Metroid Prime 3: Google Translate Edition

[kkzero]

NOTE: This mod was made for the original version of the game. If you're seeking a Trilogy version patch, see here.

METROID PRIME 3: GOOGLE TRANSLATE EDITION

They thought it couldn't be done...but not only did I throw all the text of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption through multiple languages in Google Translate and back to English, I altered the voice clips to match these changes with the talent of text-to-speech.

Download

Trailer

[spoiler=Screenshots!]


[/spoiler]

[spoiler=Notices]
Firstly, game mods of this nature are notorious for causing painful laughter. While I cannot guarantee this one will be at quite the same level, do keep this in mind as you play.
Also, this was a very long, involved, and stressful process. As such, there may be some imperfections that I seemingly just left alone untouched. Do understand, though, that I tried my hardest to make this an experience just like the previous Metroid Google Translate mods, and for the most part is just like those other ones.[/spoiler]
[spoiler=Patching]This part used to suck pretty bad before 2021. The current version should be more lenient, though.

WHAT YOU'LL NEED
-Your iso dump of the game. If you have a wbfs, a program like WiiBackupManager can convert that for you.
-The contents of the "patch" folder in this zip.
-Plenty of free disk space, I'd say like 20 GB is safe. The game's files are pretty hefty!
-(For real hardware)A homebrewed Wii with sufficient cIOS installations. (See wii.guide/cios to get started with that)

THE STEPS
1. 1. Launch step1-extractfiles.bat, and enter the name or path of your iso. Proceed to 2 if nodtool reports a Success.
   TIPS:
   -Enclose the path in double quotes ("") if it has spaces.
   -In fact, it might be more helpful to just move the iso to the folder this is in so you can just type the filename.
2. Launch step2-patchfiles.bat. If all goes well, you're good to proceed to 3. Optionally, you may just launch main.dol in Dolphin to play if you're emulating.
3. Launch step3-reinsertfiles.bat. If all goes well, then "mp3-gte.iso" will appear in the "patch" folder, and you can now play this hack.
[/spoiler]
[spoiler=FAQ]
Q: What is this garbage?
A: It's Metroid Prime 3 with its text modded with the result of multiple iterations of Google Translate.

Q: Why would you waste your time making this?
A: People wanted this. Also...because. I. CAN.

Q: Why not do this to a good game like Prime 1?
A: Already been done. As well as for Prime 2. And Hunters, too. In fact, my first stab was at Fusion.

Q: What is the whole history behind these wild Google Translate hacks/mods?
A: It was mainly just a result of some romhackers finding out how innacurate Google Translate could be, and decided to have fun with that.
The earliest instance I can find on the net is that Pokemon Blue hack from like 2013, which just took the original Japanese script and converted it to English.
Fast-forward to 2016-2017, where a lone hacker named SkaillZ did the whole obfuscation thing to a few games--Pokemon X, then Chrono Trigger, then Earthbound. This is what I'd believe really kicked off the enthusiasm for these strange creations, with Fire Emblem, Mario 64, and Pokemon Yellow getting the same treatment within the next year.
Now, that Pokemon Yellow one...yes, the one by Leurak that was streamed for a time by Joel from Vinesauce...I was watching that live. I was so amazed by it. I even made art and submitted it to the Vinebooru. (and then it got deleted by the mods for being too poorly-made lmao)
It inspired me to try this experiment out myself. I considered Earthbound at first since CoilSnake's got no problem doing text for that, then dropped that idea after finding out about the aforementioned one. At the same time, I considered Metroid Fusion, since it was not only fairly a short one to do, but it would also give me a purpose in the Metroid hacking community that I just sat in for the past year, being unable to get anywhere due to life issues.
Thus, one morning, I decided to play around with some of the dialogue sequences in Fusion, just to see what doing the translation thing was like. Later that day, I gained the motivation to take on the entire game. That week was spent translating and testing out the hack.
When I first dropped the zip of the hack onto MAGconst, the first response I got from anyone was just "Why?" I replied, "Because I can".
Not many played it or even really cared too much about it, but those who did really enjoyed it. So, after I finally beat Prime 1 for the first time June of that year, I decided to grab the tools and take on that game. It was definitely hard getting started, and a time-consuming process, but I eventually got it done in just under two months.
This mod had much more notice. I tweeted about it to a great amount of attention, and at least 8 people have streamed it since I released it. Ultimately I ended up doing Prime 2 and Hunters, which took longer to finish after I started due to school and other hobbies getting in the way.
Right as I released Prime 2's mod, I started looking into Prime 3, extracting its files and checking it out. Soon enough, the work began.
Meanwhile, even more games, such as Paper Mario TTYD, Mother 3, and Super Mario RPG got the treatment thanks to other modders out there. And this trend isn't stopping right away, as other games are getting these as you read this.

Q: How do you translate this massive amount of text? Is it all manual?
A: Mostly it is manual, but for some texts I have relied on SkaillZ's Text Obfuscator just to speed up the process when I really didn't feel like clicking through a bunch of things.

Q: Text Obfuscator isn't Google Translate you cheater!
A: Yes it is, it actually relies on it to do all the work.

Q: Is there anything that isn't translated?
A: There are a few things I intentionally left out.
   -Most unused texts. Obviously no one will be seeing these, and it just takes up more of my time to do them.
   -Various textures/models. That isn't my realm of expertise.
   -Credits narration clip. Vocals aren't center-panned in this one, and distributing an almost verbatim music file has legal issues(I know it's debatable please don't try starting an argument about it kthx).

Q: Why is some of the dialogue formatted weirdly?
A: Those texts are part of strings that wouldn't be cooked by Prime World Editor for use in the game for whatever reason. My workaround was hex editing the text into the affected files, but it would take tedious manual byte changing to accomodate the new text sizes, so I just inserted what I had and made all the unused bytes into spaces.

Q: This audio editing sucks ass, and the voices are hideous!
A: Life isn't that easy. This isn't a serious fandub, and TTS is prominent in memes and crap, so it works for me. Additionally, vocal removal only goes so far--such technology is only designed for songs and not cinematics.

Q: The pop/click at the end of many voices is annoying. Couldn't you fix this?
A: Wasn't worth wasting my time on how to purge such a small thing.

Q: This isn't Google Translated.
A: Tell me that again after you've considered that no one could (or would) possibly think up of so many strange and random things on their own all just to put into a game that's over a decade old.

Q: Why do you write these questions as if everyone hates this? They really don't.
A: I guess it's just a style I've adapted ever since the beginning. Additionally, the final phases of developing these is always stressful, especially when worrying about how this will compare to my previous Metroid Google Translate mods.
[/spoiler]
[spoiler=Extras]If you're wondering about the included "extras" folder, it's just a bunch of notes and stuff from developing this. It also has STRMFix, which was a saving grace for the voice files. If you like the history in little things like this, the extras folder is for you.
Additionally, the transcript of all the voices can be found here.[/spoiler]
[spoiler=Voice Cast]
Admiral Dane - ScanSoft Daniel
AU 217 - mass:werk mespeak.js variant m1
AU 242 - mass:werk mespeak.js variant m5
AU 313 - Microsoft Biff
Gandrayda - Microsoft Mary
Ghor - Microsoft RoboSoft Three
Rundas - Microsoft Sam
Vox - ScanSoft Samantha, Microsoft Helen

Fleet Trooper - ScanSoft Samantha
GF Marine - Microsoft David, ScanSoft Tom

Dev Messages - Microsoft Melvin[/spoiler]
[spoiler=Acknowlegements]
Programs used in creating this:

Audacity (gc-dspadpcm fork) - Recording and editing voices.
Balabolka - The source of several voices.
Dolphin Emulator - Quickly testing out the mod.
DXTViewer - Texture conversion from PNG to DDS.
Font Squirrel Identifier - Locating close enough fonts to use for the Wii Remote strap screen text.
Google Docs - Creating a map of all the voice dialogue and planning the voices.
Google Translate - Most of the translations.
HxD - File analysis and hex edits.
mass:werk mespeak.js - Aurora Unit 242 and 217 voices.
mtexdump - Texture conversion from TXTR to BTI.
paint.net - Editing the Wii Remote strap screen images.
Paktool - Producing the patch.
Prime World Editor - Text editing and file repacking.
STRMFix - Fixing the STRM voices to make them play in-game.
Text Obfuscator - Some of the translations.
Visual Studio 2017 - Creating STRMFix.
Wexos's Toolbox - Texture conversion from BTI to PNG.
WiiScrubber - Testing pak file sizes to ensure they'd fit in a vanilla iso.
WinMerge - Isolating modified files for the patch.

Special thanks:

Nintendo and Retro Studios - Development of this wonderful game despite its flaws.
Aruki - Prime World Editor, paktool, and other Metroid Prime modding efforts that made the making of this possible. What a hero.
Cirrus/jackoalan - Audacity gc-dspadpcm, allowed the new voices to happen. What a legend.
M1CR0H4CK3R - Helping me out with the 1.0a patch.
MST - For a while, I felt as if my Google Translate efforts were getting old to Metconst. But when this man stepped in and started playing, he brought getting cash money, marrying cows, sucking wheat, and everything else to a whole new level, better preparing myself to continue what I do in this community. For that, thank you so much my man.
The rest of Metconst - Keeping this community alive and kicking for the new frontiers such as Prime modding.[/spoiler]

[M1CR0H4CK3R]

I tried patching with a scrubbed .wbfs converted to .iso in WiiBackupManager, but got a 'not enough allocated space in iso' error at NoARAM.pak. Trying to find a full ISO of this game is tough, but I think I found one. I'll update this post with the results later today.

[kkzero]

I tried patching with a scrubbed .wbfs converted to .iso in WiiBackupManager, but got a 'not enough allocated space in iso' error at NoARAM.pak. Trying to find a full ISO of this game is tough, but I think I found one. I'll update this post with the results later today.

Dammit! I knew I should've did a more thorough check of the modified pak file sizes. If it doesn't work with a full iso then I'll look into updating this with that file scaled down within the week. I could've sworn it was at the same size as the original though...been a while since I checked.
Do any of the other paks throw that error?

[M1CR0H4CK3R]

I tried patching with a scrubbed .wbfs converted to .iso in WiiBackupManager, but got a 'not enough allocated space in iso' error at NoARAM.pak. Trying to find a full ISO of this game is tough, but I think I found one. I'll update this post with the results later today.

Dammit! I knew I should've did a more thorough check of the modified pak file sizes. If it doesn't work with a full iso then I'll look into updating this with that file scaled down within the week. I could've sworn it was at the same size as the original though...been a while since I checked.
Do any of the other paks throw that error?

My ISO's original NoARAM.pak is 16,181,824 bytes, and the edited one is 16,184,256 bytes. That's 2,432 bytes more in the patched file.

Edit: Metroid6.pak is also larger. I'm checking, but there might be others.

Only NoARAM.pak throws the error. All others replace fine.

[kkzero]

My ISO's original NoARAM.pak is 16,181,824 bytes, and the edited one is 16,184,256 bytes. That's 2,432 bytes more in the patched file.

Edit: Metroid6.pak is also larger. I'm checking, but there might be others.

Only NoARAM.pak throws the error. All others replace fine.

Okay, it looks like creating the patch brought about some fluff in various files. I have a busy afternoon, so as soon as I can I'll send the scaled down NoARAM and Metroid6 and update the mod.

[kkzero]

Hmmmmmmmm.....

I rebuilt said pak files by copy/pasting the patch folders to ones extracted from the vanilla iso, and doing paktool -r. The file sizes are both smaller than vanilla on my end.
Metroid6 is 126,854,720 bytes.
NoARAM is 16,181,440 bytes.
Not sure why they'd be bigger on your end. Plus, my vanilla NoARAM is the exact same size as yours.

[M1CR0H4CK3R]

Hmmmmmmmm.....

I rebuilt said pak files by copy/pasting the patch folders to ones extracted from the vanilla iso, and doing paktool -r. The file sizes are both smaller than vanilla on my end.
Metroid6 is 126,854,720 bytes.
NoARAM is 16,181,440 bytes.
Not sure why they'd be bigger on your end. Plus, my vanilla NoARAM is the exact same size as yours.

I did the exact same process, so unless you used a EUR .iso, there should be no differences.

Is it against forum rules if I request the properly patched NoARAM.pak file? I found a full ISO today, but ran into the exact same issue - my patched NoARAM.pak was larger by the same number of bytes.

[kkzero]

I did the exact same process, so unless you used a EUR .iso, there should be no differences.

Is it against forum rules if I request the properly patched NoARAM.pak file? I found a full ISO today, but ran into the exact same issue - my patched NoARAM.pak was larger by the same number of bytes.

Used the NTSC version. SHA-1 of c6c5a57b8e55104fa197d91ea8a89c34b04d3120, which is the one in redump's Wii datfile.

Might need to try and trim some of the files down a bit, or just try to snuff out a patching solution that relies on rebuilding the iso as a whole rather than manually replacing files.

Properly patched file...hmmmmmm...hit me up on the Discord if you'd like to discuss that further.

[TheGingerChris]

Apologies for reviving this thread but I'm looking to see if there is a central issues chat location at all as I'm having some issues trying to modify the game with the GTE.

Regards,

[Vorpal]

I'm really excited to play this, but I'm having a lot of trouble getting it to work.

first, I can't say I'm a fan of the patching method. I downloaded "Metroid Prime 3 Google Translate Edition 1.0c.zip," and the readme tells me to place files inside a folder that doesn't exist. Specifically, here: "3. Copy/Paste the paks listed above into the "new" folder provided." But there isn't a 'new' folder anywhere.

I ended up looking at the batch script to figure it out and creating a /new/ inside /patch/, and then a /replace/ inside that. I think that's the method, and it seems to work, in the sense that the game boots translated. However, it's not playable. It crashes within the first 10-15 minutes or so of playing. This behavior happens both in Dolphin and on an actual Wii. guess it's just sending me home.

The crashes don't seem tied to anything I do. If I try playing, I can start from a fresh file and get just about through the security scan on the Olympus before my Wii crashes and reboots. I don't even need to do that, really, I can just board the Olympus & wait and it'll crash eventually. It's happened with two versions of the rom, one of which matched the SHA-1 given in this thread (or at least, the rom site said it did. for what its worth, it wouldn't let me download the ISO, just a wbfs instead, which didn't match. i was otherwise unable to find anything that matched).

I did have to split the patched image into two parts because of my usb drive's filesystem limitations (for playing on a Wii), but I tried keeping it as one file at some point, and dolphin still crashed, so I don't think that's it. I'm also tentatively ruling out a bad USB drive or similar issues for the same reason -- it's reproduceable in dolphin.

so yeah. I know it's been a while since this thread was active, but any help would be appreciated. :)

[kkzero]

I'm really excited to play this, but I'm having a lot of trouble getting it to work.

Haha oh boy.

first, I can't say I'm a fan of the patching method. I downloaded "Metroid Prime 3 Google Translate Edition 1.0c.zip," and the readme tells me to place files inside a folder that doesn't exist. Specifically, here: "3. Copy/Paste the paks listed above into the "new" folder provided." But there isn't a 'new' folder anywhere.

Not sure why I only noticed this like right now, but I did have those folders prepared when I was zipping up all the data. I guess Windows Explorer just decided empty folders were useless and didn't include them at all. Sorry about the misleading instruction there.

I ended up looking at the batch script to figure it out and creating a /new/ inside /patch/, and then a /replace/ inside that. I think that's the method, and it seems to work, in the sense that the game boots translated. However, it's not playable. It crashes within the first 10-15 minutes or so of playing. This behavior happens both in Dolphin and on an actual Wii. guess it's just sending me home.

The crashes don't seem tied to anything I do. If I try playing, I can start from a fresh file and get just about through the security scan on the Olympus before my Wii crashes and reboots. I don't even need to do that, really, I can just board the Olympus & wait and it'll crash eventually. It's happened with two versions of the rom, one of which matched the SHA-1 given in this thread (or at least, the rom site said it did. for what its worth, it wouldn't let me download the ISO, just a wbfs instead, which didn't match. i was otherwise unable to find anything that matched).

I've heard reports on crashing like this, and it even happened during a prerelease test run on my own console. Kinda weird it's also happening on Dolphin, though. Streamer JRP2234 played through a bit of it in Dolphin a few months back, and he managed to make it a ways into Elysia before getting some weird error.
Now that I think of it, the curmudgeonly old stable 5.0 build of Dolphin didn't fail me back when I did some testing before release (played up to Ghor that time), but my console did, as I've already mentioned. If the newer and better beta or dev builds are related to the issues, then that's kind of sad. Don't quote me on that though, I'm just rambling there.

I did have to split the patched image into two parts because of my usb drive's filesystem limitations (for playing on a Wii), but I tried keeping it as one file at some point, and dolphin still crashed, so I don't think that's it. I'm also tentatively ruling out a bad USB drive or similar issues for the same reason -- it's reproduceable in dolphin.

Yeah this is weird.

so yeah. I know it's been a while since this thread was active, but any help would be appreciated. :)

Hope my insight was able to help your thinking in some way, because there's only so much I'm able to comprehend when diagnosing this game. Being such a close-to-the-metal Wii game, it can be incredibly finnicky with little mods like these. I'd be hard pressed to find a true solution to this insanity, especially since this is a rather old project of mine, and I've tried not to look at it much anyway because of how convoluted it can end up being.

All I can really say for sure is that this hack is a hit-or-miss experience to get going.

[Vorpal]

Thanks for the help; I was able to get the patch to work. The trick unfortunately did turn out to be playing on Dolphin 5.0. Kinda wish I didn't have to use keyboard controls or the opengl renderer, but oh well.

So yeah, I was able to start from scratch & get through the whole game. Credits rolled a few minutes ago with 100%. JRP was the person who clued me in on this hack, so its a shame he wasn't able to finish, for whatever reason. The lategame is the best part of the game, so it was nice to see it.

As I was going through, I saved a bunch of screenshots of my favorite lines. Make sure you protect your security access from high frequency bee guns, everyone. Might try to do something with the screens, but who knows. I definitely enjoyed the updated content, so... thanks for a fun time :)