GarfunkeL
Racism Expert
Okay, that Energy Breaker sounds good. But now I have that .ips file and no-one what to do with it.
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Translations of wapanese games
- Thread starter spekkio
- Start date
Karmapowered
Augur
- Joined
- Jun 3, 2010
- Messages
- 512
Just put the IPS file in the same folder than your ROM, with the same name than your ROM (rename it if needed), like so :
Energy Breaker (U).ips
Energy Breaker (U).smc
Start your ROM (the smc file, japanese version) as usual with your preferred emulator, and if it's a modern one (I've been using snes9X), the translation should be processed automatically.
EDIT : There are third-party tools to merge ROMs with their translations, but you shouldn't need them in theory :
http://zerosoft.zophar.net/ipswin.php
http://fusoya.eludevisibility.org/lips/
Energy Breaker (U).ips
Energy Breaker (U).smc
Start your ROM (the smc file, japanese version) as usual with your preferred emulator, and if it's a modern one (I've been using snes9X), the translation should be processed automatically.
EDIT : There are third-party tools to merge ROMs with their translations, but you shouldn't need them in theory :
http://zerosoft.zophar.net/ipswin.php
http://fusoya.eludevisibility.org/lips/
deuxhero
Arcane
You may or may not need something like Lunar IPS if you are running an emulator somewhere other than the PC (such as a PSP) or have a flashcart.
GarfunkeL
Racism Expert
I used IPS to merge them, behold the power of Google.
Anyway, is there a manual or something for this game? I have no idea what all these different colours and things mean. Or why do the bats hit me for one number, then after a second it change into another number? And what's the difference between brown, white and green numbers?
Anyway, is there a manual or something for this game? I have no idea what all these different colours and things mean. Or why do the bats hit me for one number, then after a second it change into another number? And what's the difference between brown, white and green numbers?
SCO
Arcane
- Joined
- Feb 3, 2009
- Messages
- 16,320
Well, that's a funny thing. Those columns, grow both down and up (there's a toggle button). For the longest time i couldn't learn more and it was because i didn't know they can grow down.
As you level up, you get more resources to allocate. When enough of them have been allocated, there is a chance of a attack to trigger a special attack (probably can maximize those chances by choosing the configuration just right, so no other ability fits.), that is then 'learned' and can be selected as usual. One character, doesn't work like this, but 'learns' attacks from being hit with them.
Also important for sanity: you can skip encounters that you already won when they happen again; when pressing select there will be a icon there.
BTW; keep the action button pressed when moving... you might get nice surprises. And don't use a certain broken part of the game...
Played through the new Arabian Nights (SNES) translation.
Mother of god, this is a terrible game. I would prefer to rip out my eyes with a spoon than to play it without the cheat suggested in the readme. It's got worse encounter rates than persona, thank gawd for emulator turbo button.
It's almost a shame, because the card system looks like it could be nice with some additional elaboration, but i just powerleveled and turbo toggled every single battle (there is autocombat too) and it was still horrible even with that kind of timesaving.
Disregarding that, and the infantile tone, it's got some nice ideas, like 'multiple' 'endings' (just slight variations), and is fairly easy to fuck up.
Also played (not translated) gargoyles in the genesis. Another hilariously hard 16 bit game, later levels get comically hard, like swing over certain death for 10 discrete jumps with reaction times in the dozens of milliseconds while being attacked by infinite enemies.
Played a little of pirates gold on the genesis too. Good port. But got frustrated by the voyage time from west to east in that fucking game, and went searching for a 'ship speed' AR code. Didn't find it
As you level up, you get more resources to allocate. When enough of them have been allocated, there is a chance of a attack to trigger a special attack (probably can maximize those chances by choosing the configuration just right, so no other ability fits.), that is then 'learned' and can be selected as usual. One character, doesn't work like this, but 'learns' attacks from being hit with them.
Also important for sanity: you can skip encounters that you already won when they happen again; when pressing select there will be a icon there.
BTW; keep the action button pressed when moving... you might get nice surprises. And don't use a certain broken part of the game...
Played through the new Arabian Nights (SNES) translation.
Mother of god, this is a terrible game. I would prefer to rip out my eyes with a spoon than to play it without the cheat suggested in the readme. It's got worse encounter rates than persona, thank gawd for emulator turbo button.
It's almost a shame, because the card system looks like it could be nice with some additional elaboration, but i just powerleveled and turbo toggled every single battle (there is autocombat too) and it was still horrible even with that kind of timesaving.
Disregarding that, and the infantile tone, it's got some nice ideas, like 'multiple' 'endings' (just slight variations), and is fairly easy to fuck up.
Also played (not translated) gargoyles in the genesis. Another hilariously hard 16 bit game, later levels get comically hard, like swing over certain death for 10 discrete jumps with reaction times in the dozens of milliseconds while being attacked by infinite enemies.
Played a little of pirates gold on the genesis too. Good port. But got frustrated by the voyage time from west to east in that fucking game, and went searching for a 'ship speed' AR code. Didn't find it
GarfunkeL
Racism Expert
Yeah, I spotted that - but what do the colours mean? Is one for attack, one for defence, one for healing, one for disabling - or are just type1, type2 and so on?
SCO
Arcane
- Joined
- Feb 3, 2009
- Messages
- 16,320
Elements, but it's funky IIRC. The associations are a bit off, green!=earth, blue!=water or somesuch. Also, maybe it's not immediately obvious, but the columns are unfilled. When you level up, there is the possibility of the maximum or minimum growing, but you have a shared pool of points spent of activation too, which you must allocate.
The good part of the game is some of the mid-game combat abilities, that are mainly positioning/movement related, you want to get those as soon as possible so the fun starts flowing.
Story-wise it's a trainwreck later on, and there is a *lot* of backtracking (not as much as Arabian Nights i mentioned in the other post. At least it has no mazes, and you can skip already won encounters - which i only found out late-game).
Also; just to be obvious about the exploits to avoid (beware reading this):
The good part of the game is some of the mid-game combat abilities, that are mainly positioning/movement related, you want to get those as soon as possible so the fun starts flowing.
Story-wise it's a trainwreck later on, and there is a *lot* of backtracking (not as much as Arabian Nights i mentioned in the other post. At least it has no mazes, and you can skip already won encounters - which i only found out late-game).
Also; just to be obvious about the exploits to avoid (beware reading this):
1 : don't abuse repeatable random encounters
2 : don't use the extremely broken inventory ability, and especially not with scrolls, double especially not poison or tornado
2, has the interesting side effect that you can make it a game to end encounters on turn 1.... which is a interesting, if one-sided challenge.
2 : don't use the extremely broken inventory ability, and especially not with scrolls, double especially not poison or tornado
2, has the interesting side effect that you can make it a game to end encounters on turn 1.... which is a interesting, if one-sided challenge.
Clockwork Knight
Arcane
SCO
Arcane
- Joined
- Feb 3, 2009
- Messages
- 16,320
The problem is acerbated also in that the game loves both mazes and backtracking (if you're not efficient), on top of encounters every 10 steps (and the rewards for some of these tasks... are underwhelming, to say the least).
Played genesis Light Crusader. Very nice game (done by Treasure). Funky movement, but not too bad. Very nice 'puzzles', which work more or less like those old iso games, like cadaver.
Played genesis Light Crusader. Very nice game (done by Treasure). Funky movement, but not too bad. Very nice 'puzzles', which work more or less like those old iso games, like cadaver.
Karmapowered
Augur
- Joined
- Jun 3, 2010
- Messages
- 512
This review provides some insight into Energy Breaker's game mechanics, but should also help to establish if the game is meant for you.
Spoiler-heavy of course.
Spoiler-heavy of course.
Beat the game over the weekend so I figured I'd give it some thoughts.
The one word I'd use to describe Energy Breaker is unique. It has its own distinctive art style that I haven't seen anywhere else and the gameplay tries a few new ideas to separate itself from other tactical RPGs. Provided you like the art style then the graphics will look great. A lot of work has gone into character animations so they look good and fluid and battle animations look neat too which are also mostly unique to each character. One character casting Tetra Zone looks completely different from another. The locations look alright, some get lots of nice detail but others become bland grey caves. There's some foreground effects that are hit and miss too, especially when the foreground effect needs to be redrawn because something else on the layer came up like dialog and it takes a few frames to redraw the foreground effect. There's some portait graphics too but those just look bad. Character and battle animations are the stars of the graphics. Limitz's casting animation is all kinds of cool.
The music by itself has a range from poor to good tracks (The Future Century Approaching Dusk is a personal favorite) but falters in execution. When you enter an area the area theme plays and keeps playing when you get in fights and there can be some long dungeons and long fights and you start to get sick and tired of the music. Thankfully it isn't Dual Orb 2 and there's actual boss themes which help except when half the bosses are the same guy and most of the boss themes aren't that good or poorly used (the final boss theme).
The writing needs to be separated into the overall narrative and characters. The plot of the game stinks. It doesn't have focus, drive, theme, or memorability. It's a mess that feels like an amateur's work in first draft written as ideas came to mind. I heard it was originally planned so you could choose your main character which fell through so maybe that has to do with it (or because it is video game writing from the 90's).
The characters on the other hand are well done for the time and I enjoyed most of them. The main cast were written with some chemistry and fun interactions. There isn't much character growth or depth though. The Professor (I renamed everybody so I don't remember the original names, a favorite SNES past time) is probably the best of the lot. I wonder how much was in the original game and if Satsu added any during localization (but based on the surrounding movements and animations I'd assume it was there and Satsu localized the humor and such in it).
The gameplay is alright but it has a mean streak of not communicating with the player. It's rare you actually get to explore isometric maps which is a nice change and helps create the unique feel of the game. There are quite a few chests, some with very helpful items, in places you can't access until you find the invisible path to them which is annoying because it becomes a game of checking every wall until you can reach the chest. Each character has a level for each element (standard four) and the light and dark of each element. These didn't seem to do too much except determine what skills you could learn and use (I think it also had an effect on your attack but when I checked this later on in the game it didn't). About 60% through the game you learned all the skills and are just pumping element levels whereever with no gain except the main character learning a skill at near-max. You learn about the skills through books you find in chests that tell you the element levels you need to learn and use the skill but not required to do either. I wasn't sure at first and mixing that with a very limited inventory and missing an item that expands your inventory (thanks invisible paths!) led to some rough inventory times early on. The books, used once, adds them to a permanent list which you can review at any time and takes up no inventory space making them only useful to read once and immediately sell which is needlessly obtuse.
Battles use a new stat called balance which limits your number of actions you can take. The limit is static but the current amount a character gets at the start of the player/enemy phase is determined by their current HP% with enough balance so it can always perform its lowest balance-costing action. This makes the game hugely affected by momentum and who gets to act first (not always you!). All it can take to effectively remove an enemy from battle is to drain enough HP so it can't move and you stay out of its attack range. The same can apply to you though and you can find yourself with a character with low HP who can't do much of anything. Some fights end before the enemy gets their first turn and some seemingly easy fights can turn bad when the enemy gets their turn first and of course your characters start all clumped together. It is a unique spin on a gameplay mechanic but I'm not too fond of it because of issues like that.
There's good diversity in the skills you get including some basic battlefield control with some basic skills that move around enemies. Character balance however is out the window. The main character is a one-woman wrecking crew, the Professor has power, range, and AoE healing, the blond guy does awful damage (but when he kills a new monster he can get a new ability) but learns a wide variety of moves, the little girl dies (any map where the enemy moves first and she's gone), and the swordsman is is a decent hitter and can get the main character places where she can cave in faces without spending the balance getting there. You get EXP through actions too which adds to the momentum feeling of the game. The little girl starts at a low level, has poor HP, and dies often so levelling her up is at best a chore while the main character who can do everything skyrockets through the sheer merit of not being awful. I think by the time I beat the game there was about 20 levels difference between the MC and LG.
I'm glad I got the chance to play this game in English and Disnesquik and Satsu did a great job on it. I think the best I can (very poorly) say about it is it is a good and unique SNES game but that's about it.
e: what a bunch of dumb words
source : http://rpgmaker.net/forums/topics/11814/?post=416071#post416071
The one word I'd use to describe Energy Breaker is unique. It has its own distinctive art style that I haven't seen anywhere else and the gameplay tries a few new ideas to separate itself from other tactical RPGs. Provided you like the art style then the graphics will look great. A lot of work has gone into character animations so they look good and fluid and battle animations look neat too which are also mostly unique to each character. One character casting Tetra Zone looks completely different from another. The locations look alright, some get lots of nice detail but others become bland grey caves. There's some foreground effects that are hit and miss too, especially when the foreground effect needs to be redrawn because something else on the layer came up like dialog and it takes a few frames to redraw the foreground effect. There's some portait graphics too but those just look bad. Character and battle animations are the stars of the graphics. Limitz's casting animation is all kinds of cool.
The music by itself has a range from poor to good tracks (The Future Century Approaching Dusk is a personal favorite) but falters in execution. When you enter an area the area theme plays and keeps playing when you get in fights and there can be some long dungeons and long fights and you start to get sick and tired of the music. Thankfully it isn't Dual Orb 2 and there's actual boss themes which help except when half the bosses are the same guy and most of the boss themes aren't that good or poorly used (the final boss theme).
The writing needs to be separated into the overall narrative and characters. The plot of the game stinks. It doesn't have focus, drive, theme, or memorability. It's a mess that feels like an amateur's work in first draft written as ideas came to mind. I heard it was originally planned so you could choose your main character which fell through so maybe that has to do with it (or because it is video game writing from the 90's).
The characters on the other hand are well done for the time and I enjoyed most of them. The main cast were written with some chemistry and fun interactions. There isn't much character growth or depth though. The Professor (I renamed everybody so I don't remember the original names, a favorite SNES past time) is probably the best of the lot. I wonder how much was in the original game and if Satsu added any during localization (but based on the surrounding movements and animations I'd assume it was there and Satsu localized the humor and such in it).
The gameplay is alright but it has a mean streak of not communicating with the player. It's rare you actually get to explore isometric maps which is a nice change and helps create the unique feel of the game. There are quite a few chests, some with very helpful items, in places you can't access until you find the invisible path to them which is annoying because it becomes a game of checking every wall until you can reach the chest. Each character has a level for each element (standard four) and the light and dark of each element. These didn't seem to do too much except determine what skills you could learn and use (I think it also had an effect on your attack but when I checked this later on in the game it didn't). About 60% through the game you learned all the skills and are just pumping element levels whereever with no gain except the main character learning a skill at near-max. You learn about the skills through books you find in chests that tell you the element levels you need to learn and use the skill but not required to do either. I wasn't sure at first and mixing that with a very limited inventory and missing an item that expands your inventory (thanks invisible paths!) led to some rough inventory times early on. The books, used once, adds them to a permanent list which you can review at any time and takes up no inventory space making them only useful to read once and immediately sell which is needlessly obtuse.
Battles use a new stat called balance which limits your number of actions you can take. The limit is static but the current amount a character gets at the start of the player/enemy phase is determined by their current HP% with enough balance so it can always perform its lowest balance-costing action. This makes the game hugely affected by momentum and who gets to act first (not always you!). All it can take to effectively remove an enemy from battle is to drain enough HP so it can't move and you stay out of its attack range. The same can apply to you though and you can find yourself with a character with low HP who can't do much of anything. Some fights end before the enemy gets their first turn and some seemingly easy fights can turn bad when the enemy gets their turn first and of course your characters start all clumped together. It is a unique spin on a gameplay mechanic but I'm not too fond of it because of issues like that.
There's good diversity in the skills you get including some basic battlefield control with some basic skills that move around enemies. Character balance however is out the window. The main character is a one-woman wrecking crew, the Professor has power, range, and AoE healing, the blond guy does awful damage (but when he kills a new monster he can get a new ability) but learns a wide variety of moves, the little girl dies (any map where the enemy moves first and she's gone), and the swordsman is is a decent hitter and can get the main character places where she can cave in faces without spending the balance getting there. You get EXP through actions too which adds to the momentum feeling of the game. The little girl starts at a low level, has poor HP, and dies often so levelling her up is at best a chore while the main character who can do everything skyrockets through the sheer merit of not being awful. I think by the time I beat the game there was about 20 levels difference between the MC and LG.
I'm glad I got the chance to play this game in English and Disnesquik and Satsu did a great job on it. I think the best I can (very poorly) say about it is it is a good and unique SNES game but that's about it.
e: what a bunch of dumb words
source : http://rpgmaker.net/forums/topics/11814/?post=416071#post416071
SCO
Arcane
- Joined
- Feb 3, 2009
- Messages
- 16,320
Karmapowered
Augur
- Joined
- Jun 3, 2010
- Messages
- 512
Not worth your time, IMO.
They are good sims/games, don't get me wrong, or were in their time, but I'd stick to the Patricians or Port Royales, if you have the chance.
If you are intent on playing them out of nostalgia, prefer UW2, or "New Horizons", over the 1.
A good fansite for the curious : http://www.unchartedwatersnewhorizons.com/
EDIT : Sorry, completely unrelated, but I just saw this :
Otaku... Otaku never change.
Zetor
Arcane
Apparently I cannot into forums.
Anyway, it looks like someone is actually working on a translation for the jap Wizardries, specifically "Generation Xth: Code Hazard". It seems to be a PC game too (my jrpg-fu is weak, but that seems kinda unusual). He's apparently looking for playtesters and proofreaders now. If nothing else, the game manual is translated already...
Some relevant links:
http://eikouscans.wordpress.com/2012/06/26/this-is-a-waste-of-time-but/
http://eikouscans.wordpress.com/2012/12/28/generation-xth-code-hazard-game-manual/
Anyway, it looks like someone is actually working on a translation for the jap Wizardries, specifically "Generation Xth: Code Hazard". It seems to be a PC game too (my jrpg-fu is weak, but that seems kinda unusual). He's apparently looking for playtesters and proofreaders now. If nothing else, the game manual is translated already...
Some relevant links:
http://eikouscans.wordpress.com/2012/06/26/this-is-a-waste-of-time-but/
http://eikouscans.wordpress.com/2012/12/28/generation-xth-code-hazard-game-manual/
Oh my, and here I thought no one would EVER think of translating Generation XTH. I'm sooo in for this.
Also, pinging Old Woman
EDIT: For those curious, there's an (abandoned?) LP of Generation XTH in the Playground: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...e-lets-play-generation-xth-code-hazard.76145/
Also, pinging Old Woman
EDIT: For those curious, there's an (abandoned?) LP of Generation XTH in the Playground: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...e-lets-play-generation-xth-code-hazard.76145/
- Joined
- Dec 31, 2007
- Messages
- 11,158
Btw all you emufags peobably already know this but pcsx2 has released v1.00 it generally seems bettger optimized and the gdx plugin finally gives you the option to add a shader adjusting saturation contrast and brightness. At last you can conpensate for all those washed up colors you usually get in the PS2 games and it worked great with shadow of the colossus excessive bloom
spekkio
Arcane
- Joined
- Sep 16, 2009
- Messages
- 8,345
- Joined
- Dec 31, 2007
- Messages
- 11,158
Bah, my lithuanian hitwomen will make short work of them. Seriously though, certain games really need it. Most CRT TVs used to be a lot darker and I'm not about to change my monitor settings each time I play a game. Not to mention that certain games, like SOTC, really need it since the GDX plugin sometimes mishandles lighting and shit.
But I guess you're using the software mode
But I guess you're using the software mode
spekkio
Arcane
- Joined
- Sep 16, 2009
- Messages
- 8,345
^
I recently upgraded from 2.9 GHz Dual-core CPU + GeForce 9600 to 3.3 GHz i3 CPU + GTX 550 Ti.
I was expecting massive boost in Pcsx2 and Dolphin (everything running at max speed, etc.). Problem is, some games still work as slow as before, or work faster in software mode than in hardware mode (Pcsx2).
I blame consoles for slowing-down the evolution of our glorious PCs.
As for the color palette of the PS2 - it's shitty indeed. But I would still take PS2 graphics over shitty current-gen bloom and cartoonitis. Probably last console where low-poly models still had their charm.
I recently upgraded from 2.9 GHz Dual-core CPU + GeForce 9600 to 3.3 GHz i3 CPU + GTX 550 Ti.
I was expecting massive boost in Pcsx2 and Dolphin (everything running at max speed, etc.). Problem is, some games still work as slow as before, or work faster in software mode than in hardware mode (Pcsx2).
I blame consoles for slowing-down the evolution of our glorious PCs.
As for the color palette of the PS2 - it's shitty indeed. But I would still take PS2 graphics over shitty current-gen bloom and cartoonitis. Probably last console where low-poly models still had their charm.
- Joined
- Dec 31, 2007
- Messages
- 11,158
Isn't i3 dual core too ? Probably you could have overclocked 2.9 to 3.5 or something, intel's old duals overclocked like motherfuckers (at least the core2duo models did) , I have mine overclocked from 2.66 to 3.2, it's absolutely stable and I've seen improvements. I don't know about i3s and overclocking though.
The huge problem with PS2 emulation though, is the goddamned framerate. While pc games can show perfectly fine even with 30fps with PCSX2 anything below 60 fps results to slowdowns because PS2 wasn't designed with frameskipping in mind and PCSX2's "experimental" frameskipping option doesn't work that well. So basically if your PC isn't uber enough to keep the game above 60fps at all times, you'll get bad performance. Also some games simply aren't emulated that good.
Lightknight
Liturgist
- Joined
- Nov 26, 2008
- Messages
- 705
Methinks you're expecting a bit much from perfectly serviceable emulators. Youtube is full of videos of people getting playable framerates on friggin mobile i3s with internal Intel GPUs. Do you raise AA and resolution up to 11 or turn all speedhacks off or something ? Especially Wii games are running fullspeed really well on very mediocre systems, Metroid Prime level etc.
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