I can’t guarantee you’ll be bored, but you’d have to be pretty nerdy not to be.
This time, I think I will talk about the game’s programming. It seems the game uses a lot of object-oriented programming, which is rather nice, I guess. However, this doesn’t mean it is perfect. There are quite a few bugs, oversights, or just plain weird things that I needed (or just wanted) to fix for the English translated version. One example is the Arte box at the top of the screen in battle — you know, the one that boldly displays “Demon Fang” when you use Demon Fang to helpfully inform you that you are using Demon Fang (as if your character loudly exclaiming “Demon Fang!” wasn’t enough of an indication). In the Japanese version, it looks like they drew the art for the box, then later decided they needed the box to be taller. So what did they do? Did they call up their pixel artist and have him redraw the box so it’s a bit bigger? Nope, they used the stretch function to resize it so it’s 7% taller. Here’s a fun exercise for you: Hit the Print Screen button on your keyboard. Now go into Microsoft Paint and hit Paste (Ctrl+V). Now find the Resize option and resize your screenshot so that it’s 107% as tall as the original screenshot. Does the result look pretty? (Feel free to post your results in the comments!)
Another fix has to do with the mechanics of the Heal Stone. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s similar to the cooking systems of Tales of Destiny Remake and Tales of Graces. If you’re not familiar with those, basically, it’s like Final Fantasy XII gambits for your magic healing accessory. If you’re not familiar with FFXII, either, and you’re reading this, well… you represent a small demographic, that’s for sure. Be proud! Anyway, it’s an automated healing system where you can set certain conditions and effects, and if the conditions are met in battle, the effects will trigger. For example, you can set “Total HP < 50% during battle –> Restore 50% HP”, and if at any point during battle your party’s net HP drops below 50%, the Heal Stone will automatically kick in and heal everyone for half their health. Of course, there are limitations… your Heal Stone can only store so much Heal Energy, and you can only use it a certain number of times per battle, and so on. But you can do a lot of neat stuff with it, like “Take Earth-attribute damage –> Restore 10% HP and resist Earth-attribute attacks for 30 seconds”. Sounds really useful, right?
Well, that’s where the problem lies. They didn’t actually program it very well. For example, take the above setting. You’d want it to be that an enemy casts Ground Dasher, the setting kicks in, and you get a slight heal and a newfound resistance to the Earth element, right? And that’s where you’d want it to stop. But it keeps going. And going. Every time you are hit by an Earth-attribute attack — for example, the following hits of the same Ground Dasher spell — the setting will kick in again. And again. And again. Until you run out Heal Energy or the number of times you can use the Heal Stone per battle, whichever comes first, rendering your other painstaking settings that you labored over for hours completely worthless. Once this happens to you, you will probably be discouraged from ever using such a nice utility setting again and will wish to stick with simple healing instead of all the neat status buff options the game hands you. You will sigh and lament over how they could have had it be so much more interesting.
But wait, enter KAJITANI-EIZAN’s Patch Site! We are devoted to making sure you will have the best Tales of Hearts experience ever, purity be damned. In KAJITANI-EIZAN’s Patch Site’s version of Tales of Hearts, you can set the above setting without fear — it won’t activate a second time until the Earth resistance buff has worn off. So feel free to be creative with your Heal Stone settings — and I don’t just mean setting “Total HP < 10% –> Restore 100% HP and revive KO’ed party members” and calling it a day, like some people like to do. You know who you are. KAJITANI-EIZAN’s Patch Site will know who you are if you try it. Sieg will think you’re totally uncool if you stoop to such measures. Just don’t do it.
There are several other code changes that have been made, including a fix for an esoteric bug that occurs in the Japanese game if you run low on Heal Energy during battle, and others that are planned for the future, time and effort permitting, such as a fix for the infamous Connect Panel Lock glitch. But I believe I have bored most of you long enough for now, and so I bid you adieu. Stay tuned for more boring Tales of Hearts updates!
May 31, 2011 at 12:54 pm | Permalink
Is there going to be an option to switch the enhancements off? Not that I’m a purist, quite the contrary actually, and I’ll most certainly use the upgrade anyway! =P
Just wondering, though… ^^
rf314
May 31, 2011 at 10:06 pm | Permalink
nice! more progress! keep workin hard you guy’s! ^^
June 1, 2011 at 12:01 am | Permalink
if the the tales of heart english patched is complete does that mean i can load the save game without using RTS ?(real time save)but still i like the tales of innocent english patch and thank for your hard work^_^
June 1, 2011 at 2:25 pm | Permalink
Wow, thanks Kaji. I was already thrilled to know the game is coming. This post sure made my day, my week and maybe even my month. Tales of Hearts is one of my favorite games and knowing it’s receiving such an awesome treatment makes me feel joy. 🙂
P.S.: The update was a little boring, but I could easily overlook that. 😛
June 1, 2011 at 2:34 pm | Permalink
@Sahgo / @Hazuki_87 : Wow, more brazilian people like me, huh? Nice. 😛
June 2, 2011 at 9:10 pm | Permalink
It doesn’t matter what part of the world you’re from as long as you appreciate the awesomeness of the Tales series! Here’s to B-N for making it and here’s to Kaji for translating it for us!
June 2, 2011 at 9:38 pm | Permalink
@Bob: Amen, bro.
June 3, 2011 at 10:15 pm | Permalink
These aint boring, my friend.
The fixed Heal Stone sounds particularly nice, good luck with that and take your time.
June 4, 2011 at 1:55 am | Permalink
Hi I think you’re doing a great job with your translation of the tales of hearts
I hate FF for his exaggerated reputation and I say it does not deserve.
I’m more a fan of the tales of. for his excellent characters, music, anime and voice
well overdue for me not compared with other
continuing with your translation of hearts and I hope to finish it again but in English or in Spanish;)
TALES OF RULEZ!
June 4, 2011 at 4:18 pm | Permalink
@tales of fan
Amen brother! I just about completely abandoned Square-Enix because of their near constant failure in amusement value… I have a personal taste for Bandai-Namco’s various titles more than anything else… The Tales titles, .hack, Xenosaga, Ar tonelico…
June 4, 2011 at 10:19 pm | Permalink
*107%*
…Oh. Oh god, that’s… that’s pretty nice. Oh wow… that’s pretty hot right there.
*closes Google Chrome and gets a sock*
June 5, 2011 at 2:33 pm | Permalink
^
wat
June 6, 2011 at 4:26 pm | Permalink
Stop calling your updates boring.
I greatly enjoyed reading about your progress, and how you’re actually improving the game compared to the retail version.
June 10, 2011 at 2:17 pm | Permalink
c mon , more updates!! 😀 i m checking everyday lol, need moar updates x_x!!
June 11, 2011 at 3:04 pm | Permalink
No offense, but maybe you should just stick to translating the game instead of wasting time reprogramming stuff that’s gonna make the translation longer. Especially since you might cause an even bigger bug to happen.
June 11, 2011 at 4:44 pm | Permalink
Wow wow, very cool that you’re working on those bugs.
Keep the good work, we are rooting for ya!
June 11, 2011 at 4:56 pm | Permalink
No offense, but the translator does what he wants, because he doesn’t have any kind of contract or else that tells him what to do, and he doesn’t have any kind of engagement towards anyone about the final product quality. Here he’s doing something for us: he’s fixing bugs and sprites while no one told him to do such thing, in the end only to give us a final product of better quality than the original, guess what, for free. So stop complaining.
June 12, 2011 at 2:45 am | Permalink
Infamous connect panel glitch?
*is too lazy to google*
June 13, 2011 at 1:53 pm | Permalink
umad?
June 13, 2011 at 3:53 pm | Permalink
Um, I know this is kind of unrelated, but uh…what happened to Absolute Zero’s website? ._.
June 13, 2011 at 8:13 pm | Permalink
So Absolute Zero Translations finally met it’s end. Farewell AZT, may you rest in peace.
June 13, 2011 at 10:22 pm | Permalink
Damn SSVAV, you mad or something? There is no reason to fix things no one told him to fix. Obviously the glitches didn’t bother the people who played the japanese version.
I;m bringing up reprogramming stuff because like i said, it’s only gonna make the initial translation longer and if he messes something up, then it won’t help. Also add to the fact that he may decide the translation if it’s taking too long.
This is a translation project, not a reprogramming one. I like that he’s translating the game, but it would all be moot if he causes an even bigger bug while trying to fix the bugs that namco made. or if the reprogramming causes him to stop the translation.
June 14, 2011 at 12:02 am | Permalink
Mike, here’s the thing… it’s his translation. If he wants to reprogram it, who the hell are we to tell him what should or shouldn’t he do? If that will make the translation to take longer, well…? If he ends up crashing the game and destroying the internet… well? He’s translating this game by his own will. If he wants to hack the game to make everyone sound like Barbatos, that’s *his* decision and his alone. Just because we want to play the translation, it doesn’t mean we have the right to say what he should or shouldn’t do.
June 14, 2011 at 1:49 am | Permalink
Right… And you know, if he breaks something there’s always CTRL+Z 😀
June 14, 2011 at 2:17 am | Permalink
I am not mad, I just want to avoid that the Hearts translation ends like the ASH translation or the Crimson Nocturnal translation group. They both quit after the “we want the translation now” and “gimme gimme gimme” invaded them. Don’t misunderstand me, I want the translation just as much as you guys, but we need to understand that this is no official team, there isn’t one hundred people translating this at full time. We need to wait, and telling him to concentrate in the translation instead of fixing what he said were infamous (so I assume they were annoying bugs) seems to me very selfish, because, again, it’s his translation. If someone wants to give you a gift, but he needs to work very hard in order to make it perfect, would you tell him “give up with it, and give it to me already”?
June 14, 2011 at 5:18 am | Permalink
They mad.
June 14, 2011 at 5:54 am | Permalink
I like the fact that Kaji is improving the game. Because if he din’t mention this and simply quietly slipped it into the patch, you would have never realized it. And THAT is the mark of a necessary patch – to fix things so that the player will never have the misfortune of realizing that they’re broken.
June 14, 2011 at 6:16 am | Permalink
people complaining or whining about the project taking longer should keep their mouth shut. Kaji knew that the translation will take longer if he included fixing the bugs. Every single whine will greatly decrease the morale of the translator and increase the chances of it getting dropped. You wouldn’t want that now , would you?
June 14, 2011 at 6:12 pm | Permalink
Actually, judging by the troll posts, I think Kaji finds whining much more amusing than AZT or the Graces Team did.
June 15, 2011 at 11:28 am | Permalink
I STOLE THE LIGHTNING FROM ZEUS, THEN I WAS PUNISHED!
June 16, 2011 at 5:31 am | Permalink
What happen to Absolute zero? Did he quit?
June 16, 2011 at 5:25 pm | Permalink
I STOLE HIM, HE IS MINE NOW!
June 17, 2011 at 3:14 pm | Permalink
He sold his soul to Namdai, he’s working for them now. Don’t expect another patch anytime soon, only when he have his ass kicked by Namdai and then try to get revenge by translating every Tales game to support piracy,
June 17, 2011 at 6:00 pm | Permalink
I thought Absolute Zero was a team, why are you talking about AZ in singular? Then again, patches are not piracy, because if you own the original game, you are free (by law) to use it in a flashcart, and if you want to patch it to fit your interests or likes you are also free to do it.
June 17, 2011 at 6:18 pm | Permalink
@SSVAV Yeah, I noticed that after I posted about the site being down. It was just the first name that came to mind at the time. I would’ve posted “Throughhim413’s website”, but I wasn’t sure about the numbers at the end at the time, so I just defaulted to “Absolute Zero.”
Namdai wouldn’t have shut him down if they were requesting for his help, and judging by Throughhim413’s last post, it sounds like he’s been doing it for awhile. It wouldn’t make sense for Namdai to tell him to shut the site down this late in the stage if that was the case. It’s possible that he just didn’t have enough money or something to keep the site up; I dunno, I can’t really think of anything else.
June 18, 2011 at 12:24 am | Permalink
To be honest with you, when he announced he was working with Bamco (or for them, I dunno) I thought to myself “Damn, the Destiny Remake project is dead”. I really doubt he will fan translate anymore. Now the future of the Destiny patch lies on Phantasian Productions… so…
Let’s hope Graces f and Xillia do EXTREMELY well so Bamco releases HD collections of the PS2 Tales games in he West or something.
June 18, 2011 at 9:42 am | Permalink
Dudes.. Do you actually know twitter?
Because you know, it could be rather informative. Like..
http://twitter.com/throughhim413/status/80379298820788224
Just sayin’.
June 18, 2011 at 12:48 pm | Permalink
Twitter’s shit.
June 18, 2011 at 3:43 pm | Permalink
You guys keep up the good work (then maybe the japanese pepole will play this version insted haha) =)
June 19, 2011 at 1:44 pm | Permalink
http://www.absolutezerotranslations.com/2011/06/18/were-back/
Meh.
June 20, 2011 at 3:56 am | Permalink
I don’t get it; I would assume that game carts only include the compiled executable binary of the source code for the game, which would then be in the machine language of the device (I believe the DS uses an ARM, so it would be ARM assembly).
From this post, it seems you were able to extract the original source code somehow? (some kind of incredible de-compiler…?) Is this true of all DS games? Of all (console) games in general, usually? Of only this game? How’d you do this? What language is the source in? If this is this case, is there some sort of documentation for the API’s the DS provides? Or are you/were you somehow able to get the source for the APIs/reverse engineer what they do? (Alternatively, there are no platform-wide APIs, just whatever APIs whatever engine the developers use/write themselves provides).
Keep up the great work, BTW. Looking forward to the release 🙂
June 20, 2011 at 3:33 pm | Permalink
Unless maybe you ask the Japanese developers really nicely, there is no way to obtain the source. Presumably it was written in C++ or using some kind of devkit for the DS, I dunno. The only code available to me is, as you said, the compiled executable and resources available on every game cartridge. Having a tracer/debugger is pretty much the only feasible way to significantly modify the programming.
June 21, 2011 at 3:15 am | Permalink
You *might* want to check this out:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=150618921809&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT
It’s a debug cartridge for the original Nitro, aka DS and DS Lite.
If someone dumps this and posts it online, we might discover what programming secrets the DS has inside it.
June 30, 2011 at 6:41 pm | Permalink
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June 30, 2011 at 6:42 pm | Permalink
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July 1, 2011 at 2:11 am | Permalink
@Hammy
You’re one messed up guy, Ham… Try not to make the rest of us sick ok?
July 2, 2011 at 12:03 pm | Permalink
I find your “blog” posts really entertaining to read Kajitani 🙂 Not that I’m even interested in the ToH translation project (sorry ;_; well maybe a little).
So yeah just wanted to say thanks (and thanks about the ND3 patch I’m still using =3)
July 7, 2011 at 1:39 am | Permalink
Not to be a bother but it would at least keep us occupied by doing an update every month or so. Even if its just a small progress. Just to know that well things are going smooth? Thanks your awesome for doing this patch Kaji
July 7, 2011 at 1:53 pm | Permalink
so, the translation is back on?? :DDD