As always, life is never boring around here. There’s always more to do than time to do it. Time flies by, new events occur that you didn’t expect, and you’re left spinning your wheels trying to catch up. Every time I think I’m just about there, life throws up a new road closure and I’ve got to make yet another detour. Let’s get started with the news round up!
Many of you have probably heard the news that our host, Parodius is shutting down after many years of great service. Three cheers for Koitsu, whom has given more than his fair share to our community over the years. As we know nothing lasts forever and all good things must come to an end.
So what does this mean for TransCorp? Well, it means I’ll be tied up at times with data transfers, server configurations, coding, and host issues for awhile and progress will be slow. In other words, nothing out of the ordinary for TransCorp! We’ll likely be migrating to the same server as ROMhacking.net, which coincidentally is also due to for new hosting in a few short months.
Rest assured, TransCorp has lived for near 15 years and will likely continue to live for another 15. Let’s all hope I’ve at least finished my current projects by then! Ha!
A new draft of the Table File Standard has been released and it is now in the final review stage after nearly 2 years! For real this time, I mean it! Barring any omissions, edits, or formatting items, it’s complete. So, head on over the linked message board topic above to read about the latest changes.
I’d love to have a nice looking PDF of the standard in addition to our plain text version. However, I’m not too great at that kind of thing and my time is too limited. If anybody reading this happens to be good at it and would like to pretty it up some, let me know. :)
TextAngel is going to be the next hot item here at TransCorp now that the Table File Standard is in final review. Dumping and insertion user interface logistics are being discussion in the linked forum topic. Things should roll right along now with development for this with the next goal being to get back into Tenshi No Uta’s misc. text for which this utility was started for way back! It’s been one heck of a detour getting into a more wide scale program and the whole table standard, but I’m coming back around full circle and getting back to where I need to be. No more detours!
This project is officially stalled. We have lost all translation support. So long as it doesn’t have any translation support, I’m going to let it sit for awhile to better focus on TextAngel and Tenshi No Uta. It’s a shame as the project had gained so much momentum. Well, if anybody wants to offer their translation services let me know, and we’ll see about starting things back up.
I’ve been lazy on main page updates, but the forum does get updated more often with new developments. I’m still slow as molasses mind you, but progress does actually occur sometimes! Honest! OK, quit teasing! Go on! Get out of here! :P
-Nightcrawler
I bet you were expecting to see ‘butter’ up there in the headline because you know, molasses doesn’t churn very well! Unfortunately, that’s about how quickly things here at TransCorp have been churning in recent months. Real life has really been whipping me hard. I know you’ve all heard that one before, but it really piled up all at once. I think you might get some amusement from the tale.
There was a string of natural disasters at my home to clean up from over the course of many weeks (my house is OK thankfully). Since spring there’s been a tornado, earthquake, and record winter storm causing mass tree destruction around my property (I have a wooded area and several very mature trees). That last one also caused a several day power outage. There was hospitalization of close family members, which was unfortunately followed by two deaths. Back on the work front, I had a several week spout of overtime putting out some hot fires at work.
Now, right before all of that, I had started an insulation project at home and finished ripped out all the old stuff, and of course got derailed from the earlier mentioned misfortunes at the worst time. Now winter is fast approaching and I’m throwing heat away with no insulation! In addition to that, my wife and I had also started a room renovation project we were derailed from. Lastly, to top it all off I came down with a cold, that led to a sinus infection, that led to lower respiratory problems. That took a month to recover from. Did I mention my car failed to start the other day? No, I don’t believe I did. Well, it did. I’ve got car issues on my plate too.
FINALLY, I have grieved my loved ones, gone back to a normal schedule at work, cleaned up my property, and am back to getting insulation in my house and finishing the room renovation! It’s been an absolutely insane past couple of months the likes of which I’ve never seen in my life. It’s unsustainable, right? It can’t continue like this, right? Think positive! Wait a minute. I’m on TransCorp and not blogspot? Oops! Let’s move on to TransCorp happenings over the past few months. There have been some developments.
Most of my time for TransCorp over the past few months has been spent developing TextAngel. It has come a long way since it’s humble beginnings and recently went in an entirely new direction. As the feature list became ever longer, it naturally evolved into a full project oriented utility.
What that means is the utility uses a project and string oriented approach. Start a new project, add all the files you need. Then, add the necessary pointer tables, string blocks, etc. Now you can go to work and translate them right in the utility, or you can dump to full Atlas compliant text output, or even export to XML! It is now capable of handling many different types of text and pointer structures and can hopefully handle most needs for your entire project from the dialog to the item lists. Flexibility is achieved by allowing you to ‘build’ your script structures consisting of individual strings, blocks of strings, pointer tables, and pointer trees. When completed, it should be on of the most advanced dumpers on the market.
To see early screenshots, the feature list, and more information, check out the link below!
Progress has been a roller coaster ride as translation support has come, gone, come, and possibly gone again. The momentum which led to insertion of some translated scripts from the last update have slowed down and stalled out. After declaring Heart permanently missing in action, we enlisted the services of another qualified translator named Rob. He started at the beginning and was going through Heracles III material and all item lists for Heracles IV for consistency and new translation efforts. However, it has now been a few months with no word and no response to my recent e-mails. So, we may have lost another. You’re guess is as good as mine. Let’s hope for the best!
With the tedious HDMA menu system, DaMarsMan and myself being preoccupied with other life developments, and loss of translation support, the project has cooled down and will likely be on the back burner for a little while.
A new draft was issued in June. In August, all remaining outstanding business was wrapped up and the standard should now be feature complete. Unfortunately, I have not yet had time to issue a new draft containing the final feature set. So, I would refrain from looking through the current draft as a number of items are now different.
When I finish the next draft, it will be subject to editing changes only. I hope to have interested parties that contributed to it’s development sign off on it and give it a public release so anyone interested in using it can start doing so. So far, it will tentatively be used in a future version of Atlas, TableLib, Cartographer, and my own TextAngl utility. All combined we should have a nice little evolutionary step forward in translation tools. I look forward to the day!
Follow the Table File Standard on the message board.
-Nightcrawler
It’s amazing how quickly time flies by. I meant to post a quick update a few months ago. I got swept away in the tides of life again with large home renovation project, building a new computer, and on-going medical issues. Oh yeah, I also found myself with extended hours at that pesky life interruption they call ‘work’! I *think* I have found my way back to shore again and can continue on! I’d love to start using these updates as an entertaining blog of my personal life, but I don’t want to scare away the dozens and dozens of TransCorp fans! So, I guess I’ll move on to actual TransCorp news! :)
Earlier in the year, we had some great momentum on Heracles IV. The screen shots exemplify several bits of progress. First, numerous hacks were done to the dialog to add in those formatting control codes we needed. The in-game auto formatter was fleshed out to handle the new control codes, and work out several bugs and issues to produce what you see now. Lastly, I made some extensions to TextAngel to handle insertion for all of the main dialog. Along the way I discovered several new banks of text for various text from menus to letters in your inventory. This always seems to happen to me. Every time I think I found all the text, I discover some more, in some new format, having nothing at all to do with the text I already found. Fantastic, right? This my friends is why so many ROM hacking projects race away to 90+%, and then somehow the remaining 10% takes longer than the rest of the entire project! I got a little luckier this time as this new text does follow a similar format. So, it wasn’t all that hard to get some working insertion for this text as well. It is much more text for the translator though.
Speaking of the translator, while Heart was chugging away like a locomotive the end of last year, I haven’t heard from the guy since! It kind of killed most of the momentum and steam we had built up. I inserted all translated text I got from him and we ran out! I guess it came at a decent time as I did get bogged down with more real life, but I fear for project. I’ve seen the disappearing translator act many times over the years. Hopefully Heart will read this update, or decide to respond to some of my e-mails so we can get the project back on track. Otherwise, I guess we’ll be looking for a new translator and things may stall out for awhile.
DaMarsMan had done some more menu work until we hit some stumbling blocks on how to fit longer items and names on all the menu screens. The menu screens in Heracles IV make me ill. Two background layers and lots of HDMA glue smash them together to make up a difficult to edit display. We know how they work on a technical level. We’re just trying to determine the smartest and least tedious way to handle them. We’ve discussed several options and I think we know what we need to do to get it done right. However, I think we’d like to procrastinate a bit more before jumping into that! I always prefer dialog work over menu work. It just seems so much more rewarding for the time spent.
We’ll see how it all plays out. It’ll all get done. I never quit. I just take a really, really long time to get there. I will go toe to toe with that energizer bunny any day! I will OWN him! I might be looking at another minor surgery in a few more weeks, so I’ll probably be laying low for awhile after that, but I’ll come back swinging when possible! TRANSCORP IS SPARTA! RAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!
-Nightcrawler
TransCorp is stronger than Heracles! Although Heracles resisted, TransCorp muscled our way to victory. Although there’s been no updates in the past several months, much progress has been made in our many endeavors. In TransCorp’s quest to show we are stronger than Greek Gods, progress has been made in: Heracles IV, the Table File Standard, and our text dumping utility (currently dubbed TextAngel). Read on for details!
The most visually impressive feat of strength in this update is conquering text insertion on Heracles IV, as exemplified by the screen shots! Muscle was flexed by decoupling the game’s universal decompression engine from the font and dialog, tweaking the VWF engine for English glory, and smashing an in-game auto formatter in for the text! Some polishing is still necessary on the script inserter, as well as adding some formatting control codes, but it’s looking nice so far!
Our translator, Heart, has made good progress translating several blocks of text. He’s provided some good material for us to insert into the game, and wet our taste buds for a new English Heracles adventure! I hope Heart has the ‘heart’ to forge through and conquer the rest of this translation!
Partnership with DaMarsMan has also proved to be fruitful as he has done a good deal of work on the menu and misc. text end of things. 2011 is shaping up to look good for Heracles IV!
The standard has seen several revisions over the past few months, strengthening with each pass. After long talks with Klarth (creator of Atlas) and Tauwasser, the standard is shaping up to be very nice. We’ve added some very nice table switching ability that can be used for quite a few applications. I’d suggest taking a peek to get a feel for what kind of new things the standard hopes to provide.
The main specification and content should now be complete. I don’t expect to make any more significant changes. It will now enter a period of final review with various interested/influential party members and move forward to a final edit and formatting revision.
With Klarth on board to update Atlas to use this standard, and my own upcoming advanced dumping utility, this standard will enter the lives of many ROM hackers. So, if you haven’t taken any interest in this project before, I urge you to take a look and voice any suggestions you may have, so we can move forward with the best standard possible! Otherwise, you’ll just have to trust our judgment and deal with it! :P
I’m currently calling it TextAngel, but I’ve been known to change my mind on titles, so it may change again before release. It’s seen much progress over the past few months and is quickly on track to be the most advanced dumper ever publicly released in our community.
Most of the main features were mentioned last update, but I just keep adding more and more possible modes and capabilities. I even started adding some insertion ability (in addition to Atlas compatibility). I’ve already put it to good use on Heracles IV, and will use it on Tenshi No Uta as well.
It’s going to be quite awhile yet before this utility is released for a few reasons. First, it uses the new table standard, which has been a work in progress. Second, I will need to start writing a small test suite for it due to difficulty in adequately testing all of it’s various capabilities effectively. Lastly, I’ve never been the greatest at user interface design, and it has undergone a few revamps, and I anticipate it will continue to change with some feedback from others.
Nonetheless, it’s really shaping up to be nice and I expect it will be the most advanced dumper available upon it’s release. I’m sure it won’t be the be all, end all, but it should be a great tool for ROM hackers. I look forward to seeing how it might be further improved after it’s in field use. In the meantime, I will certainly be using it on my projects! I expect to have an update focusing on this project sometime soon with further screen shots of what you can expect. So, stay tuned!
-Nightcrawler