AzimuthFE Posted October 10, 2015 Share Posted October 10, 2015 Hello, everyone. I am currently making a patch to localize the graphics in FE4. While the current English patches are excellent when it comes to text, none of them touch the graphics and I seek to change this. At the moment the patch is still in the very early stages (in fact, it isn't even in patch form yet)(see below). I still don't know whether it will be released as a standalone or part of a translation or whatever. I really just want to upload some screens and gather your thoughts. I put the screens in spoiler tags to save space, but please bear in mind that as I add more screens from the patch they may contain actual FE4 spoilers. Grannvale: Isaach Note that the horrible cutoff around Ganeishire and Isaach castle is present in the original ROM. I'm working on this. Holy Blood Wheel Any feedback would be greatly appreciated Already done: Opening/inbetween chapter map Holy blood wheel To do: Unit menu (the one that shows your characters' stats) Chapter titles Intro and title screen Currently working on: Unit menu Edit: sirmola has asked me to upload the patch. Please bear in mind that this patch is experimental and may break at any time (in other words back up your ROMs/saves beforehand). In order to use this patch you must have: A Fire Embelm 4 ROM that has been hard patched with Gharnef's Translation Patch Delta Patcher (found here) Mediafire link: http://www.mediafire.com/download/7x3jwdv8j7zehs1/fe4_gharnef_append.xdelta Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tetragrammaton Posted October 11, 2015 Share Posted October 11, 2015 Nice. I dont want to play a translation with these graphic changes, but they would work perfectly for a hack with story rewritten. I think you can just change the X coordinate of Ganeishire, like the Sophara, it might work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sirmola Posted October 12, 2015 Share Posted October 12, 2015 This looks excellent. Project Narga is stalled at the moment (the rezire coder had to quit), but i would love to see this in the finished version (or in a revised version of the current patch. I was looking for the slimest of excuses for another play-through. I would be fine with play-testing it, but i will be busy for the next month or two. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AzimuthFE Posted October 13, 2015 Author Share Posted October 13, 2015 Thank you both for the feedback. My problem with Ganeishire isn't so much the position of text, but the fact that the 'sandy' part of the coast around Ganeishire cuts off in big ugly squares; look directly beneath the i and you will see what I mean. The coast line beneath Isaach doesn't connect up. I am fixing this by creating new graphic tiles and changing the tilemap to insert them. Also, I had no idea that Project Naga had run into issues when I posted this. No disrespect intended to bookofholsety or anyone else involved. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bookofholsety Posted October 13, 2015 Share Posted October 13, 2015 legend has it that if you chant "bookofholsety" into a mirror three times, he will appear and massage his ego about pn ooh, neat. i recall gharnef having problems with only finding the graphics in memory rather than the code proper a few years back, so it's nice to see a working implementation of such edits. the mapwork's smoother than my old-ass attempts Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AzimuthFE Posted October 13, 2015 Author Share Posted October 13, 2015 legend has it that if you chant "bookofholsety" into a mirror three times, he will appear and massage his ego about pn ooh, neat. i recall gharnef having problems with only finding the graphics in memory rather than the code proper a few years back, so it's nice to see a working implementation of such edits. the mapwork's smoother than my old-ass attempts Thank you for the kind words. Sorry to hear about PN. I'd be happy to help in the graphics department if you don't have anyone lined up already. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Katie Posted October 14, 2015 Share Posted October 14, 2015 I honestly think this would go great combined with Gharnef's patch, which changes names and such to be consistent with Awakening. It could at the very least tide us over until bokofholsety's translations are finally released in patch form. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sirmola Posted October 14, 2015 Share Posted October 14, 2015 I honestly think this would go great combined with Gharnef's patch, which changes names and such to be consistent with Awakening. It could at the very least tide us over until bokofholsety's translations are finally released in patch form. Judging by the screenshots, he is using the garnef patch as a base. Thank you for the kind words. Sorry to hear about PN. I'd be happy to help in the graphics department if you don't have anyone lined up already. Could you please release your current patch for playing purposes (if not now then maybe in a month or 2 so i can play it when i have the time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AzimuthFE Posted October 14, 2015 Author Share Posted October 14, 2015 Could you please release your current patch for playing purposes (if not now then maybe in a month or 2 so i can play it when i have the time. I have submitted an XDelta patch in my original post. I would be very grateful for any play time you could put in when you have time. There are a few things to bear in mind, though: This is an XDelta patch. In order to implement my graphic changes I had to expand the ROM from 4MiB to 8Mib. An IPS patch containing these changes would contain the original ROM within it, an obvious no-no. You are correct in that I was using Gharnef's patch as a base. I have asked Gharnef if I can release this patch as an expansion to his patch. However, I sent the request only recently. Unless he responds saying it is okay I am not comfortable releasing this as an 'improvement' to his patch. TL:DR this is an 'addendum' patch, separate from Gharnef's; in order to use it you will need a ROM that has already had Gharnef's patch applied. This is not compatible with ZSNES, not even the 8MiB custom build. No idea. With that in mind I hope you all have fun playing! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sirmola Posted October 15, 2015 Share Posted October 15, 2015 I have submitted an XDelta patch in my original post. I would be very grateful for any play time you could put in when you have time. There are a few things to bear in mind, though: This is an XDelta patch. In order to implement my graphic changes I had to expand the ROM from 4MiB to 8Mib. An IPS patch containing these changes would contain the original ROM within it, an obvious no-no. You are correct in that I was using Gharnef's patch as a base. I have asked Gharnef if I can release this patch as an expansion to his patch. However, I sent the request only recently. Unless he responds saying it is okay I am not comfortable releasing this as an 'improvement' to his patch. TL:DR this is an 'addendum' patch, separate from Gharnef's; in order to use it you will need a ROM that has already had Gharnef's patch applied. This is not compatible with ZSNES, not even the 8MiB custom build. No idea. With that in mind I hope you all have fun playing! Thanks. I may not get around to playing for a few months, due to a ludicrous workload right now, but i will let you know how it goes when i do. As for the zsnes problem, maybe it's the mapper? (honestly, i doesn't effect me, because i use snes9X for features and higan for compatibility. I tried using zsnes, but it felt rather primative. I guess one person's primative is another person's charmingly retro, though.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Katie Posted October 15, 2015 Share Posted October 15, 2015 Sucks that it doesn't work on Zsnes, because Snes9x doesn't work on my computer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AzimuthFE Posted October 15, 2015 Author Share Posted October 15, 2015 Sucks that it doesn't work on Zsnes, because Snes9x doesn't work on my computer. Can your computer run Higan or BSnes? I am trying to figure out why it doesn't work on ZSnes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Katie Posted October 16, 2015 Share Posted October 16, 2015 Can your computer run Higan or BSnes? I am trying to figure out why it doesn't work on ZSnes Never tried, so I'm not sure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sirmola Posted October 16, 2015 Share Posted October 16, 2015 Never tried, so I'm not sure. Try that. Higan is an 100% accurate emulator. (With the single exception of a few obscure nonlisenced games with nonstandard mapers. Also, any patch that woudn't work on an actual console, such as kaizo mario 2, does not work in higan.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AzimuthFE Posted October 17, 2015 Author Share Posted October 17, 2015 Try that. Higan is an 100% accurate emulator. (With the single exception of a few obscure nonlisenced games with nonstandard mapers. Also, any patch that woudn't work on an actual console, such as kaizo mario 2, does not work in higan.) ^This. From the start, it was never my intention to force people to use (or not use) specific emulators to play this patch. I have tried every method of applying my patch, but ZSnes either won't start or messes up soon after starting. Unless I can find a fresh insight into the way ZSnes runs games, a compatible version simply isn't happening. Sorry about that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tetragrammaton Posted October 18, 2015 Share Posted October 18, 2015 I'm more interesting about how you do this graphic hack. Do you have some tutorials instruct this? And why 8MB? Is 6MB not enough for this? IIRC Zsnes can still work with the 6MB Star Ocean rom. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AzimuthFE Posted October 18, 2015 Author Share Posted October 18, 2015 Heh, I have figured much of the 'What?' when it comes to the graphic routines but not the 'Why?'. Any tutorial I wrote would basacally be me going, "The game copies this value here and multiplies it by 8. Why does it do this? Who the hell knows, but it does." The upshot is this: Most of the graphics are stored compressed in the game's ROM. I haven't figured out what kind of compression it uses but the game has a decompression routine that it uses to decompress the graphics into RAM. Once it is finished it copies the graphics from RAM into VRAM using DMA. It doesn't always copy it all across in one pass. Sometimes it is copied in chunks. No idea why (See?). I alter the graphics by setting the debugger to break when it writes to VRAM (specifically the address where the graphics I want to change are stored). At this point I find out where the graphics are stored in RAM when they are copied to VRAM and where in the ROM they are decompressed from and dump that part of RAM. I open the dumped file in TileMolester and make my own alterations. I then recompress the graphics using the fe_45comp tools (found here) and insert it back into the ROM using a hex editor. The compressor I am using, for whatever reason, does not compress the graphics down to the same size as they are in the ROM, Also, in order to finish the map graphics I had to add several tiles so they wouldn't have compressed to the same size anyway. The only way I can insert them into the ROM without overwriting stuff is to expand the ROM and put my graphics into the new section. This is why the ROM needs to be expanded. The final step is finding the part of the code that points to the old graphics and change it to point to my graphics. Ta-da! The game loads my graphics instead of the old graphics and they are copied to VRAM as normal. That was a lot more wordy than I had orignally intended but hopefully it gave some insight into the process I am using. To answer your last question the game doesn't specifically need to be 8MiB, but when I first started I had no idea how much extra space I would need. I have tried expanding the ROM to 6MiB. If I just straight expand it with Lunar Expand it does not start in ZSnes. If I expand it to 6MiB using compatibility mode it starts up but breaks during the prologue intro. Phew. Like I said, that was a lot longer than I intended. If you have any questions please ask! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Katie Posted October 18, 2015 Share Posted October 18, 2015 Well I got Higan. I'm gonna try out this patch now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sirmola Posted October 18, 2015 Share Posted October 18, 2015 I patched it with to issues. i also loaded a "right before the final boss" savestate and his special holy blood image did not load correctly. the forseti holy flood marker says "hol" on him instead of "forseti" like it does on everyone else. The same mistake (where his forseti marker says "hol" instead of "holseti") appears in the japanese version as well. The game appears to have a different wheel for just this one background. I don't immediatly have a savestate to check weather your patche does the same thing for his chapter 10 appearence, but checking the lp on the lp archive shows that the same thing is true in an older patch version:http://lparchive.org/Fire-Emblem-Geneology-of-the-Holy-War/Update%2037/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AzimuthFE Posted October 18, 2015 Author Share Posted October 18, 2015 I patched it with to issues. i also loaded a "right before the final boss" savestate and his special holy blood image did not load correctly. the forseti holy flood marker says "hol" on him instead of "forseti" like it does on everyone else First of all, thank you for trying it out. Check out this let's play by Wind God Sety and scroll down to Julius' blood wheel. It seems to occur in the original ROM. The 'Hol' is even stored separately in RAM. Screenshot: Kind of hard to see in the image, the 'Hol' is in the center of the screen while 'Holsety' is in the lower right. I'm sure they had a reason but I can't figure it out for the life of me (starting to sound like a broken record here). Come to think of it, I am still nowhere near Ch. 10-11 on my save. I've never even seen the 'Loptyr' graphics. Could I trouble you to post your save or at least post a screenshot of Julius' blood wheel. I'd appreciate it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bookofholsety Posted October 19, 2015 Share Posted October 19, 2015 Come to think of it, I am still nowhere near Ch. 10-11 on my save. I've never even seen the 'Loptyr' graphics. Could I trouble you to post your save or at least post a screenshot of Julius' blood wheel. I'd appreciate it. for whatever it's worth, here's my attempt at localising the loptyr graphic (and all the others) from a year or two ago Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AzimuthFE Posted October 19, 2015 Author Share Posted October 19, 2015 Thanks for the shots guys. Considering I was working blind it looks about as good/bad as I could have hoped for. I am currently trying to edit the chapter titles atm and it's quite involved. When that's done I will make the blood wheel look nicer. Also, Bookofholsety, your blood wheel is excellent. I particularly like the custom font on the banner and the letters that aren't in the original (the 'v's for example). I take it this will be in Project Naga? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sirmola Posted October 19, 2015 Share Posted October 19, 2015 Looking at the way holsety appears to have been pasted in afterword, i suspect that it was going to say "hol" on everyone's holy blood wheel untill late in development, when they decided to change it. They must have hard-coded Julius's holy blood wheel, and then forgot that they had done so. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bookofholsety Posted October 19, 2015 Share Posted October 19, 2015 i wonder if it'd be possible to hack the julius version of the screen to repoint it to the full "forseti" graphic. sure, it's basically guaranteed to be possible at some point, but whether it's practical? who the hell knows :P Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sirmola Posted October 19, 2015 Share Posted October 19, 2015 i wonder if it'd be possible to hack the julius version of the screen to repoint it to the full "forseti" graphic. sure, it's basically guaranteed to be possible at some point, but whether it's practical? who the hell knows :P It might be as simple as finding the address using the memory break method mentioned above, and changing the address in exactly the same way as you already did. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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