Tales of Phantasia (SNES Enhancement)

Cause this totally needs another enhancement/remake 

In all seriousness, I've been looking at the GBA version and the SNES version and noticed that the biggest changes were just a few add-ons from the PSX version and updated graphics.  Otherwise, it's really not that much different from the SNES one... So I guess you could say, I'm putting the GBA into the SNES version? 

One major difference is that I'm not adding in Suzu (Not yet anyway.  Holding off on her for a little bit).  If all goes well, Rambard will be a permanent character with a slightly altered storyline.  If I'm able to get his voices in game (Which I think his voices were originally supposed to be the same VA as Dhaos.  I was planning to contact the creators of the original English VA patch and see what could be done.  I was thinking of putting in Dhaos's new voice clips and then using his old PSX ones for Rambard.  Which would work quite nicely since he'd be an archer/spell caster.  Makes a lot of room for skills )

There's still a lot of work to be done so you could probably designate this as the alpha stage.

What's been done!
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1. 7 Nameable Letters
2. Item Menu organization - I'm re-arranging the menu to be more like the GBA's.. though still a WIP.  All items in one column but able to see the full name.)
3. Battle Menu (Added in "Enemy "HP" "TP" text above the correct places.
4. Rambard - He has usable equipment (Mainly Chester's gear.  I'm probably going to swap this up a little so he's more diverse.)

• More on this, I've found each location for battle sprites/weapon sprites.  The issue is, there's no room at all in the current bank to load any new sprites at all in battle for the PC's.  So I've got to bump everything to a new bank.  The issue, again, is that there is no room in any other bank -_-  I'd have to expand the rom to 8 megs but I don't think any emulator supports that nor do I think the actual game would play on an SNES.

5. Klarth - Located Klarth's spell cast code and forcefully made it load Mint's code.  Doing that, Klarth is now able to load ANY spell in the game like Mint without worry.  This is useful because Rambard would have the same issue.
6. Slot 1 Editing - New code to allow any character in Slot 1 to load their sprites on the main game map.  Not quite useful yet, but will be in the future.

What WILL be done!
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1. Menu Organization - Editing the menu to be more slick like the GBA/PSX version.  My goal is to make it look more like it's modern counterparts.

• Expanding on this, I've located all the data to rearrange the menu.  The annoying issue is that everything destroys everything.  So I'm not sure where to go from here.

2. Rambard - He's like, 75% of the way there in general minus the story.  Just need recreate sprites and all that for him.
3. Import PSX/GBA sprites - This is easy to do, largest problem is the palette, which links into item #4.
4. Palettes - Something I found absolutely interesting about Tales of Phantasia is the games lack of palettes.  Quite literally, all the NPC's/PC's share 1-3 palettes at most.  Changing one color can alter the entire cast of NPC/PC's colors, which is EXTREMELY annoying.  I've figured out where the palettes are located and what to modify them to, but I have no idea yet on how to specifically load a new general area for palettes and how to code it to load the correct ones for each PC/NPC.  Doing this, the game will look so much more improved than what it did.  Honestly, just altering the sprites makes the game look fresh and new.
5. Dialogue - Most likely be altered to match the English GBA versions.  Not completely, but many areas will most likely change.  Also new dialogue to support Rambard.
6. Voices - HOPEFULLY I'm able to contact the original crew and see if we're able to expand the list.  If not, there's a long road ahead of me to get this done.
7. Stats/Battle Tweaking - I've found exactly what to remove in game so you can move during spell usages.  With this, I'm going to create a table on certain spells that will still freeze the game, but others that don't lag or cause issues will not freeze.  Since that's the case, MANY of the spells in-game will be drastically altered to fit the new style of play.  There's also the issue of allowing the character to attack twice with Cless and probably combo with the other PC's.
8. All PC Control - I'm 1/4th of the way done with this.  Figured out where all the code is, just have to find a way to improve it and make it work for all PC's.

And a bunch of other crap I don't want to list :3


Screenies!


As you can see, the item menu is still buggy with the location of the "R" and also the "L" icons.  The arrangement icon palette is also horribly screwed up.  This relates back to the damn palette issue in item #4.

Nice. Maybe this will inspire me to play the game again.

Please don't work off of the GBA version; it's rather inferior compared to the PSX version in many ways, and I rather doubt the PSX version changed that much compared to the SNES version, graphics and content aside.

I'm mainly aiming from the GBA version as that's the official US script that was used.  I'd feel rather ridiculous if I hacked off the script from someone elses hard work.

Other than that aside, I could probably work on the script myself a little and recruit help for it much later on down the road.  Nothing is quite set in stone so there's plenty of room for change

I'm here to help again if you need it, Justin!

Looks nice but I'd suggest not changing the sprites. I really prefer the original sprites over the GBA ones.
Other than that if I remember well there were cool portraits in the GBA version in the menu.

I'm mainly aiming from the GBA version as that's the official US script that was used.  I'd feel rather ridiculous if I hacked off the script from someone elses hard work.

I don't understand this comment or what you're doing. Aren't you working off DeJap's SNES English translation?

I'm working off DeJap's SNES English translation but I'm also thinking of modifying the dialogue to match more closely to the official translation.

Note: It's just a thought but I'm not sure if I want to do that or not.  I might just cut that out and only add new dialogue where it's needed so it's more of an updated DeJap translation.

Edit: And I'm basing some of this off the GBA version because the GBA/PSX version look closely alike in many aspects, though I'm also looking at the PSX version to get a better idea as well.  So it's a combination of both.

If you can get in Chester's new skills in that would make him a much better character, though I don't know what you are going to do with Rambard.

Is it normal that I played through the whole game, and don't remember any character of the name Rambard ?

Well, technically his name is Brambard/Brambald.

Yeah, Rambard is to Brambard is to Brambald.  All the same character, just the localized name.  He was strictly an NPC that joined your party later on in the game, much like Lia was.  Though, he was supposed to be playable but got cut.

@Spiffspoo: Oh that's what I'm also aiming at.  That's how I originally found the skill list in the menu because I was aiming to give Chester skills first.

Progress
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Currently, I've got the item menu basically setup for 1 column, except the biggest issue is the shadow of an item if it's not the right item type.  I'm having blatantly so many issues trying to figure out why it's not working correctly.  It's probably an extremely simple thing and I'm bypassing it every time.  I've got all the code singled out and mostly labeled, just not sure why it's freaking out.

I've also been studying on how the skills in battle are loaded.  I've figured out how to load the manual skill list for each character, but there's apparently a third one that each character has that's hard coded to them (I believe so anyway).  My belief on this is because I have Rambard loading up Arche's skill list, yet he still loads up Klarth's skillset if he's auto casting.   So I've got to fix that and just make it strictly load from the memory value, not a hardcoded PC value.

Also, there's two or three spots for names throughout the game.  I know there's one in the menu and then there's one in battle.  They load the exact same thing but they're stored to separate areas.  Honestly, no idea why that's done cause you can just change the battle pointer to load the menu's name and all works well and it's actually easier.

Edit: And I figured I was right on rom expanding.  SNES9X can run it fine, but ZSNES doesn't want to run it at all.  Since ZSNES is my main point of emulation, I won't be able to expand it any further.  I don't know if it'd run on BSNES since BSNES is never my primary source (Though I do know it's the closest to an actual console).

Yeah, Rambard is to Brambard is to Brambald.  All the same character, just the localized name.  He was strictly an NPC that joined your party later on in the game, much like Lia was.  Though, he was supposed to be playable but got cut.

It's fun I don't remember him at all, nor do I remember Lia. Does he appear in the party but not in battles ? Looking at him make me thing he's an elf (and man he looks damn cool), so I guess you meet him in Treant Forest ?

Maybe it's time for a second Playthrough.

Lia you get earlier on the game, just before you got Arche.  They appear in the main menu as "NPC" in the GBA but as "N.P.C." in the DeJap translation.  They never appear in battles, thus they're NPC's.

And yep, you get Rambard in the Treant Forest when you go to repair the pact rings.


More progress
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1. Fixed the shadow item issue.
2. Fixed another issue in the menu where it'd load the wrong item name once you leave and return to it.
3. Fixed Item Color bug.

Issues
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1. Pressing L/R results in deleting some item names.
2. If you scroll down far enough, item names will repeat.
3. X/Y coordinates of hand once you select an item then stop the selection is horribly bugged.

I think Lia was called Rhea in the GBA version. I believe you found her in Hamel(?) after it gets destroyed. I think she was an alter-ego of Arche, IIRC.