Front Mission (SNES) Addendum v1.02

[mziab]

At the offset A9137 change the F4 F1 5A to CD 3C AC seems to solve the problem but it will show the phrase in japanese.

Or you could go to 345af4 and change the 01 to 00 to force Lloyd's name to be displayed always. Though I can't guarantee it won't cause a situation where another character's avatar is displayed along with Lloyd's name.

Incidentally, when I load your save, do a battle save and transfer the SRM to the Japanese ROM, the game still crashes horribly. So I'm actually at a loss what happened there. This might very well be a very game original game bug or the memory corruption persists between SRM reloads.

[Oxinar]

Do you know where this text is located in the ROM?
ついた
フォートモーナスか・・・・・・。
Making this change at the offset A9137 change the F4 F1 5A to CD 3C AC and translating the message I think that would solve the problem.
I don't think it's a game bug, because I tested it in the Japanese version and this message appears the same way but I could be wrong.

[mziab]

That's the exact same message I mentioned above, a few posts back - "Fort Monus, at last...". Re-translating it will do nothing to fix the issue. What you did was revert the pointer for this string to the original. The text itself is not at fault, the blanked out RAM used by the name display code is. It just so happens that with the Japanese text it breaks less critically, but the name is still displayed incorrectly, from what I've seen. The real question is what caused the RAM (and save RAM as well, by the looks of it) to be corrupted. I haven't had the time to play through that mission with a debugger yet to see what's up.

[Oxinar]

Yeah you were right, it's a bug in the game, this is from the version 1.1 of the Rom and here the name appears.

https://imgur.com/ebHIpV1

[mziab]

Cool find. It's a shame the English translation is based on the 1.0 version. Properly fixing this would be basically re-hacking the whole game, so that's just not feasible.

I could work around the bug by changing the name tag like I said before, at the risk of the wrong avatar being displayed (only potentially, since it's possible this string is always said by Lloyd, not sure of the exact conditions for all of the "mission accomplished" strings).

However, this text bug is only a symptom of some deeper issue with memory management, so sweeping it under the rug by working around it might come to bite the players later in the game.

[Felipefpl]

Cool find. It's a shame the English translation is based on the 1.0 version. Properly fixing this would be basically re-hacking the whole game, so that's just not feasible.

It's not better to change the project's page to tell ppl they should use the Rev 1 version of the game instead of 1.0?

[mziab]

It's not better to change the project's page to tell ppl they should use the Rev 1 version of the game instead of 1.0?

The English translation and everything based on it, including this addendum, will NOT work with Rev 1. A lot of data and code seems to have been shifted, so patching over Rev 1 will only get you a broken game.

[Felipefpl]

The English translation and everything based on it, including this addendum, will NOT work with Rev 1. A lot of data and code seems to have been shifted, so patching over Rev 1 will only get you a broken game.

I see, i thought Rev 1 was the 1.1 version of the game.

[mziab]

It is, but the original English translators used v1.0 as the basis of their work and both versions of the game are different enough that the patch would not work with v1.1.

[Felipefpl]

It is, but the original English translators used v1.0 as the basis of their work and both versions of the game are different enough that the patch would not work with v1.1.

I see, good to know. It's better to write this info on readme file/project's site here to avoid problems in the future.

[mziab]

The original translation already has this information in the readme and even a built-in version check:

There are two versions available of the Front Mission ROM image, version 1.0
and version 1.1.  Ver1.1 has a lot of internal changes, though nothing which
makes the gameplay any different.  It does, however, make the Front Mission
translation patch incompatable with it.
If the translation patch is applied to a ver1.1 image, the game will inform
you upon startup that it has been patched to the incorrect version and will
progress no further.

And the addendum requires a pre-patched English translation, with proper hashes mentioned in the readme and the RHDN project page. I even include a BPS patch which checks if you're patching the right file. At this point if anyone tries to patch v1.1, that's entirely on them

[Oxinar]

Some things that can be improved in the translation.

https://imgur.com/MoXElsE
I'll never let another army enter into this town.

https://imgur.com/eSXDtRe
Lack of space between Lloyd. and Make

https://imgur.com/ZD1Ckd0
Until then, you are not allowed to leave this town. or maybe Until then, you must not leave this city.

https://imgur.com/rO0H0Oj
Oceana should be oceania now?

https://imgur.com/W9kywNR
Ryuji untranslated name in Soleit.
savestate
https://www27.zippyshare.com/v/zdeJTsYW/file.html

https://imgur.com/FlKCjAe
Misspelled name Reiji Sakata.

[mziab]

https://imgur.com/MoXElsE
I'll never let another army enter into this town.

I will look at what the Japanese version says, but out of context this doesn't sound all that wrong. Technically, that "into" is redundant, but not a mistake. EDIT: The Japanese word used here is 軍隊 (guntai), which means "troops". Otherwise the intended meaning is the same.

https://imgur.com/eSXDtRe
Lack of space between Lloyd. and Make

Fixed.

https://imgur.com/ZD1Ckd0
Until then, you are not allowed to leave this town. or maybe Until then, you must not leave this city.

"You are (not) to..." is proper English. It's a formal and strict way of expressing orders that need to be obeyed. It makes sense in a military context.

https://imgur.com/rO0H0Oj
Oceana should be oceania now?

Yes, seems like I missed two instances. Fixed.

https://imgur.com/W9kywNR
Ryuji untranslated name in Soleit.
savestate
https://www27.zippyshare.com/v/zdeJTsYW/file.html

Ah, another missed pointer in the old translation. This is after the mission, right? I will need a battery save at the end of said mission then, so I can check it out in a debugger. Okay, found and fixed it.

https://imgur.com/FlKCjAe
Misspelled name Reiji Sakata.

That's not a mistake. Reiji is the father's name. This is NOT meant to be Ryuji.

[khalismur]

Some things that can be improved in the translation.

https://imgur.com/MoXElsE
I'll never let another army enter into this town.

[...]

https://imgur.com/ZD1Ckd0
Until then, you are not allowed to leave this town. or maybe Until then, you must not leave this city.

I also prefer the version in the game rather than your suggestions. The words "enter" and "allowed" are not needed.

Really great job btw, mziab. I'm in the middle of a playthrough and the translation feels very polished!

[Oxinar]

Ryuji untranslated name
https://www27.zippyshare.com/v/CP7BSJHH/file.html

[mziab]

Really great job btw, mziab. I'm in the middle of a playthrough and the translation feels very polished!

Thanks, but for the sake of clarity I'd like to stress that the script is mostly the same as the original English translation, not counting a few corrections. So if you mean it reads well, all the credit goes to the original translators

Oxinar, have you played through the entire game? I'm not sure how long to hold off on updating the patch.

[Oxinar]

I finished the game today, I found another sentence missing space. But other than that I finished it with no problems.

https://www119.zippyshare.com/v/ieGFwNAi/file.html

[mziab]

I finished the game today, I found another sentence missing space. But other than that I finished it with no problems.

https://www119.zippyshare.com/v/ieGFwNAi/file.html

Thanks, fixed! I might release an update within the next few days then. Anyway, I ended up including that workaround for the Fort Monus crash, after all.

[Oxinar]

After the next patch I will play again but this time on the original hardware. It's a good opportunity to test one of my repro boards.

[mziab]

Someone on YouTube reported a crash on real hardware, but didn't get back to me when I asked about the specifics. Since they said the original translation also didn't work for them, I assume they just didn't add the header before applying the patch, especially given that people elsewhere claim they have played through to the game on flashcarts with no problems.

EDIT: The new version is up. You can download it here for the time being.