Final Fantasy V - GBA Script Port (v1.16) Project Thread

[VicVergil]

While this is a good idea for a translation, and I do perfer seeing the definitive translation of FF5 over the PS1 version, I would love to see the original PS1 translation used for SNES game. To me, it just seems more fitting as SNES era translation.

I know, unpopular opinion lol

Back when Final Fantasy V was supposed to get an official English translation on the SNES as "Final Fantasy Extreme", Ted Woolsey begun work on it, but that work was reused for the PS1 version. It is the official SNES translation.

This doesn't mean it's the best translation for this game. If you feel strongly about it, you can do it yourself since this game has easy to use text editor tools.

[TRIFORCE89]

Thank you for doing this. Nice to see so many text projects for the SNES trilogy.

SNES version with GBA text patch, or GBA version with SNES music patch? Which way would now be considered the way to play?

[Chronosplit]

SNES version with GBA text patch, or GBA version with SNES music patch? Which way would now be considered the way to play?

All is personal opinion, but I still say if you're thinking GBA outside of Custom Classes you might as well go mobile.  It has the correct sound, the GBA extras, and fixes Mineuchi (which no version has a patch for yet), enables Sprint on vehicles, there's no online DRM, and the UI is far better than VI's.  The only issue with it is the odd look, which I can see why someone wouldn't like it for that (though V's new tiles do fit it's tone and the battle screens actually look pretty good, they did it in a pretty lazy manner which can really put someone off and the styles can clash).

If you don't like the sound of that, I'd say the original.  V's postgame is better than the other Tose ports, but it doesn't really do anything to the original game outside of some new jobs (of which honestly Cannoneer is the only one worth noting outside of stat gains, Oracle sucks and Gladiator has the odds too much against it for me.  Necromancer is really cool but you get it too late).

[121J]

I'm considering creating an optional patch renaming Exdeath to Exodus, anyone think this is a good idea?

[Axiphel]

SNES version with GBA text patch, or GBA version with SNES music patch? Which way would now be considered the way to play?

Really there's a potential negative in every version.

GBA without the sound restoration: Slowdowns in battles/towns without the patch. Oh and the portraits can be seen as a negative too

GBA with sound patch: Slightly worse quality sound than the SNES or mobile/PC ports but no slowdown compared to vanilla GBA. Portraits

SNES: No extra content and the battle background are dated and sacrifices in translations have to be made for spacing issues

PC/Mobile: Seams everywhere! Like wow it's worse than in the VI ports. Portraits

For me the best version would be the GBA with sound restoration (or if I could have the slowdown removal without the sound but that doesn't exist) as you get SNES sound while preserving the graphics and the extra content.

[Rodimus Primal]

So I've been looking over the font used for the menus and I noticed a few things that could be done for space saving AND  to make the overall font look better. If you want to try this out it might be helpful.

First of all, move most of the letters so they are centered. This will make the squish tiles you use touch LESS of the letters. Currently they are touching the left side of the space they use. Second, remove the extra bit on the lowercase L so that it is just a vertical bar. Also do this for your squish tiles using the lowercase l. You will find that you might have more room after you do this with some letters.

If you'd like, I can give a hand maybe further optimizing the space you are using with all of the squish tiles. It's up to you.

[G061]

Really there's a potential negative in every version.

GBA without the sound restoration: Slowdowns in battles/towns without the patch. Oh and the portraits can be seen as a negative too

GBA with sound patch: Slightly worse quality sound than the SNES or mobile/PC ports but no slowdown compared to vanilla GBA. Portraits

SNES: No extra content and the battle background are dated and sacrifices in translations have to be made for spacing issues

PC/Mobile: Seams everywhere! Like wow it's worse than in the VI ports. Portraits

For me the best version would be the GBA with sound restoration (or if I could have the slowdown removal without the sound but that doesn't exist) as you get SNES sound while preserving the graphics and the extra content.

The way I see it "No extra content" isn't a negative, it's a plus for the other versions at best but FFV didn't become better in everyone's eyes suddenly because there was more stuff to do in later versions.
And as for the dated graphics the GBA probably has better background sprites but at the cost of screen crunch and bad audio. We don't even need to talk about the mobile/pc ports so SNES is still superior overall imo.

On topic I think an extra patch for Exodus wouldn't hurt but Exdeath is globally accepted now so that's what I'm sticking to despite liking the sound of Exodus more.

[Chronosplit]

I agree that there's a negative to every version too, it's like VI in that regard but not as stark.

Anyways, on Exodus I like Exdeath better.  It fits more to his blatant moutache-twirling evil bark of evilness.  He likes death, don't you know?  A patch certainly does no harm though.

[121J]

So I've been looking over the font used for the menus and I noticed a few things that could be done for space saving AND  to make the overall font look better. If you want to try this out it might be helpful.

First of all, move most of the letters so they are centered. This will make the squish tiles you use touch LESS of the letters. Currently they are touching the left side of the space they use. Second, remove the extra bit on the lowercase L so that it is just a vertical bar. Also do this for your squish tiles using the lowercase l. You will find that you might have more room after you do this with some letters.

If you'd like, I can give a hand maybe further optimizing the space you are using with all of the squish tiles. It's up to you.

I tried what you said about shifting the characters along and removing the extra bit on the L. Here are the spell names as of now:


Some of the long names (eg. Thundaga) are still squished considerably, but note that aga and ara etc. are shared between spell names.
I seem to have exhausted my space. The font is below, and if you have any other ideas then let me know.

At some point I'll also review Blue Magic and see if I can port over a few more names. I'm not as bothered with abbreviations here as I can show the full names in the VWF anyway.

[Rodimus Primal]

I tried what you said about shifting the characters along and removing the extra bit on the L. Here are the spell names as of now:


Some of the long names (eg. Thundaga) are still squished considerably, but note that aga and ara etc. are shared between spell names.
I seem to have exhausted my space. The font is below, and if you have any other ideas then let me know.

At some point I'll also review Blue Magic and see if I can port over a few more names. I'm not as bothered with abbreviations here as I can show the full names in the VWF anyway.

This looks MUCH better now. Before some of the letters looked off. Is it possible to change the current text's VWF to have a matching lowercase l? It would make it look consistent and personally would probably look better overall. Also, what is that space in between the it and li? Maybe you can use it for ni or in?

As for the Blue Magic spells, perhaps altering the abbreviations might look better. For example, Goblin Punch might work as GobPunch, if it fits.

[TheZunar123]

I do agree it does look better, but the Blizzard and Thunder lines are still way too squished together in my opinion. Not really much you can do to help that though.

[121J]

v1.12 has just been submitted. This adds the font changes suggested by Rodimus Primal among the usual minor changes.

I've also tried to edit the Blizzard and Thunder tiles. They're still squished, but hopefully easier to read now:


EDIT: I couldn't use that empty blue tile as it's used for spacing with the monster names. Exile is really the only spell name that hasn't been changed to its GBA counterpart, but I kinda like it.

[Spooniest]

v1.12 has just been submitted. This adds the font changes suggested by Rodimus Primal among the usual minor changes.

I've also tried to edit the Blizzard and Thunder tiles. They're still squished, but hopefully easier to read now:


EDIT: I couldn't use that empty blue tile as it's used for spacing with the monster names. Exile is really the only spell name that hasn't been changed to its GBA counterpart, but I kinda like it.

I noticed you're using imgur. Did you know you can use a larger photo on imgur, and then click the "medium thumbnail" option at the bottom of the pop up window, and then copy the 'Linked BBC Code' instead of the regular 'BBC Code' link? This lets the user click through to the larger version.

Us old blind people need bigger letters on everything, lol

Edit: Oh yeah, this looks wonderful. I haven't really been keeping up with it, and fonts don't really bother me personally, but I like the way it looks, you did a great job.

Is this project finished? Are all the softlocks worked out? Was there a softlock bug? Uh...wow I traipse around these forums too much, I'm losing track of which hack is doing what.

[121J]

Oh yeah, this looks wonderful. I haven't really been keeping up with it, and fonts don't really bother me personally, but I like the way it looks, you did a great job.

Is this project finished? Are all the softlocks worked out? Was there a softlock bug? Uh...wow I traipse around these forums too much, I'm losing track of which hack is doing what.

All the main porting work is done, it's just fine-tuning from here. As far as bugs go, I've included an optional add-on patch with fixes from Slickproductions, however there are some other bugs that have been discovered, such as the buggy Poem of Light text. I may post on Slick about it as my hacking knowledge is rather limited.

[Kiyoshi Aman]

Honestly, the better solution to lack of room for spell names is reducing the spell display to two columns and adding scrolling.

[121J]

Honestly, the better solution to lack of room for spell names is reducing the spell display to two columns and adding scrolling.

I'm not very well versed in ASM hacking, and I'm not even sure if that's possible without extensive modifications. Blue magic uses longer spell names, so a possible solution could be to use its code for the other spells... except I have no idea how to do that.

[Sephirous]

Turns out the Epilogue Error may not be permanent. I tried the patch on a different emulator and found the glitch didn't happen. The text scrolled perfectly. I am going to look into that now that I know it's not the actual patch that causes the glitch. 

[Kiyoshi Aman]

Turns out the Epilogue Error may not be permanent. I tried the patch on a different emulator and found the glitch didn't happen. The text scrolled perfectly. I am going to look into that now that I know it's not the actual patch that causes the glitch. 

Which emulators were you trying?

[Sephirous]

Snes9X Causes the glitch but the Snes9X for PSP doesn't.

Unless it has something to do with the graphic settings I have selected in the PSP version that differ from the PC Version.

I am using the same patched from on both systems. The only major difference I use is VSync. Where I have to have that disabled in the PSP Version because of resource limitation.

[Kiyoshi Aman]

I'd recommend bizhawk, if you're on Windows, or OpenEmu if on macOS. (Or retroarch with the bsnes-mercury core.)