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Post by Ascended Mermaid on Jul 1, 2011 10:46:31 GMT -5
In 7 days, I've discovered a LOT of calls to $9CCE (the save code). I've NOPed (which is similar to deleting them) them like nobody's business. The delay is now reduced from 15 seconds, to around 3 seconds. The (J) SRAM hack is almost complete!  Either way, I'm going to look for more stuff to NOP in this cluster; I'm hoping to not only find out what's causing it to delay (for even 3 seconds), but to also figure out why it draws a garbage letter. I'm moreso worried about the latter, as I'm sure anyone else would be. The former isn't so bad now, I don't even have to fast-forward when saving anymore!  // The save icon is definitely overwritten in the PPU. Maybe this won't be so difficult. You wouldn't believe how much free space I have in the ROM now!  Free space is GOOD! Unless, of course, I NOPed something crucial. Therefore, as I've been doing during my downtime, I'll be testing and testing the game until I'm 100% certain that I didn't mess anything up! |
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Post by Raison D'etritus on Jul 1, 2011 12:58:57 GMT -5
To computer illiterate Raison, that read as: somebody's been using my calling card to make expensive smut-hot-line calls for seven days straight. I've killed them for it.
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Post by Ascended Mermaid on Jul 1, 2011 13:48:47 GMT -5
Oh, that's been going on for over 7 days. It's just that now, on my 7th day of trying to figure out what the problem was, I've finally come up with a solution. Kill whoever's been using my wireless card, so it doesn't run like it's on dial-up. As a result, saving takes only about 2 seconds at the most! All that's left is to fix the pretty pictures.  |
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Post by Ascended Mermaid on Jul 2, 2011 10:00:37 GMT -5
Alright, so fixing the icon isn't easy at all. I've been trying to figure it out, using the PPU as a guide, and also using the cheat sniffer, but still no hits. I suppose I could use the trace logger and code/data logger, and backtrack to the person in Mist who gives out the Ace Key -- or just continue on and get the Demon Ring / Dragon Slayer. That should help somewhat with creating a more stable icon code.
As an aside, I've progressed to Dartmoor, and there still doesn't appear to be ANY negative side-effects so far. I'm pleasantly surprised, and confident that the SRAM hack is safe and won't harm the game in any way.
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Post by Ascended Mermaid on Jul 2, 2011 16:42:46 GMT -5
Alright, this is a cheap fix; I made it so that it draws the formerly-garbled (yes, it's no longer garbled) character *behind* the "GAME SAVED" text. I originally used the smallest character I could find for the job, but there were two pixels that would poke out from its hiding place. I went a step further; I used and lowered the period character. I wouldn't think it'd matter, I don't see any reason for the Japanese period to be "floating" like a hyphen - so I aligned it with the bottom of the other characters. Now it looks exactly like MP83's mock-up! I'm just going to make one more adjustment, finish my play-test, and be done with the (J) SRAM hack! |
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Post by Ascended Mermaid on Jul 2, 2011 21:57:54 GMT -5
Suppose the hack works perfectly fine, but there's a bug in it -- possibly related to the Battle Suit, the Battle Helm, or the Magical Rod. Basically, it makes one of your armor disappear.
So here's the question: Do I release the (J) SRAM patch now, or investigate further?
Investigating further does mean, however, that I'd have to do a third playthrough, or find a save state taken in Daybreak -- right before collecting the Battle Suit, the Battle Helm, and the Magical Rod.
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Post by Ascended Mermaid on Jul 2, 2011 23:19:46 GMT -5
Okay, okay. How about this... OPEN BETA!!This patch is for the Japanese version only. It will NOT work on the US/EU versions. This patch will allow you to save the game, when you would've otherwise received a mantra. If you find any bugs or glitches, *please* report them to me via E-mail, PM, or this topic! Thank you! |
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Post by Ascended Mermaid on Jul 5, 2011 0:25:06 GMT -5
So I've used a new tool tonight. The misunderstood "Rom Patcher" tool in FCEUXD SP's 6502 Debugger, which actually allows me to disassemble an offset -- with the option of patching it, which is useless to me, and the reason why I've overlooked this useful feature. As I said, I MIGHT be able to figure out the name screen. So this is what the "Blank Box" data looks like: Blank Box types are 00, 10, 20, and 30. These affect the outer boarders; No Left, All, No Bottom, or No Bottom AND No Right. Higher hexadecimals and anything in-between are just garbage.  As you can see, the first three Blank Box types are 10 and the last one is 00 (which is why there's a gap between the third and last Blank Boxes) I'll investigate Blank Box types again to be sure there's nothing useful. |
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Post by Ascended Mermaid on Jul 6, 2011 19:22:40 GMT -5
For the record, unified ideographs suck. I've tried searching through radicals, etc. -- but some of them are almost impossible (for me) to find. Only 92 characters to go for the SJIS table. After this, I SHOULD be able to dump the script.
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Post by Ascended Mermaid on Jul 7, 2011 1:18:51 GMT -5
 This is what I'm working on right now. I'm trying to find these characters, and copy them to notepad. I've been stuck on that first one all night. |
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Post by Raison D'etritus on Jul 7, 2011 3:03:41 GMT -5
This is the best I could get outta nciku
1. 登
2.
3. 削
4. 終
5. 違
7. 影
8. 王
9. 屋
10. 会
11. 界
12.
13. 器
14.祈
15. 丘
16. 教
couldn't find anything for 2 or 12. Probably in part since those are the roundest damn kanji I've ever seen. ~Stupid 8-bit kanji~
Bear in mind that, in the nature of kanji, some of those may be imprecise. nciku at first game the kanji meaning "5" for number 15. A single small line can make a huge difference, and I may not have caught such discrepancies in some of the others.
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Post by Ascended Mermaid on Jul 7, 2011 8:19:31 GMT -5
Wow, that's really great! Thanks a ton! I know with 1, I was really fighting it. I was looking for exactly what I saw; a fireplace fork over a gaping mouth with a butt-chin. Even the one you gave doesn't quite look like it, so I would've overlooked it in my frantic searching.  |
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Post by Ascended Mermaid on Jul 7, 2011 9:10:07 GMT -5
Actually, I have my fonts SUPER-SMALL on here, which doesn't help in the least.  Here are the rest of them. They are: A5 B6 (Some strange "Ep" looking symbol.) BC C1-CD CE-DD DE-ED EE-FA (Ending with the name/password cursor.) |
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Post by Raison D'etritus on Jul 7, 2011 16:56:51 GMT -5
 At first sight, I said, "is that Korean?!" I don't know if all NES kanji displayed so odd, or if it's just a stylistic thing, but they all looked alien to me at first because the squares and rectangles (common to kanji) looked like circles (not). . . I still don't know what's up with the pyramid head thingies in the two I skipped . . .or wish I'd skipped, rather, considering they took up the most time out of the bunch. I'll look into the rest for you tonight when I have time. If you ever need them in a hurry, you can try this japanese.nciku.com/
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Post by Ascended Mermaid on Jul 7, 2011 17:53:56 GMT -5
I was having the exact same thoughts! It is awkwardly round. When I first looked up nciku, I immediately found the Chinese one instead. It's pretty cool, although I'm not sure how accurate I can be with it. I just tried the next one on the list, C6 (the pyramid head next to the screen door) -- but I think it didn't come out right, 鏈. I'll have to try C7 instead.
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Post by Ascended Mermaid on Jul 7, 2011 18:14:38 GMT -5
C6=
C7=戸
C8=攻
C9=号
CA=
CB=指
CC=酒
CD=
5 down here.
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Post by Raison D'etritus on Jul 7, 2011 19:45:44 GMT -5
Didn't have time to look at the whole group yet, but the one you posted made me realize that the pyramid head thingy is "kane" (gold), which helped me find the two I omitted before! It doesn't help that I'm not even used to most of these in a standard font, and I'm REALLY not good at picking things out in nonstandard--ie. I'm not the best help a person could ask for in this  (and I sadly lack your right-brained creativity in mnemonic imagery) anyhoo: 2. 録 12. 鎧 And, uh, stupid question (phrased as a statement), your letters are confusing me! C8, B3, D42 blue, hut hut,.You sank my battleship! At first I thought it might be an X, Y thing, but the ones you showed don't match up, so. . . huh? |
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Post by Ascended Mermaid on Jul 7, 2011 20:47:47 GMT -5
Well let me explain; imagine if you will that the numbers go beyond 9 and extend into the alphabet. These are hexadecimals, and they go from 0 to F; 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 a b c d e f After F, you add 1 to the tens digit. So it'd start over from 10. A single byte can go as high as FF, which is equivalent to 255 in our regular numerical format, decimal. I did screw up a few times with it, though; I got ahead of myself in inserting the katakana and hiragana, and somehow I'd even skipped about 10. Not only that, but I added ones that *weren't* in the game. Luckily, I have tested our (I have no right to say "my" anymore; you guys really are a great help!) table. So the bytes I've written down are simply the IDs of each character. MP83 got the first 8 (in the latest grouping) in the Random Thoughts thread, which included the couple that you missed earlier. So if you look at the picture and find 剣 (which is C5) -- I need the immediate character that follows it, which the game identifies as C6. The same goes for 号 (C9) and CA. After that, I'm missing everything after 酒 (CC). I know it's confusing, but you could pretty much ignore the ID system as long as you keep the characters in order -- I'll be referencing the picture I took to be sure that I'm putting them in the right areas. |
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Post by Raison D'etritus on Jul 7, 2011 20:55:39 GMT -5
Yeah, coding and such not being my thing, I'll just keep with the line/number format. On that topic: Line 2 1.銉 (maybe?) 5. 塞 8.授 Line 3 1.樹 2. 盾 3. 称 4.城 5.場 6. 心 7. 神 8.人 Line 4 1.水 2.世 3.石 4.戦 5.泉 6.族 7.体 8.男 That's all for right now.  //realized I misnumbered one. Hopefully I didn't do it with any more, but then you can probably identify them by eye. Sorry 'bout any mistakes. --can't expect much from an intern!  |
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Post by Ascended Mermaid on Jul 7, 2011 21:18:39 GMT -5
You did a great job, and you deserve a break! I've copied all but Line 2, Character 1 (C6). The reason for this is because of how difficult it is to match the right sides of the two characters and believe that they're the same. The other ones I can say with 100% certainty are perfect! Again, I know this is a real pain, so thank you very much for your hard work. I'll try real hard to get C6. I think this makes 29 remaining characters, but I've been mathematically challenged all day. Either way, we're almost done! |
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Free space is GOOD! Unless, of course, I NOPed something crucial. Therefore, as I've been doing during my downtime, I'll be testing and testing the game until I'm 100% certain that I didn't mess anything up! 
(and I sadly lack your right-brained creativity in mnemonic imagery) 
