ROM Hack [RELEASED] Blood of Bahamut English Patch

[Sora de Eclaune]

Now we'll be able to figure out why Bahamut seems so angry when summoned in Final Fantasy! If it's the same Bahamut, anyway.

 

[gamecaptor]

Mad love to my friend Densetsu for keeping this project alive and to you Aaron for pushing it through to the end!

 

[Aaron Chmielowiec]

Well, that was fast. I went to bed wondering what would happen to the thread and *poof* instathread revival GETS!

Okay, for my progress I have a lot to post but I will have to wait until I'm at a PC tonight to post it all. In brief:

* I made a 0.5 alpha patch last night. It now has about 200 more fixes in addition to the 120 or so to the story and fixes things like the tutorial, mission descriptions and a bunch of tag errors and spacing issues
* I tested it again through most of the missions and it looks good
* the very ending of 7-5 has three small screens of dialogue but I can't get it working quite right; I can get one page of two lines working or two pages overlaid on top of each other, even though all the tags and pointers seem to be correct and in line with the Japanese version. I have a placeholder page there now that still should be all right for all intents and purposes.
* in the text line at the top of the screen in-game there are some stuck pixels at times and I'm not sure why that is happening. It's minor, but noticeable. It goes away when another message is displayed.
* (maybe not an issue) I messed with the game in crystaltile and ended up in a state where you could never finish a mission (mission cleared would never appear). I backtracked and reedited it again and it seemed to work but I'm still suspicious.

At this stage it is almost releasable as-is. I do have a couple people helping with proofreading so I'm just trying to squash the minor issues.

* edit> figured out the lingering pixel issue in the main game I think. I'll do some more testing on it today.


Also, what is Sigma Harmonics? I have been asked twice in the past day about tackling that? (If it is too far off topic I can take it to private messages)

 

[Gaming4Ever]

You Good Sir are a Machine


Also found this a Square Enix RPG for DS never tried it :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigma_Harmonics

 

[Sora de Eclaune]

Also, what is Sigma Harmonics? I have been asked twice in the past day about tackling that? (If it is too far off topic I can take it to private messages)

Sigma Harmonics is an...RPG or Adventure game, I think? I've never looked it up, so I don't know for sure. The game displays in book mode. It seems like if Nagato hadn't figured out how to deal with the text in that game, we would never have gotten a translation for Nanashi no Game. You could probably go ask Nagato about all that stuff if you want to go for that one. It's a highly-sought translation, actually.

 

[Pablitox]

Sigma Harmonics is an...RPG or Adventure game, I think? I've never looked it up, so I don't know for sure. The game displays in book mode. It seems like if Nagato hadn't figured out how to deal with the text in that game, we would never have gotten a translation for Nanashi no Game. You could probably go ask Nagato about all that stuff if you want to go for that one. It's a highly-sought translation, actually.

Here's some info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigma_Harmonics

Jesus Square, why are we missing the best DS games? Same with DQ series.

 

[Phoenix Goddess]

Glad to see this open, again!

Good luck, Den!

 

[Aaron Chmielowiec]

Okay, I think I fixed the stuck pixels during messages that appear in-mission. After adjusting some of the text so the spacing is all right, that seems like it works fine now.

All right, I put the patch at version 0.6 but this is looking good enough to release. Still, I probably should wait to hear what the others think before I go and dump a patch upon the world.

One small thing with the patch; when I made one from a dump of the game I own, it didn't seem to work for a few people that found their game through...other means. After being pointed to another "source" I made a patch based on that image and it seemed to work for everyone else. I'm not sure if I should include 2 versions of the patch or not in this case.

Sora> Obviously Bahamut is angry because he has to work for Square Enix.


Thanks for the notes about Sigma Harmonics. I'll take a look at it later but honestly I have no idea what to expect with that one.

And Thanks to Densetsu for reopening the thread. It should be smooth sailing from here on; I already have the game basically done now so it is a matter of just polishing up and remaining text issues and hoping we don't find any crazy bugs during gameplay.


EDIT> I may need some people with basic art skills to try and make up some slate solutions from actual screenshots instead of a photo of a screen on the DS. Briefly, here is what I mean:

There are 10 unlockable Behemoths in the game, and Squeenix released their solutions to each over a period of time. These are not spoilers and are just extra content, though they are considerably harder than the main story in most cases. Here is an old screenshot for the first slate:

And here is the empty unsolved slate in the game:

Basically I just want a cleaner version of the solution on the new images (even if they are smaller...I'm open to artistic ideas if you want to enlarge the images or anything). I could do it in a pinch but if anyone else has any time and wants to help...it would be appreciated.

The 10 original solutions (photos)
http://aaronin.jp/bob/bob1.jpg
http://aaronin.jp/bob/bob2.jpg
http://aaronin.jp/bob/bob3.jpg
http://aaronin.jp/bob/bob4.jpg
http://aaronin.jp/bob/bob5.jpg
http://aaronin.jp/bob/bob6.jpg
http://aaronin.jp/bob/bob7.jpg
http://aaronin.jp/bob/bob8.jpg
http://aaronin.jp/bob/bob9.jpg
http://aaronin.jp/bob/bob10.jpg

The 10 screenshots in-game before solving:
http://aaronin.jp/bob/seal1.png
http://aaronin.jp/bob/seal2.png
http://aaronin.jp/bob/seal3.png
http://aaronin.jp/bob/seal4.png
http://aaronin.jp/bob/seal5.png
http://aaronin.jp/bob/seal6.png
http://aaronin.jp/bob/seal7.png
http://aaronin.jp/bob/seal8.png
http://aaronin.jp/bob/seal9.png
http://aaronin.jp/bob/seal10.png

 

[Black-Ice]

Holy shit this project is gonna revive itself from the grave and finish itself before we finish Digimon Story Lost Evolution

 

[Phoenix Goddess]

Holy shit this project is gonna revive itself from the grave and finish itself before we finish Digimon Story Lost Evolution

To be fair, this project had more translators than the Digimon project. Most of the BoB text has been translated by numerous of translators(maybe... 5 or 6+?) since the very beginning when Noitora was project leader. The Digimon project needs more love

 

[Aaron Chmielowiec]

Okay, last update for today since it is getting late and my kids aren't sleeping well anyway.

I have confirmed the stuck pixel issue is fixed with messages that appear during missions. I'll put that into yet-another alpha patch.

Now, since I like to treat threads like this as a kind of project scrapbook...

I touched up a bit more of the menu and description text, but mainly I'm just testing through the missions to make sure they all work. Desmume goes a bit bonkers on some scenes (flashback sequences (sepia filter) with meteors falling, the screen shaking and clouds/smoke scrolling across the screen all at once) but so far on real hardware this hasn't been an issue at all, and really doesn't mess up Desmume either unless you are impatient like me and like the turbo feature. It might just as likely be the fault of my PC, though. (Not the fastest; it's a Vaio Duo 11) This actually highlights another small issue. The characters in the story sometimes have hardcoded names (or ranks/titles in the case of the military) in the main story file and have to be edited by hand.

But of course, length is an issue... The one below might be shortened to "Troop" but the one above? heichou is more like Lieutenant or Sergeant depending on which branch of the military you are referring to. In any case I'll put something in its place now. I needed to add in a few other names as well based on the events in the other Chapters.

In the editing department I found that even though using the asterisk character (*) is fine, it must be written as double byte or the text goes nuts, like it thinks it is some kind of control code. The conversion tool didn't seem to convert them right but putting them as double byte equivalents (＊) made the surrounding text all right again.

In general the spacing of some of the text is arguable at times. I've fixed up the worst offenders but some of it is a matter of "Is this okay? Should I leave it?" or "I need to thwak this with the hammer of justice!". Here, quick before/after I dug up from my PC.

There are also some things I'm debating on changing, even if they weren't in the Japanese version as such. For the extra missions, many of them have the same mission clear condition "Defeat the Behemoth!", but there is a different instance in the text for each mission. I could change "the Behemoth" to the actual name such as "Vanargand" or "Bahamut" though that is completely optional. The same goes for the battle spoils screen. It lists the name of objects vaguely referencing where it was from even though it is obvious where it is from. For example, I can leave "Fire Beast's Horn" even though it is from Ifrit since you just fought him.

Oh, and I see the first post is updated with the team names. This helps me with the readme which I will update now. Thanks. My last name is technically Tokunaga since I naturalized as a Japanese citizen but I'm okay with either, especially since things like my University degree still have my old name on it as do some of my certificates. I guess it doesn't really matter either way in this case.

 

[tullfan]

awesome the games revived

 

[Densetsu]

Oh, and I see the first post is updated with the team names. This helps me with the readme which I will update now. Thanks. My last name is technically Tokunaga since I naturalized as a Japanese citizen but I'm okay with either, especially since things like my University degree still have my old name on it as do some of my certificates. I guess it doesn't really matter either way in this case.

I may not be around much for the next few weeks, so I gave you full editing rights in this thread. Feel free to update the OP with any information you want, including changing your name, etc.

I went ahead and deleted most of the old information from the OP so it's now mostly a "clean slate" for you to format however you want with new screenshots, videos, patch links ( ), etc.

All the old information has been preserved and moved to the second post and put in spoilers.
============================


We now have an alpha patch v0.7. I tried it out and it's looking excellent. Really looking forward to releasing it as soon as it's ready.

 

[Sora de Eclaune]

I've made you a graphic. It's a longer name box background. I've made it to fit the "Ifrit Troop" name seen in one of the images you've posted.

However, this will be entirely useless if the game doesn't allow you to display an alternate graphic when a longer name is displayed.

 

[hippy dave]

If space is limited you could use the standard rank abbreviations like Lt. and Sgt.

 

[Auryn]

I've made you a graphic. It's a longer name box background. I've made it to fit the "Ifrit Troop" name seen in one of the images you've posted.

However, this will be entirely useless if the game doesn't allow you to display an alternate graphic when a longer name is displayed.

Well, in english words are sure longer than in Kanji so expand that graphic is not a bad thing, mostly it will be needed longer anyway.

To be fair, this project had more translators than the Digimon project. Most of the BoB text has been translated by numerous of translators(maybe... 5 or 6+?) since the very beginning when Noitora was project leader. The Digimon project needs more love

Well, i am teaching Yugix how to correctly edit the NCBR Rastsan edited the wrong way for Digimon on PM exactly now



About Sigma Harmonics: did Nagato ever made his part of the job public?? I remember that I took a look at the game looooongtime ago and i don't even remember what i found

 

[Aaron Chmielowiec]

Okay, quick update for now but I'll try to update later with more media for you and maybe update the first post somewhat.

- I messed with the name entry screen. It's now in English but there is a lot of repetition so I'm thinking about how to spruce that up somewhat
- some of the NPC names in parts of the story seem fixed so I'm trying to work around it, changing names if I have to
- Santiago's name is a problem because the max number of letters in the name entry screen is 6. I can force it to 8 by default but it messes up the story because the character length for player characters seems stuck at 6 characters. I can mix in half width characters in his name to get around it but that makes his name go over the name window edge (position and alignment is calculated as the number of double byte characters it uses in length)
- in short I thought about a change Santiago->Diago
- Some length issues with really long item and material names but I can fix that up quickly.

Other than that, everything is sitting pretty. I'll try to post later today with some more media.


I guess when the above issues are fixed up a bit I can think again about releasing the patch. The game works fine other than some minor annoyances. Some of the ones I have helping me with testing are giddy about finally playing it in English and asked about releasing a patch publicly as soon as possible, even an alpha version, but I'll think about it as I patch up the game a bit more.

 

[Cyan]

I think it's better if you release the patch when all is done and you think it's the final version (at least 1.0, you can release fix later if needed).
If you release a beta, I think a lot of users will play that one and won't update/replay the game with newer patch.
That's my opinion, it would bother me if I keep putting a lot of work and effort on it but users will only play an unfinished one.

We waited 3 years, we can wait few days more.

 

[Phoenix Goddess]

I think it's better if you release the patch when all is done and you think it's the final version (at least 1.0, you can release fix later if needed).
If you release a beta, I think a lot of users will play that one and won't update/replay the game with newer patch.
That's my opinion, it would bother me if I keep putting a lot of work and effort on it but users will only play an unfinished one.

We waited 3 years, we can wait few days more.

I agree completely. A polished finished version is better than multiple patches and less confusing for people new to patches.

On another note, you guys did a great job, Densetsu. It was a pleasure working with so many translators and proofreaders! Everyone who was and is on the team pitched in and quite a lot of work was finished. Thanks again for the experience, everyone!

 

[ZoneBlaze]

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.