ROM Hack Game Center CX : Arino no Chosenjo 2 (New Start?)

[Aaron Chmielowiec]

Okay, thanks for the feedback. I'm going to dump some info. on you.

When you select what is currently "GUADIA" you get this:

The header and original Japanese is "Nakama" which would be a partner or companion, etc. along those lines. The phrase under it says it is the Guadia Meister you are taking with you. (And then some stats). The filename for the window is gqp_obj_window_contract, by the way.

I remember when I was doing the manuals I stumbled upon this:

Which means they are also Guadias that just happen to be roaming the land. AFAIK (or remember) you can't do anything with them and they just follow you around and assist you in battle.

To make matters more complex, each of your characters can have their own Guadia "Contract" as you can see in the STATS screens: (Ignore the lingering "I" in the bottom left window; I'm in the middle of messing with it)

So...yeah, there you go.

Tell you what. I'll get all the menus extracted and reinserted with anything I can and once I know that is all working you can have the PNGs and go to town with how you want it to look.

I must warn you though that the game font used is the same as that in the Adventure games. Changing one will affect the others. The menus are all graphics though, so they are a bit more flexible. The font used in this one is a bit thin compared to the first and it was supposed to be the 3rd Guadia Quest game on an "advanced" (Game Computer miniCOLOR) console/handheld so things are supposed to be a bit different, I think. Even so, there is no reason we can't make it however we want, especially if something looks all right in Japanese but totally wrong in English due to length or whatever.

 

[HumbertHumbert]

Personally, I rather like the thin font for Guadia Quest Saga. But since Guadia Quest is a riff on Dragon Quest, I'm just posting this thread with a few links to Dragon Question/Warrior fonts here in case it helps anyone:

http://www.woodus.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=18660

I'll keep watching to help with any mockups you might want, though I expect others are attuned to the font issues better and so I'll try not to get in the way.

 

[Fishaman P]

Guadia stuff

Hmmm... It sounds like "Guadia" as it is right now is most appropriate. Still confused by the Meister part, though. Guess it's just a name change.

 

[oji]

Maybe it's reference to "Guardian"?

 

[GHANMI]

If the text limit is too harsh, you can get away with making the on-screen info being slightly shortened/different compared to the manual text. These inconsistencies may help making it more authentic to how it was done in the NES days .

 

[Aaron Chmielowiec]

That's what I have been trying as well with screens like the battle window and the item lists. Here is what I got working out of it: (Inconsistent, I know. I just wanted to see something working. The numbers are a bit odd because the "1" is not full width, however I do like the extra space I get per line when characters like I and 1 and l are narrow like that. I'm trying not to run text over the window border because Bad Things(tm) happen when I do that.)

The items look weird but work in-game. Problem is that a lot of the items and monsters are jokingly named so I'm not sure what to put for some of them. I may just have to play it through and brush up the translation as I play through it :/

I haven't counted exactly, but it looks like there are 130-150 items in the game and the same number of monsters. I didn't see any problems with the items in the menus but when a monster dropped an item I seem to remember it showing only part of a word or something; I'll have to look into that.

Oh, I got half of the Triotos Demo messages in the game, too. It's important only because it shows you how to do a move you will need to clear one of the challenges:

(Once I wrap up the rest and fix the title screen and initial demo message saying Press B to return to the menu, I think I'm done with Triotos. That would only leave the RPG left as the last major thing to finish)

 

[cubeboy]

With regards to the alpha...
I have been excited for this project for a few years now, but I also don't like to be one of those people to rush the project, or put pressure on the people doing the good work.I'm pretty patient in the end. Instead, I'll just offer up unbiased thoughts.
If you release soon: The alpha testers can go through and start cleaning up any obvious issues with completed content. This gives you guys the time to move on to the newer stuff.
If you release when "complete": I would imagine that the jerks on the internet would have less to complain about.

With regards to Guadia/Team/Pact
In the first game, 50%+ of the enemies you encounter you could request to make a pact with at anytime in the battle. If you beat the enemy, they agree to "assist" you in battle, and the term Pact is used for that command. After playing through most of the sequel (not knowing Japanese), and with your explanation, I think Pact would still probably make the most sense. Especially since you said one of the words is "Contract", right away, it made me think that Pact is a better fit.

Just my two cents, feel free to ignore it if you don't agree

 

[Fishaman P]

In GCCX1, the items names were smashed together to fit in another letter, for example "LethrArmor" and "LethrClths".
Actually, for that last one, if it's "clothes" (like pants) then keep it as is, but if it's "cloths" (like handkerchiefs) then "LethrCloth" would be better.

It would probably look neater if "Leather" was always shortened to "Lethr", etc. but that may not be possible with long item names.

EDIT: Actually, "Lethr" is easier to get the meaning from, but "Lthr" just looks more natural to me. Anyone else have thoughts on this?

 

[Aaron Chmielowiec]

All right, I finished all the Triotos messages last night so other than an odd palette issue with the title screen that game is pretty much wrapped up for now.

I'm going to mess with the RPG now. I think some of the items can be shortened and I'm still working through the monster names need some work. I think I'm going to have to just see then in game to get an idea what to call some of them.

Other than that I think I might do a bit if the in-town and castle dialogue just so I have something else to test...whichever kikuchiyo isn't already working on, I guess.

After this I really need to sit down and figure out these main game menus. They're driving me nuts and I can't seem to get anywhere trying to swap out the graphics for those.

 

[Aaron Chmielowiec]

Hello, I'm not dead or anything. I just got a mouthful of RPG madness. I'll try to post some pics this weekend.

I am starting to realize that the RPG is very much intricate and intertwined. There is a list of items but then there are dialogues when you find each of them. There are also item descriptions that have to be done for the stats and description screens.

There are 25 magic spells and descriptions that need work (pretty easy, actually), there are 130ish monsters that don't need descriptions but then there are all the player and Guadia skills as well as their descriptions and there are a couple hundred of those :/

I'm actually only really concerned about the Guadia skill descriptions since they must fit in one small window and some of them are a bit hard to explain in a small space.

No one part of any of these files is large but there is a huge mess of files I'm trying to sort through. I'm also probably going to have to take creative liberties with some of these magic spell and monster names but that is another issue.

I'm also looking at the heaven*** files and I think all those cover everything in the first three challenges. The fourth has you go to the tower but the explanation and dialogue leading up to that is also in these files so in a pinch this may be enough alone to finish the core of the game as far as the challenges are concerned. The actual RPG runs on well after the challenges, though.

 

[RadioShadow]

I must warn you though that the game font used is the same as that in the Adventure games. Changing one will affect the others. The menus are all graphics though, so they are a bit more flexible. The font used in this one is a bit thin compared to the first and it was supposed to be the 3rd Guadia Quest game on an "advanced" (Game Computer miniCOLOR) console/handheld so things are supposed to be a bit different, I think. Even so, there is no reason we can't make it however we want, especially if something looks all right in Japanese but totally wrong in English due to length or whatever.

This is based on when I was hacking "Advance Wars: Days of Ruin", but you can easily add files to the folder.

Simply copy the font file you want to use, rename it (keeping the same amount of letters) and modify the contents. The fun part is finding the data to rename the file to load.

Do you know which font those two games use?

 

[Sora de Eclaune]

If you post the full descriptions for those skill descriptions you can't easily explain in a small space, how many lines there can be maximum, and how many characters there can be in a single line, I could try to iron out those for you.

I've gotten kind of good at making phrases shorter after seeing (and decoding) the kind of texts my roommates send because they're too lazy to fiddle with one of those phone keyboards where you press the number multiple times to get to a letter and they never actually remember to get better phones. Things that could take three lines to say are abbreviated to one (i.e. vague directions to somewhere could look like "W Nrd. C cow? N 2x. C mcow? W. E@4inst. W. S 3st. C sch? 2 far. gb, h r."...which means "Go west to north road. See a cow? Turn north on the next two intersections. See more cows? Go west. Next, go east at the upcoming 4 way intersection, and then west. Go south on third street. See a school? You've gone too far. Go back a little and the house should be on the right.")

 

[Clydefrosch]

Well, we've had to deal with creative liberties in these old rpgs forever (see dragon quest, where eventually every normal skillname was turned into something weird like Hot Lick). so dont worry about it too much

 

[DaVince]

Yeah, going sort of crazy with weird names would probably give it much more of that old-school personality we westerners are used to from Japanese RPGs.

 

[Aaron Chmielowiec]

Thanks for the suggestion about the font. I'll see how it goes. I might be able to fit it in but I want to try a few cases first. I'll look into the name of the font a bit later for you.

On the crazy names for items and spells, yeah, I kind of have to do that in some places. It's all right. I'm ever so amused at one weapon "The Kacho's Squid" that I think is equipped like a sword.

Hmm, well based on the font used I'm really pushing it for on-screen space in some of those windows.
(Ah, ignore the player names. I'm using my old save game data. In a new game you can only create character names with the roman alphabet)

I did hit a bit of a problem with the menus. I noticed after you selected "Attack" with "Weapon" you got another menu if you had a Guadia equipped (had a pact with a Guadia) You can another set of selectable skills from your Guadia (and the first one is to just use your equipped weapon)

The skills are all conveniently in skill.dat and in Shift-JIS but a few of the standard options (Weapon and I guess "Activate" or whatever for the last one; it unleashes your Guadia's other special attack) were not anywhere to be found.

I did find out where that very brief text is located in one of the overlay files, though (Overlay10)

So yeah, progress is going along. It's just a lot of fine tuning.

I have the skills, monsters, magic spells, Guadia names and items extracted and I'm working on those. Once I have this done I'll work on the Overworld/town/castle dialogue while Kikuchiyo works on the rest. Who knows, we might come to the end of our parts together.

I'll share my pain with the remaining graphics in the game (not the RPG) after all that. There are some menus and options I just can't figure out and that is going to be the big proverbial "wall" I'm going to hit.

 

[Aaron Chmielowiec]

Hello.

I'm just checking in to let you all know what's happening.

I went through the item list and descriptions and I have all 130(?) done but not put into the game yet (I'm doing that right now). At first I was worried about the descriptions not fitting since I only have about 4 lines of 10 characters worth of space but it turns out that is all right, all things considered. I had to abbreviate a few things but the basics of the items should all be in there.

I also finished all 25 spells and their descriptions and I'm putting those in the game as well.

After this I do need to put in the Guadia skill descriptions but I think I'll work on the overworld/town dialogue first since Kikuchiyo has a bunch of the dungeon text done and the overworld files would complete the game to the end of the first four challenges (I believe). There is a whole mess of things to do in the RPG after the challenges but getting the main part as it pertains to the overall game is a higher priority right now.

In the meantime, Kikuchiyo is working on everything else I'm not already working on.

When I have a bit more of this done (this week I hope) I'll post a few more screenshots for you all. Right now it is a bit of a mess, much like the entire 1st floor of my house. If I can finish off the overworld/town text fast enough I may just record a video since those are always fun.

As usual, although I may very well figure out the main in-game menu graphics and substitution, anyone that can offer help on how to put those in the game is most welcome. My hands are tied with this RPG mini-game right now anyway.

 

[SubnetPie]

Here is an attempt at editing room and game menus.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1833969/GCCX2/room_menu.NCGR
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1833969/GCCX2/room_shop_menu.NCGR
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1833969/GCCX2/gs_room_menu.NCGR
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1833969/GCCX2/gs_shop_menu.NCGR
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1833969/GCCX2/gs_room_tag.NCGR
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1833969/GCCX2/gs_room_support.NCGR

I'm not sure how to translate the second selection for the in shop game select menu. It appears to be different than "Manual". Maybe "Instructions"?

Thanks for doing this. Very cool project.

 

[starw]

I'm just replying to say kudos for doing this. I must say, it looks awesome. I wish you all the best with this project.

 

[Aaron Chmielowiec]

SubnetPie I could kiss you! (in a completely non-sexual way). I'll give this a shot. Thank you so much!

Yeah, that second one in the shop menu brings up the instruction sheet. The in-game..."games" have manuals but the 5 at the shop are just a single page instruction sheet. "Instructions" is fine if you can fit in in there.

Okay, I have to iron out some weird bugs. I can see what the problem is in some cases. For others I may just have to fudge over that data that "should" be correct with whatever is going to look right on screen.

BUGS AHOY! <- These are under control but I might as well share them for GREAT JUSTICE.

(The items list looks fine but sometimes (in a few odd cases) the descriptions don't match up.)

Now, speaking of items. Using items is a weird thing. It seems to write out the items just fine in the menus but when they are shown in the dialog window (includes the battle window) it only shows every other character. I can force the item and spell names to be double byte to get around this I think.

Here, using a "Potion"... or _o_i_n as the game says.

Here I am using "Air Slash" (_i_(space)_l_s_) to check it if is Air or Fire damage (it is air, btw; the item names are right; the descriptions don't line up); every other character shows up.

And here is the "Warp" (_a_p) spell doing the same thing.

Again, these aren't show stoppers and I can fix them but I thought I would just show that I'm doing work on this.

The 130 items and spells are all in the game...sort of. I spent a few hours putting that all in initially last night.

 

[GHANMI]

That's quite awesome actually.
English NES RPGs used to have all the characters having the exact same width each (8 pixels) leaving gaps between the sides of letters like "i" and "l". Only some romhacks did have a proper variable width (like in your screenshots)... and Crystalis in their MTE wanted to achieve a similar effect. It achieves the effect of seeming like a high-end NES game or something like this.