Messages

1

Ys I & II Complete / Re: Ys Extra Soundtrack

« on: Mar. 06, 2009, 07:05:04 PM »

Oh, but they did release a new Ys 1&2 compilation and soundtrack...

Atlus relased "Legacy of Ys 1&2" on Nintendo DS about 2 weeks ago, and it comes with a soundtrack CD.  Nothing surprisingly new-sounding, but it's an American release of a soundtrack !

2

General / Re: Need help translating please :)

« on: Dec. 07, 2007, 10:32:26 AM »

What game is this from ?

3

General / Re: Next Ys game ?

« on: Oct. 25, 2007, 10:17:09 AM »

Well, it's not on PC, but Ys 1 and Ys 2 are coming to the Nintendo DS (in Japan) soon.  As separate games, unfortunately.

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3163931

4

General / Re: Gurumin guide in english

« on: Aug. 19, 2007, 07:41:11 AM »

Oops, there is a Japanese guidebook available (based on the PC version).

Just curious - any special reason why a Japanese guidebook wouldn't be good enough ?  It would have maps, item lists, and provide some kind of HINT about what to do next when you're confused.  It wouldn't hand the game to you on a silver platter though.

- Dave

5

General / Re: Gurumin guide in english

« on: Aug. 18, 2007, 02:48:08 PM »

I haven't even seen a guide for this in Japanese.

Oh wait, Mastiff sent out a mini-guide to everybody who registered on their website... maybe they still have some of those.  Or maybe they are on eBay.  Or maybe somebody has scanned one....

6

General / Re: Could someone translate this for me?

« on: Aug. 18, 2007, 02:31:52 PM »

OK, you seem to have your Windows options set to either large or non-standard fonts or something, which causes the writing to expand beyond the normal boundary boxes for it.  But here goes anyway:

second last one is "increase the priority of this application" (ie. CPU resource share)
last one is "disable display of FPS in the title bar"

7

General / Re: Snatcher Pc Engine Scd Translation

« on: Jul. 27, 2007, 10:18:01 AM »

Excuse me if I exagerrated; iit's not a question of beauty - it's more a question of centralizing things as you previously lamented.  Many of those SNES hackers have spent an inordinate amount of time building a website to showcase their works... only to delay their projects.

I'm more interested in just progressing on the projects (because my spare time is extremely limited), so I'd prefer to leave the webpage stuff to somebody else.  But I'd support it.

8

General / Re: Snatcher Pc Engine Scd Translation

« on: Jul. 25, 2007, 09:24:13 PM »

Well, there is information out there, but there aren't too many people who know how to do these translations.

Worse, it seems that you're looking for one of these people to create a nice beautiful website to showcase their knowledge for other people to consume.  Well, the people who do know this stuff basically aren't the webpage-building type.  However, you can log into EfNet on IRC, on the channel #utopiasoft, and hang out... you'll pick up some knowledge.  And if you can make the webpage to showcase all that knowledge, I'll give you a cookie.  Secretly, you'll be learning (just like "wax on, wax off" in Karate kid).

We started to put together a wiki with some partial, yet severly technical information here:
http://nfggames.com/hack/doku.php

Some people might understand some of those notes - but these are not completed works.  They are, however, games which we have a few hints about, and could help somebody learn-by-doing.

- Dave

9

General / Re: Visual Novel Translations~

« on: Mar. 06, 2007, 09:13:24 PM »

Psycho DeuceBag, regardless of your opinions on the quality of Japanese voice acting, I honestly don't believe that it can transcend the sheer crappiness of 99.9% of American animation voice acting. 

The only exceptions being motion pictures by Disney and Pixar.

10

Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys / Re: Sample Screenshots of a New YsIV:DOY Font

« on: Mar. 03, 2007, 04:51:30 PM »

The pros of the old font aside, I do like seeing the Ys Book I & II font style being restored. It has a more appropriate feel than Courier.

Ah, of course - I thought it looked familiar somehow !
One of the things I liked best about the Ys 1-2 translation was the ability to choose fonts... not that I liked them all, or that I even switched them after the initial choice... but it was a really nice touch.

I also support any effort to provide some kind of consistency across the games in the series...

So... given that this patch won't appear for some time, and given that this font was one from Ys 1-2, is there any chance that the other Ys 1-2 font(s) may appear as patch-time choices on the installer ?  (Obviously, it's too hard to provide it as an in-game choice).

11

Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys / Re: Sample Screenshots of a New YsIV:DOY Font

« on: Mar. 01, 2007, 05:10:29 PM »

I think the original Courier font that you used was really nice.  If you use a sans-serif font, it becomes seriously obvious when it isn't variable-width.

But watch for a variable-width font in another transation at some point in the (hopefully near) future... I think it's the only serious way to deal with text-based digital comics, because there is so much text involved (generally longer passages than this type of RPG, because there is less happening visually).

But VWF hacks are all one-offs, and assembler hacks of that sort are pretty tough, so don't hold your breath...

I'm curious about how you obtained that other font ?
(I think I heard one time... but now that I'm looking for decent fonts, I want to hear it again)

12

Ys I & II Complete / Re: Just bought Ys

« on: Jan. 12, 2007, 12:10:55 AM »

There's nothing wrong with Japan - it's got to do with your purchase profile and credit limit, and the fact that you weren't actually in Japan when the transaction occurred.

If you often buy from websites, they'll loosen up a bit... but the more troubling thing is that the credit card issuer should have tried to contact you regarding the rejected transaction.

13

Ys: The Oath In Felghana / Re: Patch for the YsF Setup/Configuration Utility

« on: Jan. 09, 2007, 01:13:51 AM »

Hmm, interesting.
Looks like you went into the "Appearance" part of the "Display Properties" (possibly even Advanced), and changed the font and sizes away from the default setting.

Probably the form doesn't handle this gracefully (and it is much easier to return to defaults than to reprogram a game without source code).

14

General / Re: WANDER WONDER <<<-Where can I find this game? Action RPG

« on: Jan. 05, 2007, 07:26:04 PM »

Well, there's more info.  They have several download sources, athough the info on their page is old.

The company is Aiky:
ユーザーサポート
E-mail:support@aiky.biz
TEL:04-2920-2333(土・日・祝を除く 10:00～18:00)

This is the page which lists their products:
http://www.aiky.biz/download/index.html
It appears to be download-only, but I could be wrong.
Probably somewhere on their site they will show other places to get it.

I found that the 'bb.odn.ne.jp' link doesn't respond.
Nor does the '202.83.137.29' link.
And the 'sw.vector.co.jp' link seems to say this download has been suspended or made unavailable somehow.

15

General / Re: WANDER WONDER <<<-Where can I find this game? Action RPG

« on: Jan. 05, 2007, 07:09:34 PM »

Hmm... Nifty was (is?) a value-added network inside of Japan.  These links request for your Nifty access id, which seems to mean that your Nifty account will be charged.

There is no way that I am aware of, to obtain a Nifty account if you aren't in Japan, so you would need to ask for a Japanese person's assistance.

However...
Provision #3 of the agreement states that supplying it to a 3rd party is contrary to the contract.

It would appear that this software is very traceable, and although you likely want to pay the money and obtain a legal copy, this is not really possible (at least, via the Nifty download here) unless you move to Japan.  It is also possible that it could be available for sale in Japanese stores as a boxed product.  Again, the assistance of a friend who is a Japanese resident would be helpful in this case.

16

General / Re: TurboRip v1.00: The PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 CD-ROM ISO/WAV/CUE Ripper

« on: Nov. 15, 2006, 01:18:10 AM »

Oh, wait... there are several versions of Tokimeki Memorial as well, and it only recognized one.  I was pretty sure that I had at least 2 of them, and the TOC's were probably different.

On the other hand, it might've been the data tracks... and I just wanted to finish the job of ripping.

I'll look at this again when you get back to working on TurboRip.

17

General / Re: TurboRip v1.00: The PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 CD-ROM ISO/WAV/CUE Ripper

« on: Nov. 15, 2006, 01:15:04 AM »

Well, I made it through the whole collection.
Nothing too serious.... let me know when you get back to looking at it.

18

General / Re: TurboRip v1.00: The PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 CD-ROM ISO/WAV/CUE Ripper

« on: Nov. 11, 2006, 11:39:30 PM »

Aha !

My mistake, when I ripped it.

The title is:
Kaze no Densetsu Xanadu Taiken Play CD-ROM

The TOC is this:
Track 01 Audio 00:02:00 LBA=000000
Track 02 Data  00:52:53 LBA=003803
Track 03 Audio 04:02:74 LBA=018074
Track 04 Audio 04:55:34 LBA=022009
Track 05 Audio 09:45:04 LBA=043729
Track 06 Audio 14:36:20 LBA=065570
Track 07 Audio 17:16:42 LBA=077592
Track 08 Audio 21:23:59 LBA=096134
Track 09 Audio 21:59:04 LBA=098779
Track 10 Audio 27:48:60 LBA=125010
Track 11 Audio 32:42:46 LBA=147046
Track 12 Audio 35:19:16 LBA=158791
Track 13 Audio 40:16:09 LBA=181059
Track 14 Audio 45:02:24 LBA=202524
Track 15 Audio 50:42:64 LBA=228064
Track 16 Audio 55:56:20 LBA=251570
Track 17 Data  56:20:03 LBA=253353

Leadout: 57:52:73   LBA 260323


Well anyway - this TOC was not recognized.

In the PCECP, it is listed as "Kaze No Densetsu Xanadu Taikenban + Guidebook", but the actual title on the disc is closer to the one I gave above.

19

General / Re: TurboRip v1.00: The PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 CD-ROM ISO/WAV/CUE Ripper

« on: Nov. 10, 2006, 11:02:34 PM »

OK, here's some crucial information about differences:

- Monster Lair (US) and (J) are NOT the same TOC.  But they are the same until the leadout.
US: Leadout: 40:34:20   LBA 182420
JPN: Leadout: 40:34:23   LBA 182423

As for the name after the 'NEC Home Electronics' blurb:
US:  MONSTER LAIR    891012
JPN:  MONSTER LAIR    890812


J.B. Harold doesn't have nice differences like those, though.
The TOC is the same, and there is no name at that point in the data track.
As I recall, this game had both languages built in from the beginning, so it's probably just one byte that's different.
(after actually running such a compare...)
Well, the data tracks are significantly different.
Offset 0x1001 is the first difference.
(J) 0xB0 0x53
(U) 0x78 0x62

20

General / Re: TurboRip v1.00: The PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 CD-ROM ISO/WAV/CUE Ripper

« on: Nov. 10, 2006, 10:48:28 PM »

I'm still ripping the originals... I've actually lost track of which discs failed to read fully, but I'm sure I can find at least one to answer your question above.

Other strange behaviours I have seen:

- Once, the DLL was somehow locked on a single machine (I was not locking it by using a second process anywhere on my network).  This went away and never happened again - I don't think I can repeat it.

- There are "bad" (non-ASCII) characters in the TOC names of several titles - notably, the RomRom2 Karaoke (the 2 is superscripted) and Ranma 1/2 titles (the 1/2 is a single character).  I know you didn't build the TOC, but I figured if they were going to use characters like those, they might as well have gone with the Japanese titles.

- "Emerald Dragon Taikenban + Guidebook" was not recognized

21

General / Re: TurboRip v1.00: The PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 CD-ROM ISO/WAV/CUE Ripper

« on: Nov. 08, 2006, 09:46:30 PM »

Here's another funny one for you...
It didn't recognize my Japanese original "Wonderboy III in Monster Lair" disc....
Not sure if this is a new TOC or a transposition error... or even something in TirboRip (probably the TOC database).

22

General / Re: TurboRip v1.00: The PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 CD-ROM ISO/WAV/CUE Ripper

« on: Nov. 06, 2006, 10:42:13 PM »

NightWolve...

While I was ripping my originals tonight, I noticed that a couple more discs still had read errors near the end, and that they weren't "filled with zeores"... what do you use for your threshold to determine whether it's a regular error near the end of disc, or a should-be-fatal error ?  Is it a percentage of the track size, or a number of sectors ?

Also, it improperly recognized my J.B. Harold Murder Club (American version) as the Japanese version (the Japanese version was properly recognized as the Japanese version though).

- Dave

23

LOH VI / Re: Script Extraction Completed! Final Script Size is 2,314,816 Bytes...

« on: Oct. 09, 2006, 10:10:48 AM »

Hmm... dunno if it fits the word, but I would imagine "Arc in the Sky" works better.

24

General / Re: Just bought a new 250 GB WD drive. What's the best price for 'em?

« on: Jun. 17, 2006, 09:42:06 PM »

That sounds like a great price to me.

However, I would be careful with external drives - especially if they are formatted with NTFS.  I'm not sure why they fail, but they fail a whole helluva lot sooner than internals.  It is probably something about the enclosure's USB-to-ATA controller, rather than the drive itself.

Between myself and a friend of mine, we have owned about 8 external drives of various makes over the past 5 years (not including do-it-yourself enclosure kits), and the only ones still working are:
- my oldest, circa 2001, FAT-32
- his newest (2 units), less than 6 months old, NTFS but net-mounted.
Average lifetime before failure: 2 years.
Shortest in-use lifetime before failure: 2 months.

This is not to say that you won't get a couple of excellent years of use out of it, but be extra specially careful to ensure that it is used as a backup drive, or that it is backed up horrendously regularly.

25

Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim / Re: Cheats for PAL Ys:Ark of Napishtim

« on: May. 18, 2006, 11:51:14 PM »

Actually, it was developed in China...

26

General / Re: Elder Scrolls IV rating change

« on: May. 04, 2006, 09:45:47 PM »

It sounded to me like the "real" models are layered 3-D wireframes - 1 for the body, and 1 for the "clothing", and that a mod could change the opacity of the clothing layer.  I understand this was done also in The Sims 2 - although hackers added shading for the areolas to complete the effect.

I think the change to "M" rating was done because too many people in the USA are too sensitive to this, and somehow think that "technically possible" = "accidentally likely".  They tried to deflect from the political nature of this decision by saying something like, "oh yeah, and on second thought it's more violent than we thought too...".

The really odd thing to me though, is how violence is often deemed less serious than sex in the USA.  It completely baffles me.

One "letter to the editor" of a web news service I often read, states it plainly when referring to the story:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=31454  (about halfway down the page)

"Subject: Elder Scrolls Oblivion mod makes girls' tops fall off

I really have to laugh. Think about what tits are for, and then explain to me how the sight of them is harmful to children.

Jude Suszko"

27

General / Re: PC engine compression schemes

« on: Apr. 11, 2006, 12:34:39 AM »

Is the name of your project's game a secret ?
I could at least tell you if I did any preliminary investigation on it...

28

General / Re: PC engine compression schemes

« on: Apr. 10, 2006, 09:00:55 AM »

Honestly, very few titles have graphic compression, but some do.

The graphics can be some pretty weird formats in order to go into VRAM though, such as 1-bit and so on.

There are a few titles with run-length encoding and simple repeat-this-sequence-from-a-trailing-buffer, but they are all a bit different from each other.

But it might help if I knew what you were trying to accomplish.

29

General / Re: Help: popular 80s terms and catchphrases

« on: Apr. 02, 2006, 07:02:53 PM »

From Mr. T:
"I pity the fool !!"

or, the way he said it, it was more like:
"Ahh PITY da Fool !!!!"

30

General / Re: Help: popular 80s terms and catchphrases

« on: Apr. 02, 2006, 09:58:08 AM »

"Dog-eat-dog" and "cut it out" are not from the 80's - they existed before, and didn't become more popular during the 80's.
"Way cool" is from teh '90's.
"tubular" and "radical" were not pluralized, but were popular.

How about:
Valley girl
airhead
Gag me with a spoon
Totally !
"Like, ..."
gnarly
Dude (to call somebody without using his name)

...and of course the polar opposites: "awesome" and "bogus".

In smaller circles, I knew people who used those as relative measurement, with "awesomeness" and "bogosity" (made-up term).

In theory, this conversation could have existed:
"Dude, I just asked that Valley Girl out..."
"Isn't she a bit of an airhead ?"
"Like, TOTALLY, Dude !"
"Whoa, she looks awesome.... what did she say ?"
"She said, "Ew.... Like, gag me with a spoon..." "
"Dude, that's bogus..."

31

LOH VI / Re: My Analysis of ED6's Hacking Potential. I've green-lighted it!

« on: Mar. 25, 2006, 02:48:38 PM »

As a quick guide, let's say that a novel has about 500 words per page.
...And each word is about 5 characters... plus a space... so about 3KB per page.

That's about the same as a 650-page novel !

32

Ys I & II Complete / Re: Viewable Screen on Y's I and II

« on: Mar. 24, 2006, 10:30:05 PM »

Um, by any chance, are you running on a widescreen laptop ?
This is a 4:3 aspect ratio game, and your video card settings may not be set for display adapter scaling.

I run on a widescreen laptop with NVidia graphics, and here's where I can update that setting:
Display Properties (rightclick on the windows background, choose Properties)
-> Settings
-> Advanced
-> GeForce xxx settings tab
-> Digital Flat Panel settings

This gives me the following choices:
- Display adapter scaling (stretches it wider - this is what I use)
- Centered output
- Fixed aspect ratio scaling

You may likely be using one of those latter two...

- Dave