> A Boon From the Heavens
What's With This Noisy Item Storehouse? -> Oddly Noisy Storehouse
Man, This Is One Dirty Bog... -> What a Dirty Swamp...
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Re: VIP 4 2018 - Only two questions? I was expecting more like fifteen lol

Post by Zach808 »

Welcome to World 3. It starts off pretty reasonable, but towards the end you're gonna get the first taste of levels that never end. This is gonna be a recurring thing in this hack. Remember to farm lives in the world 1 castle.

That quiz level went completely over my head, due to not knowing Japanese. I wonder if there's anyone here who writes their Q backwards?
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Re: VIP 4 2018 - Only two questions? I was expecting more like fifteen lol

Post by LunarRainbowShyGuy »

For once I didn't miss a day so I don't have to spend time going over the levels I missed. Anyway, here's my comments for these levels.

Thrill Lift 5: When I got to the first guy that's throwing feces in this stage I fell and found a platform at the bottom of the screen and a note block containing a cape if your big. This probably led to me having an easier time in this level than I otherwise might have. It also helps that I managed to grab the star and that I went in the pipe that ends up skipping a good portion of the level.

It's Quiz o'Clock: With only two questions this level ends up being pretty easy. The only thing I have to point out here is that there's actually a bunch of invisible coin blocks leading up to the P-switch.

The Airy Red Switch: If you get the star here you can just plow through all the enemies and even get a few lives, but even without the star this is pretty easy.

I was going to mention that the castle in world one has a good place to farm lives, but it looks like someone else already did. Though given that raocow managed to gain 17 lives in this video it's not like he even needs to do that right now.
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Re: VIP 4 2018 - It's actually his roundabout way of saying "You murdered me"

Post by Zach808 »

raocow, whatever you do, DO NOT ONE MORE LEVEL THE GHOST HOUSE. It’s just as much of a nightmare as you remember.

So here’s the pause level. Definitely much easier than the CLDC one, though it doesn’t seem to have been constructed with as much sadistic care. For world 3, that’s fine.
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Re: VIP 4 2018 - It's actually his roundabout way of saying "You murdered me"

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Thank you for saving me!
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Re: VIP 4 2018 - It's actually his roundabout way of saying "You murdered me"

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Thank you for saving me!
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Re: VIP 4 2018 - It's actually his roundabout way of saying "You murdered me"

Post by This Eye o' Mine »

My humblest gratitude for the act of rescuing me from the confines of the prison that was restraining my movements.

You totally missed a bonus screen in the gratitude level. This is completely unforgivable, and I'm never coming back to this site again.

Today, our only bug fix. (Except for the one that we're putting in an update later)

Translator's note: Atop the Endless Clouds
There was a bug in this stage that caused Yoshi to spout a story spoiler from the endgame. This is because they used the textbox Yoshi normally says when first hatched for a message box in one of the last stages, with some ASM to cause it to pop up in that specific stage. Their intention was probably to have it appear in ONLY that stage, but they screwed up the code to stop it from appearing in other stages. This is probably because in the vanilla game, that textbox is only set to appear in stages on the Yoshi's Island map screen submap, which world 3 is on. They must not have known this, thinking it was programmed to appear in any level, and only tested whether their code worked on the actual first stage of the game where Yoshi hatches from an egg: the second stage in world 1, which isn't on the YI submap in this hack. When they saw that the message didn't appear there, they probably called their patch a success and moved on. We fixed it so that the spoiler wouldn't appear in this stage.
Oyster's Pearls: On Top of the Exhausted Crying Cloud

His name for "Atop the Endless Clouds"

Completely mangled. The original name is はてしなきくものうえ (hateshi-naki kumo no ue). 'hateshinaki' is a variant on a set phrase that means 'without end', with 'hateshi' being the 'end' part, and 'naki' being a somewhat old-timey way of saying 'without'. Oyster must've seen 'naki' as 泣き, which is the stem of the verb 'to cry', though that doesn't work at all grammatically in this case. Turning 'hateshi' into 'exhausted' is a pseudo-beefsteak moment, where he looked the verb it's derived from (果てる, hateru) up in the dictionary, and took the definition that was way down the list and the absolute least fitting for the situation. You can translate that verb as "be exhausted", but only in the sense of "end" or "running out".
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Re: VIP 4 2018 - It's actually his roundabout way of saying "You murdered me"

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Thank you for saving me!
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Re: VIP 4 2018 - It's actually his roundabout way of saying "You murdered me"

Post by SpoonyBardOL »

It's so weird the Dragon Quest 5 level went on to use Final Fantasy 5 music during the mountain segment, even though the backdrop was from Dragon Quest 5 as well. Maybe there was no BGM in DQ5 that really fit a platformer?

The whole Nera/Bianca thing is kind of a meme in Japan, I think. I've seen it referenced in anime in the past, mostly since Bianca is the hero's childhood friend who is even in the party briefly early on and Nera is just some rich guy's daughter who shows up for the first time like an hour before the you make your choice, so there is often comical disgust when a character in an anime chooses Nera instead of Bianca. I can't remember for the life of me an example of it in a show, though, but I know I've seen it.

The DS remake of DQ5 adds a third option, Nera's older sister Deborah who is almost over the top abusive, pretty sure she's supposed to be a 'tsundere'. But I guess that came out after VIP4? Or maybe the level author just wanted to be authentic to the original SNES version.
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Re: VIP 4 2018 - It's actually his roundabout way of saying "You murdered me"

Post by Sugar »

Thank you for saving me!
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Re: VIP 4 2018 - It's actually his roundabout way of saying "You murdered me"

Post by AlchemistHohenheim »

FYI raocow they dropped the "Dragon Warrior" name for the English versions of the series in the PS2 generation. It's just been "Dragon Quest" everywhere since DQVIII came out.
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Re: VIP 4 2018 - It's actually his roundabout way of saying "You murdered me"

Post by ano0maly »

Anyone remember the level in ASMT where you were constantly getting calls for help? The first level reminded me of that.


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Re: VIP 4 2018 - It's actually his roundabout way of saying "You murdered me"

Post by FPzero »

SpoonyBardOL wrote: 5 years ago It's so weird the Dragon Quest 5 level went on to use Final Fantasy 5 music during the mountain segment, even though the backdrop was from Dragon Quest 5 as well. Maybe there was no BGM in DQ5 that really fit a platformer?
It is weird but it's probably a case of AddMusic being really new at the time and there were very few ports available for insertion. I remember the early days of AddMusic where we had less than 2 dozen ports available, all of which came with the program, and some people were slowly taking the time to learn porting to expand the library of resources.
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Re: VIP 4 2018 - It's actually his roundabout way of saying "You murdered me"

Post by LunarRainbowShyGuy »

Thank you for saving me!

...Anyway, I was playing pretty badly today, so my opinions on these levels might be a bit lower than they could have been.

I'll Never Forget My Gratitude to You: I do think that this kind of gimmick can be fun, but I feel like this level might be a bit too hard for this gimmick. Though once I managed to hang on to a cape for more than five seconds I got through it pretty easily so the issues I have are probably just from me playing badly.

Hand of the Heavenly... Groom?: I have no experience with any Dragon Quest games, but I enjoyed this level. The level may have been pretty basic, but that's not a bad thing. Though the presence of those awful homing bullet bills in the house makes me worry that they might show up as an actual obstacle later on. Also, now that I think about it I think I did play a Dragon Quest spin off game once (Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime if anyone was wondering) but it's been so long I barely even remember it.

Atop the Endless Clouds: Lakitu gave me a lot of trouble here, but again, it's probably because I was playing badly. Fortunately there's plenty of goombas and koopas to throw at him. Just to give you an idea of how badly I was playing: I barely managed to hold onto any powerups for more than five to ten seconds, and when I got to the room with the fish jumping around I panicked and fell in the pit in just a few seconds.

It looks like we're getting to some levels that actually try to be challenging. And it seems like there's at least one level here that's "kind of a nightmare", which does make me worried for when I have to play it. Maybe I should start playing ahead of raocow, just in case I get stuck on a difficult level for a while.
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Re: VIP 4 2018 - It's actually his roundabout way of saying "You murdered me"

Post by BobisOnlyBob »

ano0maly wrote: 5 years ago Anyone remember the level in ASMT where you were constantly getting calls for help? The first level reminded me of that.
Check Duker's comment on the video - raocow tagged this video as "Help! pawprint"
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Re: VIP 4 2018 - It's actually his roundabout way of saying "You murdered me"

Post by Piesonscreations »

Thank you for saving me!

The Dragon Quest level was neat.
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Re: VIP 4 2018 - It's actually his roundabout way of saying "You murdered me"

Post by Whimsical Calamari »

episode 7

DailyMotion run
hell is little children toy blocks - March 9, 2008
0:00 - hell
SKIP

THRILL LIFT FIVE!!!! (continued) - March 10, 2008
3:22 - castle

YouTube run
paradise earned - January 8, 2009
0:00
SKIP

you shall be missed world 2 - January 9, 2009
3:15 - castle

HOLY CRAP what a masterful workaround in the YT run. now let's see some stats

DEATHS IN THE LIFT HELL

Code: Select all

      Part 1   Part 2   Boss                    TOTAL
2018:    3        1       0                        4
2008:   22       15       4  (+ 4 "don't count")  45
2009:    7       10       0  (+ 24 off camera)    41
oh the humanity

And if we watch in chronological order, we can see the run of Iggy's Castle getting progressively blinder. We start with a "ham-fisted audience participation segment" made with full knowledge of the puzzle, into a "I forget some of this" run eight months later, and finally finish off in 2018 with a run that greatly resembles the first, but without the acting.

Nice little parallel in the castle-top segment, though. In both 2009 and 2018, rao goes through the pipe, sees the first screen, and immediately nopes out of there. It's not even a difficult screen; I wonder what caused that reaction?

Oyster->2018
EXTREMELY Fun Lift Hell -> Totally Fun Lift Hell
The Meaning of 'Agate' -> What a Pain in the Iggy!
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Re: VIP 4 2018 - It's actually his roundabout way of saying "You murdered me"

Post by Rixithechao »

Delightful Adventure Enhanced is out now!

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There's an official ASMT Discord server! Check it out to discuss Demo games and follow their development! thread, invite link

(Entry requires verification, either with a connected Youtube/Twitter/Twitch/etc account or manually by the server staff.)


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Re: VIP 4 2018 - It's actually his roundabout way of saying "You murdered me"

Post by Ashan »

Thank you for saving me!
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Re: VIP 4 2018 - It's actually his roundabout way of saying "You murdered me"

Post by Whimsical Calamari »

FINALLY THINGS ARE SYNCED AGAIN
NO MORE SKIPS OR GO BACKS FOR A WHILE
UGH

DailyMotion run
THRILL LIFT FIVE!!!! (continued) - March 10, 2008
8:28 - Thrill Lift 5

run! the sky is made of ropes! - March 11, 2008
0:00 - quiz
3:00 - switch

YouTube run
airborn ambush! - January 10, 2009
0:00 - Thrill Lift 5
9:14 - quiz (normal)

popcorn - January 11, 2009
0:00 - quiz (secret)
2:37 - switch

LunarRainbowShyGuy wrote: When I got to the first guy that's throwing feces in this stage I fell and found a platform at the bottom of the screen and a note block containing a cape if your big.
I'm actually a bit surprised rao didn't run into that this time, since he made full use of it the last two playthroughs

CINEMATIC PARALLELS
DailyMotion: 13:35 - Falling between two blocks in the exact same way, but just at a different point of the level. An incredible skill, indeed.
YT2009: 1:40 - rao zips through the side of the Hammer Bros platform.

(there's probably other ones but it'd take too much time to document)

Oyster->2018
Thrill Lift 5
Quiz Time! -> It's Quiz O'Clock!
Light and Airy Red Switch -> The Airy Red Switch
Last edited by Whimsical Calamari 5 years ago, edited 1 time in total.
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