Well, i am tired as hell because it's almost 2am and i am working since 9am already but somehow I wanted to make a little update on this game hoping that it will not enflame useless discussions.
For those that counted, it's almost 3 months I since I resigned from my main job (yes, had to still work for this time), it's almost a wrap up here and then 29 days of holiday in asia....finally.
I don't want to promise anything and especially i don't want to spend all my holiday in front of the PC but I hope that I can get a good amount of work done because it's actually rainy season where i will go.
So if there is a rainy day, why not work on AAI2?? Yes, the infamous laptop will go with me because there are chances that i have to do some work (for my new job) from there if necessary.
So what is the status of AAI2??
There are 2.5 bad notices and the rest is good things.
Let's start with the bad things:
- From my side, i didn't do anything on the game.
- Hacko gave up on this game because he got to the conclusion that this hacking work is out of his league.
Anyway it seems that he found somebody with better skills (he has a nice portafolio) to take his place but sadly this new guy didn't come back with any news in the last month.
I didn't had time try to contact him to see how it's going.
Here the good things:
- Mrichston is managing insertion as usual. CORRECTION
- Rollingball is managing localization CORRECTION
- Mracy and the literal translators are getting organized for this summer break to do a lot of work.
Nice to see that many of the people that was working on the project are coming back (after school) including BigKlingy even if not at fulltime.
This means that there will be the same style across all cases and not "puzzle" of style while you play the game.
Another good thing is that there is a slow and constant flow of new people that want to help out with the translation.
What all this means??
It means we are not giving up!!
The "loss" of Hacko sure sound like a "tragic loss" but (not to say he was not important) don't forget that Mrichston and Henke got almost all "too big" files to fit in the game already.
If Hacko would had success, we had some spare space as assurance and alloved us to be more flexible with the text.
So Hacko thanks for all the time and work you invested for this project, thanks for the tools you gave us and good luck for your next projects .... don't worry, i will keep you busy even without AAI2
What it's in my mind now??
Well, I will try to contact the new guy and see if and how quickly he can give us some results (the extra space with the 1 byte story or the extra RAM).
Depending on his answer, I will decide what to do but for now, you will be happy to know that i am going with the idea to .....(dammit!! I don't want to write this word) release the game with Mrichston fixes. I am pretty sure that if the 1 byte solution will be realized, we can make a program to convert the scripts to that format.
One of the things that are sure is that where I will be, there are mountains of flashcards and mountains of hacked / copied consoles so I will probably buy a bunch of them as well to test the game in different flashcards.
In short then:
Case specific graphics: completed all but inserted only case 1 (and probably 2).
Common graphics: done
Voices (case specific): done but not inserted yet.
Common text: done and inserted
Case specific text: Case 1/2 complete and inserted, case 3 WIP.
Literal translation: continuing case 3 and big jump forward expected while/end of the summer
Localization/insertion: same as above
ASM work: throw back but or no affect on the progress or a big boost expected (no timeline for this)
Bug fixing: expected to be completed next month.
Release date: unknow
Release version: unknow
Cases covered by the patch on first release: The first release will be a partial patch for sure and will include Case 1 complete.
Release compatibility: emulator and real hardware targetted (if your flashcard can not play the AP patched japanese rom, you will probably not be able to play the translation either! )
Thanks for all those people that are showing us support on the various forums or my youtube channel, thanks to all the team for the time and work that they are investing to make this project come true and naturally thanks to myself
LITTLE CORRECTIONS