| Dragon Quest Monsters: Caravan Heart | |
|---|---|
 | |
| General | |
| Author | KaioShin |
| Type | Translations |
| Version | 1.0 |
| License | Mixed |
| Last Updated | 2015/12/05 |
| Links | |
| Download | |
| Website | |
This is a complete English translation patch for Dragon Quest Monsters: Caravan Heart. This was a work of dedication and passion by the translation team, who worked on this project for over 2 years of time. The aim is to delivered a quality translation that doesn't need to hide behind commercial translations.
Installation
| Game information | |
|---|---|
| Japanese title | ドラゴンクエストモンスターズ キャラバンハート |
| Aliases | Doragon Kuesuto Monsutazu Kyaraban Hato |
| English title | Dragon Quest Monsters - Caravan Heart |
| ROM information | |
| File | Dragon Quest Monsters - Caravan Heart (Japan).gba - NOINTRO |
| CRC32 | 3C24ABCC |
| MD5 | FC6A66C32B91FA0E526AE7782F29E86A |
| SHA-1 | 430A7062844888E68BD5587ED53A769BA548ADB3 |
| SHA-256 | FB388539B95FDAF6009BAD879E9BBB25955DAF8D4D438486A9213D407B2B48CE |
The translation is being distributed as an IPS patch. You can apply it to a clean ROM image of the game with an IPS patcher like Lunar IPS.
User guide
About the game
Dragon Quest Monsters: Caravan Heart is the third installment in the well known Dragon Quest Monsters series. At the time of this translation's release, it's the only game in the Monsters series that didn't get an official English localization.
Caravan Heart was the very last game published by Enix themselves, right before they merged with Squaresoft. It's assumed that the game never saw an English release due to the company's restructuring at that time.
Announced in 2002 simultaneously with Dragon Quest VIII, it acts as a sort of prequel to Dragon Quest VII. The game follows Prince Kiefer on a grand adventure in which he becomes the leader of a caravan.
Unlike the previous Dragon Quest Monsters games, the game isn't entirely focused on monsters alone. The caravan is also filled with several human party members, which will aid you in your quest. There are 22 different character classes, with completely different abilities. Together with your guard monsters, the game offers for a practically endless variety of possible strategies and formations.
The monster breeding of the previous game was reworked into monster reformations this time. Instead of breeding new monsters you collect hearts of defeated monsters and combine them to reform your monsters into new forms. The system offers a great deal of freedom for experimentation and collecting.
With nice graphics and a classical Dragon Quest soundtrack the game offers everything a Dragon Quest fan could wish for. Caravan Heart has a lengthy main quest that will keep you busy for at least 30-40 hours. After that you'll be treated to a whole new quest in which you can easily spend over 200 hours and more.
Translation notes
There have been so many changes to the Dragon Quest series throughout the years that everybody has a different opinion about what is the "right" way to go about translating it. When Dragon Quest was first introduced in America as "Dragon Warrior," it was full of medieval "thou hast's" and "would'st thou's"; then it changed to standard American English, and lately it has changed to British English.
We all saw monster names changed as Drakees became Drackys; Red Slimes became She Slimes (not in this version, though) So the question arose - what standard should be used for this translation?
The answer came from the story of the game itself. It blends the old with the new - The translation does the same. Many of the names will be familiar to fans of previous English releases from the Dragon Quest Monsters games. Certain other elements of the new style can be seen as well. There are also some unique terms and names that haven't been seen before. The dialog is written in standard American English.
FAQ
Q. How did you choose the monster names?
As with every Dragon Quest translation, many people will surely make a great fit over monster naming. Since the game was the last by Enix, we wanted it to have the feel of a classic Dragon Quest game. The monster names are therefore based on the ones used in the first 2 Dragon Quest Monsters games.
Where names had been very obviously shortened due to space constraints (you will see Bubble Slimes and not a Babbles). The names are not open for debate. If they are a big issue for you, end your pain by jumping off the next tall bridge.
Q. The Text Speed Option is broken!
No, it isn't. It doesn't affect the normal dialogs, what it adjusts is the speed with which the battle messages scroll automatically. If you set it to 8, the game will wait for a button press before it shows the next message every time.
Q. I found a typo/grammar error.
While 99.99% were tested, it happens. The game is huge and full of randomness.
Q. I found a place were the dialog window wouldn't disappear after the dialog was finished.
Yeah, there are two places in the game with this error. It's from the original game. It seems unnecessary to decipher the whole event code just for these two boxes.
Q. There was some text flickering on the skill selection screen.
This can happen but can't be certain about how rare/common this issue really is. The VWF code is too slow in these situations, since the game redraws the whole text in VRAM on every single frame. The flickering occurs when the game can't finish drawing one frame when the next comes up. The VWF code was optimised extremely well, due to the way the game works and no further improvements can be made. It is to assume this issue is pretty rare. It might be fixed in a later revision of the patch if a new solution is found.
Q. Luin's hair changes to black when I enter certain areas.
This glitch is present in the original game.
Screenshots
Compatibility
If you're going to play this translation on an emulator, no$GBA is recommeneded (you will need GBA BIOS image).
VBA version 1.8.0beta or newer should run the game as well, but it's not tested. Earlier versions will have timing problems that might result in glitches during the game (for example a flickering world map).
The game has been tested on real GBA hardware too and runs fine. Depending on your flashcart you might run into flickering on the world map though (it appears to be related to the flash card's speed). The translation has been tested and confirmed to work flawlessly with an EZ-Flash V 3in1 Expansion Pack.
Credits
Project History (Timeline):
- March 2006 - Project started.
- May 2006 - Script dumped.
- June 2006 - Tom joins the project. Translation starts.
- July 2006 - Script translation completed.
- October 2006 - New website.
- January 2007 - VWF code working.
- December 2007 - Kingcom joins the project. Formatting completed. Script inserted.
- January 2008 - Menu hacking completed. Beta testing started.
- March 2008 - Project completion.
Translation team:
- Project Lead - KaioShin
- Hacking - KaioShin, Kingcom.
- Translation - Tom.
- Special Thanks - Djinn, Martin Korth.
- Beta Testing staff - Neil, Crysta, Pennywise, Aerdan, Simpleton, I.S.T., Djinn.
Thanks to D, FlashPV, Gemini, labmaster, Nightcrawler, psxAuthor , Ryusui, ReBirFh, sunwukong, The #ROMHacking.net channel.
External links
- Romhacking.net - http://kaioshin.romhacking.net