Super Robot Wars EX | Super Robot Wars 4 | Super Robot Wars Alpha
# Posted on June 25, 2018, 5:59 a.m. by Gideon Zhi
With the recent release of The Elemental Lords, it's time to talk about AGTP's remaining SRW projects. First on the docket is Super Robot Wars EX, which thanks to some recent tooling I'm proud to announce has taken some massive strides forward in the last few weeks and is very close to being technically complete. The script is in reasonably good shape, though I'm in the process of passing it off for a second look-over by SSJCyberSonic who's fresh from his recent work on the A Portable project. I've added 22 new screenshots to the project's page and am attaching two to this post. I'm hopeful that the game will be ready before the end of the year, but as usual I can't promise anything. Additionally, EX's new toolchain acts as a functional proof-of-concept for work that will be going into Hero Chronicle.
The added benefit of having EX fully functional is that the work can be ported to the other SNES SRW games. SRW3, while impressive for its day, is not nearly up to standard and I'm intending to redo it with EX's new font code. And yes, the various incorrect character names will be fixed and the script itself will receive a fresh edit as well. The project's stuff, while usable, is all extremely old though and I'm basically going to have to redo the hacking from scratch. Shouldn't be too difficult, but no timelines or promises on availability.
So that's the good news. The bad news is that the translated lines for SRW4 and SRW Alpha probably fall about 50% into the "best guess" category; in addition to the poor writing quite a lot of the text was just flat-out translated incorrectly. Alpha has been undergoing a verification process with Jolly, the current editor, who's been steadily churning away on its gigantic script for the last several years; he's estimating that he's about 2/3s of the way through the script. What he's done does look really, really nice though, and I'm looking forward to seeing the final version of the text. For SRW4, we're probably just going to toss the script and retranslate it from scratch. Disappointing, but necessary. For the record, The Elemental Lords suffered a similar issue; this is one of the primary reasons the patch took so long in the first place. If anyone wants to have a whack at SRW4's text please reach out! There's an email button on the Contact page, and I can generally be reached on Twitter or on the Discord.
As a final closing note, I've made several minor fixes to The Elemental Lords. Typos, mispellings, that sort of thing. A few are still trickling in here and there so no new patch yet, but I'll push out a v1.05 or something in the next month or two once that trickle slows.
Star Ocean: Blue Sphere
# Posted on June 4, 2018, 4:27 a.m. by Gideon Zhi
Today I'm going to discuss the progress Blue Sphere has had over the last several years. The initial translation completed in 2012, though the writing is pretty rough and it'll need to be edited. It's also kind of glitchy, and there's lots of interface work to be done. But I picked up some Z80 and GBC architecture last fall rather than wait for someone else to help out with it (I've had abortive promises on the technical work from at least three different directions) and managed to convert the main dialog font into 4x8 in the same manner as the Pokemon Trading Card Game. Work continues! I've updated the game's project page with nine new screenshots indicative of the technical changes that have been done. 
Chaos World
# Posted on April 30, 2018, 4:45 a.m. by Gideon Zhi
Chaos World was one of the very first RPGs I worked on, and as a result the current patch isn't quite up to standard; I had to cut down a *lot* of the text in order to fit the game script back in, and I never released it with a v1.0 status. Today I'm announcing that I still have Xeur's original script before all the paring-down; with the help of TheMajinZenki I've mapped it to a new proper script dump and am preparing it for reinsertion. No new screenshots yet as it hasn't gotten that far, but this is something I'm legitimately excited about and wanted to share the progress that has been made.
Yu Yu Hakusho: Tokubetsu-hen
# Posted on April 23, 2018, 5:01 a.m. by Gideon Zhi
Today I'm providing a progress report for Yu Yu Hakusho: Tokubetsu-hen. The main script is translated and inserted, but there's a lot of fiddly technical bits left. I've been slowly re-drawing the menu graphics (the text on the menu items is actually painted on; it's not on a different layer so when it's removed, whatever was supposed to have been underneath it needs to be filled in by hand) and working on the menus. The tournament mode has a few problems and the attract mode still needs to be done, but the project is in fairly good shape. I've replaced the screenshots on the project's page to reflect the work that's been done. No ETA though; other things are taking priority.
Monstania
# Posted on April 16, 2018, 4:59 a.m. by Gideon Zhi
Monstania was the very first translation patch of meaningful size that I released, and it is correspondingly more than a little creaky in a lot of ways. To that end I've spent some time reworking it. I'd like to be able to have user-entered 8-character names and it still has the weird soft-lock semi-hang bug that the original version has, but I've gotten the script completely retranslated (thanks again to TheMajinZenki, who did JoJo, SRW2, Magical Drop 2, and Masoukishin.) I'm attaching a couple of sample snapshots of current work to this news post, but as they don't reflect the currently available patch I'm not going to add them to the project page. As with Lady Stalker, the Monstania redux's future could go a number of ways; I'm not going to say much more here about it, other than that it's amazing how simple this game is to work on now that I've got nearly 20 years of experience under my belt!
Magical Drop 2
# Posted on April 9, 2018, 4:33 a.m. by Gideon Zhi
Today I'm going to be talking a bit about Magical Drop 2. The translation is complete and the game is now fully playable in English, end to end! But I'm not releasing it just yet, primarily because it is currently available for purchase - yes, with the English translation applied - as part of the Data East Classics Collection from Retro-bit. That's right: we've been licensed! I've ticked the progress counter on the project page up to 99 (it doesn't go any higher for projects without downloads) and updated the screenshots to showcase current work. From here I need to ask for some patience while I figure out where Magical Drop 2's future lies.
Laplace's Demon
# Posted on April 5, 2018, 5:48 a.m. by Gideon Zhi
Laplace's Demon is a very strongly thematic game. Most years since its original release I'd think to myself, 'I should make sure to get this done for Halloween' or 'Wouldn't it be funny to release this on Valentine's Day' or something along those lines. The problem was that the thought would occur way too close to the holiday in question, and there was never enough time to fully fix the game in time. Then the holiday would pass, and Laplace would once again cease to be a priority.
I'm no longer aiming for a holiday-themed release for this. It's been in playtesting for a while, and a second round is scheduled to start as soon as Masoukishin is done, but there are enough bugs in the original game that it can be kind of hard to tell if an issue is something caused by the translation or if it's something that was always there. In the interests of personal sanity I'm not aiming to fix anything present in the original game, though the new version of the translation does look much nicer than the version I released back in the day. To that end I've completely replaced the screenshot slideshow on the project page with 15 fresh snaps showing the current state of the translation. I don't think this one is very far off, though as usual I'm not going to commit to any given release date.
Ladystalker - The Apocalypse Engine
# Posted on April 2, 2018, 5:36 a.m. by Gideon Zhi
Today on "things I haven't talked about in a while", I want to highlight Ladystalker. Some progress has been made in formatting strings for line length, and most (but not all) of the interfaces have been hacked. I've also hacked the scrolling introduction. The work is currently imperfect (see "Lad" instead of "Lady" below) and probably two thirds or more of the game still remains to be checked for both line length and context. For a variety of reasons Ladystalker isn't a priority at the moment, but I did want to drop a note to say progress is being made, if slowly, and that it hasn't been forgotten about.
Super Robot Wars Gaiden
# Posted on March 28, 2018, 4:08 p.m. by Gideon Zhi
Hi everyone, I'm just dropping a note here to say that SRW Gaiden: Masoukishin/The Elemental Lords is currently being playtested. The screenshots on the project page were old, so I've replaced the lot of them with 21 fresh new snaps. I'm extremely pleased with how it looks, and even though it won't be conveyed in screenshots I'm also exremely pleased with how it sounds, as we've got music persistence working in the game! The patch will be provided as an optional extra when release happens, and barring any major disasters that should be sometime in the next few months.
Dark Half
# Posted on May 11, 2015, 3:24 p.m. by Gideon Zhi
Just dropping a quick note to say that Dark Half has entered the beta test phase. The screenshots on the project page are a little out-of-date; they're pre-edit and I've since added a drop shadow. There'll be new snaps up before the release, which I'm predicting will be some time this month.
Puyo Puyo
| Platform | NES |
| Genre | Puzzle |
| Publisher | Compile |
| Published On | July 23, 1993 |
| Initial Release | June 2, 2000 |
| Latest Release | June 2, 2000 |
| Current Version | 1.00 |
