I was taking a brief look at a few games over the weekend, in order to do a quick 'reconnaissance' pass for translation viability.
It struck me that there is some interesting information which can be collected in only about 10 minutes, which could be shared in case other people would like to look into translations or other hacks.
I could create a thread and keep updating the head entry, but with the number of games for this system, it would become untenable pretty quickly; is there a wiki which could be setup for this ? (I don't think it quite matches the spirit of the Cutting Room Floor's intent: https://tcrf.net/Category:TurboGrafx-CD_games (https://tcrf.net/Category:TurboGrafx-CD_games) ).
For example, off the top of my head, I took another look at Snatcher.
- This would be a tough game, requiring not just a programmer, translator, and likely sound mixer, but also a pixel artist due to the text which is encoded as graphics.
- Entire opening cinema is graphics, although a fair bit of text (cast/developers' names) is printed in a PC Engine Kanji-rendered font.
- Text is stored compressed and decompressed into a buffer
- game text calls the system font to generate 12x12 kanji.
(I would find a better way to organize this raw data however)
Dave
I suggested that PC Engine needed a development wiki like nesdev for Famicom/NES, and a wiki ended up being created (https://www.pcengine-fx.com/forums/index.php?topic=22004.msg487217#msg487217) after all, but it never took off past creation it seems.
Hacks could have a special section in the wiki, but since the developer wiki never took off I have a feeling it will just turn it into a hacks wiki.
It's a nice idea, but I wonder for how long it'll be maintained and the Wiki he linked (http://pcedev.wikia.com) (http://pcedev.wikia.com) didn't go anywhere not unsurprisingly. But yeah, a Wiki with free hosting somewhere where everybody can input information and that is always available would be useful in principle - I hope you're up for the battle to stay motivated to really populate it, Dave. :)
Yeah, a wiki would need actively contributing people. None of the people he added to the linked wiki contributed anything I guess so it never took off.
It would help if people doing some development now and then or emulator programmers could join and share their knowledge. This forum isn't really a development forum though (unlike nesdev) so I guess a wiki would have to be broader to catch more members.
I read the whole development manual and skimmed through the Develo books some year ago, so I could share what's in my notes at least.