The surprise release of an English translation patch for Princess Crown was met with widespread praise among fans, before it was quickly marred with controversy after the original team raised their concerns. As of this writing, fan hacker eadmaster’s current patch uses GitHub resources released back in 2014 by original translators CyberWarriorX and SamIAm, with eadmaster calling it a version 0.3.
Since the 2014 GitHub, the two original team members have privately made sweeping changes to the translation and text injection code, saying they’re “sitting on a version 0.9.”
“This Eadmaster guy took our old version 0.2, made it barely functional, and released it as complete,” SamIAm explained in his response.
CyberWarriorX went back and forth with eadmaster Saturday in a SegaXtreme forum thread about the Princess Crown translation. In part, CyberWarriorX wrote, “How about you do your own work instead of stealing others?” A response from eadmaster reads, “Since the code was shared under GPL, (GitHub) forking should be allowed as long as you keep sharing the changes, as i did.”
When eadmaster wrote, “…if a better translation/fork pops up i’ll definitively discontinue mine,” CyberWarriorX replied with, “One has popped up, now please discontinue yours.”
After that reply was posted in the forum thread, eadmaster indicated that he will continue working on his version of the patch.
SamIAm and CyberWarriorX have both been criticized by fans for spending more than 10 years working on this patch while publicly releasing few updates. SHIRO! has independently verified that the original team has made significant progress since 2014 — with both a new script and more robust text hacking.
The patch from eadmaster using 2014 assets has wide text spacing, buggy menus and several lines of text that are still in Japanese. When the patch released, other hackers in the Saturn scene pointed out that a simple change to the hex code fixes much of the text spacing issues.
The patch is also known to crash in several parts of the game. SamIAm said to get around these crash points, one would have to reload a save in the Japanese original and proceed to a future save point before switching back to the patched game.
We reached out to eadmaster to ask about his newly released patch. He responded to concerns raised by the original team, spoke about his past work, changes made to the 2014 GitHub resource, and explained his intentions for the future of this project. A new translator has been brought on board for his version of the English translation patch.
PandaMonium: “Can you walk me through when you started the patch project and describe the process you went through?”
eadmaster: “First attempts made a few years ago based on the same codebase. More productive attempts made since last month“.
PandaMonium: “Have you made translation patches or other mods in the past?”
eadmaster: “Yes, many cheat codes too.”
He linked to his own website, showing eadmaster has worked on translation patches for three PC Engine games. The first is Honey in the Sky, which is noted as being “discontinued” in its ROMhacking thread. The second is Kaizou Choujin Shubibinman, marked as “help needed” in its thread on the same website. Lastly, his own website said he also worked on translating Momotarou Katsugeki for the PC Engine. The website does not link to any resource showing his work on this patch, but does note that it is a work in progress.
As for cheat codes, he has created more than a dozen Game Genie codes across multiple 16-bit and 8-bit platforms.
PandaMonium: “Did you try reaching out to the original team at any point? If so, who did you reach out to, when and how?”
eadmaster: “Since they looked overwhelmed with requests in the past I didn’t try to contact them directly, I thought I would be just bothering them. So I’ve just posted some messages on these two forums announcing I was working on this.”
He then linked me to this SegaXtreme thread and this GBAtemp thread. On GBAtemp, he confirmed on Oct. 22 that he did not make an attempt to contact the original team.
PandaMonium: “Do you have any response to the concerns recently made by the original team?”
eadmaster: “My point is that I’ve reused GPL-released code, which gives developers freedom to fork, modify and share back changes without asking for permissions to the original authors. By the way, I’m definitively willing fix any misunderstanding or miscomunication that may have passed.”
PandaMonium: “Would you work with the original team?”
eadmaster: “Sure, if they are willing to help, I will gladly accept any contribution.”
PandaMonium: “Did you make any changes or improvements from the (2014 GitHub), such as changes to the way text loads, or any fixes that were not present prior?”
eadmaster: “Yes, I’ve made some changes to the event editor to be able to parse and replace ASCII plaintext in addition to shift-jis. I’ve also updated the font map with a Latin alphabet and other minor code changes to make it compile on mingw.”
PandaMonium: “Do you intend to keep working on this translation patch?”
eadmaster: “Yes, as stated in the current readme: [By the way] since this was originally released with a GPL-2.0 license, I’d like to exercise my right to keep working on this and make improvements as long as a better translation patch is released.“
He went on to say that he “did something similar” with the now discontinued Honey in the Sky translation project.
When asked if and when his next Princess Crown patch update will be released, eadmaster said he hopes to have “v0.4” released within “the next few days.”
He said features for version 0.4 are planned to include the following:
eadmaster: “- More condensed text. Retranslate event sections longer than 3 lines · Issue #1 · eadmaster/pcrown
– Missing lines translation, add some missing lines of events translation · Issue #4 · eadmaster/pcrown“
He confirmed that he is now working with a new translator, MiYakuGaming. As of this writing, the Twitter bio for MiYakuGaming says she is an N5-certified Japanese translator. The bio reads in part, “All Translations are Uncensored and attempted Accuracy.” In a follow up reply, she said N5 does not reflect her “actual level.”
SamIAm is certified to be at level N1.
In a Twitter post concerning the Princess Crown project, MiYakuGaming wrote, “I was invited to replace the original script with an Uncensored version.” We asked her what aspects of the original script she feels are censored. Her response reads, “I say that because I have fans that expect my Translations to be Uncensored, that’s all.”
PandaMonium: “Is there anything else you would like to say which would, as you mentioned, fix any misunderstandings?”
eadmaster: “I think one common misconception is that permission for derivative works must always be granted explicitly and individually. This apply to works that are shared privately or publicly with no license attached. When you upload code to github, you implicitly agree to their TOS, in addition to the terms of the license you choose. In addition, the license cannot conflict with the github TOS, which also grants permission to fork and make changes (see the recent case of Winamp opensourcing on github.)”
Since eadmaster posted his patch, SamIAm made it known that he intends to record video of his current build to show the progress he and CyberWarriorX have made. We will be sure to update you when that is released.
A previous version of this article incorrectly identified the gender of MiYakuGaming due to information provided by eadmaster. Since publication, MiYakuGaming has pointed out that she is a woman, so this article was edited to reflect this.
Sorry, but a lot of this is just bickering. The issue is not that the code base was used, the issue is that the original creators were not given the proper courtesy that this was about to happen and minimal effort was placed into this release. The version put out right now is a garbage version that the original devs wanted no part because they improved it. If there was substantial changes to show an actual derivative, this wouldn’t be an issue. The problem with not extending this courtesy is now the original team may not offer any assistance with potential bugs that they have solved that the new team is going to encounter because that respect was not extended.
This comes down to a courtesy issue, not a legal one.
If you want to be pedantic, you might as well ask everyone who’s offered to help finish this thing how it feels to be given the courtesy of a response that never came.
Courtesy doesn’t apply in this situation when the creators have shown themselves to be straight up apathetic to any outsider involvement. A ten year charade with nothing to show for it. Its also been noted by SamIam that they wouldn’t have given EADmaster permission regardless so assistance was never on the table.
Whether the version put out right now is garbage or not the fact that there is anything at all has more to show than a decade of false assurances. Atleast someone put in some sort of effort.
Actions speak louder than words and if Theo Burkau or SamIam want to release something that makes this thing obsolete then its more than welcomed. As it sits now its just a couple of sad men airing grievances into the retro gaming void.
“Courtesy doesn’t apply in this situation when the creators have shown themselves to be straight up apathetic to any outsider involvement.”
That is a cute little story you have there. Too bad it is not true at all. Hate to break it to you, 99% of the help requests they were offered were most likely from people simply incapable of actually helping. This happens to me all of the time.
“Its also been noted by SamIam that they wouldn’t have given EADmaster permission regardless so assistance was never on the table.”
So what? I can see why they wouldn’t want to give permission, the build is crap, and nothing new was added.
“Whether the version put out right now is garbage or not the fact that there is anything at all has more to show than a decade of false assurances.”
This version has been playable for 10 years… only thing added were a few lines. You just needed the know how to get it to work, and when/if you did, you would have discovered that it was not worth the effort to overstep what they were trying to get out.
“At least someone put in some sort of effort.” LOL no they didn’t.
“Actions speak louder than words and if Theo Burkau or SamIam want to release something that makes this thing obsolete then its more than welcomed. As it sits now its just a couple of sad men airing grievances into the retro gaming void.”
Eh, if I were them, I would not even bother making a public release anymore. Give the people what they want, which appears to be a broken game.
If they kept the translation to themselves for 10 years i don’t think they ever cared about offering anything not only assistance.
Now that a release exists somebody can improve on it at least.
That is not true at all. People are more willing to share their knowledge if you are capable of actually showing you can understand it. I help people all of the time with this stuff, and I have been asked by many to help on my projects, so I have some understanding of why they stay quiet, and why they may not be willing to accept outside help.
I’m a professional 3d artist, have been for 15 years now, i once offered to help the group behind the “Gothic reloaded” mod, i told them that i was interested in creating higher poly assets as a possible alternate pack for the DX11 API mod in gothic.
I was totally pushed away and told that they were not interested in me and my so called “pro” advices, i even showed them my portfolio and was told to fuck off.
Dude, this happens a lot in modding and hacking and 10 years of obsolescence doesn’t help but let’s me think that there’s a decent degree of narcissism in play here.
Also i know what it means being asked permission or credit, i created a now historical mod for skyrim (High Quality Food and Ingredients) and over the years i got no joke hundreds of requests for permission, it was not even needed since i added in the mod page that i would appreciate the credit and that’s it, sometimes people just added my mod to total mods without crediting but it’s fine, the credit was informal and in this case for the translation there’s no license stopping no body, so there’s no complaining they can advance.
Will this get the other dudes to finally get back to work, complete and release their version?
Probably not.