The Dragon Force II Translation Project

[Saturnman]

Looks downright amazing gents, I'm literally at a loss for more to say.   

[FaustWolf]

Here's a tiny little teaser for Adelvach fans, and to put to rest any questions about whether there's a connection between Dragon Force I and Dragon Force II. (Guess that means a spoiler is afoot!)

[Special T]

I'm glad you mentioned it was a spoiler because I was about to click on that link.

Anyway great job!

[cj iwakura]

Time's not been kind to that connection.

[FaustWolf]

 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d_l-XBSr2Q

We're about ready to roll with this phase of the project. People interested in testing, now would be a great time to get acquainted with the SSF emulator, version 0.11 alpha_r5". And reinofhearts' suggested settings.

When I've made a choice on patch format I'll upload another preview and get some testers started on this thang.

[bastol]

Ready to test on real hardware, hope it helps ! 

[Nintennuendo]

Very excited! I've been checking this tread on a daily basis. I've got SSF 0.11A5" set up and configured to reignofhearts' specifications. Game crashed on trying to start one of the campaigns, but on trying another (this time, the Gongos-esque leader) I was able to get started and get through a battle. Can't wait until I can figure out what selections I'm making without trial and error! As always, let me know if there's any way to help and/or what you need me to do.

[FaustWolf]

Yeah, the game uses a file format for FMVs that's incredibly unstable in SSF -- nothing we can do about that for now, unfortunately. It even causes Yabause to bug out, but Yabause is nice enough to just skip over them when this happens. Yabause, on the other hand, can't load the battles at all. 

The reason why the game kept hanging for you is probably the quick Teiris cutscene it tries to load when a monarch is selected. You gotta hammer hard on the Start button so you skip over it before the game loads it. What's really annoying are cutscenes that play during the game, because those are less predictable. Documenting when this happens in earch scenario would be a great goal during the testing phase. Then we can shoop it into the readme so people have some forewarning.

In addition to the folks testing on real hardware, we'll need eight volunteers to use SSF (one for each scenario). I'll open up a signup and instructions thread at Verve Fanworks when we're ready to go.

EDIT: Okay, folks testing on real hardware get first dibs. Let me know what the file size of your image is in this thread at Verve Fanworks.

[Starscream]

Have you tried getting in contact with SSF's author to draw some attention to the issues? It can't hurt to try I guess.

[FaustWolf]

I think that'd be worth a try. Seeing as the author's already translated a bunch of technical terms into English for purposes of the emulator's interface, I'll shoot an email over provided I can find some contact info. I'm not holding my breath for a bunch of tweaks specifically dedicated to Dragon Force II, but maybe the author will have some recommendations.

EDIT: Dude, check out Konsolkongen's test on real hardware!

Handles beautifully right up until it hits one of my ASM changes.    I can't make any promises, but I'm going to see if there's another way of accomplishing the same thing that the hardware won't choke on.    The function Konsolkongen was trying to execute there works fine for me in SSF and Yabause, but it would be a shame if people can't play it on the real deal.

[Starscream]

I think that'd be worth a try. Seeing as the author's already translated a bunch of technical terms into English for purposes of the emulator's interface, I'll shoot an email over provided I can find some contact info. I'm not holding my breath for a bunch of tweaks specifically dedicated to Dragon Force II, but maybe the author will have some recommendations.

EDIT: Dude, check out Konsolkongen's test on real hardware!

I actually was thinking that maybe one your Japanese translators could do it; for contact info, I only noticed a twitter link on the page itself.

[FaustWolf]

Ooh, we can do Twitter. 


Phew, I don't want to jinx it, but now it looks like it's fully working on real hardware. Here's what was happening before: I had NOP'd the instruction to write a screen coordinate to a register, but what I neglected was the fact that a huge-ass pointer value was sitting in the register at the time it was supposed to be filled with that screen coordinate value. When the game engine looked for the screen coordinate later, it had to pull that huge pointer value. In other words:

What FW thought he was saying: Hey, game engine, I don't want you to write this thingie to the screen because it just ain't gonna fit in English. So I'm gonna tell you not to figure out the coordinate. Mm'kay?

What FW was really saying, because he wasn't paying close attention to register values: Hey, game engine, I want you to write that onscreen element about two miles to the left. Mm'kay?

SSF's response: Sure, I'll do that for you, buddy! 

Real hardware's response: Aww, hell no.


So I had to figure out another way of doing what I wanted, and now the hardware doesn't seem to have a hangup about it. Check out Konsolkongen's latest hardware test here!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjHyy2QCbLY

[FaustWolf]

Open season for anyone who wants to help test the partial translation patch (sign-up link in video description)!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0lpM1dxSMU

It's confirmed to work on real hardware, and lots of bugs have been squished already. I'm thinking August 1 right now as a release date (at the very latest), but testers get to play it sooner of course! 

[cj iwakura]

I'm so down.


Saturn emulation is known to be imperfect, though.

Shame we can't burn this to a disc and play it on the actual Saturn.
(Uh...can we?)

[FaustWolf]

Shame we can't burn this to a disc and play it on the actual Saturn.
(Uh...can we?)

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjHyy2QCbLY

I even had to fine tune my sloppy ASM work to get it to happen, but it sure feels worth it. Now it works on a Saturn better than it works on any of the emulators! 

[Special T]

Keep up the great work FaustWolf this is getting more interesting every day   

Shame we can't burn this to a disc and play it on the actual Saturn.
(Uh...can we?)

Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure you'll need a modded system to play this on if you don't want to use an emulator. You can use the Swap Trick but if you do it too much I think it will cause damage to your system.

[Next gen Cowboy]

Wicked happy for you, glad you got (not to jinx it) the real hardware problem fixed, and gave me a laugh in the process. Best of luck to you.

[FaustWolf]

Mwahaha, thanks Cowboy. There's still one hurdle to jump, and that's disabling a dictionary decompression routine for the storyline text when we get to that point. I've done it successfully for purposes of the emulators, but we haven't done a real hardware test on that exact point yet. Keeping fingers crossed.

Honestly...as notoriously complex and difficult to emulate as the Saturn is, I'd totally recommend Saturn modding as a good starting place for beginners who want to get into assembly and so on. The author of Yabause has got the system's basic RAM arrangement documented to a tee, the SH2 language doc is available right from the manufacturer, and Yabause is just super user-friendly, even if it's nowhere near as full-featured as Geiger's SNES9x debugger (and probably the PSX debuggers from what little I've seen of them). This has been way smoother sailing than I had hoped for. Which is to say, it seems easier to get lucky when you're Saturn modding than when you're modding on other systems. 

[cj iwakura]

I bought my Saturn a decade+ ago in a store, so yeah, I'd rather not risk it on a swap trick. I'll hope I can get a good emulator running.

[bastol]

My saturn is 10 years old as well. Been doing the swap trick since 2004 on a regular basis and she's running fine.