Announcement ~ PAX East No.2: Shin Megami Tensei: if...
Shin Megami Tensei: if...
# Posted on April 14, 2012, 4:21 a.m. by Gideon Zhi

So I'm sure the big burning question on most peoples' minds is, "What took you so long?" The short version is that while most of Shin Megami Tensei: if... (hereafter SMTif) is technically identical to SMT2, one crucial part of the game is different: font storage. While SMT2 stores its font right out in the open, SMTif's is compressed. This by itself would not normally be a problem, but instead of unpacking the entire thing to RAM like some games do, SMTif unpacks individual letters - making my usual workaround for these sorts of things largely ineffective. I've had project files (including a complete script dump) for if sitting on my hard drive since 2008, but it wasn't until May of last year that we got the font stuff fully sorted out, thanks to veteran romhacker Neil_ who you may know from the Partial Translations version of Dragon Quest 5, among other things! So not only has it been a long and arduous process getting it even this far, it's been an interesting job keeping quiet about it :) I initially wanted to announce work on this much sooner, but didn't have anything to show for it until recently.

Ian Kelley returns to do the script, so stylistically it'll be similar to SMT 1 and 2. We're largely adopting official naming conventions for spells, items, demon races, etc when available. There are a few notable deviations (we're considering Fey or Fae for the yosei race due to its largely celtic membership, as opposed to Fairy) but by and large we're conforming. I also elected to go with a fully proportional font for this one; compare the screenshots below to SMT2 to see the difference. There are a few other technical improvements I'd like to look into, such as expanded item and equipment names in subscreens, that's going to come after I'm done with the rest of it.

So don't expect this immediately, or possibly even soon. It's a process, and it's not nearly done yet. But I'm hoping that despite SMTif's distant ETA, this announcement will make a lot of people happy.