Author Topic: Dragon Quest I - IV: Delocalized (Read 107991 times)

caikelm · « **Reply #280 on:** October 09, 2020, 09:14:22 am »

Wasn't there another project being worked on that did just that? I mean giving the spells their official modern names. I remember seeing something like that on the early pages of this same thread.

Chicken Knife · « **Reply #281 on:** October 09, 2020, 02:37:54 pm »

These exist for for DQ1 & DQ3. I assume that everything is vanilla besides the spell names. If someone desperately wanted to make one of these for DQ2, I could potentially help at some point, but I wouldn't publish it myself.

http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/3431/

http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/462/

Choppasmith also has his contemporary script insert projects that have them:

http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/5170/

http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/4237/

nejimakipiyo · « **Reply #282 on:** October 14, 2020, 10:55:37 am »

I'm gonna bump this thread with the big update, since Chicken Knife can't...

Dragon Quest III: Delocalized is now published and available to play!

https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/5466/

Choppasmith · « **Reply #283 on:** October 14, 2020, 11:34:02 am »

Quote from: nejimakipiyo on October 14, 2020, 10:55:37 am

I'm gonna bump this thread with the big update, since Chicken Knife can't...

Dragon Quest III: Delocalized is now published and available to play!

https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/5466/

Congrats guys!

AdamDravian · « **Reply #284 on:** October 15, 2020, 03:37:24 am »

Awesome news. You all do amazing work, and I eagerly await your take on DQIV.

nejimakipiyo · « **Reply #285 on:** October 15, 2020, 12:53:52 pm »

Quote from: Choppasmith on October 14, 2020, 11:34:02 am

Congrats guys!

Quote from: AdamDravian on October 15, 2020, 03:37:24 am

Awesome news. You all do amazing work, and I eagerly await your take on DQIV.

Thank you! I'm also looking forward to working on DQIV, though I want to say that it will take a while. Hopefully not as long as III took, because we have discussed ways to make the process much more efficient. Chicken Knife is taking a bit of a break from hacking for now, and I'm still working on my own hack of Dragon Warrior Monsters. But we definitely want to tackle DQ IV as well. Chicken Knife will know more about specific bugs that will need to be fixed, if any, and otherwise I know he wants to use the Japanese title screen. This will either involve translating in the Japanese ROM directly, or swapping out the title screen code in the English ROM for the Japanese one. This is something that neither of us has done before, so will take a lot of learning and baby steps.

As far as translating goes, I'd be happy to start DQIV as soon as I finish the last stages of my current hack. That would involve extracting script from the Japanese ROM, though, which I've not done before, and I wouldn't know where to start. Again, baby steps.

abw · « **Reply #286 on:** October 15, 2020, 08:07:41 pm »

Three down, N to go

.

Quote from: nejimakipiyo on October 15, 2020, 12:53:52 pm

As far as translating goes, I'd be happy to start DQIV as soon as I finish the last stages of my current hack. That would involve extracting script from the Japanese ROM, though, which I've not done before, and I wouldn't know where to start. Again, baby steps.

One place to start would be with the DQIV example that ships with abcde, which handles extracting the game's 6-bit text encoding

.

Chicken Knife · « **Reply #287 on:** October 16, 2020, 01:13:21 pm »

Thank you all. It's a big relief to finally have this out.

And yes, the DQ4 example material packaged in abcde is going to be our first stop when extracting the Japanese script for DQ4.

Still haven't decided which way to go as far as using the Japanese version or English version as a base. Fixing the background maps seems a lot less intimidating now. Not sure how bad importing the Japanese title sequence into English version would be, but I'm tempted to try based on all the grunt work I already did reverting all the characters to their Japanese equivalents along with changing the ghosts to coffins.

dudejo · « **Reply #288 on:** October 17, 2020, 07:08:22 am »

will the DQ3 build alter the Golden Claw so that increased encounters don't go beyond the pyramid basement? Like in the SNES/GBC ports?

Chicken Knife · « **Reply #289 on:** October 17, 2020, 07:49:31 am »

I've thought about that. It could be a good optional patch, but I'm not certain it was the intention for the Famicom/NES version. Plus, I've always enjoyed being able to adjust the encounter rate while grinding Stray Metals in the late game. If someone were to show evidence that this mechanic was intended for the original game, I'd be a lot more motivated to work on it.

dudejo · « **Reply #290 on:** October 17, 2020, 08:46:28 am »

It's not hard evidence but I would argue they regretted their original design choice. After all, they changed the claw as early as the SNES port.

Chicken Knife · « **Reply #291 on:** October 17, 2020, 08:59:38 am »

That's true, but that's also a whole other game, where they were clearly looking to boost the power of most classes via giving them additional equips. I happen to think that the Martial Artist class in the original feels almost perfectly balanced against the Warrior or Hero, even with their equipment deficiencies.

Conceptually, I can see it both ways. I like the idea of the denizens of the Pyramid making a mad scramble to stop you from leaving with their ancient relic, but I also like the idea of the claw carrying an subtle, lasting curse, compelling the player to eventually get rid of the evil thing.

With all that said, I can still see the appeal of the change for many players, enough so to justify an optional patch. I'll keep it in my head and will probably read through the ASM routines involved with the mechanic at some point. But for now, I need an extended break. Getting through the hacking obstacles of the last few months was rough, and getting through the new job challenges of the next few months will be equally rough. If anyone reports any errors here, I'll jump on top of fixing them right away, but I don't plan on taking on any new endeavors at this moment. I've been slaving over DQ3 for a couple years now, and I hope that people will enjoy the result.

dudejo · « **Reply #292 on:** October 17, 2020, 09:28:04 am »

I'm currently running through it. I just made it to the Thief Key's tower and er...the furniture on the first floor is lime green. The stuff next to the stairs down. Is that a side effect of making the dragon statues green as well?

Chicken Knife · « **Reply #293 on:** October 17, 2020, 09:41:34 am »

Hmm, this is a good point, but I think they did this because the normal palette selection used for furniture has it sitting against a yellow/tan floor. That would have looked entirely wrong here against the burgundy floor. This map is only using three palettes for the background tiles and a fourth could be chosen, but it has to be one that already exists in the game. If you happen to see somewhere in the game where tan furniture sits on top of a burgundy floor, let me know.

*EDIT

There might be a possibility here. There is a palette that could potentially do the job. I'll play around with this.

*EDIT 2

Having trouble locating the data that assigns the palette of those tiles. I'm not going to go crazy over it for the time being. The presence of green furniture in the original game design is something I can live with for now.

Choppasmith · « **Reply #294 on:** October 17, 2020, 10:47:32 pm »

Quote from: dudejo on October 17, 2020, 08:46:28 am

It's not hard evidence but I would argue they regretted their original design choice. After all, they changed the claw as early as the SNES port.

Funny enough, playing through DQ3 Mobile (for dialog matching I swear!), I was looking up the Golden Claw and read about the differences and figured it was probably a programming shortcoming. Like the original they could only adjust the encounter rate as a whole but remake was probably what the intended.

A similar notion is the Hero's gender. It's pretty obvious the Japanese dialog was only made with a male hero in mind (ie the "I've raised a fine son" at the beginning) but the remake adds a LOT of extra dialog for the female Hero.

Chicken Knife · « **Reply #295 on:** October 17, 2020, 10:50:57 pm »

Quote from: Choppasmith on October 17, 2020, 10:47:32 pm

Funny enough, playing through DQ3 Mobile (for dialog matching I swear!), I was looking up the Golden Claw and read about the differences and figured it was probably a programming shortcoming. Like the original they could only adjust the encounter rate as a whole but remake was probably what the intended.

A similar notion is the Hero's gender. It's pretty obvious the Japanese dialog was only made with a male hero in mind (ie the "I've raised a fine son" at the beginning) but the remake adds a LOT of extra dialog for the female Hero.

Ehhh... they have a system for keeping track of gender in DQ3. They were just really sloppy with putting it into use. Our project fixed all that inconsistency, with only a bit of remaining weirdness with the sequence where you become king of Romalia.

iridium_ionizer · « **Reply #296 on:** October 18, 2020, 12:45:25 am »

I have been playing a bit on DQ3 Delocalized and it has been great. I just got to Romalia, and I have been impressed by the absence of glitches, nice spritework, and terrific script. I will probably write a review when I have gotten a bit further.

Just a suggestion for the next time that you update the readme file, you might want to include at least a little bit of detail about what the "dw3_revert_localization_rewards.ips" actually does. I have read elsewhere that DW3 (USA) had about a 25% increase in XP and GOLD drops compared to DQ3 (J), and I assume that when this patch is applied it reverts back to these more generous localization rewards, but I am not entirely sure. I didn't see anything in the readme.

Anyway, wonderful job. Congrats to the team!

Chicken Knife · « **Reply #297 on:** October 18, 2020, 05:03:41 am »

Quote from: iridium_ionizer on October 18, 2020, 12:45:25 am

I have been playing a bit on DQ3 Delocalized and it has been great. I just got to Romalia, and I have been impressed by the absence of glitches, nice spritework, and terrific script. I will probably write a review when I have gotten a bit further.

Just a suggestion for the next time that you update the readme file, you might want to include at least a little bit of detail about what the "dw3_revert_localization_rewards.ips" actually does. I have read elsewhere that DW3 (USA) had about a 25% increase in XP and GOLD drops compared to DQ3 (J), and I assume that when this patch is applied it reverts back to these more generous localization rewards, but I am not entirely sure. I didn't see anything in the readme.
Anyway, wonderful job. Congrats to the team!

Thank you for the kind words. As far as your confusion over the revert localized rewards patch, you are absolutely right in pointing out that I didn't provide enough clarity to the situation. I'm guessing you read about the 25% boost on The Cutting Room Floor website like I did. But the actual boosted values turned out to be quite different in the end. I just submitted a big update to the readme that includes the following paragraph, among other new additions. See the below excerpt:

Regarding the extra gold / xp:
The 1992 North American localization made the following changes to the original Japanese version: routines were introduced that boosted earned experience points by 40% and earned gold by 20%. This patch has those reward boosting routines disabled by default, so that the player can experience the game as it was originally developed. In the opinion of the authors, the restored pacing & difficulty feels much more in line with that of Dragon Quest I and II, & therefore provides the feeling of a more cohesive trilogy. However, the authors understand the diversity of opinion on issues like grinding & overall difficulty. Therefore, an optional patch was included called dw3_revert_localized_rewards.ips. This patch should be applied *AFTER* the main patch, *ONLY* if the player does not want to experience the original, more challenging difficulty curve.

P.S. Thanks for wanting to post a review. I look forward to seeing it.

Rabite890 · « **Reply #298 on:** October 19, 2020, 07:55:32 pm »

This is going to make me sound like an ass, but the spell names are really difficult to understand for me. Some of them are Phantasy Star level difficult to understand. I love the DQ series, but the naming of spells in the post-Enix era has been a bit difficult for me to figure out. This is yet another layer on top of that. I'm really interested in seeing what else you've done with one of my favorite games in the series, but the spell name changes are probably too extreme for me to understand.

Chicken Knife · « **Reply #299 on:** October 19, 2020, 08:20:50 pm »

Quote from: Rabite890 on October 19, 2020, 07:55:32 pm

This is going to make me sound like an ass, but the spell names are really difficult to understand for me. Some of them are Phantasy Star level difficult to understand. I love the DQ series, but the naming of spells in the post-Enix era has been a bit difficult for me to figure out. This is yet another layer on top of that. I'm really interested in seeing what else you've done with one of my favorite games in the series, but the spell name changes are probably too extreme for me to understand.

I get it, they are a little tough to grasp if you look at the whole list and try to take it all in at once. If you were to start on DQ1 and absorb them one at a time, I think the experience would not be so difficult. At least, that's the feedback I've gotten. Even if you jumped into DQ3 and processed them one at a time, I think it would be a lot more manageable.

I understand that our approach was not the most user friendly, but it was important because it recreates the experience that Japanese players had when they encountered the spell names. They were designed to sound like magical words with only a hint of meaning. But in their mystery, they filled Japanese youths with a sense of awe and wonder. We needed to create something that could achieve that, although we know that dealing with yet another set of English names is a huge request.

So, all I can ask is that people give it a chance. While I've had numerous people express their frustration with the idea of a new list, I have yet to have anyone play the games and not be happy with it. And this spell list is actually the thing I'm most proud of.