Page 102 of 153

Re: Current Project Status (1/14/09): Alpha Testing

Posted: Tue Mar 03, 2009 6:39 pm
by 8bitsonic
el_ash wrote:something good happened in New Jersey? :mrgreen:
The Armpit of America...

Re: Current Project Status (1/14/09): Alpha Testing

Posted: Tue Mar 03, 2009 7:24 pm
by akor1108
I read this page everyday by the way. after a 12-14 hour workday for a 7 day workweek (with a few days off after the 7th day) I need something to make me happy and look forward to other than my own successes that are always troubling me.

this makes me happy. and... considering that my dog is sick in the vet's, I am sad right now. please make me happy again. :(

that was a good story though. sounds like one of those "divine intervention" moments.

Re: Current Project Status (1/14/09): Alpha Testing

Posted: Wed Mar 04, 2009 1:44 am
by Randam Hajile
Slowbeef, i'll send you christmas cards for the rest of my life.

@akor1108: Hope your dog gets better, man.

Re: Current Project Status (1/14/09): Alpha Testing

Posted: Wed Mar 04, 2009 8:48 am
by Ghaleon
Slowbeef, great story, thanks again for all your hard, unpaid work :mrgreen:

Re: Current Project Status (1/14/09): Alpha Testing

Posted: Wed Mar 04, 2009 10:30 am
by slowbeef
You can read more about it in my upcoming book, "You Spin Me Round: The life and times of a ROM hacker on Beyond Coast"

It chronicles the adventures of a computer programmer turned ROM hacker who finds himself on Beyond Coast... in the Deadliest Game of his life... special appearances by Jonathan Ingram and Ed Brown.

Anyway, I'm getting pretty close on another bug, but it's turning out to be kind of tougher than I thought it would be (I was *sure* I'd figured it out on the bus ride into work but apparently not), so I'm not sure if I can squash it tonight or if it'll take a couple more days. Lord knows I'll be tryin', though. I will be taking a break on Friday for the Watchmen premiere.


Also, don't get too excited if the countdown does drop to zero. Beta is still predicated on script changes, or new features Marc/Artemio want to add, so things like that might bring it back up. (Actually, Marc found a bug on Disc 2 which I can't replicate, so it's been frustrating on my end trying to make my copy of the hack break, and now the damn thing's working when I need it to replicate his bug!!!.)

Re: Current Project Status (1/14/09): Alpha Testing

Posted: Wed Mar 04, 2009 6:46 pm
by akor1108
in your efforts to replicate that bug slowbeef, don't destroy all the progress you've made so far!

and... thanks for caring about my dog Random Hajile. still the same though. :(

Re: Current Project Status (1/14/09): Alpha Testing

Posted: Wed Mar 04, 2009 11:03 pm
by slowbeef
akor1108 wrote:in your efforts to replicate that bug slowbeef, don't destroy all the progress you've made so far!
Well, I'm not gonna like break the hack or anything.

I basically have to figure out why Marc's seeing it and I'm not - honestly, changing stuff around is only going to perplex things, so all my bug-fixing is going on Disc 1 while his problem is on Disc 2.

Re: Current Project Status (1/14/09): Alpha Testing

Posted: Thu Mar 05, 2009 5:13 pm
by 87th
I finally ordered a chipped PSone, in anticipation for this coming out, now that the goal is near. I know I could have emulated it, but this way seems far more exciting (and I won't have to worry about any issues with the emulator, either).

Re: Current Project Status (1/14/09): Alpha Testing

Posted: Thu Mar 05, 2009 8:07 pm
by slowbeef
I'd suggest trying to burn your Japanese copy and play it first. I found we got best results when burning at 4x speed. If your burner doesn't go that slow, there's a program called ImgBurn which will force it to.

Going too fast means the burner won't dye the ink dark enough, so the intro movie (Konami logo and title movie, nothing else) won't have audio. Rest of the game works fine.

Burning at 4x speed or lower should alleviate this, but I don't have the hardware to test myself so I've had to rely on research and the rest of the team and to figure it out. Anyway, whatever settings work for that (so you can play original Policenauts off a CD-R) will work for the patch as well.

Re: Current Project Status (1/14/09): Alpha Testing

Posted: Thu Mar 05, 2009 8:28 pm
by The Prince II
Image
"I just want to tell you both good luck, we're all counting on you."

Re: Current Project Status (1/14/09): Alpha Testing

Posted: Thu Mar 05, 2009 11:00 pm
by slowbeef
I will explain this in greater detail when we release, but I am going to effing murder some of the programmers on this game.

"Run-length encoded graphics? Well, we could do it like the rest of the game, buuuut... this one graphic is special!"

Fun fact! When I romhack something at the end challenge of Act 2, I purposefully leave it on and see if I can finish programming before the timer runs out.
Spoiler:
Meaning the bomb.

Re: Current Project Status (1/14/09): Alpha Testing

Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2009 5:40 am
by DOTL
So you´re making your own Minigames!!!
:-D
About the graphic stuff, do think they were lazy?
I mean after all, if the game runs, it shouldnt matter how they put it together..
and they surely haven´t been thinking about an eager romhacking team which takes the whole thing apart and back together.

Thx for the updates!!

Re: Current Project Status (1/14/09): Alpha Testing

Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2009 8:26 am
by khmr33
Well how much of the mess comes from starting on PC9821 then 3DO then PSX, and eventually Saturn? How much do you suppose is porting mess?

Re: Current Project Status (1/14/09): Alpha Testing

Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2009 9:01 am
by Pizuz
Remember Mato's Mother 3 blog? That game was probably even messier besides not being ported over (Block 0 text, hell yeah!)

I assume that most of those consistent parts - dialogues, menu text, video subs, all that stuff using the same font bank, encoding and stuff - were the ones coming from the PC9821, because they are basically some nice background graphics with a few sprites added for sunbeams and clouds, wobbling boobs and stuff, nothing really special or CPU-abusing here. Then we get to the parts involving 3D objects which of course require some adaption to the system the game was running on - there weren't any lousy ports at that time, yet :mrgreen: Since both the shooting range and the motorcycle scene involved talking, but "porting" the regular text processing engine over might have been too easy, they decided to hack their own.

At least this is what I believe happened. Nevertheless it's pretty retarded to have eight different methods to display text in one game IMHO. We ain't even talking RPGs, here, where it would be understandable. It's a freakin' adventure game!

Re: Current Project Status (1/14/09): Alpha Testing

Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2009 9:33 am
by slowbeef
khmr33 wrote:Well how much of the mess comes from starting on PC9821 then 3DO then PSX, and eventually Saturn? How much do you suppose is porting mess?
I'd say that's the biggest thing, if I had to guess. The motorcycle scene in Act 2 screams "Last minute addition!"

Like: "Since we're on PSX/whatever, can we maybe introduce some 3-D into this?" And then you have this weird cobbled together executable/font file crap that makes the text display a lot differently from everything else. The shooting range is kinda like that too - the text when other characters shoot isn't text at all - it's packaged with the graphic as flat image data.

But other shooting scenes with text (and voice) use the regular subtitled commentary, so it's just those two scenes. And just to be clear, those two scenes don't even work like each other.

The only things I know that those two parts have in common is that they're significantly upgraded from the original PC version.

(In retrospect, yeah, this is pretty much what Pizuz was saying)

There's honestly no shortage of these dumb one-off things like that, that just don't work like anything else in the game.


Also I was doing that "timer programming game now" and I reloaded state when I only had 47 on the clock.

Re: Current Project Status (1/14/09): Alpha Testing

Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2009 7:38 pm
by 87th
slowbeef wrote:I'd suggest trying to burn your Japanese copy and play it first. I found we got best results when burning at 4x speed. If your burner doesn't go that slow, there's a program called ImgBurn which will force it to.

Going too fast means the burner won't dye the ink dark enough, so the intro movie (Konami logo and title movie, nothing else) won't have audio. Rest of the game works fine.

Burning at 4x speed or lower should alleviate this, but I don't have the hardware to test myself so I've had to rely on research and the rest of the team and to figure it out. Anyway, whatever settings work for that (so you can play original Policenauts off a CD-R) will work for the patch as well.
Thanks for the advice. I'll report back when my PSone arrives. I've already made good rips of both PlayStation discs, and they seem to work fine in emulators, so I expect it should work fine when I burn them.

Re: Current Project Status (1/14/09): Alpha Testing

Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2009 9:40 am
by snatcher1996
87th wrote:Thanks for the advice. I'll report back when my PSone arrives. I've already made good rips of both PlayStation discs, and they seem to work fine in emulators, so I expect it should work fine when I burn them.
I did try rips of the original game on a real hardware and can confirm that the intro has no sound if the CD was burned too fast.
The one problem I was not able to solve is that the intro movie keeps freezing in Jonathan's office as soon as the picture of the former five Policenauts enters the screen, regardless of the burnspeed.
Please tell me if the intro runs flawless on your modified hardware as soon as it arrives.

Re: Current Project Status (1/14/09): Alpha Testing

Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2009 11:04 am
by LiquidPolicenaut
Just had to stop by again to say keep up the awesome work you guys are doing. Its nice to keep having updates as you go step by step in the translation process....

As for the release date mentioned a few posts earlier, the fact that it'll probably come out this year makes it even more meaningful since this August is the 10 year anniversary of my Policenauts Paradise website. Now, if it comes out exactly in August it would be even more ironic lol ;)

Re: Current Project Status (1/14/09): Alpha Testing

Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2009 9:01 pm
by Jack Stern
You know what would be awesome?

A 10-min gameplay video from the intro scenes, with the respective translation. Even if there's bugs or something, seeing how the game goes with english language would be amazing, just like that short translated video featuring Jonathan seeing his photo with Lorraine.

I think it would move out loads of props and even get potential people that could be interested in help the translation development.

Re: Current Project Status (1/14/09): Alpha Testing

Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2009 11:18 pm
by NASAchusetts
I'm pretty sure slowbeef made a video like that on his youtube page.

Re: Current Project Status (1/14/09): Alpha Testing

Posted: Sun Mar 08, 2009 12:34 am
by slowbeef
That was from the Let's Play, where all the English from Marc's translation was edited into the recorded video.

Re: Current Project Status (1/14/09): Alpha Testing

Posted: Sun Mar 08, 2009 12:42 pm
by Jack Stern
Oh, I see.

Btw, does Policenauts works on this NTSC US PS model? With a modded trick, of course....

Image

Re: Current Project Status (1/14/09): Alpha Testing

Posted: Sun Mar 08, 2009 2:00 pm
by 87th
"Modded trick"? Is that a mod chip, or some kind of process that allows games to boot on one disc and then swap to another? Either way, if it can play games off a CD-R, it should play the translated Policenauts.

Re: Current Project Status (1/14/09): Alpha Testing

Posted: Sun Mar 08, 2009 5:51 pm
by akakak4747
Do that thing where you put a spring or tape down or something to hold down the button so the "PS" thinks the system is closed but then you do that swap trick from geniune to fake/other region game back n forth. It made the ps so much for funner to play games since you had to do that. I don't see why it wouldn't work. It worked for other games that were japanese.

Re: Current Project Status (1/14/09): Alpha Testing

Posted: Sun Mar 08, 2009 6:08 pm
by Jack Stern
Damn, I dunno what I was typing... I meant a mod chip :P

I guess I shouldn't worry about the BIOS thing with Policenauts, then?