L.S.F. English Project

I'm glad to announce that we have over come a big technical difficultiy in craking the game. Now all the pointers to the messages to be displayed have been positioned, which means I can rebuild the whole message file and reindex it, and of coure free to change its contents regardless of the script system of the game.

I'll settle down to a message editor for the game as my next step, and there'll be no news on cracking before I finish that.

How can I make the players to understand the character, even though they don't have a basic idea of the Chinese kong-fu system? That's a big problem to solve before the translation to start.

Luckily, I found a way. It's to compare the Chinese kong-fu system with the western AD&D system. I take Diablo as an example this time. Here are the classes and the skills of the four main characters.

The hero in the game, Li Xiaoyao, is a swordman without question. Swordmen in Chinese kungfu share a lot with paladins in D&D, but also differ from paladins in many aspects. He uses the swordmanship as the skill of physical attacking. And he can use some summon skills, too. Some sword-related things can be summoned by him.

The heroine No.1, Zhao Ling'er, should be classified as a sorceress.  She can use all kinds of spells, charms, curses and some holy summons. She's a good helper to Li.

Another heroine Lin Yueru is more like a rogue with lots of remote attcking skills. But she don't use the corporeal bows and arrows as her remote weapons. A special thing in Chinese kong-fu, Chi (vigor or something, Qi in Chinese is alright, too), is a replacement and flying daggers is another.

The third girl Anu uses the characteristic Druid's skills -- she can summon the lives. She can summon the poisonous insects like bees as helpers to attack the enemy. And she's also good at feeding poisonous insects and refining the poisons from them, for she's a girl from the Miao minority's land, which is a naturalistic minority.

Well, that's all for the classification and the skills of the chracters. Although they're represented in a AD&D form, but please remember, they're all kong-fu things. I hope it would be helpful for you to understand the Chinese kong-fu system.

The reverse-engineering ( I'd rather say cracking ) of the game can not be done by one person. There're groups of people interesting in cracking it, to reach the final goal of taking over control of the game.

The most important part is the cracking of the script system. If I want change the words in game freely, I have to get a general idea of its script system. But the progress is slow. Althought the script file has been unpacked from the package file and the meanings of some (hexadecimal coded) instructions has been figured out, I still don't know what would happen if I add or delete instructions from the file. Maybe something like jumping instructions or more will be affected.

It'll take us a long time getting to know the meanings of all the instructions, and what other parts of the game will be affcted if the length of the script files is changes. Before that, I'll how the characters and the kong-fu they use should be annotated to the western gamers, in compareson with the game Diablo.

The Chinese Love Story (it reads Xian Jian Qi Xia Zhuan in Chinese, PAL or CLS for short) is the utmostly succesful Chinese kong-fu game thus far. Since the day its first edition was realeased, it has always be the ever-victor in all kinds of rankings and competitions of games. It's a legend, not a pure game, a legend of the game.

The CLS tells of a love story of one boy and three girls, and of course with the ancient Chinese kong-fu world as its background. Li Xiaoyao, the hero of the game, once lived in a small village with his aunt and led an ordinary life. One day, his aunt was suddenly ill and the doctors found no cure for her disease. Being helpless, Li set out for the elixir by the guide of a local tale. And then on his way of searching, Li met a extraordinary girl with the possession of the elixir,  who helped to cure his aunt then. But in fact the girl , Zhao Ling'er as her name, was the exiled princess from the Miao land -- a territory in southwest China where the Miao minority lived . Soon the killers were sent from Miao, and Li and Zhao were forced to adventure of finding Zhao's parents.

The first edtion of the CLS was release in the year of 1995, which was a DOS-based game. And now the game has become a big series and has many editions. This project is based on the 95/98 edition of the game, which is a duplication of the DOS edtion but runing under the Win32 systems. Maybe its graphic performance isn't up to date, but it is the only disadvantage of the game in a modern view. After you dip into its story line, its msuic and its game system, you'll love it. That is my certainly.

I feel honored to start this translation project, although no one has honored me to do so. I also know that there will be enumerous difficulties on the road ahead, both technical and literal, but I believe that the project will come to a good ending.

I think most English-speaking people don't understand the Chinese cultrue well, hence have difficultie in understanding the Chinese kong-fu (wushu, or martial art) Cultrue. But there must be some way to make it understood by everyone.

This project has two steps involved: the reverse-engineering of the game, and the translation of the literal part of them.

Some introduce to the game will be posted up soon.