ROM Hack RELEASE The Legend of Heroes: Trails From Zero Kai - Complete English & Partial Japanese patch + QoL patches

Graber

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ZeroKaiLogo.png

This patch adds in English support (provided by The Geofront's release of their PC mod) and partial Japanese support to CLE's release of Zero no Kiseki Kai for the Nintendo Switch.
You need a modded switch with custom firmware (preferably Atmosphere).

It comes with a good amount patches for proper, complete English support:
  • Dialog boxes scale correctly where they do on PC
  • Complete translation of Executable strings
  • Cuprum font with proper variable width font support
  • Various text alignment/size fixes across the executable
  • Various patches to correct icon positions and notebook items to properly match English text.
  • PNG/WebP texture support, for loading the Geofront's assets
  • Localized map assets
It also features a few quality of life patches:
  • Dynamic GPU clock feature, made by Zakaria, allowing the game to maintain 60FPS most of the time in cases where it usually lagged by slightly boosting the GPU clock when needed, the average gain being around 10FPS. This uses the same functionality that some retail games use (eg. Doom Eternal), so it's completely safe (Note that this only affects portable mode and that it doesn't guarantee a locked 60FPS at all time since the vanilla game dropped to even 40FPS in some cases).
  • Better map textures from the Joyoland PC version
  • The mod "Azure Portraits in Zero", made by ShinKiseki, is bundled with this patch. This adds in portraits for characters that received those in Azure, but didn't have such in Zero.

The game will now also load in Japanese (present but unused in the game) if your console is set to Japanese, but it's only partially supported, mostly for reference purposes, as some files are missing in japanese and may fall back to chinese assets (eg. title screen, op video) or not load at all.

Thorough list of patches (technical)
ENGLISH SUPPORT:
  • Hook game language settings to force Japanese/"English" mode.
  • Redirect asset loading to data_en and data folders on English mode
  • Replace executable string array with english text.
  • Hook some other functions that pass on unlocalized strings to replace them (done by Zakaria).
  • Elemental efficiency bar in Combat notebook hooked so it looks like The Geofront's PC version.
  • Fix percentage sign rendering on Camp Menu
  • Fix X/Y offsets of battle tutorial icons

TEXT RENDERING PATCHES
  • Variable width font patches across multiple parts of the game. The Geofront patch is made with Cuprum in mind, this font is provided with the patch as well.
  • Dynamic dialog box size is now calculated correctly.
  • Fixed width windows are now horizontaly-scaled similarly to the PC version, to fit the english text with these in mind.
  • Fix book text rendering.
  • Fix the right column's horizontal offset of the extra mode unlock/points section to prevent text from overflowing.
  • Align save descriptions on the save menu to the right edge of the box to prevent them from overflowing.
  • Set offsets of some notebook texts correctly to account for english texts.
  • Push Support Request names to the right to prevent overflow
  • Change "Not for sale" text X offset when trying to sell unsellable items (eg. event items, etc.).
  • Change X offset of request status on detective notebook to prevent overlapping with request names.

IMAGE LOADER
  • Implement WebP/PNG texture loader. Due to slow SD read speeds, WebP is slightly faster as it loads the encoded webp image into memory faster and decoding the rest is faster than reading a decoded image.
  • Activate CPU boost on certain functions to improve decoding of such textures.
  • Because of limitations (texture creation subroutines being aggresively inlined/optimized, preventing me from either hooking a single function or reimplementing it trivially), a dummy ITP with the same resolution of the inserted textures must be provided. These are included with the patch.
  • Game's file memory cache system is used to always try to maintain the dummy ITPs on memory.

OTHER PATCHES
  • Activate CPU boost on some loading screens for slight load time improvements.
  • Dynamic GPU clock when FPS falls below 60fps.
  • Replaced JP/TC/KR built-in save opcode pointer fix with proper offsets for English scenario files to fix the infamous black save chapters bug.

SCENARIO
  • Rebuilt using proper semi-automated text re-insertion and rebuilding through EDDecompiler.
  • Crossbell Library's script ported instead from PC instead of reinserted due to significant amount of changes.
  • Added ShinKiseki's "Azure Portraits in Zero" mod.

Screenshots:
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Small gameplay video (made by TommyB - recorded with SysDVR):


Downloads:
Patch: Link
2022 Note:
Hello, as you may already know, Trails from Zero is being localized by NIS America and will be releasing this Fall. To support the official release, I have removed the download. I'm informed that the official release NISA will do is vastly superior to the CLE port, and anything this patch could have possibly improved from it in the technical aspect, as well as in texture quality, QOL fixes, etc.. I'm confident the official release will find a better experience overall, so please support it. Thank you for your understanding.

System menu icon (for sys-tweak users - not included with the patch): Link

Source code (only for developers that want to take a look at the code, not needed for playing with the patch):
https://github.com/AGraber/ed7hook_switch

Info:
Only the 1.0.1 version of the game is supported. 1.0.0 support was considered but eventually dropped, not worthed it.

Installation instructions for the patch are available in the README file inside the zip file.
While this patch may work for other custom firmwares, only Atmosphere is officially supported.

Me and Zakaria worked very hard to be able to provide the most complete and best possible experience for Trails from Zero on the Switch, and special care was taken with the shared library patches that integrate the english support into the game, following the steps of The Geofront's work in their PC patch, so I hope you enjoy it.

Azure is still on the works, but has been already tested with a WIP variant of this patch and should come soon.

If you find any issues, please post them (even if it's something like text overflowing out of dialog boxes - stuff like this does matter!), I might be able to fix some of them from time to time.
Do note that some text boxes that are larger than needed are also like that on PC. Fixing that is out of scope for this patch.

Special thanks to:
  • Zakaria for providing additional programming and graphics editing for the Switch patch, and testing the patch thoroughly.
  • jess.exe for making the new title screen based on the logo Zakaria was working on.
  • TommyB (@tombly) for early & pre-release testing of the patch and informing me of errors on the initial stages of the patch.
  • The Skyline Project for their code patching framework, and Shadów for initially assisting me with it.
  • The Geofront for their amazing localization of the game.
  • ShinKiseki for his Azure portraits on Zero mod.
  • devkitPro for their Switch toolchain and portlibs, specifically libwebp
 

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Last edited by Graber,

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Congrats. This for sure took big amount of work to finish. I shouldn't have finished PSP version of Crossbell Arc games a year ago... :(
 

Shenrai

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This looks fantastic. Wish I knew about this earlier before I started testing the other patch.

Great work.
 

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Are there any differences to the great work done by evilgoku?
It's hard to compare when author itself didn't point out changes in one post.
People who played both should say more. :P

For sure all things related to code injection are not available in evilgoku's mod as he didn't use it (so for example dynamic clocks/boost mode and webp/png texture loader are not available).
 

DJPAUL1990

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I am playing it now so I'll be able to compare but from what is being stated it should be an overall better experience.


ok thank you. I'm only interested in a 100% translation of the main story. I do not care about the rest. I stick with evilgoku and your work :D.

only out of interest @Shenrai Aren't you bored of playing a game 2 times in a short period of time?
and don't forget to play Azure :ha: Thanks for your work :yayswitch:
 
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Shenrai

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ok thank you. I'm only interested in a 100% translation of the main story. I do not care about the rest. I stick with evilgoku and your work :D.

only out of interest @Shenrai Aren't you bored of playing a game 2 times in a short period of time?
and don't forget to play Azure :ha: Thanks for your work :yayswitch:

You should just wait for the Azure version of this group. I don't plan on testing it anymore since it will just be replaced by this one. I also love Trails and since this time I won't be checking for bugs and errors It will be a better overall experience on my behalf.
 
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DJPAUL1990

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You should just wait for the Azure version of this group. I don't plan on testing it anymore since it will just be replaced by this one. I also love Trails and since this time I won't be checking for bugs and errors It will be a better overall experience on my behalf.

oh ok.. that is sad but yea your decision. you should maybe let evilgoku know about it.

But thank you so far
 

moonblood666

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Wow, this is really fantastic to see...

Two questions:

  1. Does this implement the entire Geofront script including NPCs and all side content? I've heard the last patch by the other person did only use the main story script.
  2. Is it possible to implement the Evo OST? Pretty sure I'm not the only one here who likes the Evo OST even more.
 
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tombly

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  1. Does this implement the entire Geofront script including NPCs and all side content? I've heard the last patch by the other person did only use the main story script.
Everything you see in English was either taken from The Geofront's localization or is original to this specific patch. (Stuff like Kai-specific system text, etc)
 
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wluigi

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Wow, this is really fantastic to see...

Two questions:

  1. Does this implement the entire Geofront script including NPCs and all side content? I've heard the last patch by the other person did only use the main story script.
  2. Is it possible to implement the Evo OST? Pretty sure I'm not the only one here who likes the Evo OST even more.
The previous patch had all content from Geofront aside from the chest texts.
 

tombly

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The previous patch had all content from Geofront aside from the chest texts.
No, it didn't. All of the non-scenario (item descriptions, monster descriptions, etc) text was taken from Guren's unedited translation instead of The Geofront's. This patch has non-scenario from The Geofront's version implemented properly, and it also includes textures that The Geofront edited for their English release as well. This is something that was completely absent from the previous patch. It required a lot of work to implement those textures properly since their PC mod loaded PNGs disguised as Falcom's ITP texture containers, so it wasn't a drag and drop operation to get those in properly. This patch also ships with subtitles hardcoded into the English version of the opening for those who appreciate that.
 

Shenrai

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It was said earlier (sorry if I missed it) but was anything done about the Kai specific characters? Will there be anything done for Azure?

I'm talking about
Juna, Towa, Juna's siblings
 

wluigi

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No, it didn't. All of the non-scenario (item descriptions, monster descriptions, etc) text was taken from Guren's unedited translation instead of The Geofront's. This patch has non-scenario from The Geofront's version implemented properly, and it also includes textures that The Geofront edited for their English release as well. This is something that was completely absent from the previous patch. It required a lot of work to implement those textures properly since their PC mod loaded PNGs disguised as Falcom's ITP texture containers, so it wasn't a drag and drop operation to get those in properly. This patch also ships with subtitles hardcoded into the English version of the opening for those who appreciate that.
Nice!
 

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