Hacking Zill O'll infinite plus

[Deleted User]

hello bois and grills.

what's new with zill o'll you ask ?

bugs fixed:
1) battle UI number resize bug is now gone, and the UI finally works and looks as it's supposed to.
2) biography entries are no longer crashing the game (this was one of the bigger issuses earlier.)

content:
1) nearly all biography entries are now translated.
2) terminology has been revised and updated on more or less everywhere, most visibly in blacksmith.
3) all items and equipment is now translated, and descriptions started.
4) cover scan is complete
5) 30/40 pages of the manual are now recreated from scratch in english.
6) the game's logo from the opening video was completely removed and recreated from scratch for both logotypes we are providing (zill o'll infinite plus or infinity: souls of zill o'll which is our localized name for the project.)
(( 7) Karla's ass was improved ))

features:
1) added an option to patch the game's date format to any configuration (default: yyyy.mm.dd / USA: mm.dd.yyyy / EURO: dd.mm.yyyy an option will be provided in the patching process to select the one you wish to use.

what's left:
1) tons and tons of translation work
2) assembly fixes to repair the job system menu that still keeps crashing occasionally
3) change the biography menu to A-Z order instead of japanese syllable categorization.
4) fix a textbox in battle win screen to not act like a retard with obtained item's descriptions.


optional stuff is getting there, i have 64 NPC textures left to convert from the ps2 data for the high resolution mod.
in addition to that, monster and weapon textures still need to be done.

here's a few pics and a couple pages of the manual:

Oblicatory Karla's ass

manual:
note that i actually destroyed my copy of the manual by tearing it apart, then scanning it and sending it to Tom for translation, whichafter, i painstakingly redrew each page from scratch, took screenshots for them
and implemented Tom's translation while maintaining the original layout of the manual. It is about as close to a perfect replica of the japanese as it can be. All pages are 100% redrawn, not cleaned from scans.

and for the end, 3 animated png's showing the original logo on the opening video, and the 2 new variants of it that will appear in the patch.
(im not much of a video editor really, and removing the logo and recreating the piece of video for it took a while )

original -> remade -> remade with localized logotype

TL;DR: we're still at it. <3

Looking good!!

 

[Kitsu-neechan]

I did do some improvements to the opening video after that post was made (less ghosting on the redone part.) sans that, still working on the manual,
I have 7 pages to go I think, before it's complete (some screenshots have to be taken later, since the game is not translated from those parts yet.)

after that and the jobsystem fix which will happen once i receive the scripts for that from Tom, it's just cosmetics and hi-res texture converting for me.
time, time, time as always, the game's pretty much baked aside that.

 

[HoaiTrung97]

I did do some improvements to the opening video after that post was made (less ghosting on the redone part.) sans that, still working on the manual,
I have 7 pages to go I think, before it's complete (some screenshots have to be taken later, since the game is not translated from those parts yet.)

after that and the jobsystem fix which will happen once i receive the scripts for that from Tom, it's just cosmetics and hi-res texture converting for me.
time, time, time as always, the game's pretty much baked aside that.

Woah! Kitsu-neechan's-san new avatar is too cute. Kawaii Kawaii (≧▽≦)

 

[Kitsu-neechan]

here's the cleaned up versions for the opening video, with hopefully no more changed needed to them (the first ones had a slightly annoying ghosting effect going on )

 

[HoaiTrung97]

here's the cleaned up versions for the opening video, with hopefully no more changed needed to them (the first ones had a slightly annoying ghosting effect going on )

Awesome!! (≧▽≦)

 

[crimsonwolf8439]

Thanks for working on this and being willing to share your hard work.

 

[Kitsu-neechan]

Thanks for working on this and being willing to share your hard work.

while im working on this solely because of the fact that i've been obsessing over this game for 2 decades now, there's no point to not share it really, so i dont really even understand the statement, but you're welcome in any case
lately it's became the most fascinating part of this patch, just to see how far i can actually push it, since at it's current state it empoys some seriously heavy modifications.
the fact that it's now running almost entirely on ps2 assets is a small miracle by itself.

 

[crimsonwolf8439]

while im working on this solely because of the fact that i've been obsessing over this game for 2 decades now, there's no point to not share it really, so i dont really even understand the statement, but you're welcome in any case
lately it's became the most fascinating part of this patch, just to see how far i can actually push it, since at it's current state it empoys some seriously heavy modifications.
the fact that it's now running almost entirely on ps2 assets is a small miracle by itself.

Well, as you said, you are working on this for yourself primarily and your fascination with the game. I've just seen quite a few translators in the novel translation scene do private translations or lock them behind an infinite number of web checks to make sure that they get the full...recognition(?) for their work. So it's quite nice that there is dedication like this still in the scene.

I'm still praying the PSP scene really takes off again. Then maybe I can leech off a mentor and learn something

 

[Kitsu-neechan]

well yeah, i dont appreciate it any more than the next guy when people just leech off my stuff and fail to give a shit about the fact that i spent years making something which they somehow believe was only made to please them and they are somehow entitled to bitch about every thing ever while just sitting on their ass waiting for the end product, but such is the internet, so i dont really bother my head with it too much.

 

[Deleted User]

Very nice. You've pull off some amazing acrobatic hacking. Thanks for putting in all the effort.

 

[Kitsu-neechan]

Very nice. You've pull off some amazing acrobatic hacking. Thanks for putting in all the effort.

If only you knew.... Well, the assembly files for this hack will be made public once it's ready anyway, so you can see for yourself. The hack employs a number of tricks that dont particularly seem complicated but tracing down all the code to change has taken quite a toll on the team at times. Such is the life of a perfectionist I suppose.

 

[Kitsu-neechan]

stupid site stop lagging -.-

 

[crimsonwolf8439]

The code.........THE CODEEEEEEE. Too generous.
Sorry, I'll stop being offtopic now.

 

[Kitsu-neechan]

the code is no secret, it's written in pure assembly and the patching process uses the sourcecode to assemble directly over the game executable.
I gave up using xdelta files for patching because of the limitations they impose. Also, storing your modifications as raw code makes making changes much easier that having to juggle with a straight hacked elf files and redundant txt files holding hacking notes.

It also has the extra advantage over xdeltas in the way that because it is pure code, it does not contain anything copyrighted, unlike patches often do.

we havent really finished finetuning the process on how this will work at the end, but most likely what happens is that there will be a series of assemblies, a resource file for modified graphics, and a tool for extracting and rebuilding the iso, as well as a copy of armips for asembling the codes.

we have started developing a tool which currently is called UMDM, and is essentially a commandline version of UMDgen, which allows easy, one click patching as it can extract and rebuild isos through commandline.

 

[crimsonwolf8439]

Any recommendations on learning assembly?

 

[Kitsu-neechan]

uhhh well.... there's plenty of resources for that allover the internet really. Google is your friend.
if you wish to learn how to deal with assembly on psp, you'd want to dig into the psp sdk to familiarize yourself with the instructionset and it's quirks on psp specifically, but in general, generic books regarding mips r4000 asm should get you pretty far.

 

[crimsonwolf8439]

ThEnK.

 

[Kitsu-neechan]

aside a few missing screenshot, the entire manual is now completely translated and redrawn.
that took a while

have a page,


here's original scans for reference.

 

[Kitsu-neechan]

looks like translating some moonrunes to sensible english reveals useful shit sometimes.... to think that i've been playing this game on and off for almost 2 decades and i didnt even know this before yesterday

 

[crimsonwolf8439]

View attachment 147518

looks like translating some moonrunes to sensible english reveals useful shit sometimes.... to think that i've been playing this game on and off for almost 2 decades and i didnt even know this before yesterday

ばか。

 

[Kitsu-neechan]

ばか。

hey hey now, easy with the insults