Grandia English Patch

Translating Grandia 1.1.1

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Not sure if this is where I should post this since I'm not sure its an issue with the patch. Is anyone using this on their Terraonion MODE? I'm having an issue where the dialogue scroll is scrambled/pixelated colors (probably not describing that well so here's a screen):

image1.jpeg


The pixelated box you see at the end of each line scrolls along with the text.

Tried the japanese dump and it works fine:

image0.jpeg


The issue has been persistent during the couple of hours I've played so far. Aside from some distorted audio during FMVs, everything else seems good. Just an annoyance really. Might very well be the saturn since I had a friend recap it for me a couple month back. Haven't noticed any issues on other games i've tried with the MODE so far. I do have another saturn stored somewhere (phantom/region modded) that I'll try installing the ODE on, see if I can replicate the issue. Just thought I'd reach out and get some ideas.

Thanks for all the work though, played this originally on the PSX and has been one of my top favorite JRPGs since. Looking forward to another play through on my saturn.

Cheers.
 
retrotoker said:
The pixelated box you see at the end of each line scrolls along with the text.
Click to expand...
This is the garbage that remains when the font's character buffer is filled with other data. The buffer is only half cleared because the font is 8x16 ( original version of the game used a 16x16 font). There are two options for solving the problem, I believe:
1. It is necessary to clear the character buffer manually every time the dialog box appears (buffer address 06020068).
2. Or disable writing unnecessary data to the tile map:
Code: 
0601DBB4    0009
0601DBBE    0009
 
This is a known issue with the MODE. It's a bug in their latest firmware. Basically their latest update put things into memory and didn't clean up after itself. It's not related to the English Patch:

Terraonion Support Forums - Information

forums.terraonion.com forums.terraonion.com

@paul_met I can look into those but since this is again caused by MODE essentially mucking with memory I'm not sure if that will really help.
 
Last edited:
paul_met said:
I don't know what MODE you are talking about, but replace this file with CDMage and see the result.
Click to expand...

MODE is the Optical Drive Emulator he's using. It replaces the Disc Drive with an SSD/HDD. It's from TerraOnion and they made a firmware update recently. They already reached out to me because they noticed it and in going back and forth they realized the issue is that their new firmware puts things in memory and doesn't clean up after itself. Grandia then loads up expecting clean memory only to have leftover garbage in certain spots and it causes problems.

As for your changes, I already found the spot to change and implemented them. However I saw no real difference because in emulators and on real hardware with an actual disc this problem doesn't present itself. It only happens when using MODE and it's latest firmware update (older Firmwares don't have the issue).
 
TrekkiesUnite118 said:
As for your changes, I already found the spot to change and implemented them. However I saw no real difference because in emulators and on real hardware with an actual disc this problem doesn't present itself. It only happens when using MODE and it's latest firmware update (older Firmwares don't have the issue).
Click to expand...
I encountered a similar problem on the emulator when I first started researching this game. So, the reason for this garbage is precisely because of the use of the 8x16 font in dialogs.
This can be easily checked. Fill the address space from 06020068 to 060200A7 with any values and see how the characters are displayed in the dialog window (without applying the patch). And then perform the same actions, but using the patch.
 
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paul_met said:
I encountered a similar problem on the emulator when I first started researching this game. So, the reason for this garbage is precisely because of the use of the 8x16 font in dialogs.
Click to expand...

I'm not denying that could be an issue. But I'm saying is that this problem does not happen on real hardware using a real disc, it doesn't happen in Mednafen, SSF, or Yaba Sanshiro. It doesn't happen with the Satiator or the Fenrir. It ONLY happens with the MODE and even then it only happens with it's latest firmware. Before they made their latest firmware update this issue wasn't happening:


If something like this had been happening earlier I definitely would have noticed and done something to fix it before even releasing the first beta patch.
 
I am just stating the fact that in the latest available translation version (0.8.5), the tile map for the dialog window is not filled quite correctly (the pixels of the second half of the character buffer are taken into account).
This is not visually displayed as long as the address space (06020068 to 060200A7) is filled with zeros. But if at some point in time any data is written to this space, then this bug with garbage will appear at the end of each line of the dialogue text.
 
paul_met said:
I am just stating the fact that in the latest available translation version (0.8.5), the tile map for the dialog window is not filled quite correctly (the pixels of the second half of the character buffer are taken into account).
This is not visually displayed as long as the address space (06020068 to 060200A7) is filled with zeros. But if at some point in time any data is written to this space, then this bug with garbage will appear at the end of each line of the dialogue text.
Click to expand...

And what I'm saying is that the only time any data is written to that space to cause that garbage to display is when you use the Terraonion MODE on it's latest firmware. People have done full 100% playthroughs of this patch without any mention of this issue. Finally, I have not touched anything related to how the text is drawn since before the initial beta release. So it's not something that just got introduced either.

To further go into this, you are correct that garbage will display if data is written to that part of the buffer. However data will only get written there if you actively switch back and forth between the 8x16 font and the 16x16 font. If you stick with the 8x16 font the entire time, garbage should never get written to that part of the buffer. Meaning that part of the buffer should stay clean. For the English patch the 16x16 font is never used outside of the save screen and that's only if you have a Japanese save in memory. But that goes to a different buffer and shouldn't impact the text box buffers.

So where is the garbage coming from then? MODE's new firmware added a quick boot option. Where it goes directly into the game and skips the Sega Logo screens. If you watch the normal boot process of those screens you'll see the last thing the bios does is clear out RAM. By skipping that though this process doesn't happen, and MODE doesn't clean up the data it put into RAM for it's menus and what not. What you are seeing is the leftover graphical data from MODE's menus that is still in the buffer because it never got cleaned out.

If you boot the game without the quick boot option enabled there is no garbage displayed.
 
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The lastest MODE firmware 1.03 released yesterday resolved the scrambled text issue for me. Also chiming in to say thank you so much for all of your hard work!
 
zophycakes said:
The lastest MODE firmware 1.03 released yesterday resolved the scrambled text issue for me. Also chiming in to say thank you so much for all of your hard work!
Click to expand...

Good to hear. They said they were putting a fix into their code to clear memory before booting similar to what the BIOS does.
 
Just as a point of curiosity because I don't remember seeing it discussed; are the FMV sequences in Prelude identical to the ones in the retail game?
 
Then it would seem the answer to whether or not that hints at a way to replace the oddball retail FMV with Standard Cinepack is most likely "no". Any progress at all on the FMV front, though?
 
Is this a known issue with 0.8.5? On disc 2 when a battle is over, instead of playing the fanfare music for exp updates it plays back the battle theme instead, slightly muted. Using MODE in a US Model 1.
 
zophycakes said:
Sorry, wasn't aware! It doesn't change on the PS1/HD versions so I assumed that was universal, but I confirmed this in videos of the non-translated version. Now I know! Thanks for the hard work.
Click to expand...

It changes in the Saturn version (3:00 Mark):


The PS1 Version (2:10 Mark):


And the HD Version(57:57 Mark):
 
It definitely changes on the switch. My sons and I just crossed the Sea of Mermaids last night, and even they noticed. 🙂
 
Seems like my misunderstanding is by coming across moments in youtube vids (and even on my own disc?) where it does play the disc 1 music again, at random, for reasons I don't understand. The first time I got a battle on Disc 2 it played the Disc 1 music, then stopped, hence why I wondered if it was an issue. I wonder if it's a bug in the game itself or something. This is my first time through. Thanks again for the great work.
 
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