Dragon Quest Monsters (GBC) Delocalized

[Thirteen 1355]

Wait, you're actually planning to tackle BOTH the SNES JP only games AND the GBC ones? In that case, I'm sold.

[Choppasmith]

Wait, you're actually planning to tackle BOTH the SNES JP only games AND the GBC ones? In that case, I'm sold.

Like I said, it's a long ways off, but yeah, that's the plan.

[Masaru]

I don't know if it's important for the topic, but i've also made mockups for both DQ1.2 and 3

[Choppasmith]

I don't know if it's important for the topic, but i've also made mockups for both DQ1.2 and 3

I think Chicken Knife looked into it one time and said the tiles are stored differently between versions so you can't just copy and paste the tiles over. I could be wrong though.

[nejimakipiyo]

Wanted to post an update again. We finished our first round of polishing, but after some talk with Chicken Knife we decided on a major stylistic change for the game.

In Japanese, and in the original localization of Dragon Warrior Monsters, dialogue begins with a * to show the designation of an unidentified speaker. When I noticed that this occurs in other Japanese DQ games as well, as opposed to being limited just to Dragon Quest Monsters, we decided to take it out of our translation to match in style to the other Delocalized games.

Ok, no big deal right? But over 1000 strings are affected, which means we have to do another playthrough to ensure that no text bugs occur from changing the formatting. So far, Chicken Knife already found some - and I plan to play after he does to root out the ones he missed. Unfortunately the text engine in this game really sucks and requires manual formatting of all the dialogue. This is the main reason it's taking so long to release this.

But it's coming, we promise!

[Duran]

I wonder if it's possible to increase the difficulty of the game 🤔

[Chicken Knife]

I suppose it's possible, but probably best achieved by challenge runs of various kinds. I feel like the system is built to be exploitable to a large extent. You'd need to redesign the system from the ground up to have it not be.

[nejimakipiyo]

Increasing the difficulty isn't really in the scope of the hack anyway. The purpose of our work here is not to change any fundamental game mechanics, but to provide a more faithful translation that captures all of the intent of the original Japanese text.

[Chicken Knife]

Hello, everyone!

We submitted Dragon Quest Monsters: Delocalized for approval, so hopefully this should be out in the wild any time now.

Since DQM is a game that really encourages guide usage for planning out monster breeding and such, we were concerned that the new Delocalized namings would become an obstacle for players, so nejimakipiyo went as far as to produce a full fledged guide that compiles pretty much all the relevant information in one place. That guide will be included with the download.

I definitely put my hours into this project, particularly with script editing, but this was really nejimakipiyo's baby, with them putting in at least 70% of the total work. So big congrats to my dear friend for crossing the finish line! 

Looking forward to feedback, particularly anything that we might have missed in our extensive quality control process.

Enjoy!

[Special]

Awesome! Easily one of my favorites and probably THE favorite of the handheld/GameBoy system games, I haven't been following this project much, so no balance changes at all right, just localization stuff? (I hope no balance was done >_<)

Looking forward to that guide also, is it PDF?

[Chicken Knife]

We were debating the format for the guide. Ended up picking the ODT (Open Office) doc format since we could set it to default in web view for a more pleasing look. PDF is an idea we could consider as well.

As far as balance changes, we didn't have an agenda to change the game balance. The only thing that could be seen in that light is an item we consider a bugfix having to do with the Metal Slime family XP. In the original game, the basic Metal Slime gave a bit over 1000 xp per ally, which is normal for a DQ game. But the Stray Metal (Liquid Metal) gave appx 21667 per ally (they normally give around 10000) And then, going against any other Dragon Quest game I'm aware of, the Metal King XP dropped down to only around 10,000 per ally. We have chosen to take the position that this was an error. We felt that the most elegant solution would be simply swapping out the XP of the two creatures so that the Metal King yields more. Most DQ games have the Metal Kings giving around 30000 per ally, but the 21667 value was extremely close to the max that a monster can yield in this game, so the switch seemed ideal.

And as far as the game itself, it really is fabulous. I've played the main series my whole life and only discovered this one a couple years ago, but it is a really tremendous game. I think the quality of a lot of the writing in Japanese is superb, which I didn't expect. The way the same group of NPCs have their text updated countless times over the course of the game, I think you develop a real connection to these characters and their personalities. This version should really bring that out for players that take the time to constantly talk to everyone.

[Special]

That's too bad about it being an ODT (Open Office) format, don't think I can view those (can notepad++ do it?) without installing some huge suit of tools, unless theres a simple viewer, but even that, I don't want to have to download some random software just to view something...

Depending on the amount of work you did on the Guide you might want consider other formats as well, PDF, well everyone has at least a browser and they all can open those, and IMO SumatraPDF is my viewer of choice for quick openings like these... At the very least you should put the Old name = New Name in .txt like with your other DQ patches.

But even so, I know the game enough to probably just wing it with the new names alone.

[Chicken Knife]

@Special

You make great points. I'm also a Notepad++ guy, as I assume the majority of folks here are, and would have personally gone for a simple .txt format, but my partner strongly prefers this is in a nicer looking presentation.

I've been messing around with trying to create a PDF, but the problem is page breaks. They really mess up the flow of a lengthy guide like this. If we can manage to overcome that and save in a web view of sorts, I agree that there's a big advantage of compatibility there. Regardless, if we don't solve the PDF issue, I think I can convince nejimakipiyo to release an alternative in .txt format.

And as far as the general release notes showing old and new conventions, (I believe) that was submitted in .txt.

[Bagel_Bear]

Awesome work! I'm eagerly awaiting the acceptance of the project!

If there are any issues or errors that we may think we found is the best place to submit them this thread?

[Chicken Knife]

Yes, definitely. Overall feedback for those who play a substantial amount of the hack is probably best in the form of a posted review, but we would appreciate any issues to be listed here, or in a direct message if anyone prefers.

[nejimakipiyo]

I was thinking mainly about formatting when I submitted the guide. It seems like PDF would make it uglier with page breaks, but I have no problem with uploading a PDF and/or a txt version to make it more accessible. There's no point to the guide if people can't use it!

If you're extremely familiar with the monsters and breeding combinations through repeated plays, I have no doubt that you could wing it without a guide if you so chose. Speaking from experience though, no matter how many times I play there's always a combination or two I have to look up, or monsters I have to look up to see what skills they learn and what levels/stats the skills can be learned. It was becoming a pain in the butt to try to use existing guides for this during my playtests, since almost none of the names match.

[zarkon]

As far as balance changes, we didn't have an agenda to change the game balance. The only thing that could be seen in that light is an item we consider a bugfix having to do with the Metal Slime family XP. In the original game, the basic Metal Slime gave a bit over 1000 xp per ally, which is normal for a DQ game. But the Stray Metal (Liquid Metal) gave appx 21667 per ally (they normally give around 10000) And then, going against any other Dragon Quest game I'm aware of, the Metal King XP dropped down to only around 10,000 per ally. We have chosen to take the position that this was an error. We felt that the most elegant solution would be simply swapping out the XP of the two creatures so that the Metal King yields more. Most DQ games have the Metal Kings giving around 30000 per ally, but the 21667 value was extremely close to the max that a monster can yield in this game, so the switch seemed ideal.

Noooo, my leveling speed lol

I always used liquid metal slimes to level up back in the day, as they were far more frequent then the kings (or so it seemed).  Didn't realise they also gave far more exp.  I already thought it took too long to get my monsters up to a high enough level to breed onwards with lol

[Chicken Knife]

Noooo, my leveling speed lol

I always used liquid metal slimes to level up back in the day, as they were far more frequent then the kings (or so it seemed).  Didn't realise they also gave far more exp.  I already thought it took too long to get my monsters up to a high enough level to breed onwards with lol

I know this fix is a little painful, but if we all are being honest with ourselves, we've got to admit that the Metal King should be giving more XP 

[Special]

There's no point to the guide if people can't use it!

Exactly that, I'm no expert with them, but I've seen some fantastic PDF guides/manuals that get bundled with projects like this, if page breaks and formatting are a struggle, maybe you can ask for help from some people on this community that are good with PDF creation? (if you choose to go PDF that is).

I know this fix is a little painful.

Could always bundle an optional "revert" patch, please everyone, no complaints, never a negative review, EVER!

[Chicken Knife]

Could always bundle an optional "revert" patch, please everyone, no complaints, never a negative review, EVER!

Ok, we've debated this a bit. I'm not going to tell you who was the merciful one and who was the savage, but we've decided to be inclusive and offer a revert patch as you suggest. For someone who doesn't care as much about series consistency, sensible game design, or what is probably the creator's intention, we can see how essentially doubling the length of the end game grind process for the ever-elusive perfect monsters could be an issue.

Regarding the guide format, we've been brainstorming, researching, and asking around, and I think we settled on HTML. It looks pretty. There are no intrusive page breaks. Every device that has a web browser can open it. I think we have a format that checks off every box.

So! As soon as our submission finally gets approved, we will submit an update including the better guide format and the XP revert patch.