AGTH Basics

One of the biggest complaints I hear from people about why they will not try playing Japanese PC games is because of the language barrier -- since ren'ai games are very dependant on story, it can feel like a drag or a waste of time to play a game without getting an understanding of the story. For a long time, many non-Japanese-speaking fans of Japanese games would simply play judging the story off of small bits of recognizable Japanese, tone of voice, facial expressions, and the game images. But now, there is a much more effective way to get a basic understanding of the story within a game: by using Anime Games Text Hooker.

Anime Games Text Hooker (AGTH) is a program developed by Setx that captures the text from Japanese games by intercepting program calls of system text functions. This captured text is then copied into AGTH's window, and from there it can be used in conjuction with translation software or services to translate the Japanese game text into machine-translated English (in other words, rough "Engrish" translations).

AGTH is a freeware program and the most current version may be downloaded from the AGTH website:

AGTH - Anime Games Text Hooker Website.

To set up AGTH to get line by line translations, you will need two things: AGTH itself, and a Japanese to English translation software, preferably one that can copy text directly from the Windows clipboard. The most popular choice of translation software is Atlas, because it has the ability to translate text from the clipboard, which allows you to have each dialogue box translated as it is written to the game. You can get a trial version of the Atlas translation software from the Atlas Translation Software website.

1. First, you need to install AGTH. AGTH actually doesn't have an installer, so all you need to do is create a folder for it on your hard drive, and then put all the AGTH files from the download into the folder (agth.exe and agth.dll). I personally suggest putting your AGTH directory in the same location where you normally install your games. No matter where you decide to place your AGTH folder, remeber the location where you placed it; you will need to know this later. (For example, C:\Program Files\AGTH\, or in my case, I have my AGTH folder at F:\Games\AGTH\ since I install all my games to F:\Games -- this makes it easy for me to find my AGTH folder.)

2. Next, you need to install Atlas on your system. Download the Atlas program and run the installer. When you are done, go into your Atlas install folder, and you'll see a file called QuickATLAS.exe. Quick Atlas is part of the Atlas program which runs in your Windows tray and can translate text copied to the clipboard. Double-click on QuickATLAS.exe and it should put it into your Windows tray. You may wish to also put a shortcut to the program in your AGTH folder for easy access if you ever need to close it and restart it. If you would like QuickATLAS to automatically load up when you start Windows, right click on its icon in the tray, go to "Options", and put a checkmark next to "Start Quick ATLAS when starting Windows".

3. Now browse to the install folder of one of your Japanese games. Locate the game .exe file (in my example below with Apocripha/0, this is the SS_ADV3.EXE file). Right-click on the game .exe, and go down to "Create Shortcut" from the drop-down menu.

4. Now you will have a copy of the game .exe that has a small arrow in the corner -- this is the shortcut file to the game .exe. Now, right-click on this new shortcut file, and go down to Properties on the drop-down menu.

5. A properties window of the shortcut to your game .exe will open, and it will be on the "Shortcut" tab. In the box next to Target, you will see the location where you installed the game. Now, the full location to the agth.exe needs to be added to the front of the "Target" line (which is why you need to remember where you placed your AGTH folder on your hard drive). Type in the location to the agth.exe file BEFORE the address to the game .exe that is already in the Target box. Make sure there is just one space between the two. If there are spaces in the file path to AGTH (for example, C:\Program Files\AGTH\agth.exe, where there is a space in "Program Files", you need to put quotes around the AGTH path: "C:\Program Files\AGTH\agth.exe"). If there are no spaces in the path, such as in my example below (F:\Games\AGTH\agth.exe) then you do not need quotes around the AGTH path. Make sure the "Start in" line below that it shows the path to your game .exe.

At this point, you now have your game set to run with AGTH, however, it will not copy text to the Windows clipboard, it will only extract the text. To copy text to the clipboard, AGTH needs a command parameter added to it. In the case of copying the text, this command parameter is /c. Therefore, you will always need /c in your Target line. This command will be placed directly after your AGTH address, and before the game .exe address. Make sure there is at least one space between them, like in the example below. When you are finished, hit Apply and then OK.

When you are done, the shortcut may no longer have the game icon. If this really bothers you, you can click on the shortcut, go into Properties, and on the Shortcut tab click on the Change Icon button, and then browse to the game .exe icon.

6. In your tray, right-click on the QuickAtlas icon, and then put a check mark next to "Automatic Clipboard Translation" (any time you want to shut off the Automatic Clipboard Translation feature, just right-click the QuickAtlas icon and click on "Automatic Clipboard Translation" to remove the check mark). Usually when you first enter the game some system text may get copied over from AGTH to Atlas, so you may chose to turn on the Automatic Clipboard Translation after you are already in the game and to a dialogue box.

7. Now double-click your game .exe shortcut file. It will load the game up, and you'll notice another box loads up with the game: the AGTH window. Note that in order to see the AGTH and QuickAtlas windows, you are going to need to run your game in a windowed mode, so make sure your resolution is set accordingly and your game is set to Window Mode instead of Full Screen. Also, for best efficiency with AGTH, you will need to set the in-game text speed in the game options to it's fast setting (preferrably instant display if the game offers this option).

8. Go ahead and get into the game, to where a dialogue box is displayed. Now you need to look through the different hooks AGTH has found to see if one is extracting the game dialogue. This is done by clicking the down arrow at the top of the AGTH box to display all the threads. You can also move through threads by hitting the Tab key to hightlight the top AGTH box and hitting the up and down arrow keys.

In the example below, the only threads being extracted are two text threads: in general this is unusual, and you will need to look through several threads. However, you'll typically always find the text on a thread with a name such as "TextOutA", "TextOutW", "GetGlyphOutlineA", "GetGlyphOutlineW", "RealLive" (for RealLive engine games), or "Kirikiri" (for Kirikiri engine games). Also, be aware you may not find any threads extracting correct text (for example, it may have double characters, repeated lines, or missing characters, or simply not be extracting any dialogue text at all). These problems will be discussed later.

When you have found a good text thread, select it. It will show up in the top box on AGTH, and in the box below will be the extracted text.

9. If you have QuickAtlas running and set to Automatic Clipboard Translation, you will notice that it is catching the text from the AGTH window, and then translating it. Every time you advance the text in the game, the new dialogue window should be captured by AGTH, and then sent to the QuickAtlas window where it is translated.

You should now know the basics for setting up and running AGTH. There are many different parameters that can be run with AGTH that can fix various issues that you may run into, and other helpful techniques that can aid translation such as adding names and words into Atlas's dictionary. In the following sections in this tutorial, these different AGTH commands and other helpful techniques will be discussed.


Boys' Love Games Headquarters Complete Idiot's Guide to Japanese Gaming © March 2009
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