[acediez]

Thanks! Means a lot comming from one of the people who sparked my interests in hacking Mega Man games.
"Alignment issues", that was the WIP part. But I just finished turning last night's initial VFW experiment (only a few characters changed width) into one based on a complete table of widths per character.




(Still some missing periods though )

By the way, the font is "Blood of Bahamut" by Gemini https://www.romhacking.net/fonts/30/

Next is:
- Fixing menus (there's a mess of mixed fonts at the moment)
- See what I can do about cutscenes and mission report text. Those screens use a different, wider internal resolutions. Text gets squashed (probably the reason why the original font is so massive, they didn't bother use two diffent ones like the japanese version does). I can't use Gemini's font in those screens.
- Finally get to inserting all the text...

[gledson999]

Nice font buddy, congratulation

[AxlRocks]

That looks really, super good It is way different aesthetically, but I think it still fits well. I was never crazy about the PS1 fonts anyway. And it's so much more efficient that I can't help but be pleased by that.

- See what I can do about cutscenes and mission report text. Those screens use a different, wider internal resolutions. Text gets squashed (probably the reason why the original font is so massive, they didn't bother use two diffent ones like the japanese version does). I can't use Gemini's font in those screens.

This is present in all menus, right? I've always hated all the mixels in X6, especially the save/load screen. Well, mixels at higher scales, lost pixels at regular scale. Sprites-Inc doesn't even have non-stretched rips of those graphics though, so I don't know if they're actually stretched or what.

Do you think it will be possible to make those screens render in 320x240? Because honestly, I don't think any font changes would look all that great when it's still rendering at whatever whackjob resolution Capcom used.

Do you have any idea why they HAD to change that from X4/X5 anyway? I don't think those have anything like that in them. Or I never noticed in 20 years of play, which would be strange for my usual level of nitpicking.

EDIT: Maybe it looks better on an emulator/plugin that actually bothers switching resolutions when the game tells it. *COUGH*NOTBEETLEPSX*COUGH* Anyway, it would be nice if the game just always ran at 320x240 for all the emulators that don't dynamically switch. Seems really stupid that they even did this when everything would have fit anyway (well, I didn't align text to fixed widths, but whatever:

[niuus]

WIP

Beautiful work, dude.

[acediez]

Do you have any idea why they HAD to change that from X4/X5 anyway? I don't think those have anything like that in them. Or I never noticed in 20 years of play, which would be strange for my usual level of nitpicking.

I assume it was done to supersample higher resolution title screen and cutscene graphics, which seems a reasonable trade off for me. They do look a lot nicer than the ones in X5.
However, I agree the options and save/load menus suffer unnecessarily because of this.
 

Do you think it will be possible to make those screens render in 320x240?  Because honestly, I don't think any font changes would look all that great when it's still rendering at whatever whackjob resolution Capcom used.

Even though I completely agree with you, and it does seem that the menus would fit just fine in 320x240, I don't think it's worth it considering the amount of work it would involve (output resolution modifications is uncharted territory for me, and even if that was sorted out, this would involve manually downscalling all assets involved and completely rewriting every tile's position on screen).

[AxlRocks]

I assume it was done to supersample higher resolution title screen and cutscene graphics, which seems a reasonable trade off for me. They do look a lot nicer than the ones in X5.
However, I agree the options and save/load menus suffer unnecessarily because of this.
   
Even though I completely agree with you, and it does seem that the menus would fit just fine in 320x240, I don't think it's worth it considering the amount of work it would involve (output resolution modifications is uncharted territory for me, and even if that was sorted out, this would involve manually downscalling all assets involved and completely rewriting every tile's position on screen).

That does sound like quite a lot of data/code work. Well, if you ever wanted to, I would be more than happy to downscale and redraw the assets (especially if they can be dumped straight from the game instead of my babby-mode screenshot ripping)

Well, for that matter, I mostly already did for the save/load screen mockup. I actually based what I could on X5 and also reshaded most of the icons, but they should all be within the original range of 8 shades per color (but I did change the color values slightly too). I think the BG is too, but I did that a long time ago for a Retroarch border and would have to check to be totally sure. The button icons aren't though, they're from X5 and made darker to match X6 main color.

Not sure if any of that even matters much, I know almost nothing technical about the PS1.

[DannyPlaysSomeGames]

You know what, this is fantastic. For someone who was really frustrated for how much of a train wreck the original X6 was, I'm glad it's finally getting proper attention and care put into it. I still feel like it will still have some problems, due to the inherent flaws and design choices of X6's stages (even with Uber Blade armor, Metal Shark Player is still the worst stage in the series IMO), but this is definitely a great step in the right direction, so good job there. I also like the Patch maker, that's a good idea for those who think some tweaks need tinkering.

If I were to give any suggestion for features to add, the most I'd want would be to split Gate's Lab 2 into 2 actual stages on the select screen, instead of just being half-haphazardly connected via a loading screen. That kind of ruined Gate's Lab even further for me, because of how both bosses and sections are extremely annoying in their own right, even moreso when done in a row, so maybe giving some breathing room in between stages (and making you only need to beat Hi-Max 2 once, thank God) would help it not be such an awful nuisance. But the other tinkers and tweaks you've done so far are great! I can't wait to see what you'll do with the translation.

[Ghaleonh41]

Wow, great work so far Acediez! Can't wait to see what else is in store!

[Aceearly1993]

Title Screen

The obvious choice would've been pasting the american logo into the japanese title screen directly, but the american logo's shape, thick black outline, and colors didn't play together too well in the japanese title screen, so instead, I made a new one, keeping it as close as possible to the japanese logo. I took a similarly styled "Mega Man" text from a different source (the Mega Man X Command Mission logo) and adapted it directly into X6's japanese title screen.


For comparison, here are the original counterparts:

The title screen itself has been successfully inserted in the game with no issues (thanks blade133bo for helping me find the right files for the graphics and pallettes!). Picture above is an in-game screenshot.
However, as you can see, I still need to adjust the size and position of the "PRESS START BUTTON" graphic, which I also imported from the japanese version. The white italic text from the American one didn't work so well with this background.

Overall I'm very satisfied with the result, and plan to keep this as my default title screen (the one that goes into the standalone patch). As always, I'll leave it as a separate option in the Patcher, so you'll also be able to either keep the original american title screen or the untouched Japanese title screen.
After I figure out the   "PRESS START BUTTON" part, I'll try replacing the logo on the loading screen for consistency (when using this version of the title screen).

In my opinion there could be several options about title screen included in the patcher
1) The unaltered title screen in the original Western release
2) The Japanese title screen
3) The revised title screen you did
4) The same as 3) but without the Japanese kanji at the top of "MEGAMAN" logo

[acediez]

Thanks for you comments and suggestions everyone. Even if it's stuff outside the scope I'm currently working on, I put everything on my list of things to consider in the future.

4) The same as 3) but without the Japanese kanji at the top of "MEGAMAN" logo

That's what I'm currently running on 




Taking a break from the localization stuff, I've also been working on and off on some gameplay tweaks I've been meaning to do for awhile. I started with the Blade Armor "dual" Mach Dash, and the Saber animation tweaks, from past posts. Now it was the turn for Zero's techniques.

Setsuizan

- Improvement on the "Hold/Release" input option. The tremor sound from hitting the ground would also play when cancelling midair. This is fixed now.
- Added an input option to "Press once to activate/Cancel by moving to opposite direction" (this is now my prefered method)
- Input changed to "Down + Special" instead of "Up + Special", taking the place of Ensuizan




Ensuizan

- Input changed to "Special (while in Air)". I turned it into an air only move.
- Up to 3 spins per jump instead of just 1. Can be done in a row if the button is held.







I suppose making it an air only move might not be such a popular idea. The reason is both from a balancing perspective and practical. The ground Ensuizan is overpowered, causes glitches, and the fact you can do it only one on air but spam in indefinitely on ground makes me think it wasn't ever meant to be a ground move anyway. Still, if I kept it as it was (a single spin) it wouldn've been very useful, and it wouldn't been too different to the normal spin done after a double jump, but making it longer seems to work very well.
And a practical reason... Lack of input options.
- "Up + Attack" will always be problematic due to ropes.
- "Up + Special" is taken by Yammar Option
- "Special" alone is taken by the Z-Buster when on ground.
- I really really wanted to give "Down + Special" to Setsuizan

These two modifications combined will work as a set and will probably be a single option on the patcher (while "Legacy" options from older versions will be kept intact)

[AxlRocks]

Third reason, Ensuizan is hilarious and silly looking when spammed on the ground

I think that's a good trade off. At least there's some kind of skill involved in using it now. I never tried the Hold/Release option for Setsuizan, but that gif makes me want to try the "cancel by moving oppositely" whenever the next update drops.

Hey, the button predicament makes me curious, does the game just completely ignore the unassigned L2?

[DannyPlaysSomeGames]

Seeing you nerf Ensuizan, I wonder if you guys already patched the whole dash-attack spam exploit.

Both changes are really nice additions. My suggestion would be to make Ensuizan Up+Attack, although I'm not sure if that would interfere with the rope, but at least not as badly as Setsuizan (because this time, direction input correlates with the actual direction of the attack). But honestly, Ensuizan is fine as it is, and I get your point.

P.S. I wonder if you could change the health/weapons bars so that they weren't so tiny. That always kind of bothered me, since their size in X4 was fine, but now it's a tad bit harder to see. Just a point I wanted to bring up.

[Aceearly1993]

Thanks for you comments and suggestions everyone. Even if it's stuff outside the scope I'm currently working on, I put everything on my list of things to consider in the future.
That's what I'm currently running on 

Man, this is so awesome! I can see millions of hype when the newest update arrives.
I doubt the title graphic would Work on the unaltered Western title screen but a special variation of the Traditional Chinese Windows release did use such strange combination...So there could be more place to play around the title screen "constructions".

Taking a break from the localization stuff, I've also been working on and off on some gameplay tweaks I've been meaning to do for awhile. I started with the Blade Armor "dual" Mach Dash, and the Saber animation tweaks, from past posts. Now it was the turn for Zero's techniques.

Setsuizan

- Improvement on the "Hold/Release" input option. The tremor sound from hitting the ground would also play when cancelling midair. This is fixed now.
- Added an input option to "Press once to activate/Cancel by moving to opposite direction" (this is now my prefered method)
- Input changed to "Down + Special" instead of "Up + Special", taking the place of Ensuizan




Ensuizan

- Input changed to "Special (while in Air)". I turned it into an air only move.
- Up to 3 spins per jump instead of just 1. Can be done in a row if the button is held.







I suppose making it an air only move might not be such a popular idea. The reason is both from a balancing perspective and practical. The ground Ensuizan is overpowered, causes glitches, and the fact you can do it only one on air but spam in indefinitely on ground makes me think it wasn't ever meant to be a ground move anyway. Still, if I kept it as it was (a single spin) it wouldn've been very useful, and it wouldn't been too different to the normal spin done after a double jump, but making it longer seems to work very well.
And a practical reason... Lack of input options.
- "Up + Attack" will always be problematic due to ropes.
- "Up + Special" is taken by Yammar Option
- "Special" alone is taken by the Z-Buster when on ground.
- I really really wanted to give "Down + Special" to Setsuizan

These two modifications combined will work as a set and will probably be a single option on the patcher (while "Legacy" options from older versions will be kept intact)

Speaking of the Z-Saber techniques I'm personally against the idea to make the new custom options bundled as a set. Several items such as the high jump enhancement part at the alternate zone in North Pole area would be a problem to reach as Zero if without Ensuizan invincibility. My personal opinion is to keep the custom options of Setsuizan and Ensuizan divided while
1) set "eliminate Ensuizan invincibility glitch - make Ensuizan an air only move" as an adjustable option in the patcher.
And/or 2) set Ensuizan to an unassigned button as mentioned.

[acediez]

Speaking of the Z-Saber techniques I'm personally against the idea to make the new custom options bundled as a set.

I meant bundling input options that would clash if they aren't. I'll always make every option selectable, except when I'm really not able to.
We'll see how it goes when I get to the Patcher GUI side of the update.


A bit of work from this past week:

- Made some tools to sort and format the translation text easier. Text insertion should go a lot faster now.

- Text in pause menu fixed (to work with the new font). Some minor text revisions on bottom icons and weapon descriptions. Still undecided if I should use the smaller font in the input settings menu, I'll probably give it a go later.


- Shadow Armor can slide down on walls if you press "down"

[AxlRocks]

Cool addition to the Shadow Armor and the text looks nice on the pause menu As usual, the old font is kind of cluttery when used so much like in Button Config, but I think the opposite might be true for Blood of Bahamut, looking too barren. Maybe not though. The old font is good for headers but that's about it I suppose.

To quell my own obsessive issues over the wacky, super sampled, menu resolutions, I redrew the Rescued and Parts menus, and palettized the save screen BG. All within the same or lower # of colors, but some color changes too. Maybe there are some ideas to gleam from it if you wanted, I think the BG colors are better at least. The original looks like graph paper from the 70's. Yuck.



And here's some sort of actual contribution to your project if you want to use it. Or just for other fans of this hack to use in a frontend or whatever. I also have the logo (I remade it entirely along with X4/X5, double this resolution, super secret reasons) if you want it for the header graphic on your main post, acediez.

[DannyPlaysSomeGames]

Cool addition to the Shadow Armor and the text looks nice on the pause menu As usual, the old font is kind of cluttery when used so much like in Button Config, but I think the opposite might be true for Blood of Bahamut, looking too barren. Maybe not though. The old font is good for headers but that's about it I suppose.

To quell my own obsessive issues over the wacky, super sampled, menu resolutions, I redrew the Rescued and Parts menus, and palettized the save screen BG. All within the same or lower # of colors, but some color changes too. Maybe there are some ideas to gleam from it if you wanted, I think the BG colors are better at least. The original looks like graph paper from the 70's. Yuck.



And here's some sort of actual contribution to your project if you want to use it. Or just for other fans of this hack to use in a frontend or whatever. I also have the logo (I remade it entirely along with X4/X5, double this resolution, super secret reasons) if you want it for the header graphic on your main post, acediez.

Honestly, looking at the differences between the Alia and Douglass portraits reminds me of how X5/X6 were kind of cheap with their graphics and instead of full-on sprite art like X4 used scans of drawings and pre-renders (it's a nitpick, I know, but I feel like it's kind of part of the reason why I get a different vibe from X5/X6 compared to X4).

A comparison to show you what I mean:


I mean, I could just be crazy, but that's what it kind of feels like. Either way, these mockups look great, and way better than the original ones. It'd probably be a bit of a hassle to fix the resolution and whatnot, but fixing the presentation does really help out in the long run.

[AxlRocks]

Honestly, looking at the differences between the Alia and Douglass portraits reminds me of how X5/X6 were kind of cheap with their graphics and instead of full-on sprite art like X4 used scans of drawings and pre-renders (it's a nitpick, I know, but I feel like it's kind of part of the reason why I get a different vibe from X5/X6 compared to X4).

A comparison to show you what I mean:
SNIP

I mean, I could just be crazy, but that's what it kind of feels like. Either way, these mockups look great, and way better than the original ones. It'd probably be a bit of a hassle to fix the resolution and whatnot, but fixing the presentation does really help out in the long run.

Oh yeah, it feels different to me too. I really like X5/X6's scanned artwork on its own, but it doesn't have the same hand-made, oldschool feel that the pixel art in X4 does. I can see what you mean with it feeling cheaper too. Even though it's great art on its own, it's not additional, new pixel art specifically made for in-game use. Those little things really add up to totally alter the feel of the games.

So where X6 does have pixel art on menus, I think it really suffers and adds to the feel that X6 was rushed. I'd like to see the menus supersampled (I tried to get gpubladesoft and ePSXe working for an hour, too many issues, gave up), but I think it'll just end up more blurry than it needs to be and some sprites stretched where they don't need to be. Probably looks good for cutscenes and boss intros though.

And thanks I'm not super satisfied with Alia yet and want to try something else with the armor part icons (too much empty space between them) but I got kinda burnt out. I mainly wanted to see what it would look like and if every graphic at its original resolution could actually fit within 320x240. And it's just fun to do

[acediez]

Nice pic! I'll use that on my disc case for burned copies! (I still have a couple of those)
Your logos are welcome, all high res assets are!

Love your Parts menu redesign. I think some of it could be implemented, I'd like to give it a try once I'm done with the text instertion stuff. It won't turn out as clean though since we'll be dealing with the wide resolution

Placing X4 and X6 side by side is almost not fair. There's a huge difference in presentation.
I'll probably end up doing something about that Ultimate Armor mugshot, it's too ugly even for X6 standards.


A few icons adapted from the japanese version for Zero's technique descriptions (a typo and a wrongly assigned icon leaked in, oops)
Should be easy to adapt them to whatever input options is chosen in the Patcher since they're just tiles.
I'll keep description short because expanding the text size is quite the chore.
Yammar Option won't get button icons because the description is shared with X.


Input screen still needs some alignment adjustments. Sadly I wasn't able to quickly fix the cursor. I can move it, but the horizontal position is shared with the main screen. I'll probably need to code a screen check that leads to a position modification for the cursor.

[DannyPlaysSomeGames]

Nice pic! I'll use that on my disc case for burned copies! (I still have a couple of those)
Your logos are welcome, all high res assets are!

Love your Parts menu redesign. I think some of it could be implemented, I'd like to give it a try once I'm done with the text instertion stuff. It won't turn out as clean though since we'll be dealing with the wide resolution

Placing X4 and X6 side by side is almost not fair. There's a huge difference in presentation.
I'll probably end up doing something about that Ultimate Armor mugshot, it's too ugly even for X6 standards.


A few icons adapted from the japanese version for Zero's technique descriptions (a typo and a wrongly assigned icon leaked in, oops)
Should be easy to adapt them to whatever input options is chosen in the Patcher since they're just tiles.
I'll keep description short because expanding the text size is quite the chore.
Yammar Option won't get button icons because the description is shared with X.


Input screen still needs some alignment adjustments. Sadly I wasn't able to quickly fix the cursor. I can move it, but the horizontal position is shared with the main screen. I'll probably need to code a screen check that leads to a position modification for the cursor.

Yeah, it's a bit unfair to compare X4 and X6, but while X6 was quite rushed, the presentation still looks very off for a 6 month development. Lot of the in-game scans feel like they only made the promotional material (although the cutscenes do work, I will say). The renders don't look that good either, especially with Flame Donut and Metal Shark Player's miniboss. But yeah, it's kind of unfair to compare the two, but even then, X6 doesn't feel complete with how it's presented either (especially with the translation), unlike X5, which, while worse, has a complete presentation (as bland as it is). But still, yeah, an unfair comparison.

Going back to the tweaks discussion, that start screen looks nice and clean. I tend to forget some of the button combinations for some techniques, so things like that are a really nice addition. That arrow does kind of annoy a bit, but not a whole lot. But at the very least you paid attention to detal.

[AxlRocks]

Boy was I wrong, Blood of Bahamut looks really nice on Button Configuration! I never knew about those icons existing in the Japanese version, so that's like bonus points for functionality and restoring content.

Might just be me, but I never liked X6's Ultimate Armor sprite palette either. Black UA sounds cool, but the colors they used are too similar. That parts menu mockup I did uses Shadow Armor's gray/black and gold colors over X4's sprite (tried to condense colors for the armors like they had, but more efficiently) which I think would have been a better palette personally. And what I think is X's default, unarmored leg/arm/stomach is putrid with Black UA lol

Funny enough, it's more or less the same problem on the X Challenge Armor for LC, just with the white shades.

Also, thanks! I'll send you the logo and stuff tonight. Gotta hit the road right now.