English version is progressing

Just a quick status update:
Ryusui joined our team and will be handling the english translation work from now on.
He is progressing steadily and i can see he's putting lots of effort into the script and i'm confident he will deliver an excellent and accurate english translation. however, i'm not going to make any guesses about when the english version will be ready for release, so please just be patient for now.

German Patch released!

Alright, it's done! After nearly two years in development, we were finally
able to release the german breath of fire 2 patch.
The release two days ago was a bit rushed, unfortunately.
However, i just _had_ to finish it in September because development on
the original game was completed in september 1994.(the release was in december 1994, but i didn't want to wait that long.)

Also, i couldnt resist and added yet another feature in the last hours before release.
its now possible to select between translucent and opaque textboxes.
and best of all, you can do that all the time by changing the newly added option in the games configuration menu.
please note that this will alter the appearance of the dragon-tear that appears next to some textboxes, the way i did it was the most easy and compatible - remember, its a feature, not a bug. ;)
oh, and if the intro sound is skipping, its most likely the fault of your emulator.
it runs just fine on a real snes and on accurate emulators such as bsnes, and thats what counts for me.
the character descriptions have been removed from the intro because they just looked butt-ugly.
to complete the package, i also created a really nice pdf-manual.(only in german for now, sorry)

without further delay, heres the patch:
Download the patch

have fun!


oh, and the game will also reliably detect if its running on a real snes and will display an additional warning telling the user that the patch is freeware and not be sold.(it will otherwise work perfectly on the real thing, of course)
this is for all the punks trying to sell cartridges with the patch.
have fun hacking that one. :P

German version is finished at last.

Hi there!
Sorry for not updating this page for nearly half a year again. ~_=
To be honest, i didn't even visit this page once since february or so.
I guess im just not the kind of guy who likes to maintain blogs.

Anyway, good news everyone:
The german version is now finished and to my knowledge completely bug-free, the
final beta-test commenced today.

I'm kinda tired right now so i'll try to shortly sum up the progress made so far:
-completely formatted, proof-read and revised dialogue script.
due to my recently improved japanese skills, i was also able to compare the german, english and japanese script side-by-side, correcting some errors and restoring the stuff that got censored out, such as various jokes concerning eichichis tits and the likes. already played through the game once and fixed the remaining textual issues.
-Enlarged character names. All names have been restored to match the japanese original.
-Variable width font for the enemy names. Again, translated enemy names now match these of the japanese version. Some names have kept their japanese reading because they would either sound shitty in german or aren't translateable at all.
-Pseudo 3d-overworld. I always thought that bof2s overworld looked rather bland, so i went ahead and beefed it up a bit. Due to various technical limitations, the effect is of a rather subtile nature, but its an improvement over the original nevertheless. This effect works similar to the 3d-levels of axelay and the overworld of treasure hunter g. Looks best in motion.
-TONS of bugfixes, literally. over 80 bugs just in the last 2 weeks! most were related to hardcoded stuff that appeared later in the game.
-Compressed the hell out of everything i added to the game and reorganized the work ram a bit to make room for my decompression buffers. However, i wasn't able to squeeze it all back into 24mbits, so i'll have to live with a 32mbit rom for now. :(
-The game now looks stable and polished enough for a first release. However, my betatesters will have another look at it first to ensure i didnt miss anything. Didnt set a deadline for the betatest yet, but the patch should be out pretty soon hopefully.

Some pictures showing the recent progress:

expanded character names:


enemy vwf:


nicer overworld, has to be seen in motion:

Sorry for not updating this page for so long, guys.
It's a shame this game is taking me so long to finish, especially considering the fact that all the major work is complete since more than 3 months.
The one mistake i made was assuming my translators and script editors for the german script would take care of the script polishing, so i didn't care about that for too long.
Unfortunately, nobody took care of it, and i don't want to blame them for it, it's really tedious and annoying work.
So that means i've to take care of the script polishing myself.
I started out at the end of december and now i've got about
30% done.
After this final polish, betatesting will commence.
Hate to say it, but i don't think i will be able to finish script polishing before february, cause i'm very occupied with university currently.

One more thing regarding the english version:
To my surprise, PKGingo reported that he's about 85% through the english script and although i wasn't able to have a look at his progress myself, i'd say that's pretty good news. =)

Nothing earth-shattering to report, but i thought i'd keep you posted, anyway. ;)



I added a much-needed text output system to the intro.

My main motivation here were the character information screens that were present in the intro of the japanese rom, but simply got cut out in the us-version. (shame on you, capcom)

Since my new intro presently has all the characters in it, too, we translated the character information and put them in, aswell.

The text is on layer 3 (supports only 4 colors normally) but using some fancy hdma tricks i was able to give it a gradient-like appearance.

Yeah i know, no vwf, theres simply no vram space left. ~_=
The background image tiles consume soooo much space, its a pity.
Actually, vram space is so tight that i wasnt even able to have a full 32x32 tilemap of layer 3 in vram, i had to make it smaller and move the layer around mid-frame to cover the whole screen.
Alright, lets stop it right here before it gets too technical. ;)
Various graphics previously shown have been improved or altered completely, just compare the new titlescreen, credits and character introduction screens with the ones i posted here earlier. =)



I also rewrote the music streamer.

Now, the main cpu keeps on idleing and waiting for the spc most of the time when uploading data, its that fast. =)

(in the first place, the main cpu was the slow part)



Implemented sram checking, improved checksum routine and pal/ntsc detection aswell(doesnt freeze in pal mode, just displays a warning).



The german script is coming along nicely, reaper84 is still busy with script revision.



Sadly, i've got some bad news, too.

The english version of the script isnt remotely as complete as the german one.
This is due to only one person working on the english script, and despite making progress, he unfortunately doesnt have much time on his hands.

I can't make any promises when the english version will be out.

My hope is that the release of the german patch will increase interest in the english port aswell, but currently, it's not looking too good.




As always, i've brought some fresh screenshots for you to see:

some more bugfixing and tweaking

university kept me busy during the last month, sorry for not keeping you posted.
although i assumed all bugs were fixed, a couple of nasty ones survived and surfaced later in the game.

making such fundamental changes to a games graphics core like i did is just asking for trouble, as the game was never designed to display all that ill stuff i added to it. ;)

im quite happy that it turned out so well.

apart from that, i extended the intro a bit, partially rewrote the music streamer, the running feature and some of the menus.

plus, i redumped the japanese script, aswell. :>

now that my skills in the japanese language are slowly but steadily improving, i succeeded in playing the japanese version of the game and actually understanding bits here and there, wich was quite satisfying.

anyway, not being a native speaker of english, i'd never dare to retranslate the game myself. ;)



oh, and i got some more random piccies for you to feast your eyes on.

enjoy!

great news, as always :>

yeah, you're right, the last update happened quite some time ago.
anyway, i was just slightly lazy and implemented what many of the pro's requested:

a variable width font!

hugs and kisses go to the mighty byuu-san for providing me with
the sourcecode for a 8x8 vwf font.
dunno if i would've been able to do that without him.
thanks again, m8!
naturally, i took that thing to the next level and included multiple fonts, as you can see in the screenshots.

here are two screenshots, first one shows the new vwf, the second one is from the original game.




and just in case you're wondering what my setup looks like, let
me go a little off-topic and show you yet another snes project i started tackling last week:

a full-blown "intelligent" multi-region snes that automatically checks the inserted cartridge, switches video modes accordingly and displays neat info about the cart!
a snes explorer that makes realtime-browsing through the snes' memory map (also sporting editing features) possible is included aswell!

this machine is a snes-freaks dream come true!


just fyi:
the actual code is stored in an eprom buried deep inside the snes together with 2 custom registers that make video mode and cart select switching by software possible, the actual mod is absolutely invisible from the outside.

the stuff connected below and on top of the snes happens to be my satellaview testing rig with a special homebrewn flashcart. =)

expect to see some more bof2 news here soon!