Tales of Phantasia SNES (Enhancement) (Slow WIP)

[justin3009]

- Welp, finished the Status screen finally.  Figured out how to get VRAM to update properly on every screen.  I actually.. have duplicate code everywhere that was completely pointless to have.  Removed it all, saved room, less lag, etc..

Edit: ACK.  Tactics menu does not have enough room in VRAM to support all the PC's data for their Tactics selection (Currently anyway).  I AM able to clear out the tilemap and throw some of it in there and it works perfectly, only issue is when you leave the menu, every other menu is pretty much destroyed as well.  (I think it's because it only loads the menu graphics when you enter a new area, NOT anywhere else.  So I'd have to forcefully re-load the tilemap whenever you go back to the main menu).

If that works, then I should be able to fix that issue and allow a HUGE amount of VRAM room in the other menus. (Which God knows that's going to be needed especially when the item/Spell menu is hit :| )

Edit 2: Sigh.  Found out how to reload the menu tilemap but in doing so it causes a much larger lag spike.  The other option is to rename all of the Tactics so they all share the same data.  I only really have enough room to fit two full different sets of Tactics.. I may be able to find a way to make Cless/Chester/Klarth/Arche/Brambald to all share the same thing while Mint has her own.  If I can do that then I'll have no issues.

I just honestly can't really 'wipe' the tilemap without a HUGE amount of work.  I'd have to quite literally re-do all placement of various icons in the game and even then the lag is just not even worth it.

If I do go ahead with that plan though, I'd have enough room in VRAM for 3 whole swaps of Tactics data.  (That's using Cless's as a base since his takes a large amount of room.) 

[skyrunner14]

This looks fantastic! I've been following this since the beginning, and I'm happy to see you're still working on it.

[Bregalad]

Can't wait to play this^^

[TheZunar123]

I agree with Bregalad. I feel like I'll be missing out on awesomeness if I play the regular game, so I may hold off on trying out this game until the patch is done.

Keep up the good work Justin! 

[justin3009]

Tactics menu is done and all VWF for the most part.  'Dark' text isn't working yet.  I'm hesitant on putting it in atm as I think I'm going to completely re-do the Tactics menu's layout.  Since everything is VWF now it left a HUGE bulk of empty space which makes the menu look.. rather empty and sloppy now.  I'm probably going to try and implement the PSX/GBA's version of the menu at this point.  Save room on VRAM, better organization and overall would look much better.

Also not sure if it was mentioned, but I found a new voice actor for Brambald.  Annoyingly, he's a fairly common voice actor and he's already voiced in a Tales of.. game.  But the voice I'm using is from another game and it sounds more 'deep' and not his usual.  Could work nicely with a couple knocks on his pitch.  So far I'm loving his new voice and I've got a slew of his arte voices done.

- What's done so far.

Edit: Decided to go the easy route.  Everything on this screen except for PC names and Tactic descriptions are pseudo-VWF.  I had to copy the main menu graphic loading routine and alter it so it could be dynamically used to set where graphics can load.  There's now a clone of the menu graphics that specifically has Tactics data. (There's SO much less lag now)

Edit 2: Tactics screen is done minus the Tactics descriptions.  I had to do the last bit of work and bump the final menu text strings (Minus item descriptions) into bank 60.  (Though I may have to bump it again.. I swear it was bank 62 before... hm).  But that fixed a lot of issues as now I have plentiful more room on pointers and I NOW understand how ti all works.  I also fixed a tremendous amount of game breaking bugs I introduced, so overall it's getting there.  I really.. just really need to go back and reorganize everything.

Edit 3: Just fix NUMEROUS bugs across the menu.  Name screen was broken, 7 letters was broken, Tactics menu was broken when no PC was in slot 1, same thing with main menu, etc..  All fixed!

[TheFireRed]

I'll be having a closer look to this tremendous project. From what I can see in the screenshots, you have improved the game experience by far, looking even better than the GBA port and really close to the PSX version. I can't wait to play it on my Android! Nice work! 

[justin3009]

Going to provide a quick update on this.  I've been struggling really bad on the equip screen with VWF.  It shows up perfectly fine but changing PC's really.. screws everything up.

You move from Cless to Mint, nothing changes.  You move from Mint to Klarth and it shows Cless's items/name but it doesn't update beyond halfway through the 'Hand' item.  Seems VRAM is always one PC behind.. which is strange because the new data does indeed get stored each screen transition.  I've been trying to bug fix this with absolutely no avail so far but I'll keep you guys updated when I do work on it.

- Shows up fine as you enter the screen separately.  Just screen transition is horrid.

Edit: Fixed!  It was something.. really simple of course.  But that's fixed and item names and such now update perfectly when moving through screens.

[Mirby]

I have to say, every time you post something about this, I get a bit more excited.

Seriously, wonderful work you're doing here.

[skyrunner14]

Woah, I just came in to see if you've updated and I noticed the "On Hiatus" thing... is everything ok?

[justin3009]

Yeah all's fine.  I just need a break from this game for awhile.  Want to try splitting my time into another project (Cause I totally don't have enough of those) so I can bounce back and forth while not losing interest.

[TheZunar123]

Any chance you'll work on this sometime? I understand if you're busy, I'm just curious. I kinda want to try Phantasia, but at the same time I feel like I need to wait for this to be finished, otherwise I'll be missing out on good stuff.

[justin3009]

I've been working on it again.  Though, starting over from scratch due to much needed re-organization, code improvement, etc..

I do recommend playing it originally though as the first time.  I don't foresee this being done really anytime soon.

[VicVergil]

I saw French fans took the iOS brand-new JP>FR retranslation for Secret of Mana and re-inserted it in the SNES rom. With the iOS English Phantasia English retranslation out yesterday, I wouldn't be surprised to see a similar feat attempted. Probably not for the SFC version though. And probably not anymore in the "legal grey area"

[skyrunner14]

I've been working on it again.  Though, starting over from scratch due to much needed re-organization, code improvement, etc..

I do recommend playing it originally though as the first time.  I don't foresee this being done really anytime soon.

I'm just glad to hear you're still working on this at all! Take all the time you need, I know from your updates that you're very capable, and the wait will be WELL worth it! 

[bradzx]

Wow...I bet this take many years to finish it for 100% complete for no bug and stuff.

[justin3009]

It might, might not, depends how much time I'm able to put into it over the months and such.

Just a little progress report, though, not much.

1. Got most of the custom menu back to normal.  Can't add a few things in it yet because I have to add in the missing strings, which, there's no room for until I move things.

2. Item Menu is back to normal.  ALL items and pointers for them have been moved.  The VWF item routine was completely altered.  It went through a huge list of pointers before to make sure the item pointer was there, cut that whole thing out.  It now loads the item #, doubles the value, loads the new pointer location and done.

3. Removed all item pointers in RAM (I seriously have NO clue why they did this).

4. Removed the '<Accessory>' etc.. text.  That won't be needed anymore.

5. All item names and such are now into a Atlas/Cartographer format.  Just.. need to figure out what all the 'official' item names are from the latest games and match them correctly.  May need some help on figuring all of this out.

6. I ripped all of Dhaos's new voice actor's voices from Tales of Phantasia X.  The game stored the voices in a similar format to the Playstation format, as in, they recorded everything sequentially kind of.  With that, it included ALL of Dhaos's unused spells and MANY MANY other enemies doing the same thing.

7. Having mixed thoughts on Brambald's voice.  His voice in the anime/game is quite deep and we have a fitting voice for that, but it's INCREDIBLY hard to work with and very limiting.  The one I have right now currently is easier to work with, has a horde of custom voices done already AND we can get more of his dialogue from the game it's originally from so it's not too big of a deal.  But still worrisome.

8. Mint has a horde of custom voices ready.

9. Cless has some fun custom voices for later on.

Etc..

Not really much inside the game yet but it's getting there.

[Bisqwit]

Let me know when you have an international toolset ready so I can begin making a new Finnish translation based on your enhancement :-)

[justin3009]

o-o.  That would be an honor if I actually DO finish this enhancement.  With that in mind, updates!

Front page will hold more new updates and be edited whenever I make some.

1. Got the menu drawing code reinserted and meshed the black box routine.  It now does the same as before, but if the menu box number is 80+, it'll draw black boxes instead. (That value can be changed easily).

2. Main menu is back to what it was before VWF.

3. Item menu is back to what it was.

4. Equip menu is back to what it was.

5. Custom screen is somewhat back to what it was.  I refuse to add the rest of the changes until I FULLY split the item/spell/enemy/menu text

6. Item names in the item screen/item description/equip screen now use a very similar routine.  With that, item names are officially split from everything else and the routine that uses them is MUCH smaller than TOP's original.  What it does now is grab the item #, double the value, transfer to X, pick up the pointer then send that to Y to load the text instead of going through 200+ pointers to see if the item name 'exists'.  Screwed up as shit routine the game originally had.

7. Been rethinking Brambald a bit.  He'll be re-done graphic wise again.  Right now, dropped his 2nd VA that we tested in favor for his 3rd and HOPEFULLY final VA.  It sounds MUCH closer to his anime/FVE version and actually is so much easier to work with.

8. Lots of ideas for battle system enhancements, none will be added for awhile though.

This was all redone from scratch again, forgot to mention that.  But all's well so far!  I think after a little, I'm going to see if I can modify SRAM a bit and bump the PC names back about 10 bytes for each save.  It'll allow 8+ letter name storage if done correctly.

[Jonesy47]

Good Job, Man! This looks like a ton of awesome! Can't wait until this is done!!

[justin3009]

After literally being sick to the point of almost hospitalization since the 9th (Thank you epidemic flu), I've only made one update but it's an important one to me.

Treasure items NOW load correctly.  The game uses 3 values in RAM to dictate how many Treasure items you have and then picked the pointers appropriately.  I modified it so it now gets the base pointer needed as an ADC, then later on it has a specific addition to count how many times the loop has gone through, each time it does, it adds 02 to the Item Pointer in RAM.  It loads based on the Treasure Item pointers and nothing else.  So if those ever got moved, I'd have to modify one value and that's it!

That's only for the 8x8 names, now to get the description to work!

Also, all item descriptions are completely separate from one another and do NOT share any data with each other.  Although this wastes space, it makes each individual item completely unique.

Edit: Treasure screen is done!  Item names and descriptions now work fully!  Also, went through some more item descriptions and fixed up a few overflow errors.  Obviously descriptions will change later down the road, but it's just a basis!

Edit 2: Spell Names are split now while spell descriptions aren't quite yet.  I'm hesitant on moving the descriptions at the moment considering I have to completely destroy the original spell name code and replace it with something new.  But so far, everything using the 'original' system works perfectly.