Dreamcast-Talk.com

The font is looking beautiful no bias, or anything.

This is very nice. This game was one of my most wanted "to play" games, when I was a teenager.

Just a few quick updates!

Presently, the story script (i.e., dialog) is 70% edited! Remember, 100% of dialog is already translated, but we're working hard to ensure that this game reads as beautifully as possible!

Furthermore, I did some assembly hacking to remove the screensaver functionality from the DreamPassport browser that's serving as the backend for the "Bonus Disc" that I'll be shipping along with the translation patch itself.



You can learn more about that here (https://twitter.com/DerekPascarella/sta ... 8510102528) and here (https://www.dreamcast-talk.com/forum/vi ... 10#p166578).

Why remove the screensaver, you ask? Well, I didn't want users to have to press a button on the controller to prevent it from kicking in while watching the bundled OVA episode. It took an entire morning, but was fun to figure out, and worth it in the end!

Lastly, I managed to finally wrap-up the hacking of all system/menu messages, which of course were programmed entirely differently from the in-game dialog text itself. This means that the same new, beautiful font I shared in my previous post (along with the proper placement of YES/NO buttons) looks and feels just right!

Hi everyone,

I just wanted to write a quick post to let all of you know this project is still coming along wonderfully! Since I started this project in July 2021, there's hardly been a single day that's gone by where I haven't worked on "Nakoruru" in some capacity. My stellar translation and editing team have been incredible too!

As a quick snapshot of where we are, the script is now 95% fully-edited and tested in-game. The remaining script still requiring polish revolves around the different endings the player receives, and as they're very emotional scenes, we're doing everything we can to make sure they're PERFECT.

At this point, the modifications to the game, including several little quality-of-life improvements, are too many to count and continue to update here in this thread. However, I did want to share that I've finally finished tweaking the text fade-in speed for dialogue text.



As seen above, text now fades in quite rapidly, helping a lot with the pacing. In the settings menu, this is the "FAST" option, and is enabled by default in the patch. There's also a "REG." (i.e., regular) option, which is a bit slower and represents what the game used to use for its original "FAST" setting. This all comes down to the fact that it takes the eye longer to scan English text to derive meaning than it does for a more symbolic/phonetically-clustered language, like Japanese. As a result, both the regular and fast text-speed options had to be throttled up.

The official release notes suggest players switch to "INST." (i.e., instant) mode for text, but that's entirely up to them. The last option is called "LINE", and causes each individual line to be displayed instantly, one after the other, with a slight delay. It's not pretty, but it's there!

And regarding those release notes, I've prepared an extremely detailed, in-depth web-based README (hosted in the GitHub repository) that covers anything and everything you can imagine about this translation patch. Just wait until you see it! We're even releasing the game's full OST for download! This will be available in WAV, OGG, MP3, and FLAC formats.

Lastly, I wanted to touch on a potential release-date estimation. While we're very, very close to having a fully-edited script, Lewis and I are still planning to do several end-to-end playtests of the game before release. We don't want to publish v1.1 shortly after initial release! We're making sure we get it right. If I absolutely had to say, I'd imagine we'd see a public release somewhere in Q1 of 2023 (or sooner).

Well, that's all for now! Stay tuned

Hi all,

Wanted to post a quick update. Side note before that, we're currently going through the entire script with a fine-tooth comb, perfecting and polishing things as much as possible! We're planning to start our play-test phase in January, leaving us still on track for a Q1 2023 release.

That said, I wanted to share with everyone an interesting find I made when playing this game with the DreamConn+. You see, Chris over at DreamMods has done excellent work in order to preserve as much as possible in the way of VMU icon animations, while still ensuring that button input is responsive and quick. The MAPLE bus and its peripherals can be quite complicated to work with, especially when developing a wireless controller solution like his.

All of that said, "Nakoruru" does something quite strange, which was causing the DreamConn+ to experience intermittent ignored input. Inside the game's main function, there were three separate calls to subroutines that pushed VMU LCD data. Eliminating two of the redundant ones helped reduce the rate at which button presses were ignored on the controller, though it did not mitigate it altogether. Instead, I wrote some new code that would ensure a new VMU icon was only pushed to the controller precisely when it's needed.

To break it down at a high level, I created a simple flag system, where a specific parameter in RAM can hold one of three values:
• 0x00
• 0x01
• 0x02

This parameter equals 0x00 by default before the game's main function is executed for the first time. After that, 0x01 is written to it, and my new code calls upon the VMU update function to send the "regular" icon. Since the flag now holds the value 0x01, my new code knows not to perform another icon update.

After that, the icon is only updated if my code detects that VMU read/write access is taking place, at which time it will call the VMU update function to send the "saving/loading" icon. As soon as it’s detected that VMU access is no longer occurring, the "regular" icon is restored. Outside of that, "Nakoruru" will no longer push LCD data to the VMU.

The result? After much testing, I can 100% confirm that there is absolutely zero ignored input when playing this game with the DreamConn+! Of course, I realize that this is an EXTREMELY niche bugfix/QOL improvement. However, as a massive fan of this controller, it's quite the awesome feat in my book.

For the curious, below is the SH4 ASM responsible for performing the above logic, which is called each time the game's main function executes (rather than just blindly calling the VMU update subroutine each and every time).

Really interesting, why do you think the developers did this way though?

colgate wrote:Really interesting, why do you think the developers did this way though?

Honestly, I'm not sure. I'd have to analyze a few other games to understand how common this is. Perhaps this code comes from an unoptimized template. Right now, I can't say.

However, I started thinking more about this and realized there was one flaw in my implementation... What if a VMU isn't inserted until after the game boots? What if a VMU is removed, then re-inserted later?

To account for these scenarios, my code now monitors the presence of a VMU, being sure to send icon data if one is inserted for the first time or re-inserted later.

Working like a charm

Well done ! Very impressive skill.

[EDIT] what the function "cmp/eq" do exactly please ?

fafadou wrote: [EDIT] what the function "cmp/eq" do exactly please ?

For anyone interested, I outlined this problem/solution in a little Twitter thread, which offers a different perspective on the thought process at work here.

https://twitter.com/DerekPascarella/status/1598008862736384001