Progress ~ Alpha Has an Editor
Super Robot Wars Alpha
# Posted on Feb. 22, 2010, 5:56 p.m. by Gideon Zhi

Please welcome Antialias, recruited in desperation from the depths of /m on 4chan, to the SRW Alpha project. When he passed me these images two weeks ago he'd edited up through the route merge at scenario 6 (of 57.) So I've uploaded a bunch of the stuff he sent me to showcase his work! The two snaps below are now in the game's gallery, along with nine more new snaps. Enjoy!

Progress ~ Tactics, Making Progress
Tactics Ogre ~ Let Us Cling Together
# Posted on Feb. 22, 2010, 5:35 p.m. by Gideon Zhi

In the last 24 hours or so, I've fixed a couple of major issues. One of them was hopefully the last of the hiccups resulting from the conversion of the text routine into something that'll accept a different format of text. Another was a crash surrounding the default name for your squad. This means you can actually play past the third map now without the game blowing up in your face.

There are still a lot of issues, though. One of the tutorials has a bad button press in its script, which is causing it to go out of sync and lock up. A lot of the interfaces need to be tweaked, windows moved and expanded, and every once in a while there'll be a *really* horrible glitch with some of the graphics, though I have a feeling this is a result of a hook misfire with some of the code I've added to the game. I'll have to double check.

Getting much closer, though.

Progress ~ Merry Christmas, and Apologies
# Posted on Dec. 26, 2009, 12:15 p.m. by Gideon Zhi

I'd hoped to have Megami Tensei (as in, the original) out yesterday, but due in part to being with relatives for the last 48 hours (without internet) I was unable to post this yesterday. Unfortunately this is not the biggest problem with my plan, as several extraordinarily nasty bugs (including the one pictured in the screens below, which refused to die and killed my entire party quite handily) have reared their heads and are preventing the release. The game is mostly done, I think, though I do want to get some of the more nonsensical text segments doublechecked, but the issue is largely due to the physical expansion of the ROM.

Physical expansion (i.e. making the game bigger and being able to fit more text in) is a relatively easy task when dealing with SNES games. Not so with the NES. The glitches - possibly related to timing and interrupts - were initially discovered to be causing visual corruption in the maze layouts. These are easily ameliorated by simply turning your view, but given that this is a first-person dungeon crawl, the bug was deemed serious enough to hold back a release. However when I endeavored to play further, I encountered several further problems, including the Mappa spell's output (a minimap in the left-hand pane) locking in place instead of moving with the player, Nakajima dropping to level 1 after gaining a level in battle yet retaining all of his statistics while Yumiko progressed normally, and of course, the nasty creature pictured in the attached screens, which frankly seemed to be unkillable. Given the severity of these issues, I cannot yet in good faith release the game to the public.

(I've actually just finished talking with Liana, who you may remember from Metal Max Returns. She's done some research and apparently the Bug enemy is not a bug. I hope that sounds as odd to you as it did when I wrote it! The other issues still stand, though.)

However, I *HAVE* done a lot of work on the game in the last week. I've tweaked the font to be a bit more uniform and much more readable (I've un-bolded a few of the letters and straightened out the heights), and I've redrawn the bland "DON" that appears when you bang into a wall to be a much more fancy "BAM" (pictured below.) I've re-researched all of the enemy names and brought them up to speed with proper romanizations. Several of them don't appear in any other Megami Tensei title, or certainly not in any that have been released in English - examples include Akhushtal, Viy, A Bao A Qu, Bathym and Myrrha. I've inserted most, if not all, of the miscellaneous text in the game - and Lord knows there's plenty of the stuff. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that I'd missed some.

I'll post more news when I have it. Can't say when that'll be, though, and I apologize again if I've disappointed anyone.

Progress ~ LUNAR not quite ready
LUNAR Walking School
# Posted on Dec. 4, 2009, 5:56 p.m. by Gideon Zhi

I've edited Chapter 9 and am a good way through 10 (just done with the townie text), but 11 and 12 are going to be long ones. However, I have been posting brief updates to Twitter when they're available. I'm working hard on it, but LUNAR has a very particular flavor to it, and getting that across while still maintaining textual accuracy can be very tiring.

Progress ~ LUNAR: No promises, but...
LUNAR Walking School
# Posted on Nov. 29, 2009, 6:44 p.m. by Gideon Zhi

No promises, but if I can manage to edit even one chapter each day this week, LUNAR: Walking School might just be available by the weekend. I finished editing Chapter 7 (of 12) today, and as a bonus plowed through 8. Four left...

Progress ~ Holy Umbrella enters beta testing.
Holy Umbrella: Dondera's Wild!!
# Posted on Oct. 29, 2009, 7:40 a.m. by Gideon Zhi

Betatesting on Holy Umbrella started last night. Should be a pretty quick deal, all told; the game is not very long and is a *lot* more stable than Mystic Ark was. It DOES have a lot of text, though! A surprising amount of text.

I've completely replaced the snapshot gallery with up-to-date material - 22 brand new screenshots, two of which you can see here.

Progress ~ Mystic Ark Beta Test Progressing Smoothly
Mystic Ark
# Posted on Sept. 16, 2009, 5:03 a.m. by Gideon Zhi

Mystic Ark entered playtesting on Sunday afternoon, and the tests have been progressing smoothly. We've been moving at a quick pace (but are not sacrificing accuracy for speed) and are up to the fifth world on our initial playthrough. Second playthrough should go pretty quickly, faster than the initial one anyway. I've replaced the old screenshots on the project's page with 28 new ones showcasing the current work on the game.

Progress ~ Moving Forward (Mystic Ark, etc)
Mystic Ark
# Posted on Sept. 11, 2009, 5:04 a.m. by Gideon Zhi

So, since Dynamic Designs posted an update on their Mystic Ark project, I figured I should post an update on mine. As of about 5AM on Thursday, the script has been completely inserted. It's not entirely stable; I was able to play for about ten minutes last night before encountering a bug on the Bloodhook which wouldn't let me leave an item shop, but that's since been fixed. Due to the way the script is stored there are probably a lot of these minor little instabilities, all of which are easily fixed provided they're found in the first place. A fully proportional font has been implemented, as you can see in the screenshots below; in the event that the text needs to be centered, a command for that has been programmed as well. Further, a linebreak command has been added not only to menus but also to equipment displays, and it works better than I could have hoped. I'm writing this from work so I don't have a lot of time, but over the next few days (Monday, probably) I'll be updating the project page with completely new snapshots.

I'm also resolving to work on several games in order, as they're all fairly close to being done and pretty much require either further editing or minor hacking tasks. After Mystic Ark these are, in order, Holy Umbrella, LUNAR: Walking School, Megami Tensei, and Laplace's Demon. I may squeeze Hourai High in there somewhere, get the script ready for satsu to do the extra editing he wanted. But that's what my schedule looks like, at least for now.

Progress ~ *whistle*
Super Robot Wars EX
# Posted on Aug. 22, 2009, 10:39 a.m. by Gideon Zhi

It's far from perfect, but it's getting there!

Progress ~ At long last, an update
# Posted on July 27, 2009, 4:08 p.m. by Gideon Zhi

Before I launch into the update proper, let me first express regret at the silence on the front page lately. Marathonning Alpha Gaiden like I did was taxing and tiring, and my state of exhaustion is/was not helped by a rigorous work schedule; I do 38 hours over three days, and by the time I come home after that I barely have the energy to do ANYTHING. I'm lucky if I get that energy back by 9PM the night before I have to go back to work. That said, in the last several weeks (not to mention the last several months) I've made quite a lot of progress on several of my projects.

To begin with, I've reinserted the majority of Holy Umbrella's text, and it's gone through an initial alpha test phase. There are still several issues and a couple of untranslated text boxes, but nothing that a few days hopefully won't fix. See the first of the accompanying screenshots for an example of inserted text.

Similarly, some fairly major strides have been made in Majin Tensei recently. The last of the technical issues surrounding font replacement have finally been resolved, and some theoretical assembly workarounds for text expansion that I'd been thinking about have proven to operate flawlessly in practice. The result is that, at least for now, I can insert roughly 3/4s of the "main" script with no issue, and that the rest shouldn't be far behind. Meanwhile the demon dialogue has been fully dumped and translated, and is ready for insertion as well, but I want to get the rest of the text into the game before I futz with that any further. Again, see the other accompanying screenshot for a sample of inserted text actually working correctly in-game.

I'm not sure if it's been mentioned on the front page or not, but Romancing SaGa 2's script has finally been translated, thanks to Eien ni Hen, translatress extraordinaire. I've outsourced script formatting to local forum and IRC junkie Arle, who has already completed a good chunk of the work. Screenshots will be posted as soon as they're available, but I have no idea how long that'll be.

The last game I'm going to mention in detail is LUNAR Walking School. As I'm sure I've probably mentioned before, the entire game has been hacked and translated, and has been "sort of" ready to go for a while; however, I'd wanted to give its script another going-over before releasing it. Well, I've gone through the first of the main plot arcs and done all the edits I've wanted. This, if I recall correctly, comprises chapters 1-7, or about half the game. It takes about three to four hours to edit a chapter, so call it fifteen to twenty hours of hard work on my part before this is ready to go. That said, I can only work on one thing at a time, and there are a lot of other things vying for my hours, so don't expect LUNAR immediately.

All that said, I'd like to remind everyone, myself included, of the loooooooong list of games with translated scripts that are also vying for my time. These are all in varying states of completion, so remember, just because the script is translated doesn't mean that the game is anywhere near ready for release. So, without further ado, the list, excluding the four games mentioned above: Adventures of Hourai High, Ancient Magic, Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem, Ganbare Goemon 2, Ladystalker, Lagrange Point, Laplace's Demon, Madara 2, Makaitoushi SaGa, Megami Tensei, Mystic Ark, Rejoice, Slime Morimori Dragon Quest, Solid Runner, Super Puzzle Puyo 2, Super Robot Wars 4, Super Robot Wars EX, Super Robot Wars Gaiden, Tactics Ogre, and Ys 5. I have not forgotten about ANY of these. It's a question of time and motivation, both of which have been at an unfortunate premium these days.

Hopefully I'll have a release coming in the next few weeks, but I'm not going to make any promises. Again, sorry for the silence. I've just been extremely tired of late.