Translating Dracula X / SOTN Beta V1.02 1.021

[Dalkon]

After the arena bossfight Alucard says that Richter said he is the "lord of this". Is it meant to say "lord of this castle"?

Oarsman story text still in japanese I think, don't remember.
Mist gate just next to mist ability but I guess you've already fixed that (060F6AA6).

Can't really do much more so far. (Casual playthrough)

 

[Knight0fDragon]

Arena boss fight requires extending the file size. This will work with a new patcher.
Just checked, Ferryman is translated currently.

 

[Dalkon]

I see, anyways I cannot continue until there's a new patch.

Edit: bypassed waterfall message with a library card and continued a bit, succubus fight crashes during cutscene.

 

[shitmat]

Thank you very much for this amazing work. I am very very very happy to play symphony of the night in english on an original sega saturn hardware.

I am playing on a jap ntsc sega saturn model 2 with a flashed pseudosaturn card.

There is one bug I found in the "waterfall" area. When you press the button the skeleton comes and then destroys the bridge. Afterwards the message "Something appeared near to the wooden bridge" should appear but my saturn freezes. Sadly I don't have a savestate, but here is a video from the room and message

 

[E101B]

Thank you so much for doing this! I love SOTN and it's awesome to play the Saturn port in English. I'm going to be casually playing thru the game with each character when I can if it helps with bug squashing.

Something that I noticed is that Maria's "Game Saved" text comes out garbled, but still saves. If you try to save a second time the game hangs. I'm assuming there is an issue with her "Overwrite Save Game?" prompt. This seems to be just Maria, I tried with Richter and both the "Game Saved" and "Overwrite Save Game?" prompts showed up in English just fine.

Also I'm playing this on Mednafen; not sure if there's a better emulator solution to use?

 

[derek (ateam)]

Thanks for all of your hard work Knight0fDragon! I look forward to the day you say "folks, it's done".

Keep it up 🙂

 

[Knight0fDragon]

Showing this has already been fixed on my end. Thanks for pointing it out.

 

[liqudphazon]

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

Well, somebody has finally done it. Here is the alpha patch for SOTN on Saturn.

The game is mostly playable. I tried pushing to get as much done for Halloween, so I apologize for it not being finished.


To all of the people who are going to rip this off and make a repro of it without my permission, please at least give me the
courtesy of finishing it before making physical discs out of it.

To patch, use xdelta xdelta UI or MultiPatch





If people want to help me with the parts that are crashing. If you are using a an emulator with a debugger, place a breakpoint at 0601960c and let me know what the address is at register 4. That would be Shift-JIS text that still needs to be translated to ASCII.




SOTN (Dracula X) Saturn patch for Sega Saturn
Copyright Konami 1998
Copyright Knight0fDragon 2020 (Parts not owned by Konami)
This patch is provided for non-commercial use only, and
is free for personal use.
If you have paid for this, ask for your money back.
Currently this patch only works for an image that
aligns with what is on redump.

redump.org • Akumajou Dracula X: Gekka no Yasoukyoku • 悪魔城ドラキュラＸ　～月下の夜想曲～

Redump - disc images information

redump.org

V.081
Fixed items crashing game issue. Will display "Obtained." Need to update my text writing routine to handle
Obtained <Item Name>

V.080
Happy Halloween.
Thank you for trying out the alpha build of SOTN on Sega Saturn
This version has most of the items and enemies names translated,
as well as some of the story translated.
This patch is loosely based on the PSX translation version. The final version will contain the PSP version.
I currently need a lot of saves to go through the different aspects in the story line.
If you see an issue, please provide a save file (not a save state) with details as best
as you can as to what the issue is.

Known issues:
Later story and ending text not translated.
Alucard's name at the ending not translated.
Locations may be wrong and wrap. This requires an 8x8 font routine to be written.
Some gates messages may be wrong and wrap. This requires an 8x8 font routine to be written.
Entering a new area still has Japanese text.
Stat screen has Japanese text.
In game menu options are not aligned for English and may not all be translated.
Outer wall elevator switch still has Japanese text.
Title screen not converted to SOTN.
Speech pauses and text may not align in certain places.
Some speeches may have the last line cut off. (This requires a new patcher)
First meeting of Death has translucent effect.


If you would like to buy me a coffee to say thank you, McDonalds coffee is
my preferred choice. You can't beat it for $1. If you would like to donate,
you can send via PayPal to knight0fdragon@gmail.com.

what emulator do i use for this? i'm new to Saturn emulation and i literally just found this a few minutes ago.

 

[shitmat]

So I played through the game without any major problems. (jap ntsc sega saturn model 2 with a flashed pseudosaturn card.)

There are some parts where the game got stuck and i just used the prepatched game to get along.

• Waterfall Message - > "Something appeared near to the wooden bridge" -> Game chrash (while loading message)
• Trying to open blue doors without orb -> Game crash (while loading message)
• Mist Message -> "Mist could pass" -> Game crash (while loading message) -> This doesn't happen in the inverted castle
• Game crashes at the last screen before the credit roll, when Alucard / Maria / Richter are talking in front of the castle.
• As stated before by the makers -> Text at the end of the game gets muddled.

And I am gonna say it again-> Thank you again for doing this.

 

[modsbox]

Anyone here managed to get this working on real hardware with a Phoebe ODE?

I'm presuming that we are to apply the .xdelta patch to the first .bin track of the redump image. Patching went fine, but after then I went through my standard process to convert the image to clonecd (to make it work on the Phoebe), the game hangs at the blue sega screen at boot.

Any tips would be great. Worth noting that the redump rip of this that I started with works fine on the Phoebe (after the same conversion to clonecd process).

I could also try applying the .xdelta patch to a clean clonecd rip of the game disc itself, would that be worth a try? I'm assuming that the .xdelta patch requires the specific file from the redump rip to work so I haven't tested this.

I'm on a japanese region saturn w/ phoebe here.

 

[Knight0fDragon]

Anyway to mount the Clone CD image and test it in an emulator? I do not own a phoebe to test with, I only own a fenrir.

 

[modsbox]

Anyway to mount the Clone CD image and test it in an emulator? I do not own a phoebe to test with, I only own a fenrir.

That's a good idea. I'll give that a try, since if that doesn't work clearly my conversion process (mount in daemon tools lite, rip with clone cd) isn't working.

Are you happy with your fenrir? It allows for just dragging and dropping images on the SD card, and supports multi-.bin file rips as well correct?

I say this because the process of getting the games onto the SD prepared to work with Phoebe is extremely frustrating at times. Would be great to just buy a fenrir and be done with it. Especially since the most important game to me of all on Saturn happens to be this game in particular (I think I own SOTN on every platform it exists, been a favorite of mine since it released).

 

[msimplay]

I have it working on Rhea but it was a prepatched iso.

I extracted the iso using Isobuster as when I mounted the prepatched redump iso, it gave me errors when ripping.

Then I mounted the iso and wav files that Isobuster created. The cuesheet was made with Sega cue maker and then ripped to ccd image

 

[modsbox]

I have it working on Rhea but it was a prepatched iso.

I extracted the iso using Isobuster as when I mounted the prepatched redump iso, it gave me errors when ripping.

Then I mounted the iso and wav files that Isobuster created. The cuesheet was made with Sega cue maker and then ripped to ccd image

Thanks for posting, this is super helpful. It definitely has something to do with the post-patch track 1 .bin file no longer being valid for some reason. I can mount and rip the untouched redump iso to clonecd format with no problems. Doing the same with it after patching creates ripping errors. I can still get a clonecd file exported (by skipping on error) but not surprisingly it doesn't boot.

What you did is basically reauthored a fresh valid saturn iso with the modified files, which makes it work! I'll try that.

 

[msimplay]

Thanks for posting, this is super helpful. It definitely has something to do with the post-patch track 1 .bin file no longer being valid for some reason. I can mount and rip the untouched redump iso to clonecd format with no problems. Doing the same with it after patching creates ripping errors. I can still get a clonecd file exported (by skipping on error) but not surprisingly it doesn't boot.

What you did is basically reauthored a fresh valid saturn iso with the modified files, which makes it work! I'll try that.

Cool do let us know if you managed to get it working hopefully it's all good for you now.

Also the Rhea / Pheobe are a little annoying to get running but that's to have 100% compatibility.

That's the reason why obscure formats are supported on the ODE rather than modern standards was because of the way they support sub channel data

Rhea hasn't let me down yet with regards to compatibility although I do have one issue with it.

On Virtua Fighter the image seems flickery in comparison to playing through an original disc or cdr.
My guess is that it's something to do with the way the the drive is emulated as I heard Virtua Fighter has flickering issues through emulation in general.

 

[Knight0fDragon]

I am working on a new Saturn Patcher that should avoid most of these complexities. It is going to produce single cue/bin files (Or maybe I will make it an option for you to choose) Hopefully, if it works out well, others will adopt it and make life easier for everybody.

 

[niuus]

I am working on a new Saturn Patcher that should avoid most of these complexities. It is going to produce single cue/bin files (Or maybe I will make it an option for you to choose) Hopefully, if it works out well, others will adopt it and make life easier for everybody.

Having an option for multi would be great. I like storing romhacks in the redump format if it is available.

Thanks for your cool work!

 

[modsbox]

An update re: getting this to work on Phoebe.

With a fresh clonecd rip from my real disc and then applying the xdelta patch to it, the game now works great on Phoebe.

What threw me off was that I was being bitten by the savegame issue, which was making the game crash at the title screen. Once I deleted all of my saves from my saturn internal storage, the game works beautifully.

 

[msimplay]

An update re: getting this to work on Phoebe--

Either patching a redump image or my own personally ripped clonecd image with the xdelta patch, the resulting image doesn't work on Phoebe.

But what I also discovered is that it doesn't on Yaba Sanshiro v3.4.2 on my PC either. Whether on my saturn via Phoebe or via Yaba Sanshiro, each crashes at the same place-- just after the Konami and TrueMotion videos play, while displaying the title screen-- but before the PRESS START BUTTON is rendered and the leaves begin moving.

Interestingly both work fine on Yabause 0.9.15 on the same PC. So it seems that during the process of editing the files to apply the patch, the CD image is changed in a way that makes the game hang at startup on my real hardware or Yaba Sanshiro v3.4.2 but doesn't make it hang on Yabause 0.9.15.

I'm curious KnightOfDragon why the patched game is working fine for you on Yaba Sanshiro v3.4.2 (per your screenshots) but not for me. If the patcher you're working on makes things simpler that will be fantastic. I assume you're doing some kind of tool that will actually build a fresh iso from files that are modified?

I suppose it's worth noting that I've been fiddling with mkisofs in an attempt to build my own working-on-phoebe version of your patched iso but haven't had any luck yet.

I recommend finding the prepatched iso and follow my instructions it did work for me

 

[modsbox]

I recommend finding the prepatched iso and follow my instructions it did work for me

Thanks msimplay, I ended up solving my problem and updated my post. Got it working now.

I do have some bugs to report, some of which seem to have been addressed already but are definitely happening for me on my setup:

setup: Japanese Saturn w/ 1.01 bios + Phoebe. 0.81 translation patch applied.

issues:
- The game crashes on startup if too many saves are in internal memory. Deleting all of my saves from my internal memory solved it.

- Crash on attempting to obtain the Cube of Zoe. The game just freezes entirely.

- The dollar sign symbol renders as a gray square, rather than a dollar sign. I can share a screenshot if that's helpful.

EDIT:

One more bug, this one is pretty major I'm afraid. Candles don't drop items! Enemies do, but candles do not-- either the ones that hold hearts or more importantly the ones that contain subweapons (dagger, hourglass, etc).