Mato Projects (mostly FF4/6 stuff)

[Kain Stryder]

I'll throw my hand in to offer to maintain your work with my team since we already handle our work, the MSU-1, the html help files and such, especially if it helps you out.

[Tomato]

How difficult is it to adjust the timing on those event text windows? If it's as simple as changing a hex value or two, I probably have enough time and OCD to experiment and play around with those myself.

I feel like once the tools are released it'll be fairly easy for you or anyone to fix, and with some repeated trial and error it'll be simple enough to get the timing to your liking.

Kain: Regarding the "sister" line: what would you prefer the script say instead? I spent so much time researching FF11 stuff in Japanese and in English but ironically enough the sheer info overload in English combined with the info underload in Japanese made it trickier for me to navigate.

[Kain Stryder]

I would probably just go with "Yve'noile..." to give context who was speaking to him prior. And no worries, FF11's a mess for lore and dialogue for those that have never played it (I can't even recall some of the lore anymore and I played for years), but you absolutely nailed everything related to it in this.

[Ballz]

I feel like once the tools are released it'll be fairly easy for you or anyone to fix, and with some repeated trial and error it'll be simple enough to get the timing to your liking.

Cool deal. Most of them aren't too bad, there's just a couple where I'm halfway through reading and am like "Whoaaaa slow down there, buddy." And then there's the added complexity of that one Edgar/Celes interaction before the battle of Narshe that might need to deviate from the GBA translation to work without a hitch.

And just if I haven't said it enough, this is great work, Mato. I'm really happy I can finally play this on real hardware. Thanks for all the time and work you put into translating it. I feel like a kid again playing this game for the first time.

[Kain Stryder]

Just a small update on the MSU-1, we've had some new troubleshooting solved and noted come to light with recent players using SD2SNES and the like, so the readme for it has been updated, as well as fixing/bettering some of the download itself. Here's the direct link for the MSU-1 (readme included in the download and updated as of today): http://bk0.ovh/msu/FF6_T-Edition_msu_installer.zip

[Tomato]

Unfortunately my FTP access to my tomato.fobby.net site isn't working at the moment so I can't update the ff6t page, but here is a new patch version and the tools:

https://ff6t.s3.amazonaws.com/Final+Fantasy+VI+T-Edition+%2B+EX+English+Patches+A2.zip
https://ff6t.s3.amazonaws.com/FF6+T-Edition+and+EX+Translation+Tools+and+Source.zip

Kain: Once I get FTP back I'll update the site and also point visitors in whatever direction you want.

Barring any crazy, unexpected events I think this marks the end of this project for me. The patches are out, the tools are available, the source code is available, and it sounds like you guys can give the English patch more maintenance and care than I can 

[Kain Stryder]

Thanks Mato, yeah no rush on your end, I know you're busy. As far as maintaining your work, we won't touch anything in your files/notes unless it's some glaring bug or we need to update a text error etc (and we'll note it). To do that we'll host the download if you want to just redirect your link to here so it auto updates: https://www.mediafire.com/file/0iid87hwaaj61gk/Final+Fantasy+VI+T-Edition+++EX+English+Patches+A2.zip/file

The only other link you'd want to list on your site is the MSU-1 which the direct download for that can be found here (readme is in the zip for setup etc): http://bk0.ovh/msu/FF6_T-Edition_msu_installer.zip

Barring that it's up to you if you want to link directly to our forums and make a note about us just maintaining it and to direct questions/concerns our way, which can be directed here: http://ngplus.net/index.php?/forums/forum/40-final-fantasy-vi-t-edition/

We'll do our best to keep stuff from imploding, as you know this mod has been nothing short of a headache to work on lol. Thank you though again for tackling this, and for letting us help you out with it. If anything extreme does need your attention I'll poke you about it, but from watching streams to take notes on any issues, nothing's broken or bugged out, just been text things. Everything seems really solid for right now.

If you have any follow ups or questions/need something just ask 

[Ballz]

I'm still chugging along in my playthrough, documenting any (admittedly, minor) issues. Going forward, where would be the best place to report/talk about them? I don't know if Mato wants us cluttering his thread up as he moves on to other things.

[Tomato]

It's up to you I guess, I don't have any other ROM hack projects in the works/planned at the moment. I might do a better Wanderbar someday, but not for a long while.

[Kain Stryder]

I'm still chugging along in my playthrough, documenting any (admittedly, minor) issues. Going forward, where would be the best place to report/talk about them? I don't know if Mato wants us cluttering his thread up as he moves on to other things.

You can post them here if Mato's fine with it, or here on our site: http://ngplus.net/index.php?/forums/forum/40-final-fantasy-vi-t-edition/

If we're maintaining it, I'd like to be informed of any issues so we can address or be aware of things. Luckily so far, since his release of the patch, there's been no bugs etc reported (just text stuff which he's already fixed).

Edit: Good god literally as I posted this, Dyne on stream had this happen to him:

https://clips.twitch.tv/HedonisticMuddyPizzaPupper-Pe0KHH_tx7xgtcfs

https://clips.twitch.tv/TenuousMildRaisinAMPTropPunch-79Oj2TUEWBJuM1Cv

Dyne thinks it's something to do with Sabin's spell list as with Terra in the lead, it hasn't happened to him on retries (he's guessing/troubleshooting based on the old Sketch glitch).

I don't know if this is from Mato's patch or the mod in general, we're gonna look into it but I figured I'd alert Mato, and he does have a save file handy to help troubleshoot if needed.

https://www.mediafire.com/file/k8ddz1kukksjd12/Final+Fantasy+VI+T+Edition.srm/file

This is his save file, as per the videos above it happened on Hidon with Sabin in the lead.

Edit/Update: We've been trying to replicate it on our end with our translation and unable to, someone else went to dino forest on Mato's patch and got it triggered doing Vanish etc with this result:



We're gonna keep checking it out, I'll report back.

[Tomato]

Looks like it's related to that shortened battle menu, I didn't test it as much as I should've, plus I undid a related change A2 to fix that weird Moogle name issue from earlier. If you can re-create it reliably then I can take a look. My first gut feeling says that it's just a register I didn't restore properly for certain edge cases I wasn't aware of.

[Kain Stryder]

Edit: Ok, we got a save state to isolate it.

https://www.mediafire.com/file/4wfxuzk5gc998lh/Final_Fantasy_VI_T_Edition.000/file

Just miss Sketch on Hidon with Relm and it'll trigger. You will have to cancel the targeting, wait a few seconds, select Sketch and confirm. If it succeeds, reload, cancel Sketch, wait a few seconds more, try Sketch, etc. The screen will flicker and/or your inventory is going to get very corrupted. You must fail Sketch for it to work.

What our tester who got this working thinks:

It seems to be more transient than in vanilla. It doesn't happen at battle start, and it didn't happen after I used Ashura. It did happen after I used PuPu as well, though. I suspect it's some sort of VRAM overflow or something. My working theory is that using busy spells will eventually allow the bug to trigger in a longer battle. Other factors may include the business of the formation; Hidon's formation is one of the largest in the game. But it may be impossible to trigger the bug against e.g. a single Leafer.

Edit Again: Someone popped into discord and showed a small bug with equipped espers and the status menu. Equipping Asura for example here:



and then checking the status menu shows they have Mist Dragon equippd:



This happens for a few others like Pupu->Shiva etc.

[Tomato]

Oh crap, I didn't realize earlier that that bug was a Sketch bug, or that it happens in vanilla too? I don't know if I'll be able to fix a Sketch bug.

I will take a look into the other bug, but it'll take some time possibly.

[Ballz]

Oh ho, is that the same infamous Sketch bug found in the 1.0 version of FF3US?  People have fixed it in other FF3US hacks, didn't they?  If it's the same cause, then hopefully someone can find it and fix it for FFVI. Not me, though.  I am a terrible rom hacker. 

One thing I am not terrible at is script editing and bug testing.  With the release of the source, I made a couple of tweaks and text timing fixes. You can download the changed files here and use them going forward with any future updates.

Here's everything that I changed:

Spoiler

ff6t-translation-bank1.txt
Line 2228 - changed [PAUSE_08] to [PAUSE_09]
Lines ~3561 - timing adjusted on Elayne and Owain's Phantom Train dialogue
Lines ~4251 - timing adjusted on the Edgar/Celes dialogue before the Battle for Narshe
Line 8410 - fixed an odd line break between "another" and "rampage."

ff6t-battle-dialogue.txt
Line 132 - Moved the awkwardly placed [WAIT] so it's after "eight-armed freak..." instead of in the middle of "thrash it with a blitz!"
Line 178 - Added a [PAUSE] so Sabin's yell doesn't appear/disappear instantly

[close]

I tested each change for myself, but I also included a couple of Snes9x save states in the above link, in case you want to see how they now flow.

[Kain Stryder]

Oh crap, I didn't realize earlier that that bug was a Sketch bug, or that it happens in vanilla too? I don't know if I'll be able to fix a Sketch bug.

I will take a look into the other bug, but it'll take some time possibly.

Yeah, we did a little more troubleshooting to help give more feedback. It's not triggering on the Japanese version or our translation (at least so far), but turning the short menu off on yours didn't fix the issue either, so it probably isn't related to that. If you're unable to fix, I'll see what we can do or just issue a warning that some busy fights and Sketch MAY cause issues, so be careful and reload if you trigger it.

And Ballz the Sketch glitch was fixed in the mod by Tsushiy, this is the first time in x amount of streams/feedback from players we've seen it, just trying to pinpoint it now (not ruling out it was 100% fixed by him, just mentioning that for all intents, it was fixed).

Edit: Noticed a small error, there's 2 lower case z on the name screen and no lower case x

[assassin]

in the event that this patch's Sketch Bug fix was based on my FF3us 1.0 patch, this post could be relevant:
https://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php?topic=32580.msg411096#msg411096

Slick's domain registration has lapsed, so make use of the referenced Archive.is link.

[Ballz]

Edit: Noticed a small error, there's 2 lower case z on the name screen and no lower case x

Oh man, I can't believe I missed that. I was even changing my characters' names to lowercase, I should have caught that!

New link with changes I made to the text files.

Fixing the lowercase "x" is simple enough, it's in _menus/ff6t-misc-strings.txt

EDIT: I also made a few more changes since last night to ff6t-battle-dialogue.txt. There was a missing [WAIT] during the Ultros/Relm scene, and some pauses were added to the cut scene where the espers rush to help at Thamasa (and fail miserably).

[Kain Stryder]

Oh man, I can't believe I missed that. I was even changing my characters' names to lowercase, I should have caught that!

New link with changes I made to the text files.

Fixing the lowercase "x" is simple enough, it's in _menus/ff6t-misc-strings.txt

EDIT: I also made a few more changes since last night to ff6t-battle-dialogue.txt. There was a missing [WAIT] during the Ultros/Relm scene, and some pauses were added to the cut scene where the espers rush to help at Thamasa (and fail miserably).

Oh thanks Ballz, I'll toss it into the next update. Yeah the name screen I just wanted to note down, I was fixing that on our end lol. Good work on the pauses 

And thanks assassin on the Sketch info, we'll see where this leads. We had another bug pop up last night (unlikely related to the translation) with:

Spoiler

The FC in WoR

[close]

but that place has had issues, some were ironed out via Tsushiy. Streamer had a softlock going through a teleporter.

Edit: Ok, after checking out assassin's stuff, we went and threw together a fix. Tested it a bit, and can't seem to trigger the bug anymore, especially in the Hidon fight. However, we were able to confirm the bug is present on the raw Japanese version of the mod, so Tsushiy didn't fully fix it it seems. This patch WILL NOT work on his nor our translation (which most likely is present there), but we're going to get a patch for those 2 separately later (late and people went to sleep). In the meanwhile, Mato's is solved...hopefully lol

(File below has been updated from my post after this/old one removed - 12/4/21)

https://www.mediafire.com/file/o807hfolw3yuh82/ff6_t_edition_mato_nosketchv4.ips/file

This patch goes on AFTER Mato's translation, so 1.0 Japanese vanilla->Mato's translation->this sketch patch

I'll put everything together (Ballz's stuff and this) later and throw a link up. I know Mato's busy so if you want us to just look into the status bug thing let us know, but if you get it solved, I'll throw that into the next update too.

[assassin]

okay, that patch looks to duplicate Bank C2's portion of the FF3us v1.1 bugfix.  however, as http://archive.is/vyM0K describes, FF3us v1.1 actually has fixes in TWO places: Bank C1 and Bank C2.  with only the latter changes, you've limited a pointer from holding various garbage values to just holding FFFFh.  however, there's still nothing in place in C1 to recognize the FFFFh and treat it as a special case.  now, if the arbitrary values pointed to in Garbage-Land don't trigger any bad behavior, you can get away with a half-fix ... as i did for 12 years.

things were pretty safe on a mostly vanilla FF3us 1.0, but i'd unknowingly been relying on dumb luck (until Novalia Spirit pointed out the shortfall).  should Garbage-Land be edited, as tends to happen on romhacks, a benignly incomplete patch can suddenly start producing actual, consequential manifestations of the Sketch Bug.

thus, to be complete, you'd want to fix Bank C1 as well.  just Bank C2 is better than nothing, i spose, but it has risks.

[Kain Stryder]

Ah, thanks. Yeah one of our coders replicated the C2 fix (and had to do 3 versions cause she kept missing things and ended up going to bed lol). I'll have her check your post tomorrow and see if we can throw up the C1 also and just fine tune this then. 

Edit: Quick follow up on MSU-1 and anyone using SD2SNES. For some reason and we're unsure the cause (it doesn't happen for everyone), if you use MSU-1, when you save your game, make sure you go back to the SD2 menu after, then turn the console off. If you just save the game and turn it off, it doesn't save the .srm for some reason. Again this only happened so far for one guy, but not another.

Another issue we're seeing, at least with everdrives (no MSU-1) is if you have multiple copies of a game, say, vanilla FF6 and T-Edition, and boot up vanilla and play, it will overwrite the T-Edition files possibly. So just take precaution. We'll be updating the readme for MSU-1 with this info later today.

https://github.com/mrehkopf/sd2snes/issues/80