So then...what sucks about Mysterious Song?

[OldRover]

My wife isn't too partial to those profile pics...she says that they look like they're staring you down, as if to say "whatcha gonna do, huh? HUH?". I don't like her pic either, honestly...

[_Paul]

My wife isn't too partial to those profile pics...she says that they look like they're staring you down, as if to say "whatcha gonna do, huh? HUH?". I don't like her pic either, honestly...

There ya go, I've made everyone look a little less threatening. There is no charge. 

/msr107a.png

[Nazi NecroPhile]

There ya go, I've made everyone look a little less threatening. There is no charge. 

Frickin' awesome!  Tiger kinda looks like the bastard child of Pennywise and Ronald McDonald. 

[_Paul]

Attacking that fairy almost seems cruel now. Perhaps they should tell jokes and make it laugh itself to death.

[guyjin]

Anyone else notice that the female character has the most masculine jawline?

you're new at this Japanese RPG thing, aren't you?

[nectarsis]

Anyone else notice that the female character has the most masculine jawline?

you're new at this Japanese RPG thing, aren't you?

Seems you are... 

[OldRover]

Just a quick update here...MSR's EX Game development has been in full swing lately, and I've gotta say...it will drive the ordinary player to the brink of insanity. It will take someone with an iron will to complete it. Fans of Rogue should enjoy it though.

[Arkhan Asylum]

. Fans of Rogue should enjoy it though.

score.

[esteban]

This is pure genius:

/msr107a.png

I suggest these updated images be unlockable for the EX quest.

[Joe Redifer]

Will there be a Super EX + alpha ' version?

[TurboXray]

Will there be a Super EX + alpha ' version?

I thought you're supposed to write out the "+" as a word; super EX 'plus alpha.

[OldRover]

One thing I have observed from this project is that it has really pushed the limits of HuC's capabilities, and has shown that HuC's code generation is less than optimal. Yeah, it's certainly possible to do a big game with HuC, and this project proves it. But it also proves that stuff like this is better suited to assembly. Memory consumption is a constant battle as you have to find new ways to optimize for smaller code generation.

As of right now, Beta 3 of the game, the last major beta version before the Release Candidates, is being prepared for release right now. The release will come within the next hour or so.

[Arkhan Asylum]

yeah, the function call overhead alone that HuC generates is enough to make you wanna go ASM-fu on it

[OldRover]

Sure does. As it is, I've gotta rewrite a major portion of the text displayer to cut back on memory consumption. It's WAY too greedy. Of course, that means writing new utilities...but I'm used to that already.

Beta 3 was released a little while ago, so we're now on the home stretch.

[Arkhan Asylum]

so we're now on the home stretch.

careful , youre going to jinx it.
>_<

[OldRover]

Can't jinx it any more than I already have.

[OldRover]

I've implemented the new text display function, and even though all the code hasn't been converted yet, it's already down 8KB in size. That's a huge reduction in code size, and it can only continue to go down further.

EDIT: Now down 16KB!

[Nazi NecroPhile]

Wanna know what really sucks about Mysterious Song?
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That it hasn't been released yet. 

[OldRover]

Hehe. Well, we're working on that now. The code for the trouble town has been reduced by 24KB by switching all of the English dialogue over to the new routine. I will next do the same thing for the Spanish script, which is likely to drop it another 24KB in size. By going around and using this technique on all of the areas of the game with heavy text, the overall size of the game will be greatly reduced, making load times smaller and reducing the possibility of read errors on old hardware.

[ParanoiaDragon]

Which also means more room for niceties(is that a word), like clouds n' stuff I'd assume.........but only if we can still release the game on time!

[OldRover]

The world map doesn't have heavy text in it so utilizing it there might be fruitless and might even have the opposite effect...

[ParanoiaDragon]

doh

[lord_cack]

Well, I have been away  hehe

I don't really want to dredge up things that (as of Page 5 in this thread) have been handled. But, I only took a small offense to what was said, thats mainly because I worked hard on ALOT of the tiles in this game.

I began work on this game in 2005 after it was made apparent the game was gonna need a complete graphical overhaul. The castle tiles were the first set I did. What I like about this set? I like the texture of the floor and the walls look pretty good. As for a 10th grader being able to do better.... I had done exactly Zero tile work, graphic design, pixel art, ANY computer art before those tiles. This isn't a group  of professional game designers here you are talking about, we aren't ex-gamedesigners, and for the most part we aren't technical wizards (as far as I know....  ) this isn't a group of people who can even communicate there ideas in an instant, I have never met the fine people I work with never heard there voices. We are a group of people (scattered around planet) who love games, who have a great deal of passion about our particular parts in these projects, we are people who LOVE this system. We want to make games, create something outside of ourselves, and allow other people who love this system to continue to play it for years to come....

Im glad to hear everyones positive feedback. Thanks for caring enough to be honest. I hope you all enjoy the final product, I know I will.

I look forward to everyone seeing our upcoming titles 

[esteban]

Well, I have been away  hehe

Hey. Good to hear from you.

Hope all is well.

[OldMan]

ThOldRover:
"the BRAM functions require a single, contiguous region of memory. MSR uses a lot of different arrays and variables. Therefore, it is necessary to put all the variables and arrays into one large array when saving..."

Since HuC almost requires everything to be global (for speed), the copy then write isn't really necessary; just list everything you want to save in order, get the address of the first thing and the number of bytes needed, and write from there. Same thing for loading.

HuC assigns variable addresses in the order they are declared, so if two things follow each other in the code, they follow each other in memory. Makes block writes like that a lot easier (but watch out if you cross a page boundary.)
Personally, I use HuC to get a working (though slow) prototype running, and then use the overscan trick to see what needs optimizing. Then I go assemblerize the parts that take a huge amount of time. Since I have a working version of the C code to go from, I can swap the assembler stuff in and out to make sure it's working right. And, if I need to, I can refer to how HuC generated the assembler, just to make sure.
It's a bit more work than writing it all in assembler, but I tend to think in C. And for the most part I only have to optimize a few routines to get the speed I want.

[OldRover]

I already tried that; it failed to work. I had that idea as well. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. The BRAM functions are apparently too smart for it.

[OldMan]

That's funny. They work okay for me. Have test code showing it working, if you would like to see.
Did you remember to put the id bytes at the beginning of the name? That got me when I started writing it.

[Arm]

Hi,
 
I noticed you were looking for someone to translate Mysterious Song into french. Has Kaminari found time to do the translation ?
If it's not the case and you still need someone, I guess I could help with the translation. I think I'm pretty fluent in english (more than 10 years of study and reading/writing english is necessary at work to complete my job). French is my mother tongue.
Anyway, if you still need help for the french translation, feel free to contact me.

[OldRover]

That's funny. They work okay for me. Have test code showing it working, if you would like to see.
Did you remember to put the id bytes at the beginning of the name? That got me when I started writing it.

Yes, of course I put the id bytes; that's a fundamental detail of doing bram. Remember, MSR already has bram functions, so that was not an issue at all.

Here's the test program I used to check it out:

Code Select Expand

#include "huc.h"

#define BRAM_FILE "TESTFORWOS"
char filename[13];

char test0;
int test1, test2;
char test3, test4;
int test5,test6;
char test7;
int test8,test9;

main()
{
  load_default_font();

  put_string("BACKUP RAM CONTIGUITY TEST",0,2);

  filename[0] = 0;
  filename[1] = 0;
  filename[12] = 0;
  strcpy(&filename[2], BRAM_FILE);
  if(bm_exist(filename) == 0) bm_create(filename,16);
  test0 = 240;
  test1 = 1999;
  test2 = 9467;
  test3 = 45;
  test4 = 194;
  test5 = 90;
  test6 = 9000;
  test7 = 18;
  test8 = 32762;
  test9 = 12345;
  put_number(test0,5,0,8);
  put_number(test1,5,0,9);
  put_number(test2,5,0,10);
  put_number(test3,5,0,11);
  put_number(test4,5,0,12);
  put_number(test5,5,0,13);
  put_number(test6,5,0,14);
  put_number(test7,5,0,15);
  put_number(test8,5,0,16);
  put_number(test9,5,0,17);
  bm_write(test0,filename,0,16);
  put_string("WROTE 16 BYTES",0,4); put_number(bm_errno(),4,16,4);
  test0 = 0;
  test1 = 0;
  test2 = 0;
  test3 = 0;
  test4 = 0;
  test5 = 0;
  test6 = 0;
  test7 = 0;
  test8 = 0;
  test9 = 0;
  bm_read(test0,filename,0,16);
  put_string("READ 16 BYTES",0,5); put_number(bm_errno(),4,16,5);
  put_string("DUMPING BUFFER TO SCREEN:",0,6);
  put_string("ORIGINAL   BRAM",0,7);
  put_number(test0,5,10,8);
  put_number(test1,5,10,9);
  put_number(test2,5,10,10);
  put_number(test3,5,10,11);
  put_number(test4,5,10,12);
  put_number(test5,5,10,13);
  put_number(test6,5,10,14);
  put_number(test7,5,10,15);
  put_number(test8,5,10,16);
  put_number(test9,5,10,17);

}Did this both as a pce rom image and as a scd iso. Didn't work as either. I'd be interested in seeing your implementation though; perhaps I've overlooked a detail or two.

Arm: I've still not heard from him since he said that he'd do it. We went through a few years of him saying "yep I'll do it this weekend" or something along those lines, and nothing ever got done. I don't deal well with people who don't communicate with me. At the very least he could have told me "I'm not gonna do it because this game will never be finished" but instead, he kept us hanging for years in vain. That severely pisses me off. If he didn't wanna do it, all he had to do was tell me. And now that the deadline is on top of us, I simply don't have the time to wait for the translation. It takes a long time to insert new text into the game, and if I have to wait any longer, it's simply not gonna be added. So unless I hear from him in the next 48 hours with SOMETHING, I'm cutting out the plan to add a French translation. It needed to be done 2 years ago.

[Arm]

Sorry to hear that. I haven't talked with Kaminari, so I didn't know the situation. I was just proposing to help in case you were looking for someone as I remembered your last message about the translation.
You know, I'm a good translator too. I can translate rather quickly, so if the script is not too long, I guess it would take a couple of days.
That's too bad. Anyway, you can contact me if you change your mind. Good luck

[OldMan]

"char test0;
....
bm_write(test0,filename,0,16);"

No, bm_read and bm_write take pointers as the first arguement (ie, addresses).
Try bm_write( &test0, filename, 0, 16 );
and bm_read( &test0, filename, 0, 16 );

That's pretty close to what I used as a test, btw.
I dumped the return values, too, and they came out as 32; I didn't bother to see if that
was an error code or not, but since I got the data back (into different variables) I didn't
worry about it.

[OldRover]

Hey, that actually worked. Hrm...perhaps I could reorganize the variables in the source and do this with a single read and write. That would make things much easier, and would cut out some code space too.

The fact that HuC didn't throw an error bothers me though. It's pretty lax about errors.

[OldMan]

"Huc...pretty lax about errors". What an understatement!
Here's hoping you get a little extra data / code space, and .that it runs faster. Progams in Huc can use all the help they can get :-)

[OldRover]

Progams in Huc can use all the help they can get :-)

You're not kidding there.

I tested it out using variables in globals.h and it still worked, so this is a good thing. Now I can simply rearrange the variables and use a single instruction. It won't run any faster, but it will certainly cut out about 8KB of code space, and allow for more save locations.

[shubibiman]

TOR, I pmed you to say I would do this translation if Kaminari didn't show up. I haven't heard from you since then and now it's too late as I've been really busy lately. So the French Translation could have been done by now.

[Arm]

I suppose that the fact that you didn't give me an answer implies you don't want my help. That's fine.
By the way, you should empty your mail box. I tried to contact you via email several times and received a message stating it was full. I also sent you a PM 2 days ago.

[peperocket]

There are many PC Engine owner in France, Belgium and Switzerland.

It will be very a shame to forget them.

[OldRover]

TOR, I pmed you to say I would do this translation if Kaminari didn't show up. I haven't heard from you since then and now it's too late as I've been really busy lately. So the French Translation could have been done by now.

I expected him to do it; he stated he would, and you said that he was probably better for the job than you. But it seems he's bailed on us...again. Arm says he'll do it though, so no worries.

[Arm]

The Old Rover, I have sent you a PM.

[esteban]

SH*T, does this mean that I don't have time to finish the Ukranian translation?

[Nazi NecroPhile]

SH*T, does this mean that I don't have time to finish the Ukranian translation?

Fret not, the Klingon translation continues apace.