More hidden documents on the PD2 disc

Panzer Dragoon
1

A while ago I posted about the differences between the Japanese and non-Japanese versions of PD1, one of which was the readme.doc file that was hidden away on the Japanese game disc. For anyone who wasn’t around, the document was basically a post-production message from Team Andromeda, with thoughts and commentary on the game’s development. Someone (I think Raizen) revealed that there was a similar document on the Japanese PD2 disc as well, called readme.txt.

I didn’t actually have a Japanese copy of PD2 at the time, and I hadn’t got around to looking at the disc myself until now. It turns out that in addition to the readme.txt file, there are another two documents on the PD2 disc: omake.txt and world.txt.

I took the liberty of ramming world.txt through Babelfish, and it seems to be a pretty comprehensive description of the Panzer Dragoon world, much like Panzer Dragoon Orta’s in-game encyclopaedia. It looks like it goes into a bit more depth on some things we only vaguely know about, like the background of the Empire / Meccania war, and it also confirms some things that us Westerners didn’t find out until much later (e.g. that Lundi’s full name was indeed Jean-Jacques Lundi, and that he was meant to be a mere 14 years old.)

Here’s Babelfish’s poor translation of world.txt

Anyhow, a couple of questions struck me while reading the “translated” text for this document:

  1. Does it refer to the Panzer Dragoon world as “a distant star”, or is that just Babelfish getting poetic and confusing things?

  2. Does it say that the Ancient Age only ended 1,000 years before the games took place? If so, the 10,000 years mentioned in Panzer Dragoon Orta must have been a small continuity slip…

Oh, and omake.txt appears to contain detailed info on how scoring works in the game, info on what some of the hidden features do, and other technical-gameplay stuff along those lines. Anyway, for anyone who wants them, here’s the original documents:

PD1’s readme.doc (converted to plain text)
PD2’s readme.txt
PD2’s omake.txt
PD2’s world.txt

2

1 - Maybe by star it means a solar system or something.But it does seem like weird…

2- Probably 1000 was supose to mean thousand (as in thousands of years) and babelfish just translated as “one thousand”.

Thanks for this Lance.I’ll have to read all the texts in deatil later.

3

“A forsaken World on the Edge of the Galaxy…” :anjou_happy:

It says “somewhere on a distant star” (in japanese star sounds more poetic, but of course it means a planet close to that star. btw, “Planet” is written with two kanji of which the second is the same character as for star)

It also says “1000 nen mae” which literally means “1000 years ago”, I doubt there is another meaning for this.

4

i love it when things like this are found =)

good work

5

If the ‘War of the Ancients’ only happened 1000 years ago, they and their technology would not be considered ‘Ancient’ - 1000 years is not a very long time at all.

Plus the devastation of the planet would have taken alot longer to recover from - and the mutation of the monsters would have taken alot longer as well; 10,000 years is definitely more accurate.

6

Awesome work finding this Lance- it is like you are excavating the ruins …

7

Thanks for the translation LC, it’s nice to be able to confirm these details about the storyline, even if they are coming quite late for us Westerners. :slight_smile:

Gehn, (for when you get back from that holiday,) the number 1,000 is just written in numerals in the document, so the number itself isn’t open to translation problems; I was only unsure of what exactly it was referring to.

About Kadamose’s points: I was actually pretty surprised about the 1,000 year thing too, but after thinking about it a bit it doesn’t seem as strange as it might initially. For one thing, the terms “Ancient” and “Ancient Age” are the names that the English PDS translators settled on, so they may not be the most literally accurate renderings of the Japanese words. Of course, I’d prefer a second opinion on this from a Japanese speaker though… I’ve just noticed that whenever I run anything like this through Babelfish, it always translates “Ancient Age” as “Old Century”, and although Ancient Age arguably just sounds better in English, it might imply that the age happened longer ago than it was meant to have.

On the other hand, from a storyline perspective, the term “Ancient Age” would have to be a name retroactively made up by the people who live in the PD world at present - and of course, they’re meant to be quite ignorant of the Ancient Age’s true nature, so while they mistakenly refer to the Ancients as “gods”, they might also mistakenly call one thousand years ago an “ancient” time. Well, that’s one possible loophole, anyway.

I have to disagree about the planet not having time to recover from whatever was done to it though, as the games don’t tell us enough about what happened to the world (or how potent the Towers were at repairing it) for that to be a problem in my opinion, and after all, the PD world is still in pretty bad shape. The issue of the mutated monsters did strike me straight away though, as we do see a huge number of wildly different species in the series, all of which seem to have come a long way from their pure-type origins; and a thousand years is a much shorter time for that evolution and adaptation to take place.

However, in reality, ten thousand years of Darwin-style adaptation would not be enough time for those monsters to change so much either: hundreds of thousands or millions of years would be required for that much diversity, as far as I’m aware. For the storyline to make sense either way then, we’d just have to assume that the monsters have volatile genetics that are extremely prone to mutation; PDO’s encyclopaedia actually describes the gene-mutation as something that spreads between pure-types like a virus, which implies that something other than normal evolution is taking place. In this case then, 1,000 years would be as good as 10,000 with the premise that’s been set up.

8

You know Lance, it’s always possible that the pure type monsters were designed to de-evolve as a contingency plan should the Towers ever stop functioning. That way, they could still keep the human population under control. Of course, the ancients would then have no control over those monsters themselves and risk exterminating humanity.

What I’d love to know is if the pure type monsters viewed the mutated monsters as a similar threat to human beings, and kept them under control accordingly, too.

That’s something you might find enjoyable to write about.

9

Well, that was a topic I broached as part of my “War Without End” Theory. One of the things I postulated that the Ancients might have designed the pure-types to be gradually self-decommissioning and so integrated into the natural ecology as the world became restored and the pure-types became superfluous. I came to dismiss that because the world is still far from secure, and mutants have harried the world since time immemorial when the planet was in an even worse state. You’d also imagine that the Ancients would have made the mutants less dangerous! Abadd also refers to the Els-Enora (Episode V Orta boss) contemptuously as a “simple creature”, and seeing as he’s a Drone you’d expect him to be more deferential (and not shoot on sight, for that matter), if the mutants were part of the Ancients’ plans. The mutants, then, are certainly an aberration.

The pure-types also seem to consider the mutants an impurity and threat to ecological balance as much as they do humans - the Goriah that Kyle chases into the factory in Eins is killed with as much prejudice as is meted out to any other crature.

10

It all sounds curiously like Asimov’s “I, Robot”.

You know, V.I.K.I.s evolution of the First Law and all that.

11

Ah yes, that had slipped my mind. I just wonder if pure type creatures go out of their way to supress the mutated monsters as much as they do human beings (as in keep them to a minimum). That’s something Sega should explore more thoroughly in the next game (if there ever is one).

12

The “trigger genes” mentioned in PD Orta might have been introduced in the ecosystem by the rebel faction in the Ancient Age. As mentioned in PD Orta, creatures that carry the trigger genes will affect other pure-type creatures, who would then fight each other. That would be an effective way of weakening the Ancients’ defences. The Heresy dragon may have been created in a similar way (a program created by the Ancients that was then infected with some sort of virus).

13

Would anybody be interested if I started to translate these properly?

14

I think we all would be. :anjou_happy:

15

If you’re able to, then absolutely; I don’t think there are any other posters here at the moment who’d have the ability or the time to take on a full translation, so they’ll likely sit around untranslated indefinitely otherwise. If you do manage to get any of them done, I’m sure your translations could be hosted permanently on panzerdragoon.net if you’d like them to be…

16

That’s good then, as I started doing the PD2 “omake” file last night! :anjou_love:

17

Completed translation of PD2 “omake” file - I apologise for the “rawness” of the translation, but I haven’t had much time to polish it and I didn’t wish to stray too far from the original text. Please tell me what you think!

Complete Translation of Panzer Dragoon 2 ?omake? text by Kimimi

(Warning) It is prohibited to make a reproduction of this article

Bonus section 1 About the strength of your equipment

In fact, this game can be played with a Mission Stick or Shuttle Mouse
(To tell the truth, even with ****).

It can be especially convenient to use the mouse too. Maybe it is better than the pad, don?t you think?
For your convenience, these are the mouse controller settings

A: View Change (Left)
B: Shot
C View Change (Right)
X: Berserk

It does get better, too. When you press A and C at the same time, it recognises it as X, and berserk mode is activated (this is because of the lack of buttons).
By all means try the mouse, it?s good, don?t you think?
It may take time for a person to appreciate it (do you think that?s a lie, too?)

					Programmer Yasukamone

Bonus section 2 About Screen indicator FULL mode

Summary
When the option screen Screen indicator mode (INSTRUMENT MODE) is set to FULL the following information is displayed

  1. Score
  2. Boss Time
  3. Direction of danger
  4. Knowledge of forks in the route

About scoring
Please refer to Bonus section 3.

About boss time
Simultaneous when the battle with the boss starts, the countdown starts also.
To get maximum points you must do your best so that the time stays above 60 seconds.
Bonus section 3 has more detailed information.

About direction of danger
The on screen radar will change to display yellow and red zones now.
The strength and numbers of the enemy are judged automatically, with the radar divided into four areas which change colour in response to the danger. Quick reaction to the direction of the enemy interference will be useful.

Knowledge of forked routes
When passing the position of a fork, that path is displayed so that you have the knowledge to locate that route. ?Route 1? is displayed on screen next to the score. ?Route 1? is the standard route, to get the route bonus you should not concern yourself with this route. Please use this guide to get the highest points.

						Unkopurii Yori

Bonus section 3 About scoring
About ADEC SYSTEM
This is an outline of the Automatic Dragon and Enemy Control SYSTEM. In other words, if a good person is having difficulty the system will adjust itself.

Normal score calculation
Normal shot, lock on laser, berserk laser drop, score calculation is increased.

NORMAL SHOT SCORE = (Enemy strength value) x (shot rate =2) x 10
LOCK ON LASER SCORE = (Enemy strength value) x (number of simultaneous lock ons) x 10
BERSERK LASER = (Enemy strength value) x (berserk magnification=1) x 10

Boss time bonus
Bonus points are awarded for boss battle time. The countdown varies for each boss, with the remaining seconds x100 as the standard points. Except in cases where there are more than 60 seconds remaining then 10000 bonus points are awarded as well as the standard points. And, the degree of difficulty also contributes to the boss time bonus. (1)

Boss time less than 60 seconds
BOSS TIME BONUS = (boss time remaining (seconds)) x 100 x (Difficulty)

Boss time more than 60 seconds remaining
BOSS TIME BONUS =10000 x (Difficulty)

Boss time bonus beginning value
EP2 150[sec] x 30[frame/sec] = 4500[frame]
EP3 120[sec] x 30[frame/sec] = 3600[frame]
EP4 180[sec] x 30[frame/sec] = 5400[frame]
EP5 150[sec] x 30[frame/sec] = 4500[frame]
EP6 100[sec] x 30[frame/sec] = 3000[frame]
EP7-1 180[sec] x 30[frame/sec] = 5400[frame]
EP7-2 120[sec] x 30[frame/sec] = 3600[frame]

Difficulty
SUPER HARD rank=5 x 3
HARD rank=4 x 3
NORMAL rank=3 x 2
EASY rank=2 x 2
SUPER EASY rank=1 x 1
ULTRA EASY rank=0 x 1

Hidden bonus
Each route has a hidden bonus. Score is multiplied by the degree of difficulty. Please try to search for these.

						Programmer  Shin

Notes-
(1) I could not get this sentence to work for the life of me! I?d love some suggestions for it :slight_smile:

Boring bits…
The original Japanese text is copyright Sega/Team Andromeda, I merely translated it into English.
This document may not appear anywhere except
www.panzerdragoon.net
This English translation is entirely my own work, please don?t pass it of as your own.
I?d love to hear any constructive comments on this, or if you have any other questions, please feel free to email me ? kimimi_ffxi(at)hotmail(dot)com

18

Cool, thanks for that Kimimi; apparently Solo’s going to do a site update at some point in the next few days, so I’ll make sure he knows about this (if he hasn’t seen the thread already). I see what you mean about it being a bit raw in places, but it’s massively more readable and comprehensible than the autotranslation I did when I first found these documents, and a lot more helpful. Some random thoughts from reading it:

  1. I’d forgotten the Saturn even had a mouse. o_O I don’t think either that or the Mission Stick were released over here, but if the game was designed to be compatible with analogue input devices like the mouse, it might explain why it works with the Saturn’s analogue control pad (which wasn’t released until some time after PD2).

  2. About the “hidden bonuses”: I’d noticed that doing certain things in certain levels earns you a chunky score bonus that pops up in big pink numbers, but I didn’t realise there was meant to be one of these on every route; I think I’ll see if I can find them all…

  3. About the three names listed in the document: I’m sure “Programmer Shin” must be Shin Futakawame, but I could’t place the other two names (Yasukamone and Unkopurii Yori) in the PD2 credits list; a transcription of it can be found here if you’d like to have a look yourself. Maybe just an issue of rendering Japanese names into English spellings? I’ve noticed that “official” English-language credits often render the same names a bit differently from one game to the next…

  4. If you’re thinking of translating more, I’d personally be interested to see the “world” document next, but of course I’d be interested to see any of this stuff really. :anjou_happy: Tackle whatever you feel like…

19

Yeah it’s tough to balance out being true to the original source while still keeping it readable in English. I could have gone down the more natural rewrite route, but that would’ve meant the text was more my own, rather than keeping it as a straight translation.

Yeah the Sautrn has a mouse! I bought mine for Sakura Taisen, but I’ll have to dust off my UK Saturn and see if it’ll work with my PAL PD2 now :anjou_happy:

Japanese names will be the death of me… the characters used can have anything up to about 30 meanings each, and the way to pronounce them is purely down to the name of that person, so there isn’t any real way of second guessing them. I’m not certain of the name translations I gave, they’re just straight romanisations of what was written in the text. :anjou_sigh:

Ok then, world document it is! Please bear in mind I have boxes to pack for house moving so it won’t be as quick - if anyone is interested I’ll post updates of how it’s going with anything interesting I find in it.

EDIT: I’m so ditzy! I forgot to say thank you for offering to bring this to Solo Wings attention for me, so…
Thank you very much! :anjou_love:
FINAL EDIT I PROMISE: “unkopurii” could possibly be a bad Japanese version of “uncomplete” they like to screw around with words, those crazy people.

20

That’s awesome, thanks for the translation. I had no idea PDZ worked with the mouse, I’m sure the controls felt pretty intuitive using that (be sure to let us know when you try it out)!

Looking forward to the next translation :slight_smile: