Translating Grandia 1.1.1

[TrekkiesUnite118]

Hey TrekkiesUnite118. Thanks a LOT for all your efforts!
I really want to help out with the emulation betatest, but every image I've found on the net so far seems to have an issue with your patch (although it says patching was successful). Whenever it plays a video, it makes a horribly loud noise (on SSF, it won't even load the videos on Yabause)... so my guess is that it's an iso image issue.
Would it be a little too much against the rules to forward me into the right... direction?

I can make no guarantees it will work with random rips you find online. I do know that it does work with the one that's on Emuparadise (use google to find out how to still access those). As for the issues, SSF should be ok from what I remember. I'll try it out later though to confirm. It could come down to what version you use though. Yabause though doesn't really handle the game well. The custom Video format causes problems and the battles are a horrid mess. You can get it to go past the FMVs if you have it set to software rendering though.

Honestly I'd stick with Mednafen, or use SSF if your computer can't handle Mednafen.

 

[cireza]

Hey TrekkiesUnite118. Thanks a LOT for all your efforts!
I really want to help out with the emulation betatest, but every image I've found on the net so far seems to have an issue with your patch (although it says patching was successful). Whenever it plays a video, it makes a horribly loud noise (on SSF, it won't even load the videos on Yabause)... so my guess is that it's an iso image issue.
Would it be a little too much against the rules to forward me into the right... direction?

I patched the iso from gametronik and it worked flawlessly (at least with patch 0.54). Simply follow the steps, and verify with a checksum tool that the export is good before patching.

Is anyone else getting bad slowdown in Parm?

The original game has quite a lot of slowdowns in towns and various regions, for example the beginning of the Dom Ruins has a lot.

@Treekies : the sync for text was good on the first scenes. I have not been able to reproduce Magna Plains not loading, so I guess everything is ok on this point.

I did notice a very small display glitch when the letters are appearing in some scenes. It is very subtle, it looks like garbage of only a few pixels that is displayed right before a letter is fully displayed, on certain lines of the window only (sometimes the second line, sometimes the third). Not a big problem at all, but still saying just in case you want to do something about it.

 

[TrekkiesUnite118]

I did notice a very small display glitch when the letters are appearing in some scenes. It is very subtle, it looks like garbage of only a few pixels that is displayed right before a letter is fully displayed, on certain lines of the window only (sometimes the second line, sometimes the third). Not a big problem at all, but still saying just in case you want to do something about it.

As far as I can tell this isn't a bug. This is just a side effect of how the game renders it's text. If you slow down footage of the Japanese version you can see this behavior too. It's more prevalent it seems when the game's performance seems to dip. It seems the 8x16 font is just more prone to having this appear with how it draws.

 

[cafe-alpha]

I've converted the save files for you using the method I linked. The process described by @cafe-alpha would have worked too, but in this case it was easier to use the SSF-to-mednafen method since the Mednafen Saturn core in Retroarch cannot load ISO files, hence it cannot load cafe-alpha's Save Data Manager as-is.

Thank you for the help ! I like iso format because my projects don't need CD sector recovery data, and for the simplicity of this format. I thought this simplicity would make it with every emulator or ODE, but it seems I was wrong ^^;


@TrekkiesUnite118 : if at some point you want Grandia translation resources (patch, instructions, artwork, etc) to be hosted in the long-term but don't have any place to store it, do don't hesitate to contact me and I will prepare a dedicated corner for your project on my homepage.
The only goal for me is to make translation resources available to everyone and for free : I don't (and will never) monetize fan translation files or physical copies, nor pretend it is the result of my work.

 

[privateye]

Thank you for the help ! I like iso format because my projects don't need CD sector recovery data, and for the simplicity of this format. I thought this simplicity would make it with every emulator or ODE, but it seems I was wrong ^^;

Actually, I made a mistake. It is true that the Mednafen Saturn core for RetroArch cannot load ISO files directly but it can load CUE files, so you can load the Save Data Manager by making a .cue file with these contents and opening it in the emulator:

FILE "pskai_sdm_flasher.iso" BINARY
TRACK 01 MODE1/2048
INDEX 01 00:00:00
POSTGAP 00:02:00

 

[retrodadandmodernlad]

hey, update on me playing the grandia beta on real sega Saturn hardware. so first up and I ment to mention this with the last patch aswell, but when in battles the music does quite frequently stop and start the battle music from beginning and this can happen a few times in the same battle. also a new thing I have noticed with the latest patch is you can use any magic you want in battle but for some reason if you try to use feena heal magic the game crashes. I have tried this in different battles and the game seems to always crash when using this magic but only with this character, this has only happened since the new patch. I am currently in gumbo village and at this point you are ment to go and talk with danda at his boat and he offers to take you to twin towers however when you speak to him the text box just has ……. in it. so I loaded up my official Japanese release to see if it was me doing something wrong went to the boat and Japanese text comes up and gives you the option to go twin towers on the boat, so it must be an issue with the patch at that point and you can not progress any further. hope all this information helps and if you need any videos or pics using the debug disc just let me know and I will put them up. keep up the great work trekkiesunite118 and thank you.

 

[TrekkiesUnite118]

hey, update on me playing the grandia beta on real sega Saturn hardware. so first up and I ment to mention this with the last patch aswell, but when in battles the music does quite frequently stop and start the battle music from beginning and this can happen a few times in the same battle. also a new thing I have noticed with the latest patch is you can use any magic you want in battle but for some reason if you try to use feena heal magic the game crashes. I have tried this in different battles and the game seems to always crash when using this magic but only with this character, this has only happened since the new patch.

Since you're past the crash from the previous patch can you load up your current save with the previous patch version and see what happens. I don't think this newest patch did anything that would impact that so if it's happening now I'd imagine it would have happened before on the previous patch. I'll need a save file or save state though to dig into that as it's probably an issue with where I moved things in memory.

I am currently in gumbo village and at this point you are ment to go and talk with danda at his boat and he offers to take you to twin towers however when you speak to him the text box just has ……. in it. so I loaded up my official Japanese release to see if it was me doing something wrong went to the boat and Japanese text comes up and gives you the option to go twin towers on the boat, so it must be an issue with the patch at that point and you can not progress any further. hope all this information helps and if you need any videos or pics using the debug disc just let me know and I will put them up. keep up the great work trekkiesunite118 and thank you.

Load up the game with the Debug Disc and give me a screenshot of the scenario map. I may have the wrong flag for the ASM hack to load the different map, as Gumbo is one of the towns that had an additional map added to deal with the bigger script size.

 

[retrodadandmodernlad]

so weirdly enough after the game crashing when I tried to use feena heal on the boss at top of mt typhoon and the dragon battle in the volcano twice each and a normal enemy battle when I wrote my last post, having tried it again it seems to be working fine now. I have attached two pic from the debug disc at the save point in the inn of gumbo to try and help you with the issue of the correct speech not coming up to be able to progress, when talking to dando at his boat. hope this helps and thank you.

 

[TrekkiesUnite118]

so weirdly enough after the game crashing when I tried to use feena heal on the boss at top of mt typhoon and the dragon battle in the volcano twice each and a normal enemy battle when I wrote my last post, having tried it again it seems to be working fine now.

Did you try it again on those exact bosses? Or on just random battles. I'm curious if it's a situation that changes depending on what enemies you're fighting.

I have attached two pic from the debug disc at the save point in the inn of gumbo to try and help you with the issue of the correct speech not coming up to be able to progress, when talking to dando at his boat. hope this helps and thank you.View attachment 4720 View attachment 4721

Thanks, I'll look into it later tonight.

 

[nanash1]

First of all a huge thanks to TrekkiesUnite118 for all your effort. I'm also playing the beta on real hardware with a Rhea ODE. I'm not so far in the game and it's my first time playing Grandia, so I don't know if I can give too much helpful feedback. I'm currently on the mountain path to the Dom ruins and up to now I only noticed two things: 1. Some times a strange character occurs at the end of lines. It kinda looks like the pipe character with a loop at the bottom. 2. I had one instance where a battle glitched and didn't end even though no enemy was left. I highly suspect though that this had nothing to do with the patch and was just the game glitching up.

I tried healing magic with Feena, but it worked fine for me so far.

 

[TrekkiesUnite118]

First of all a huge thanks to TrekkiesUnite118 for all your effort. I'm also playing the beta on real hardware with a Rhea ODE. I'm not so far in the game and it's my first time playing Grandia, so I don't know if I can give too much helpful feedback. I'm currently on the mountain path to the Dom ruins and up to now I only noticed two things: 1. Some times a strange character occurs at the end of lines. It kinda looks like the pipe character with a loop at the bottom. 2. I had one instance where a battle glitched and didn't end even though no enemy was left. I highly suspect though that this had nothing to do with the patch and was just the game glitching up.

I tried healing magic with Feena, but it worked fine for me so far.

For the odd character can you show a screenshot of it happening? And does it happen anywhere or only in specific situations? I know in my experimenting I found that if the game switches back to the 16x16 font you can end up with leftover tiles at the end of lines, and it's usually half of a Capitalized U. If that's what's going on please give as much info as possible as it could be an area where the game is scripted to change fonts and it's bugging out.

As for the glitched battle, again as much info as possible would be nice.

• Was it a boss battle?
• Have you had battles with the same grouping of enemies in the same area that didn't crash?
• Did you use any special items or abilities?
• What was the party make up and what skills/magic were learned?

Grandia can be a bit buggy at times, but since I did rearrange memory to fit the English Item text I want to make sure that hasn't had any unintended side effects.

 

[nanash1]

Here's a screenshot of the the character in the first line of dialog.

I've seen it several time throughout the game. The first time was the one from the above screenshot. It happens right at the beginning of the game when you go from the port to north Parm and talk to the first guy on the right, I think.

The battle was a normal encounter in the canal below the church in New Parm. The enemies were two Ammonites iirc. When it happened Sue was KO'd and only Justin was left. The Ammonite attacked me with the spin attack and knocked Justin down and then disappeared. It looked like it glitched off into the water area. Justin then stood up and ran towards the area were the Ammonite disappeared but couldn't reach it. Thus the game was locked and I had to reset.

 

[retrodadandmodernlad]

hey so abit more information on the feena heal crash I was noticing. So I first noticed it when the new patch came out and I fort the boss at the top of mt typhoon it happened 2wice there and then it happened twice at the next boss at top of volcano. Unfortunately I don't have a save for the top of mt typhoon anymore. however, I do still have my save from the top of the volcano dragon fight were it also happened twice. I just loaded up my save an fort the dragon at top of the volcano again and used feena heal about 7 times and it was no longer happening... its a strange one because about 5 times in a row when I tried to use it in various places the game crashed and I had to reset it, but now it doesn't appear to be happening. I am just uploading a temporary video that will follow this message that shows it happening at both the top of mt typhoon boss and the volcano boss so you can see it happening.

 

[retrodadandmodernlad]

okay so here is a temporary file to show the feena heal crash/ freeze happening:
feena heal crash.MP4

 

[nanash1]

So I just played the beginning of the game again and the strange character is always there in the dialog with the guy from the screenshot. He is first guy you encounter when you return from Parm's port to the main town area.

 

[TrekkiesUnite118]

Here's a screenshot of the the character in the first line of dialog.

I've seen it several time throughout the game. The first time was the one from the above screenshot. It happens right at the beginning of the game when you go from the port to north Parm and talk to the first guy on the right, I think.

That's a music note. It's supposed to be there. It's expressing that the character is either singing or being very cheerful. The Japanese version does this too with Notes, Hearts, and Stars.

The battle was a normal encounter in the canal below the church in New Parm. The enemies were two Ammonites iirc. When it happened Sue was KO'd and only Justin was left. The Ammonite attacked me with the spin attack and knocked Justin down and then disappeared. It looked like it glitched off into the water area. Justin then stood up and ran towards the area were the Ammonite disappeared but couldn't reach it. Thus the game was locked and I had to reset.

That's interesting. I don't think my changes should have caused that but I'll see if I can recreate it as I do have a save near there.

hey so abit more information on the feena heal crash I was noticing. So I first noticed it when the new patch came out and I fort the boss at the top of mt typhoon it happened 2wice there and then it happened twice at the next boss at top of volcano. Unfortunately I don't have a save for the top of mt typhoon anymore. however, I do still have my save from the top of the volcano dragon fight were it also happened twice. I just loaded up my save an fort the dragon at top of the volcano again and used feena heal about 7 times and it was no longer happening... its a strange one because about 5 times in a row when I tried to use it in various places the game crashed and I had to reset it, but now it doesn't appear to be happening. I am just uploading a temporary video that will follow this message that shows it happening at both the top of mt typhoon boss and the volcano boss so you can see it happening.

So are you using an actual disc or are you using a Disc Drive emulator? If it's an actual disc it could be a bad read off the disc that did that. But I'll take a look at your video later to get a better idea of what happened.

 

[retrodadandmodernlad]

I am playing using pseudo Saturn and actual discs with the game burned on. so there is the possibility it was a bad read or its the burn I have done. but because at the time it happened 5 times in a row and only happening with a specific character and one move I thought I would mention it. however, it does not seem to be occurring any more.

 

[TrekkiesUnite118]

okay so here is a temporary file to show the feena heal crash/ freeze happening:
feena heal crash.MP4

So I got a chance to watch it. When it does happen does it always have either a skipping voice track or no voice track at all? If that's the case then I want to lean towards it being burn related as I'm guessing it's having an issue reading that voice sample and the game is hanging from it.

 

[TrekkiesUnite118]

Patch version 0.56 is out. This should fix the event flag problem in Gumbo that was preventing people from getting to the Twin Towers.

 

[retrodadandmodernlad]

great work on the new patch trekkiesunite118. I didn't have much time, but I applied the new patch and quickly tested it out this morning. I can confirm the correct text is now coming up when speaking to dando at his boat and you can progress to twin towers. I will update with any further information as I continue playing the beta. keep up the excellent work and thank you.