Welcome!

This is a blog that we use to post news on our translation of "Ripened Tingle's Balloon Trip of Love". For those who don't know, it is a sequel to Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland. Rupeeland was released in English, but Balloon Trip of Love wasn't.

This is an unofficial fan project. We are in no way affiliated with Nintendo or Vanpool, and are doing this completely for free.

Sunday, July 31, 2016

It's been 4 years already?!

Yep, that's right! It's been four years since the Tingle's Balloon Trip translation project began! I'd like to take a little time to put things in perspective and explain what happened over those 4 years, and then I'll deliver that progress update that I promised in my last post.
I started working on this on July 31st, 2012. At that time it was all about laying the technical groundwork for the translation. Around January 2013, yellow (known as ytdash here) joined me and we made a lot of progress with the graphics and text. 

This went on for about a year, with no actual translation being done, save for the intro and title screen. However, due to severe technical limitations, the text had to be condensed and the title couldn't be inserted into the game. (Some may recall this from the video posted a few years ago by ytdash).
This changed in February 2014, when DarthNemesis, a member of GBAtemp, coded us a text editor for the game. This program made editing the text as simple as editing a .txt file. Shortly after DaVince joined and translated the first page of the game. 

Progress was slow over the next few months, as both me and DaVince were busy frequently and couldn't work on the translation as often. This changed later that year in August, when waldrumpus joined. Having written a walkthrough for the game before, waldrumpus was very familiar with the game and quickly began to make progress in the script. 

Throughout 2015, I was able to figure out the games graphics system, and could now edit ingame graphics. So, me and ytdash began to work on translating the graphical text in the game. 

Finally, in July 2016, zell0s joined us as a graphics editor, helping to speed up the progress on that side even more.


So that's it, it's certainly been a while. But how much longer will it be?
I'm happy to announce that the patch is projected to be released within the next year! The script is nearing completion, and the graphics should be done in the next few months. Then there's just proofreading and beta testing, (which may or may not be public, we haven't decided). 

That's just an estimate though, please don't be disappointed if it takes a little longer ;)

Until next time!

13 comments:

  1. It's good to get signs of life every now and then. Keep up the good work, I'm still hoping to be able to play this game in English someday, that's what I had in mind when I bought it initially.

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    1. Thanks, it really means a lot when people like you follow this and comment often :)

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  2. Thanks a lot for this full report !!!
    Waiting like many others for this patch :)
    Thanks for your work and i wish you the best for the remaining tasks !

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    1. No problem, I figured a summary of the project's history was appropriate considering how long it was taking ;)

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  3. Did the formatting issue get fixed? I remember that in the earliest patches the text l o o k e d l i k e t h i s .
    Not that it's much of a problem, even if it doesn't get fixed. Keep up the good work!

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  4. Great news !
    I have been following U from the start. Thanks for the regular updates , I really appreciate all the work U guys have put into this project.
    Tingles Rosy Rupeeland is one of my Fav. games (so underated), hope this follow up game is similar.

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    1. Thanks!
      Hopefully you will be able to enjoy the work we put in soon ;)

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  5. Excellent news! I have the Japanese game, the guidebook and the complete soundtrack for this, and it's truly a brilliant game, and deserves to be translated. You are doing great work, keep up with it!

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    1. Thanks! And wow, I wasn't aware that there was an official guide book and soundtrack released for the game! I'll have to hunt down the soundtrack sometime :)

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  6. Good news,
    You will reach your goal soon.
    Can't wait to see the patch :D

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  7. This is great news! If it is completed within the next year, that would be perfect timing with all the Zelda hype going on right now. I'm super excited to play this when it's released. Don't stress over it too much. Just take your time because I know it'll be great whenever it's released!

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  8. Been following for maybe 2 or so years now and it's always lovely to see how far this project has come ^_^

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