ROM Hack [RELEASED] Blood of Bahamut English Patch

[Blebleman]

I played the crap out of this a couple of years back and I'm looking forward to playing it again. Somehow I really hate the Monster Hunter type games but this really stuck with me.

 

[Aaron Chmielowiec]

So glad you're doing this. I was thinking about BoB the same time you posted the thread.
Perhaps you can work with the Dicastia team as they already have a ~95% translated patch.

This is already 100% translated and it's just a matter of squashing bugs in the game as everything (text, graphics) are already in the game. Thanks for the heads up, though. I still might be interested in talking with them, especially if they have some technical knowledge to share.

And about waiting for a more finished patch, I agree. Some users will stick with an older one and then mail me later about something that was fixed in a later patch.

Okay, it's noon here so I won't be around until later tonight but I'll try to finish up the materials list (length issues) by then. I also have a couple small reports of text running over the window borders so I'll look at that, too.

 

[vyseman15]

I bookmarked this thread years ago and checked every so often for updates till the hiatus, and still checked every couple of months. I'm so glad I randomly looked. Thank you all for all of your work.

 

[Aaron Chmielowiec]

Thanks for checking in. Things are moving fast.

Okay, I went ahead and realigned all the items in the game so they work with the " was obtained" or " restored" messages because I had cases where I had 2 spaces or none at all. I also (unfortunately) had to rewrite most of the material names because there were a lot of names that were just plain too long and ran well over the window border. It might be a controversial change to a degree but in a sense it isn't anything surprising. For the materials it refers to the Behemoths by the element of which they represent (Rock Beast, Fire Beast, etc.) but you know where the materials are from because not only did you just fight the Behemoth from which the materials came, they are even labeled in categories by those Behemoth names anyway.

I updated the first post rather haphazardly to put in a ton of screenshots I'll have to organize (and maybe take others). Oddly, I think a video shows it off better.

Bug-wise (or not necessarily bug-wise) there are only two things I'm wondering about:

1.The name entry screen has been stripped of Kana and Kanji input but there is a lot of space left to work with. I have the alphabet repeated in most of these screens but it seems like a huge waste of space and I'm not sure what to do with it all. The name entry in English (Roman Characters) works fine, however. There are also options on the right side of the Kana screens that normally switch between hiragana and katakana (or accent the kana; ka->ga, ha->ba/pa, etc.) but they don't do much now. It doesn't affect anything but even if I remove them the user could still try to access the functionality by clicking in that box (area)...despite it having no real effect anymore.

2. When the story text is displayed, it is displayed one character at a time at a constant rate (in Japanese), but because English uses many more characters per screen, after a while, the constant display rate suddenly speeds up to Warp 9 and blasts the rest of the text on screen. It doesn't have any effect on the game other than it feeling a bit jarring, but I thought I should note it.

Okay, at any rate, I put out a 0.9 version patch. Other than the minor annoyances above it is looking good to go, but I'll let the testers (whom shall remain nameless for the time being lest they get hounded for the patch) rip it apart some more. Feedback in general is positive, however, and the testers seem happy with how the game is looking and running overall. Hopefully I can put out a patch very soon, with "very" being the operative word.

 

[Cyan]

For the name entry, can you disable and use an empty square in the place of kana and diacritics?
like the top-right one. it will look better with empty area and users will be less curious about it.

 

[Aaron Chmielowiec]

That's what I thought about doing. I'm just trying to actually find those tile images and null them out (copy a blank tile in their place).

EDIT> Okay, found the name entry tiles (images). I just need to null those out. Oh, and I see the whole name entry tileset (bg)...hopefully I can edit that without it blowing up the whole game.

I was going to fill up some of the pages with symbols but I probably should be careful. The half width asterisk makes the game go haywire, for instance. I would assume that unless influenced most players would just enter a simple name using the Roman alphabet anyway.

 

[GHANMI]

That's what I thought about doing. I'm just trying to actually find those tile images and null them out (copy a blank tile in their place).

I was going to fill up some of the pages with symbols but I probably should be careful. The half width asterisk makes the game go haywire, for instance. I would assume that unless influenced most players would just enter a simple name using the Roman alphabet anyway.

Then you should avoid that character
Or, if you want to keep it badly, create a duplicate character with the asterisk but that's technically still *not* the real asterisk.
To be avoided generally is stuff like < : > / { } [ ] * (maybe more depending on games, Konami ones are more crazy... and Falcom stuff sometimes use the half-width coma as a line break code).

Spoiler: One accident during an experiment phase: used a reserved char (upper screen) and the whole text box went crazy

(I'd love to see the rampage caused by the asterisk symbol :3 )

 

[Cyan]

Nippon Ichi games sometime even use letter "A" as special code

 

[AsPika2219]

Nice Arabic text! Anyway, keep moving forward for this games!

 

[Aaron Chmielowiec]

Okay, I messed with the Name Entry "fun" for a few hours now. I have it like this, trying to use every non-kanji character available to me in the font (surprisingly a number of characters are outright missing; I *could* add in any characters I want in theory but this is such a small element of the game most people won't bother with, I went ahead with what I had:

There is one last problem in the first name entry (default) screen. Those kana accent (゛) and (゜) are not graphics and although they look like text, there is nothing in the name entry file (those tiles are actually blank according to that) so those characters are hard coded elsewhere and I have absolutely no idea where. Again, this is minor since they don't actually do anything, but it is on the same level of frustration as finding the suffix (体) in the RPG of Retro Game Challenge during battle.

For what it is worth, everything else in the game seems to be working fine. I generated another patch...I'll call it 0.95.

 

[Auryn]

If you need some help with the graphics, i mean romhacking way, don't esitate to ask. Example those Text overflow you was talking in the last site (Ifrit troops), should not be a big deal to do.
Or delete the empty squares in the name entry screen or try to deactivate those buttons.
If you could point out the files where those things are stored, i can take a look.

 

[GHANMI]

A Hira/Kata slot where dakuten toggle buttons are unavailable? Umm... That doesn't really work.
But if you want the JP chars so bad, here's an idea.
You keep the hiragana tab as is, and the second tab (you used for katakana) becomes pre-made hiragana with dakuten already added.
Too bad though you couldn't add European accentuated characters, but that would be too much trouble changing the 1-byte half-width katakana in the font just for that.

 

[Aaron Chmielowiec]

I would actually be happy with just 3 screens for the name entry. I don't really need kana at all; I was just filling up space with what I had. If I had that and the buttons on the right side disabled I would be happy.

 

[tullfan]

So glad you're doing this. I was thinking about BoB the same time you posted the thread.

Perhaps you can work with the Dicastia team as they already have a ~95% translated patch.

zoneblaze...... the translated section in dicastia clearly states that the blood of bahamut translation is the property of this translation project. there is no such thing as a "dicastia team" they only upload patches and roms. theres even a link to this page. I wish newbies thought before they spoke.

 

[Ulieq]

zoneblaze...... the translated section in dicastia clearly states that the blood of bahamut translation is the property of this translation project. there is no such thing as a "dicastia team" they only upload patches and roms. theres even a link to this page. I wish newbies thought before they spoke.

Maplestory, land of newbs.

 

[Aaron Chmielowiec]

Well, at least I won't end up writing mail to myself.

In any case I guess I'll scrap the last two name entry pages of kana and leave those blank. Maybe later I can then try to figure out how to disable/remove those two pages from the name entry screen altogether. After all, the rest of the game is mostly done and I want to push forward, not end up getting stuck on a red herring for eternity. I'd like to release the patch as soon as I can.

On that note it has been a couple days since I heard from any of the testers. The game is pretty hard but in any case I'll try to make another video of the game in its current state and upload that, maybe later today or tomorrow if I get the chance (mind you, tomorrow is my daughter's birthday and I might be tied up with that)

 

[lcleong]

i think u better release the patch if u feel its ready for releasing it rather than waiting for testers eternity
most of the testers is like dissapear right after gotten the patch or whatever

 

[Aaron Chmielowiec]

I've actually been fortunate with both Retro Game Challenge 2 and this in that the testers have provided invaluable feedback and improved the game considerably. My problem with working so closely with all the files is the "can't see the forest for the trees" syndrome. I need an outside pair of eyes to see things I can't notice or mentally skip over. I even get suggested fixes in addition to "It ain't dun wurk" in many cases. Here is one found today (and the proposed fix):

This and some of the item/panacea descriptions needed some rewording due to space issues. (Already done), so that is good.

The last things to see are the final rank (honor/title) descriptions, which can only be obtained by doing things by synthing all possible items in the game and beating all Behemoths and missions with an S rank, even the optional ones. However, some of them require materials you can only get by playing multiplayer, so I'm trying to come up with a good way to do that. I could load up my DSi LL with my DSTwo and put my old R4 in my DSLite and go to town trying it that way, I suppose.

In any case, I updated the patch (again).

The name entry screen has those last two kana entry screens blanked out so it looks less cluttered but there is an open space there now. Still, I'm sure the average English native would rather see an entry screen with the roman alphabet, numbers and symbols than huge screens of kana and kanji upon starting a new game.

 

[Cyan]

Isn't there any cheat code to unlock all items?
Maybe the items are not at the same place in RAM due to the patch?

 

[Aaron Chmielowiec]

There is, but to get the rank titles you actually have to perform certain tasks. I can gift myself 99 of each item but I have to actually synth them to get the rank. The known cheats to the game still work as has also been reported by the testers.

There should be a way to change a flag and give myself all the ranks but it might be better this way anyway; I get to test various dialog and text along the way. I already found and fixed a few text errors when synthing certain weapons (Cloims Solace and Mjolnir...for some reason)

In any case I'll give multiplayer a try tonight and report back on that. I have a lot of the rank titles now but I know I'm missing a few for multiplayer and I think I have to S rank every mission in the game, of which I already have done that for much of the game already.