Last Shout - Posted by: Bernie - Sep. 09, 2020, 04:40:16 PM
WTF is up NW?!!!! ;D
About
NightWolve's Details
Age: 37
Height: 5′10.5″
Party Affiliation: GOP/[Reagan] Republican, naturally
Education: College, Bachelor’s in Computer Science from Northeastern Illinois University - Class of 1998
Hobbies: Programming: PHP, Perl, VB, C/C++, Java/JavaScript, HTML, etc.; Internet; Videogames: PC Engine/TG-16, Playstation1/2, Windows PC; Construction; Home Improvement; Automotive/Car Repair; movies, etc. All I can think of for now.
Trade/Occupation: Programmer/Software Engineer. With my first job fresh out of the university, I started out in the IT industry working on some Internet ActiveX controls written in Visual Basic that were to be important components for a product named Quicksite, by Primecom. QuickSite was targeted to all levels of users so that they can quickly produce professional-looking Web sites. The product featured a library of customizable, predesigned Web site templates to enable small businesses to create commerce-ready sites. One of my components was for FTP'ing all HTML and image files to the server that would host the customer's site when ready and the other was to dynamically build a product selection page, a Product Wizard, if you will, where the customer would provide images, prices, descriptions, etc. for everything they wanted to sell. Also, I maintained and enhanced Primecom's shopping cart software written in "C" that ran on a Unix box. That was a long time ago and I don't know what PrimeCom's founder is up to nor how well they did with this product. It looks like the last version was discontinued. Anyway, for another customer, I maintained and created new dynamic/database-driven pages with Crystal Reports software for a real-time financial system.

With my second job, I really got a feel for what it was to be a programmer... Just complete chaos with a company not very well organized when it came to project planning, organizing tasks, etc. It was "just do it." Not that that wasn't the same problem with my first company.

So anyhow, there, I did many many things as it was basically expected of you to become a jack of all trades and master of some. I did plenty of installer creations for their Windows applications (typically written in Visual Basic 5, then up'ed to VB6 when that came out) using InstallShield 5.5. I maintained several Visual Basic applications that were front-ends to MS Access databases. This company mainly published bank directories. Before the Internet and desktop computers became big, they only published big books, just like the yellow pages. But with the computer and the Internet, they wanted to take their bank directory data online as well as offline with CD-ROM products. That's what the IT department that I worked in handled - Creating electronic bank directories rather than paper form... You know, click on a search page, type in Chicago, and get a list of all the banks in Chicago. Pick one, then get all the financial info, the address, contact phone numbers, branch office locations, etc. Blah blah, you get the idea.

So for the offline CD-ROM products, I worked with VB6 and Installshield 5.5. On rare occasions, I used Visual C++ to compensate for something that couldn't be done in InstallShield to enhance the setup wizard. For the online products, that was where the real trouble was. I had to learn and use several technologies and platforms. I worked with Oracle 8i, Solaris 2.6/7 boxes, Netscape Enterprise Server, Server-Side JavaScript, Microsoft ASAP pages, since they also had IIS servers for the internal intranet site, Perl scripting, Korn scripting occasionally, and later on, JAVA when they moved away from old Netscape technologies like SSJS. Oh boy, I said a handful there. Well, I'll try to tidy this up as time goes by. But basically, that's where most of my talents were forged. I learned quite a bit there, but it did burn me out in the end. Onward to the future I say!
Favorite Games: Xenogears, FFIV, FFVI, FFVIII, FFX, Ys Book I&II, Chrono Trigger, Terranigma, Metal Gear Solid series, ICO, Resident Evil series, and what the hell, props to the old NES Mike Tyson’s Punch Out. I’ll think of more to add here as well. :
Favorite Bands: The Police, Depeche Mode, Duran Duran, Collective Soul, Live, Cardigans, AB Logic. (Yes, I know I’m out of date here too. I’ve lost the will to seek out new music, what can I say…)
Favorite Radio Hosts: Rush Limbaugh (aka Maha Rushi or El Rushbo), Sean Hannity, Mark - the Great One - Levin, and last but not least, Matt Drudge. Now you can say, "OH. MY. GAAAWWWD. So THAT'S where NightWolve gets his crazzzzy political views! I knew it!"
Recent Book Reads:
  • Animal Farm, by George Orwell
  • 1984, also by George Orwell
  • Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right, by the fabulous Ann Coulter
  • Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism, also by Ann Coulter
  • Who's Looking Out for You, by Bill O'Reilly
  • Persecution: How Liberals are Waging War Against Christianity, by David Limbaugh
  • The Savage Nation, by Michael Savage

Alrighty, so let’s do as much of a compressed bio as possible on how I got into this fan translation gig of mine, shall we? Where to begin… Let’s see, ’round late 2001 (early November), I started to toy around with the idea of doing fan translation projects for the PC Engine/TG-16 console system! Why did I choose this? What happened in my life to lead me down this road? Well, for one thing, I had lost my job and remained out of work. In my free time exploring the net, I had become influenced by fan translation activity after discovering English patches for SNES games like FF5, so I thought, hey, it’d be cool to join the club, too! Thus began my long march to make my own mark in this area.

Tenchi-no-ryu, by then, had shown me the ropes around a group known as R.I.G.G. (Retro ISO Gaming Guild, which was similar to "Home of the Underdogs" but for PC Engine/TG-16 CD games) that he was in charge of, and since I was pretty depressed after 9-11, jobless, and wanted something to do to take my mind off of it, I decided to test my programming skills in a way I never had before… Given how neglected the PC Engine HE System (TG-16/Turbo Duo) was compared to the SNES as far as the many many groups doing fan translations for it, I saw I had the opportunity to fill a vaccuum, thus become the first to create a translation patch for a full CD-ROM game! This prospect was quite appealing to me to say the least.

One of the very first PC Engine Action-RPG CD-ROM titles I began to experiment with was, “The Legend of Xanadu,” by Falcom. I was very fond of Falcom since my boyhood having had the wonderful opportunity to play Ys Book I & II when I bought my Turbo Duo back in 1993. Anyway, after about a month, I would conclude that the project wasn’t feasible given font and spacing issues present and my lack of PCE assembly knowledge to do anything about it, but it did allow me to build up an AccessXP-based translation editor tool (which I like to call Translation Station) that I use to this day, so it did serve as a foundation for my future project endeavours at least.

Soon after, thanks to Tenchi-no-ryu, I ran into another PC Engine Action-RPG CD-ROM game, “Xak III: The Eternal Recurrence,” and amazingly found that this title was virtually ready for a US localization from a technical standpoint. I mean, it had full English 8×16 font support already built-in and plenty of string space coupled with easy pointer adjustment. It was a sure thing to get the PCE CD translation scene going with this game… Suffice to say, after a lot of hard work by myself and the translators I came in touch with, I finally succeeded in releasing an English patch for it, first on October 08, 2002, and then with later tweaked revisions down the road. Thus, I was proud to be one of the very first to venture into this arena and I leave behind a visionary legacy if I do say so myself. :) Mwahahahaha…

Enter the PC arena… How did I wind up moving away from fan translation projects for the PC Engine in favor of the Windows PC platform instead??? A few more things occured in my travels for this to have happened. I’ll underscore the two main occurrences that come to mind. Tenchi-no-ryu (Steve Harris), once again, played a major role. I see now how his involvement with RPGFan was where he was getting his influence. Anyway, the turning point was when he had introduced me and others to a Japanese import game, “Ys I & II Complete,” for the Windows PC platform… I never would’ve known about the Japanese PC import scene if it wasn’t for him, and as soon as I played this version of Ys on the PC, I knew my mission in life would be to translate and bring it to the US shores!!

The second thing that played a role was related to increasing the needed knowledge/skills to even be able to boldly pursue such projects in the first place. As it turns out, there was an already existing project for “Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys…” (I wasn’t the only one with bright ideas about fan-translating PC Engine CD-ROM games at the time.) At any rate, to say that this game was the holy grail to PC Engine/TG-16 fans the world over would be an understatement! An English patch for it would be an amazing accomplishment and would surely be well received! Now, the only man capable of making it happen was Neill Corlett (known for the SNES SD3 patch!). Fortunately, Akimaru, whom I met through R.I.G.G. and was responsible for having begun the project in the first place, knew and later introduced me to Neill to help get the project going again. It was stalled at that point for various reasons, both technical and real life issues apparently. So, at this point, I had established contact with someone VERY experienced due to the pursuit of a PC Engine project I wanted to see succeed. Anyhow, while chatting with him one day and mentioning my project plans for Ys I&II Complete, he introduced me to IDA Pro - a very powerful disassembler tool… This tool is beyond mortal comprehension to say the least and allows a regular ole human to accomplish great feats in reprogramming Windows executables… With IDA Pro at hand, I was well on my way to fan-translating for the PC platform with ease. Who could resist with all the Falcom goodies being released for the PC after all!

Thus, chance meetings, world changing events, gaining the motivation and now the knowledge, two powerful combinations, led me down this path of producing the very patches you can today enjoy… Pretty cool, eh? Indeed, this is the story of how NightWolve was born with my fervor for fan translation projects for Falcom games!! (For that matter, what possessed me to choose “NightWolve” as my screename anyway? Bah, forget it; I’ve had it for so long and thus the investment built up is too much to consider changing it to something else now.) Anyhow, I would eventually take over the “Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys” project I previously mentioned after Xak III and that would be my last for the PC Engine. After that, I spent my remaining time working towards bringing you English patches for Falcom’s PC games along with others, that is, actual language translators, technically-minded people for needed information/tips, graphics editing, proofreading, beta-testing, etc. Where I could solicit help from those interested, I would. Such projects are a team effort and require talented people to make them happen.