[Spoiler:]

1

Personal Projects / Fire Emblem 1 (SD&BoL) - War of Darkness (Randomizer + Improvements) (Open Beta)

« on: March 09, 2022, 02:09:41 am »

Hello! After working on a translation for the first Fire Emblem game, I still wanted to keep messing with the game. So, after doing some work on an editor, I decided to compile all my ideas into a single project I'm calling 'Fire Emblem: War of Darkness".
 
War of Darkness is an English patch that comes with a number of enhancements for the original game to bring it up-to-speed with its remakes. Total faithfulness isn't the name of the game here, so I've also thrown in some stuff just for fun. The other part of this project is a randomizer, which the improvements will help make more fun. The randomizer will likely be available as a stand-alone application in addition to a patch that contains just the enhancements. Unfortunately, the editor program I'm making isn't quite releasable yet, so I've included some randomized patches in with the base patch with random seeds/names.

Check out the beta here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mqbEUba2_nw6s2pfJYF8cIhr4m3rV7i-/view?usp=sharing

Here's a list of all the improvements I've added so far:

Spoiler:

 - Camus is recruitable by Astria
 - Mages use their Strength/Magic to attack
 - Stat window shows MAGIC for Mages instead of STRENGTH
 - Crossbows are short-range only weapons for Archers
 - Thunder/Tron tomes deal bonus damage to Dragon Knights
 - Nyna replaces Biraku in Chapter 5
 - Generals can wield Swords, Lances, and Bows
 - Gradius, Parthia, and the Miracle Rapier are unbreakable
 - Mars starts with a Vulnery
 - Some units have Resistance now (based on Monshou).
 - All units promote using Master Seals now
 - Knights promote to Generals
 - Hunters promote to Horesmen
 - Iron Lances have 6 Might instead of 5
 - New Usabilty table
 - Added Steel Lance
 - Enemies use Steel Lances like in Monshou
 - Added Killer Lance
 - Added Killer Bow
 - Added Slim Lance
 - Added Nothung
 - Miracle Rapier is no longer Mars-exclusive
 - Added Intro
 - Added different song for some chapter intros
 - Misheil is recruitable by Maria (replaces Jake)
 - Added Swordkiller (eff. against Merc / Hero)
 - Thieves can promote to Lord
 - Lords can use Rapiers (important for randomizer)
 - Clerics will use the female sprite for all female units

Here are the things I plan on trying to add in the future:

Spoiler:

 - Clerics gain EXP from healing (even just this would make this project complete!)
 - Commando class is converted to Dancer (groundwork is done, need to figure out animations)
 - All female mages use Linda's battle sprite
 - Randomized chest/village rewards
 - Fake Maphs, Chapter 23 redesign based of Shadow Dragon
 - Map compression (to better allow custom maps)
 - "Avatar" customization for randomizer (select name, class, male/female, strength/weakness, like modern games)

I'd also be happy to hear any ideas you guys have to add some spice or improvement to Shadow Blade and the Light of Dragon. Let me know what you think!

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Newcomer's Board / "Delta Patcher" tool vanished. Virus, or broken?

« on: July 09, 2021, 11:01:30 am »

Hello! This seemed to be the most appropriate place to put this even though I'm not new anymore. So I downloaded a "Delta Patcher" tool (this one here: http://www.romhacking.net/utilities/704/) so I could apply a Dragon Warrior patch created in that special format, but after using it, I'm now very concerned. The utility launched fine and I was even able to use the GUI to patch the ROM. However, when I returned to the folder, the executable for the tool is now gone. I've had a similar thing happen with some files I downloaded a few years back that vanished when I clicked on them, and received a virus. Nothing else has happened since Delta Patcher vanished. Now I'm wondering whether this is supposed to happen with this tool, or I need to mark this tool as non-compliant and just hope my computer survives. I'm running a virus scan anyway, but that might take awhile so if this is intended behavior with this tool then I can probably just stop the scan and continue working. Is Delta Patcher supposed to up and disappear on me?

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ROM Hacking Discussion / Handling a SNES 16x16 Japanese Font

« on: June 29, 2021, 01:16:59 am »

Howdy, folks!

I'm beginning my first real venture from NES translation into SNES translation. The particular challenge I have to overcome here is a 16x16 size font. The game in question I'm looking at is Nage Libre: Seijaku no Suishin, but this will be useful information if I end up giving up for some reason anyway. I figured it'd be wise to ask for advice before trying to blindly go at it and wind up banging my head against the wall. There really doesn't seem to be much out there on the internet about exactly how to modify fonts like this.

Obviously, trying to make a font out of a 16x16 tile will look ugly. Therefore, I'm looking for a way to reduce the width. VWF is the dream, but it's probably easier just to cut the width in half to 8x16. So, what would be the steps involved in going about this? For reference, I have a bit of experience with NES ASM and I'm currently trying to learn the BSNES debugger.

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ROM Hacking Discussion / Best way to manage game script?

« on: April 08, 2021, 09:24:16 pm »

Hello! I've been translating a Famicom game script that uses normal pointers, dictionary compression, and many control codes in the text.  However, having to manage the positions of all my strings as well as calculate/enter the pointers by hand has been a real pain. Also, having to go back in the text and change things will require me to recalculate and enter all the pointers again.

I imagine something like a script extractor/inserter would help with this process, but I don't know which would be the best to use. I'd also like to avoid having to reconfigure my table files as much as possible.

What is the best tool to make this happen?

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ROM Hacking Discussion / Fire Emblem Dark Dragon Hacking

« on: October 08, 2020, 05:54:41 pm »

I'm working with Fire Emblem Dark Dragon / Ankoku Ryu / Shadow Dragons and the Blade of Light, what have you, and I've run into some data I can't find.


I need to change Mars's spawn location so he appears on the shore of the new map, not sunk in the ocean.



Now, I found the spawn Y/X positions for the 6 units from the previous chapter above highlighted in blue through FCEUX's code logger. Oguma and the  axe fighters above them have their positions stored with their unit data which I also found, and the map's enemies likewise.

I just can't seem to find Mars's spawn position for this map. I tried combing through the ROM numerous times, but to no avail. Breakpoints also don't seem to trigger at all in the loading process (Mars's current Y/X is somewhere near $6AA0 in RAM). His position bytes should be about 0619, but I can't find them anywhere.

Any ideas?

[Spoiler:]

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Gaming Discussion / Detective Debut - PERSONA 5 Prequel Fan-game based off Pop Star Debut ROMHack

« on: October 03, 2020, 10:52:08 pm »

As some of you already know, about a year ago I localized the Famicom game アイドル八犬伝 as Pop Star Debut. Since then, for whatever reason, I really wanted to do some fan-game ROMHack based off its engine. One of my ideas was to create a Persona 5 prequel following Akechi's story as a PSD ROMHack. Unfortunately and fortunately, I wasn't able to get very far. No matter what I tried, I just couldn't figure out how the game was structured. All I managed to do was optimize the text formatting to hold more text on-screen.



It was for the best, though, as I was able to create my full vision of what the game would be.

My associate Mareeta and I worked for about a month on this project called Detective Debut!



Detective Debut is a fan-game for Windows created in Game Maker Studio 1. It controls just the same as Pop Star Debut /IH, where the arrows keys act as a D-Pad, Space is the A Button, and Shift is the B Button. More information can be found in the readme.txt or the altered PSD manual parody included with the game.

Basically we made a visual novel structured like Pop Star Debut to tell the untold story of Akechi before the events of Persona 5. You play as Akechi as he uncovers the mysterious world of the Metaverse. Expanding upon the mechanics of Pop Star Debut are fight scenes where you have to defeat enemies before your HP drops to 0, and a new Checkpoint system in addition to passwords to save your progress as you play.

You can download Detective Debut here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BC75wfHh3Vj-zN7nyskWjclM6RSW6e0c/view?usp=sharing

Also check out my trailer for it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syhH61U7NtI

I don't want to include too much information for fear of spoiling both this game and the actual Persona 5. Even if you've never played a Persona game before, you should still be able to enjoy this.

Also, you can some of the passwords from the original Pop Star Debut for some special bonuses! Oh, and I highly encourage you to upload your video playthrough with commentary if you can. Live reactions are something I'd love to see, as they're the most helpful feedback and just downright entertaining!

Screenshots:

Spoiler:

Here's a tip: If you want to see everything this game has to offer, don't betray your friends!

[Spoiler:]

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Gaming Discussion / Fire Emblem 3 - Unused maps found?

« on: August 18, 2020, 07:05:56 pm »

Hello! About 3 or so years ago, I used a code with my emulator ZSNES with Fire Emblem: Monshou no Nazo and found some weird maps I haven't seen documented anywhere else yet. Only, I didn't have the tools to do a proper video on this stuff until today. Here's the video where I show these maps off: ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikTmHkU-Ouc )

Some of them just appear to be garbage data, but some actually look like maps that could've been used but weren't. I've looked at all the maps, and the ones I found don't look like any of them. There also doesn't seem to be anything about them online. Only the test map 0x00 was mentioned on The Cutting Room Floor.

Any ideas why these are in the game? My only guess is that some were prototypes for existing levels or cut levels.

The code to load these is 7E07CE**, with ** being the map you want to load. 17 and 22 appear to be cut maps. 31 and beyond contain garbage data maps and clones of other levels.

Edit: Here's some crude images of the maps created when I first found them.

Spoiler:

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Newcomer's Board / When does the Recent Hacks post get posted?

« on: May 30, 2020, 10:44:46 pm »

This seemed like the most appropriate place for this type of question.

When does the weekly/monthly/??? RHDNBot post about recent hacks and translations get posted? I'd like to know so I can avoid my news submission being buried under the recent hacks auto-posts.

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Programming / Text/Name Entry Troubles

« on: February 26, 2020, 10:50:40 pm »

I've started working with Dragon Quest III for the Famicom (Rev. B), and I've run into two major roadblocks.

For one, I can't seem to locate where the game maps out which character bytes are assigned to which cursor positions. With Dragon Quest I, it seemed simple, as the character layout was determined by strings like ordinary text or menus, and all the characters came ordered in one long string. With DQIII, I found where the characters are stored visually, but I have no idea where I can change the actual character assignment.


My second issue is that I can't find any text strings other than a few menus. I've tried searching a bunch of character combinations, and scrolling through the ROM, but to no avail. There's a good chance this game uses a dictionary like I and II, but I haven't found it.


As I recently found out, this game uses a "1BBP" font, but I don't know if that'll make it any different than an "ordinary" game. Anyone have any ideas on what I could try?

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Script Help and Language Discussion / This line makes no sense! - Famicom RPG Line

« on: November 23, 2019, 01:42:05 pm »

In LaSalle Ishii's Childs Quest, I've run across line that I just can't figure out!

「とれまんたこれたちんた
はまこけらぼ　てかてやだだ
うー　るりるり！

Context:
Hero the idol manager has heard of some lady who has dropped something in the snow. Hero goes to the snowy region and finds the lady above in a house. Later he finds the dropped item, the Indigo Oil, buried in a snow tile south of the house.

I've tried running it through Jisho.org (online Japanese-English dictionary), and I can't get anything useful out of any of the text. There aren't even any particles! It seems to be some sort of bizarre dialect. "Ruri" seems to be lapis lazuli, so she might be referring to the Indigo Oil somehow.

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Programming / Various NES Questions (Mappers, Palettes, Pointers, oh my!)

« on: November 17, 2019, 01:49:57 am »

So I've been working on localizing LaSalle Ishii and I've had some questions on how to do things that might improve the final product of what I'm making. I've searched around the internet for information, but haven't gotten every detail answered, or the guide (like that NesDev wiki) assumes you know a lot about how the NES functions at a hardware level. I'd like some more information in simpler, more practical terms. I know that things can work differently on different mappers and I'd like general info I can use with any ROM, but how stuff pertains to "Mapper 4" (LaSalle Ishii No Childs Quest) would be especially helpful! : )  But without further ado, here's my questions:

How do mappers/switching banks work?

What I've gathered is that the NES ROM has some number of banks, one of them always loaded into RAM or something like that. Somehow the game "switches out banks" by writing some number to RAM $8000. Can someone tell me more about how that works, like exactly how to "switch banks"? The ROM data seems to start exactly at $8000, so it seems like writing anything to $8000 is just going to put one byte there. I tried fixing a value at $8000 using FCEUX's cheat tool, but that didn't fix the bank at all! All it did was change some random map tile. If I could learn how to switch banks, I could use unused spaces in other banks to expand a game's text, right?

How does the game assign palette to things?

I want to know how the game tells what tile/sprite is going to use what palette. With backgrounds, I've figured out that some are like text strings where they have two bytes at the beginning of drawing a line that determine the position that tiles show up. (ex. [32][20][byte values for tiles like in a title screen]. But where do games decide what background tiles are going to get what palette?

I've included an example of what I mean in the above screenshot from Pop Star Debut (アイドル八犬伝), if it shows up. When I was working on giving Pop Czar Feld some pants, I noticed that not all the tiles that made up his leg used the same palette. Some parts of his leg use  red, others use brown. Knowing how to change the tiles' palettes will be helpful when going to make Patch #2.

I'd also like to know how the game assigns palettes to sprites, too. I'm still don't know at all how the game handles things like X/Y positons, animations, spawning sprites in general etc. If anyone could tell me how to change what palette a sprite (or part of a sprite) uses, that'd be useful to know! : )


Weird pointers I don't understand!

So I've learned through internet research that the way to calculate a pointer is to take the ROM address of the beginning of the text, subtract 10 from the last two bytes, then swap the two pairs of bytes. However, the LaSalle Ishii game doesn't seem to abide by that!

You can see in the below screenshot that the first line in this bank of text begins at 0xA070, so following the standard pointer formula, the pointer address ought to be 60A0, right?


But if we go to the pointer table for this text, (and yes, I've confirmed this IS its pointer table using FCEUX), you can see the first pointer listed is 6081! (I also may be off by 1 on the last byte pair because the game might somehow skip the first string's byte number that determines at what speed the line prints out at).


What's with this inconsistency, and how should I be calculating the pointer?

What can I do to enable SRAM?

Through research I've heard that you can write any values you want to get saved to the addresses $6000-8000. I think I understand that I just need to add a routine to some unused part of the ROM where I write values with STA, and have the game load them with LDA. However, I don't think I've found all the steps that you need to actually enable the game to USE SRAM. Trying to test out how SRAM works, I manually set some values in SRAM in Pop Star Debut (a game that doesn't save) through FCEUX's Hex Editor, reset the game, but the data was erased! I've heard something about change some byte in the header (couldn't figure out what!), and writing some value (don't know which) to $A001. What are the exact steps I need to do in order for a game to save, especially on a real NES cartridge?

As always, help is greatly appreciated! : D I hope it's okay to ask all these questions at once. I feel like it's be bad to start 4 new threads about each individual unrelated question.

Edit: I found a different place to store images, so they show up now. Woohoo!

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ROM Hacking Discussion / Help with Famicom game - Glitched graphics!

« on: September 28, 2019, 08:20:47 pm »

I've been working with this Famicom game, Lasalle Ishii's Childs Quest, and I've run into a big issue. There's a glitch that causes the screen to "glitch out" (cover large chunks of tiles with a solid color, hide the map when walking around certain tiles, etc.) It's hard to explain with words, so I hope the screenshots come through.

The unedited ROM doesn't have this issue at all, but if I make any change to the game in Tile Layer Pro, then the ROM has the issue. It doesn't seem to be Tile Layer Pro's fault, as I tried saving an unedited ROM as a new copy using TLP and it worked fine. My only theory so far is that there's some sort of anti-piracy protection checking the graphics, but I can't imagine this cheap, uncompressed game doing something that crazy.

It is interesting that any LaSalle ROM I tried in my JNES emulator had the graphics glitch, edited or not. The Retron 5 and another NES emulator I found on my phone seem to be able to play the unedited ROM with no problems.

Could anyone help explain what's going on and how I can get past this issue?

Unedited ROM - Normal behavior.


A ROM with any changes made with TLP, in the same location as above.


The edited ROM - issues in other places.


I used the Scratchpad to upload these screenshots, but last time I tried to post a screenshot that way the image didn't show. I hope they get through.