Castlevania II (Simon's Quest) - Multilingual enhancement

[Bisqwit]

I suppose most people don't care. (much less notice) Still, I think avoiding split infinitives polishes the script somewhat.

Yeah, it's not like people ever use split infinitives in real life!

[granz]

I don't. Still, no harm in mentioning it, in case it's something you want to consider in the next version. I've been trying to test everything and leave no stone unturned.

I was also thinking, a possible compromise with the morningstar string would be to break the string down into squishy tiles, if there's enough free space left in the ROM. The early Final Fantasy games did this with the battle commands, where strings like "FIGHT" would be squished to fit into a 4-character space. It didn't really look unusual. I actually didn't notice until I cracked open the ROM one day.

[MathUser2929]

I think you should use the circle also. It's shows up better I think. Also yeah, the FF hand is cartoonish. When do you see someone wearing a glove like that in Castlevania?

[Bisqwit]

I think you should use the circle also. It's shows up better I think. Also yeah, the FF hand is cartoonish. When do you see someone wearing a glove like that in Castlevania?

Very well.
Version 1.3.7 released...
-- The rosary is now a selectable item. It affects certain dialogue (if dialog extensions are enabled), but not muching else.
-- The cut whip-name problem is resolved.
-- The map cursor is now a circle.
And I changed the split infinitive since nobody seemed to object to it.

[granz]

Awesome.

I just now beat the game for the first time. It was a pretty interesting experience. Not really my favorite Castlevania, (Belmont's Revenge gets my vote) but still fun and innovative.

Thanks for re-translating it. I was reluctant to play it before due to all the criticism directed at the official localization.

[Bisqwit]

There is a peculiar unused tile in Simon's Quest item selection.



Anyone can guess what this might have been? (Shown above right next to the text "AAMUTÄHTI".)
It exists also in the Japanese FDS game. There is no code in any version of the game that would ever render that tile.

EDIT: Thanks for testing, granz!

[elbobelo]

Yes!! This is the first time I've seen it but I know exactly what this is.

Those are Dracula's Fangs. 

In SOTN they have the Fangs and Nail as a relic. 

They must've planned to have both in CVII but they only went with the Nail.

[Bisqwit]

In SOTN they have the Fangs and Nail as a relic.

At least this page only lists the same five relics as in CV2. http://shrines.rpgclassics.com/psx/castlevsn/relics.shtml

[elbobelo]

My mistake, I was thinking of Harmony of Dissonance.

http://www.castlevaniadungeon.net/cotm/hod/items.htm

[keropi]

[...]

Thanks for re-translating it. I was reluctant to play it before due to all the criticism directed at the official localization.

Same here, never actually played it because of the same  reasons plus there was no famicom cart. I just could not justify putting the official version on eproms. But now Bisqwit worked on it, and not only provided a way better translation but improved in both content and hardware support. For emulation people the mmc1/3/vrc6 support might sound uninteresting but for hardware folks it's just pure awesomeness ! 

and yes, I am a castlevania fan : I have been buying systems when a castlevania game got released for them (most notably psx , ps2 and psp) 

[Bregalad]

what donor cart are you using? a mmc-3?

I did not test with a donor cart but with a power pak.

Oh and I still have a destroyed Simon's Quest cart somewhere in my house so if this would be necessary I could burn 2 EPROMs back and test with a real MMC1 chip but I don't think it makes much of a difference.

Also the crash you mention is definitely a hardware fault. I had these glitches happen all the time with my front loader (PAL) NES. Thanks god they are mostly gone with a top loader (NTSC) NES, but importing it from USA was expensive.

[keropi]

ah, so noone except me actually tested on real hardware.... the powerpak is still emulation of some sorts... that corruption shown I only get after some time, at first I thought it was the CHR eprom and got it replaced. But upon verifying the old one I found it 100% ok. I had an eprom failure before but it would just blank the screen and after a while it would crash the famicom.
I still haven't tested the latest versions that got released, once I do and I get the same bug I will look on replacing the donor pcb

[Bregalad]

ah, so noone except me actually tested on real hardware.... the powerpak is still emulation of some sorts...

Absolutely not, what makes you say this ?

Only the mapper is "emulated" but the MMC1 has been completely reverse engineered and is emulated cycle-accurately so I'm pretty sure this makes no difference.

Oh and about the legibility, it looks about the same as this picture on NTSC, but looks worse on PAL.
Also my PAL TV is a CRT while my universal one I use for NTSC is a modern LCD, this might affect the legibility as well.

[keropi]

^ Sorry mate, it's a long discussion but a reversed engineered mmc1 does not mean it's the same as the real deal. It's the fpga that runs the mmc1 code and said code could behave differently in some cases. It's like early emus like Nesticle that was mentioned before - games run on it but it's still a very hacky job.
The only flashcart that can actually claim it's 99% close to original hardware is ikari_01's SD2SNES, it actually runs games like their real counterpart - something that the mainstream emus cannot achieve.
Take for example rockman X2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zpZbI6yS54 , sure it runs on emus and does not crash ever, but is it accurate?

I am not defending my soldering skillz or my famicom - not by a long shot - but testing on a fpga device is not a way of being 100% sure about something. It's very close to it but not 100% .
Your idea of testing on your real mmc1 cart is a great one btw, eventually you'll have to burn those eproms to bring it back to life with this awesome hack and have a nice original-looking cart 

[Bregalad]

Yes I should just find two 27C010 (or whathever it is) and burn them once a "final" revision is released.

And you're technically right that the FPGA is not like a real mapper, but it's pretty damn close. I mean the MMC1 is internally simple to emulate and I'm pretty sure there is no differences.
However for other mappers, for example the MMC3, there might be differencies when it comes to tricky stuff about the internal workings of the scanline counter, so yeah I would not count on the power pak for this. But for the MMC1 and discrete logic mappers it's safe to say there is 100% accuracy.

[keropi]

Yep, 27C010 is what you need, they are 128kbyte each. You can use larger eproms too if you find them easily, you just have to burn the same data multiple times in them. And you need a little rewiring to put them instead on the original mask roms 

[Bregalad]

Thank you but I already knew. It's just much less conveninent to have to order EPROMs, wait for them to arrive at my home, find my (E)EPROM programmer under a pile of dust, install it again to my PC, program the ROM and solder/socket them on the board (assuming the rewiring is already done) than to simply take the CF cart out of my PowerPak, copy a new file to it and place it back in the power pak to test.

[MathUser2929]

I see your other translations were added to the site Bisqwit. I meant to do it but forgot about it. Anyway, it's done so that's good.

[Bisqwit]

I see your other translations were added to the site Bisqwit. I meant to do it but forgot about it. Anyway, it's done so that's good.

Yeah. Unfortunately those ones do not have much value to non-Finnish folks. Though you an always download Chronotools and start translating Chrono Trigger to your favourite language :-) (I began the project before Temporal Flux and other related projects by Geiger existed, and haven't been keeping track.)

Re: Castlevania II, I'm still working on the lag reduction. I managed to move the sprite update code to be done during the upper part of the frame rendering, and now I am struggling to compensate for the DMC effects during that chunk of time (about 3000 cycles).
EDIT: Ack. Now I ran out of space in the last ROM bank (problem for MMC3 because it has a huge bankswitch routine). I will have to find code that I can evict into another bank...

[MathUser2929]

Even if I knew the CRC, which I don't know how to find. You can't exactly google for a CRC can you? You still have to find the right site the ROM is at anyway. All the Sonic hacks I submitted were made from the same ROM tho so once you find it all the hacks should be usable.

Edit: Oops, wrong thread.