7th Dragon 2020 for PSP
English Translation Patch v0.91
March 28, 2016

by Geoff Embree

Table of Contents

1. Installation and Disclaimer
2. Translation Notes
3. Technical Notes
4. Credits
5. Version History
6. Tips and Tricks
7. Contact

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1. Installation and Disclaimer
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This is the xdelta version of the patch, meant to be applied using an xdelta patching utility - I use KaoiShin's simple frontend at http://www.romhacking.net/utilities/598/

The binary differential patch is extremely large, due to the compression and encryption of the original game. Using a similar process to that used by the Valkyria Chronicles 3 team, it should be possible to create a smaller executable - however, I was not able to get either the VC3 patcher or my version running on my system. While my decision to use a binary patch will be responsible for the digital massacre of many innocent bits, I can't justify delaying the patch while I attempt to tinker with something I may or may not be able to figure out. 

Anyone who wants to give the current executable patcher a try, or is ambitious enough to try fixing it, can find it at cavespeak.org shortly.

This patch has been tested on PC in PPSSPP. It may run on jpcsp and other platforms, but you're on your own - after the bug fix, it appears to be running without issue on actual hardware.

I'm happy to note that 7th Dragon 2020 is available on the Japanese PSN store, and it's even relatively affordable, so go pick it up before playing! This is a wonderful situation where you can support the publisher directly, rather than buying used and providing no real benefit over piracy. And maybe even more importantly, 7th Dragon III hits North America July 12, so pick that up too!

This translation patch and accompanying works are released under the Creative Commons CC0 Public Domain Dedication. However, while the patch is released as a derivative work of 7th Dragon 2020 under the fair dealing exemption into the public domain, and I waive all of my own rights, the original rights holders for 7th Dragon 2020 retain all rights to 7th Dragon 2020, and virtually any use of this work by anyone else is likely still subject to a determination of fair dealing. I merely mean that the portion original to me is usable without payment, notification, or attribution, by anyone.

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2. Translation Notes
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This translation isn't perfect, but it's better than the 7th Dragon DS job, and if you aren't too discriminating you should have no trouble at all. There are some issues with sloppy font centering and image text cutoffs I didn't want to spend the time to fix, but they should have very minimal impact on your enjoyment of the game. I just had a significant time crunch and felt it best to release the patch when it was perfectly playable.

In general the translation follows the original, although in cases where there wasn't much at all I felt free to embellish - for example, the junk items did not have unique descriptions in Japanese, so I added some flavor text. Lots of things were renamed.

While bits of Japanese text remain in the game, their meaning is generally redundant to English text already on screen. The full-screen splash screens are translated in the corner.

The translation worksheets for this project are a mess, but I still want to release them at some point. They are a good reference for miscellaneous fan purposes and there are a number of deleted quests with a lot of interesting stuff. Just be forewarned that it won't be an easy plug-and-play to create your own translation!

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3. Technical Notes/Known Issues
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7th Dragon 2020 is encrypted and packed, which was a pain to deal with. This is why the patch file is so large. I haven't thoroughly examined 7th Dragon 2020-II, but if it is in a similar format to 7th Dragon 2020, it may be a faster project, although I'm not jumping into it right away!

Text is stored as in the original in a modified Unicode, with three-byte characters (which may represent 2-3 characters due to the visual DTE encoding I used).

There are two known issues, both near the beginning of the game: in emulation, you need to use English Full-width characters in order to get your character names to show up. You can access this character set by pressing the L Button. If you're still having trouble, you may want to update your version of PPSSPP. (Originally, names could not be input on PSP/Vita hardware, but that bug is now fixed.)

The second issue is graphical glitching during a cutscene after the first boss is defeated. (This scene immediately follows the line "Afterward, we'll come and get you. Got it?") It probably won't be noticed by many players, but I wanted to mention it because as far as I know, it's the only time this happens. If you want to know how the scene looks without glitching, you might be able to look up a video and compare the two.

Additionally, scattered throughout the game are some lines that vanish before they can be easily read during autoplay cutscenes, as well as some generally poor centering of certain lines of pop-up text. If you screenshot or describe these, I'll try to fix them, but they shouldn't significantly impact your enjoyment and I'm not going to worry about them on my own.
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4. Credits
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Special thanks to my wife for tolerating many, many hours of this nonsense.

Thanks to ChepChep and Ignis for being really swell and letting me handle this at my own pace in my own persnickety way. ChepChep also contributed some helpful initial research on the file structures and helped report the text entry bug.

Thanks to Scorp at GBAtemp for walking me through the patcher process, as well as the Valkyria Chronicles III fan translation team - the executable patcher is essentially a copy of theirs and relies on their hard work. And thanks to Josh MacDonald for the xdelta patching framework, which made the binary patch slightly less awful than it would have been otherwise.

Finally, without PPSSPP, and its debugger, this project would have been impossible. Thanks to everyone on the team, in particular Kingcom who contributed mightily to the improved debugger but also to everyone else, major and minor helpers alike.

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5. Version History
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0.91: What's In A Name (Unicode)
Second release 3/30/2016. Minor fix editing the text entry box on hardware to properly use full-width Latin characters (which the patch manually applies VWF to). Players on PSP/Vita can now enter actual names for their characters. Will not make a difference in emulation; players using PPSSPP should continue to hit L to access this character set and there is no need to update. Thanks to Mr. Boombastic for help testing this fix.

0.90: March Fool's
Initial release 3/28/2016. Not tested as thoroughly as I would like, because it's a long game, but it's good enough to ship. I would treat this as an open beta; feel free to wait a week to see if any significant kinks remain.

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6. Contact
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You can send questions or comments on the patch or anything else through the "Ask" function to my website cavespeak.org (which is just Tumblr "pokeytax"). I also have the Twitter account @pokeytax. I may not reply due to volume but I try to read everything.

To be honest, while I appreciate all feedback, thank-you notes tend to run together after a while. So feel free just to join in discussion of the game online. I'll probably find it at some point, and I appreciate both positive and critical comments.