Greetings TransCorpians! 2009 is drawing to a close and 2010 will soon open. I for one am looking forward to a fresh new year in hopes of improved conditions for myself and TransCorp! It’s been a very rough year for me on a personal level with some physical disabilities impeding progress. However, progress has been made nonetheless when conditions allowed. While life’s lemons have seen to it that I could not bring you a completed translation to stuff in your stockings, I can sprinkle a little news and eye candy your way!
Tenshi No Uta has seen much menu hacking progress. When we last left off, we needed a new thin font and many tile map text routines converted over to VWF, using my ‘Universal VWF’ system in development. Thanks to Gemini, we have ourselves a fitting thin font that will allow us to take maximum advantage of all available screen space. It’s definitely necessary as some screens are fully used with no room for any expansions. Though I don’t show it in the screenshots above (some text systems are still not converted), there are many screens that utilize near 100% of the screen, mostly when full item lists are given along with several complex menus on screen at the same time. A thin font was a necessity to ever hope to squeeze full English in there.
We’re now up to seven different text engines in the game that have been hacked to use my ‘Universal VWF’ system. Five of them were tile map based. As I mentioned in my forum post in November, the practicality of the universal routine is starting to hit some walls. To keep it at a high enough level to be flexible and game independent, there’s quite a bit of overhead that gets added. Then there’s the fact that there are just so many possibilities and ways games handle text printing in tile map based routines. Again, you go higher up on the abstraction ladder adding more flexible code. What’s the result? Something that ultimately gets slower and slower. This isn’t too bad except for cases such as item lists where up to a full screen’s worth of data must be dynamically redrawn quickly and interact with user input. That’s when the lag starts to really show. So, while my routine is doing the job I set out to do with it, it may be more practical in some instances where speed is important to use something more game specific. At least I can rip and reuse parts of my system for these instances.
I’ve still got a ways to go with it. There’s a few changes I know I can make that will help in the speed department and I still haven’t fully hacked Tenshi’s menus to have full multi-routine screens in place to really benchmark and optimize the system. So, we’ll see where it goes. Its usefulness for menus and items will likely be a bit limited, but for everything else, I believe it should be able to be applied to other games easily. It’s been a fun venture so far nonetheless. I can also examine such things as further modular breakdown and other ‘big picture’ items when I get Tenshi fully converted and working. I haven’t hacked the battle menus yet which will have 3 or 4 more text engines from what I have seen so far. So Tenshi No Uta really is a spectacular test subject having more individual text engines than I’ve seen in any game I’ve hacked before. The total when it’s all said and done will probably be 10-12 routines.
I will certainly push forward with Tenshi when I can. However, I will likely be unable to work for a few months while I recover from an upcoming surgery. However, I’ll be back at it whenever I can. This old dog isn’t dead yet and passion for the hobby is as strong as ever. It may be at a snail’s pace, but I continue to march forward. Thank you for your ongoing support. It definitely helps me get through these down times quicker! TransCorpians, you rock!
-Nightcrawler
Things have been progressing even slower than usual. I’ve been in the slow lane for awhile now thanks to an injury I sustained last September that has caused me months of pain, months of therapy, and is still not better. I’ve been unable to play any games, and for many weeks was even unable to use the keyboard with two hands. This has been a real set back for me and has limited my hacking and related game playing time significantly amongst other things.
I was able to get some stuff done here and there. I continued on with menu hacking and the unified VWF core. Most recently, I added support for tile mapped text engines. The further I got into the menu hacking, the more routines I discovered that needed to be converted to VWF. It really is starting to get ridiculous. I have to assume this game was worked on simultaneously by different people who all wrote their own text engines for the pieces they were working on. I got some menus translated, but there’s still many to go.
As can be seen in the screen shot above, I am in the middle of working some things out. I have to find a new thinner font for the menus. What I have just isn’t going to work. I hate finding fonts. That’s why I have kind of kept the same few for all my projects. If anybody has any suggestions for a thinner font that might look good with Tenshi, let me know. I’ve asked around at RHDN and gotten on suggested font so far.
I am also running into speed problems. My unified VWF routine suffers from overhead as a result of being so flexible. I’ve got menu screens using 2 or 3 different text engines. Converting them all to VWF is showing some sluggish performance. I still haven’t decided what I’m going to do about it yet.
If you’re interested in any other details, check out the forum. I’ve made several posts over the past few months updating on things along the way. Unfortunately, due to my current situation and continued doctor visits, I wouldn’t expect much output from me in the near future. The verdict is still out on whether or not this will be a permanent injury for me. I’m hoping some more time might help, or continued doctor visits will reveal something that can be fixed surgically or something. I haven’t quit, and will continue when I can. In the meantime, I’m going to go enjoy my soon to be new wife and subsequent honeymoon cruise to the Carribean!
-Nightcrawler