More Boring Text

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!