Xenogears Project Update #2

I'm currently working on the kernel files. You know, the main stuff, like weapons, abilities, spells, deathblows, etc. It's gonna take a while to finish it, they're 33 files, the biggest ones being the items and equipment. The descriptions are stored somewhere else in the CD. Oh yeah, I hope no one minds this, but most of the unused content will be renamed as "Dummy" to save some space.

And now that I've learned how to edit enemy names, their techs and their respective pointers, this project's gonna be a piece of cake. There's only one thing holding me back right now, and that is the Xenoiso tool. For some odd reason, it isn't rebuilding the ISO from scratch as it was designed to. It's stopping right at the first folder. :/ I really need it working properly, or else this project may never be finished.


Screenshots:

SPOILER ALERT!!!
Only look at the screenshots below if you've already played the game (or don't mind spoilers at all).

Xenogears Project Update

Here's a few new screenshots for you. I finished editing the chapter names that are written in the Memory Card, and just finished the world map. Now that I've learned how to use Xenocomp and ExtXeno, finishing this project will be a lot easier (although a little boring, heh). It looks like the pointers are working just fine.

However...

Looks like the world map doesn't read character name opcodes. I inserted Bart's name opcode there (or so I think), which caused a little glitch. Maybe I wrote the wrong hex value, I don't know. All the other locations look fine. Anyway, stay tuned for more updates!

Xenogears - Script Revision + Term Corrections

This is a work in progress.

This is something I've been wanting to do for a long time. This is a full revision of Xenogears, a classic RPG made by Squaresoft for the original PlayStation and one of my favorite games of all time. Those who have played the game know how poorly translated/localized this game was. Not only there were several mistranslated terms and sentences that didn't even make sense in English, the translation was also full of misspellings and the punctuation was really bad, with several cases of missing commas, periods, exclamation marks and question marks. It's like the localization team didn't even had a spell checker and had to rely on their eyes alone. They also left Japanese characters in the text for no reason (such as "ー" and "～") and replaced the pointy brackets used for highlighting key terms (like <this>) with dashes (like -this-), not knowing what they were actually supposed to mean. Some sites state that this was furigana (which are special characters used to aid those unfamiliar with a specific kanji or those relatively new to the Japanese language, providing its intended reading in either hiragana or katakana), but I have evidence that that's simply not true. Sometimes the developers put kanji within those brackets (such as ヒトの力＜愛＞), which totally debunks that theory. Kanji is never used as a reading for another kanji, period. There was also a bit of censorship, such as "God" being written as "god", even though it's a direct reference to the god of Judaism/Christianity, or "Church" (the institution) being localized as the "Ethos" organization (within semi-quotes every time, again, for no reason). I know that the localization team did this to avoid controversy among religious gamers, but as a religious gamer myself, I don't see a problem, as it is just a game. The Shin Megami Tensei series is far more daring than this game, believe me.

Anyway, this project is supposed to correct all that, while using the official translation as a base. There were a few parts that I had to re-localize because they were far too literal and sounded very unnatural in English. There were also parts I had to re-translate and shorten a bit in order to make the sentences fit better and display the character portraits fine, but these are in the minority.

Project screenshots:

And below are a few tests I did:

What you're not seeing in the images above: apart from renaming Fei as "Fey" (lol), I've added unused character name opcodes to the game's dialog, which make the console's hardware read data from a different offset within the CD. The biggest advantage of doing this is that it saves me a LOT of space. Character name opcodes take up only 2 bytes each, while names like "Emeralda" take up 8 bytes (consider how many times that might appear in the game!). Another advantage is, if a ROM hacker wishes to add a character naming feature to the game, this hack will save you a great deal of effort and time. The problem, however, is that you'd have to name Citan and Emeralda twice while playing the game, because both characters have 2 "characters" of themselves in the game code with different battle sprites each.

Most of the main dialog and battle dialog is done, but I still need to do another proofreading to make sure nothing was forgotten. Also, the menu, the world map and some other battle stuff still need to be done. Updating pointers manually is such a boring task.

I'm not sure if I can finish this alone, but if things don't end well, I'll just hand my work over to someone more capable.

[PSX] Final Fantasy VIII - Uncensored Gerogero Boss + Minor Text Changes

I'm not dead yet!

This hack decensors the Gerogero boss of Final Fantasy VIII (PSX version), as well as his Triple Triad card. The American localisation team of Squaresoft censored them back in 1999, fearing that the game would receive an undeserved "M" rating in case they didn't. The monster was originally reddish like the image above, but his textures' colors were changed to blue-ish, so the monster wouldn't look so gory. They also censored a pool of blood in one of the rooms of the final dungeon by turning it into a green liquid, but I couldn't restore it, sorry. I believe these are the only instances of censorship in the US release (Note: the animation of the Devour command is as censored as the original. The only difference is that the Japanese text was translated to English).

 Fighting the monster.

Gerogero card.

The four "Red Gerogero" patches also fix a few text annoyances that were present in the official translation: "Buel", "Katal" and "Mega Phoenix" are now "Buer", "Katar" and "Mega-Phoenix", respectively. I felt that these changes needed to be included ASAP. Changing these names wouldn't require updating any pointers, which is why I did it. I wish I could've made more changes to the translation, but I didn't find any useful text-editing tools for the PSX version on the internet, so I just used a hex editor instead. I've tried the FF8 tools on Qhimm, but they're mostly for the PC version. If anyone with more advanced hacking skills wishes to fix the rest of the translation, please write on the comments below. I'll give you all the information I've gathered about this game's translation. You may also contact me via PM at Romhacking.net if you're a user there, or send an e-mail to: almagest994@gmail.com.

A few more screenshots:

There's also an optional patch that fixes Ultimecia's temporary accent with K's near the end of the game. That was a mistake and shouldn't be there. It must be applied to Disc 4 ONLY.

Screenshots:

All patches were tested with ePSXe and worked perfectly.

Download

[PSX] Breath of Fire III - Spell Name Update v1.1

This is an update of one of my submitted hacks. Please download it if you've gotten the initial release from RHDN's database. Very little was changed, but hopefully you'll enjoy it.

This hack updates Breath of Fire III's spell names in order to match their original Japanese pronunciations. Skill names are also affected by this patch, but not many. The reason why I did this hack was because there's actual voice acting in this game, and since the spells' names are actually mentioned while casting them, it'd make some sense to leave them in their original state. Many of the spell names were made up by Capcom and are neither in Japanese or English. In fact, there's some wordplay mixing both. I find the Japanese spell names to be quite interesting and unique, it'd be nice if other BoF fans knew about them.

Screenshots:

Download

Compatible only with the NA release for the PlayStation. Do not apply it to any other release, as it might corrupt your ISO.
Tested with ePSXe and works. It wasn't tested on real hardware though.

Breath of Fire III - Rei's Sprite Mod

This isn't exactly a hack, but another work of mine I thought of sharing with the internet. I've been working on this for about 4 weeks. I downloaded Barubary's BoF3 sprites of Rei, opened up Photoshop, and after carefully tweaking Rei's skin with the game's color palette, wow, he looked much more accurate than ever! Doesn't this just beat all?

Before

After

Another comparison - Young Rei:

Sprite

In-game portrait

Photoshopped in-game screenshots (the last one was taken from hardcoregaming101.net)

Barubary's sprites, modified by me. Notice the battle sprites are absent.

Hopefully someone will use these in future hacks. I can't do it because it requires decompression/compression skills, which is something only ASM hackers have. If anyone can rip Rei's sprites straight from the ISO, give them to me and I'll finish them for you. I don't know how many are left, but I'm willing to do the work anyway.

[PSX] Breath of Fire III - Desert Translation Fix

This Breath of Fire III hack fixes one translation error that can potentially keep you from finishing the game (in case you're playing without the help of online walkthroughs or strategy guides). Once you reach the infamous Desert of Death, a man will tell you how to get out and give you the directions. Because of the huge amount of information, he'll write it down for you so you can re-read everything in the campsite while traveling. If you're playing the official US translation, the notes he wrote will give you the wrong directions, telling you to head the opposite way.

This hack is only compatible with the US release for the PlayStation. It was not tested, however, but it should work fine at least with ePSXe. I couldn't test it because I don't have any cleared BoF3 savegames in my computer, sorry.

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