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Post subject: Production surges ahead, but...
PostPosted: Sat Apr 03, 2021 12:19 am 
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I have updated the project page with a progress report, description, and additional graphics.

We now have a V0.50 beta. Here is what I said:

Odysselya and its sequel, Odysselya-II, are one continuous story that extends through world events. Both games center around time travel and other fictitious elements that are woven into actual history but intermingled with mythology, fantasy, and paganism.

Currently, we have the game 50% translated. The menu system is well developed. It's not fully polished, but it's marginally playable. Unfortunately, at the halfway point, we have experienced a number of crashes in the game. These generally occur directly at the end of text blocks and sometimes following character recruitment and cut scenes. What I image is happening are omissions of control codes because if I block out the strings where the crashes occur, the scene plays through fully, even without the dialogue, and the game advances.

As much as I (Wildbill) am enjoying this game, I am wondering if we will ever make it releasable. I feel like our patches must be fully playable first. As for me, I'm able to advance by either blocking out the crashing strings or jumping the most previous English SRM (save) into the Japanese ROM, playing past the crash point until I regain control of the characters, then doing a save in the Japanese ROM and jumping back into my English-patched game.

Therefore, I am putting out a request to someone with coding and assembly skills to help us fix the crashes and a few remaining menus that need adjusting.

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Post subject: Re: Production surges ahead, but...
PostPosted: Tue Apr 27, 2021 8:34 am 
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This game looks so cool, sorry you are having such trouble with it!


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Post subject: Re: Production surges ahead, but...
PostPosted: Tue Apr 27, 2021 12:49 pm 
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DoubleDvideogames wrote:
This game looks so cool, sorry you are having such trouble with it!
Odysselya-I contains 14 scenarios of varying length and complexity. I am well into #13. Our main holdup through the years (other than time) has been translation support. Happily, I have learned enough tricks to gain a 99% accurate reading of this game, its sequel, and Shiji. Polishing Shiji was a snap with Hausen’s tutelage. The two Ody’s mostly follow historical events I studied in my career, so fitting characters into those events has been akin to John Jakes creating the “Independence” series of historical fiction.

The bugaboo now is assembly support, plain and simple. Taskforce mentioned he will take a look at the dozen or so places where Ody-I hard crashes (I mean so hard in a few places that the emulator blows off the screen, and when I reload the whole works my SRM save data menu built into the game is corrupted to the point that I lose all of my builds in the patch that I didn’t have backed up prior to the crash. The problem has got to be some tiny little control code that links the crash point to the next scene or text dump block.

If we can solve this, we may be in a position to release both Ody’s simultaneously, as one of our friends has already suggested. So, you’ll be the first person I’ll ask. The Ody games may be played quite well by reversing the order and regarding #1 as a prequel later. Or, would you rather wait for a hopeful fix on #1 and have access to it first?

Second question, if you had a completed English patch for Ody-1 that contained a dozen hard crash points, some of which “ate” dozens of hours of game play, if provided with a list of those points that instructed you when to copy your SRM into a separate directory containing the Japanese ROM to play the game in that language past the crash point and convert the Japanese SRM back into the English folder, would you (A) be fine with doing this if it’s the only way you can enjoy the game, or (B) think it’s such a pain that you would rather not be bothered and prefer to move on to something else?

That reminds me... must get Ody-2 and Oni-2 working folders both to Taskforce. Oni-2 has far-and-away more crash points - perhaps a hundred, but they don’t eat the save data. Otherwise, Oni-II is 100% translated and formatted.


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Post subject: Re: Production surges ahead, but...
PostPosted: Thu Apr 29, 2021 2:25 pm 
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Wildbill wrote:
DoubleDvideogames wrote:
This game looks so cool, sorry you are having such trouble with it!
Odysselya-I contains 14 scenarios of varying length and complexity. I am well into #13. Our main holdup through the years (other than time) has been translation support. Happily, I have learned enough tricks to gain a 99% accurate reading of this game, its sequel, and Shiji. Polishing Shiji was a snap with Hausen’s tutelage. The two Ody’s mostly follow historical events I studied in my career, so fitting characters into those events has been akin to John Jakes creating the “Independence” series of historical fiction.

The bugaboo now is assembly support, plain and simple. Taskforce mentioned he will take a look at the dozen or so places where Ody-I hard crashes (I mean so hard in a few places that the emulator blows off the screen, and when I reload the whole works my SRM save data menu built into the game is corrupted to the point that I lose all of my builds in the patch that I didn’t have backed up prior to the crash. The problem has got to be some tiny little control code that links the crash point to the next scene or text dump block.

If we can solve this, we may be in a position to release both Ody’s simultaneously, as one of our friends has already suggested. So, you’ll be the first person I’ll ask. The Ody games may be played quite well by reversing the order and regarding #1 as a prequel later. Or, would you rather wait for a hopeful fix on #1 and have access to it first?

Second question, if you had a completed English patch for Ody-1 that contained a dozen hard crash points, some of which “ate” dozens of hours of game play, if provided with a list of those points that instructed you when to copy your SRM into a separate directory containing the Japanese ROM to play the game in that language past the crash point and convert the Japanese SRM back into the English folder, would you (A) be fine with doing this if it’s the only way you can enjoy the game, or (B) think it’s such a pain that you would rather not be bothered and prefer to move on to something else?

That reminds me... must get Ody-2 and Oni-2 working folders both to Taskforce. Oni-2 has far-and-away more crash points - perhaps a hundred, but they don’t eat the save data. Otherwise, Oni-II is 100% translated and formatted.


14 scenarios! Wow! That seems like a lengthy game, even if they all vary in length!

It sounds like a complex game to hack. I am always amazed at how much work and time goes into getting these games to function in English!

I think sometimes it can be interesting to play games in reverse, so that playing 1 would, as you said, almost act as a prequel. Interesting concept!!

As you mention in paragraph 4, I have done that before, it is fairly easy to do. Even just having a game partially in English is better than not having it at all. I think you guys and agtp, nightcrawler, dds, etc. put so much work into these games, even just having some of it is still amazing, if that makes sense.

It sounds like these are complex games. I think most sane players would be 100% in support of any patch you want to release! It woulld be cool to have instructions to bypass the hard crashes.

Thanks to DDT for all the amazing work over the years!


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Post subject: Re: Production surges ahead, but...
PostPosted: Mon May 10, 2021 3:32 am 
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"Sacred Age Odysselya(-I) project page updated.

All currently dumped dialogue and miscellaneous files are 100% translated and inserted into the English patch. Un-dumped Japanese probably accounts for less that 1% of the total. This consists of the introduction, a few menu files, a major but fairly short scene inside a much larger scenario, and a few other odds and ends.

The major problem with the alpha patch is a dozen or more crash areas, mostly at the end of dialogue blocks. Some crashes "ate" all my saved game data! As I neared the end of each of the 20 script blocks, I saved and stored current SRMs inside a separate sub-folder. In one case I had to backtrack to about an hour earlier in game play. I learned my lesson!

If/when Taskforce has a little time, he may look into these issues. Meanwhile, I've done all I can. It was a super game, one of my favorites now.

Setting up the sequel, it ended like this:

Spoiler! :
_Text_002394_:
; [BoxShow][Player]「[Name-$C0DA]・・アイオーンは わたしのために[newl]
; たいしょしてくれたのです。[Key][newl]
; くうちゅうていえんは アシュラ・・ハデスの[newl]
; かんしかにあった。あなたたちが[newl]
; あのままあらわれたら わたしのみが[newl]
; あぶなくなると・・。」[Key][BoxHide]
;
[BoxShow][Player]: Mister [Name-$C0DA] helped[newl]
me out of the jam.[Key][newl]
In Hades' domain, Ursla took[newl]
a throne. At the outset, I[newl]
was in danger. Otherwise,[newl]
it was mostly a stalemate.[Key][BoxHide]

_Text_002423_:
; [BoxShow][Mem-$E5]「そうか・・ これでよかったのか。」[newl]
; [Mem-$E6]「ぶきやのおっさんに てつのぶきの きたえかた[newl]
; [Blank]おしえてやったし まあ ええやろ。[Key][newl]
; [Blank]しかし にんげんのすがた いうのは[newl]
; [Blank]えらい きゅうくつなもんやな。[newl]
; [Blank]ほとんど ちからが はっきできてへんがな。」[Key][newl]
; [Player]「わたしも ちじょうのかみのくるしみを[newl]
; [Blank]りかいすることができました。しかし[newl]
; [Blank]こんどは わたしが おんをかえすばんです。」[Key][newl]
; [Mem-$E5]「さがしにいくのか?」[Key][newl]
; [Player]「ええ。」[Key][newl]
; [Mem-$E5]「まあ てんじょうにもどっても ヒマなだけだ[newl]
; [Blank]つきあうぜ。おい おっさん[newl]
; [Blank]・・・かじのかみはどうする。」[Key][BoxHide]
;
[BoxShow][Mem-$E5]: Oh, I see.[newl]
[Mem-$E6]: I taught the old man[newl]
how use weapons, so fine![Key][newl]
In our human forms, some[newl]
of us struggle to develop[newl]
our power.[Key][newl]
[Player]: I finally understood[newl]
the sorrow of guardians who[newl]
taught me. I'll help now.[Key][newl]
[Mem-$E5]: And keep searching?[Key][newl]
[Player]: Absolutely![Key][newl]
[Mem-$E5]: Ah, heaven can wait.[newl]
I'll tag along. Hey, old{newl]
man, is your sword sharp?[Key][newl]

_Text_002578_:
; [BoxShow][Mem-$E6]「カミさんがなあ・・・まあ あいつは[newl]
; [Blank]あいつなりに あそんどるし うーん・・・。」[newl]
; [Mem-$E5]「オレたちゃ もういくぜ!!」[Key][BoxHide]
;
[BoxShow][Mem-$E6]: My wife, well... She[newl]...
is off having her own fun.[newl]
[Mem-$E5]: Are you coming, too?[Key][BoxHide]

_Text_0025D7_:
; [BoxShow][Mem-$E6]「うーん。うー・・・。おいっこら!![newl]
; [Blank]またんかい。 わしもいくがな こらーっ!!。」[Key][BoxHide]
[BoxShow][Mem-$E6]: Of course I'm coming[newl]
with you, fool! Wait up!![Key][BoxHide]


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Post subject: Re: Production surges ahead, but...
PostPosted: Mon May 10, 2021 4:43 am 
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Nice. Great job. Send it along when you get time and I'll try to get to it as soon as I can. Please send save states and whatever is needed for investigation on my end.


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Post subject: Re: Production surges ahead, but...
PostPosted: Mon May 10, 2021 12:58 pm 
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Will there be a patch release with descriptions of where the crash areas are and how to avoid them? The imagery here really takes me back, so I'd at least want to try it, bugged-up or not.


A stamp for your book? Sorry, I don't have one.


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Post subject: Re: Production surges ahead, but...
PostPosted: Mon May 10, 2021 2:59 pm 
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Sherkel wrote:
Will there be a patch release with descriptions of where the crash areas are and how to avoid them? The imagery here really takes me back, so I'd at least want to try it, bugged-up or not.
Give us a little time to see if Taskforce can solve the end of block crashes. I have a few ideas I'll discuss with you later.


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