Here we’re just showing some of the recent refinements to the menu and shop screens.

In other news, I’m happy to report that everything is progressing nicely. I’m pretty much done. Since I really don’t have anything else to do with the text until it gets edited, I’m just working on playtesting. I’ve already completed a full playthrough of the game and made a lot of little tweaks and looked for bugs. Kingcom is doing a great job staying on top of all of those and I’d say we’ve corrected as much in the last few weeks as we have for many months prior. Yuli is working on editing the events with much fervor. I’m really pleased with her progress. Proofreading is also moving along… I think. Subtitles are likewise progressing. Everything looks like it should be wrapping up around the same time, so I’m just trying to make sure it all comes together right.

And now to drop a bomb on some of you… Lately there have been some questions of “Will the patch work on my flashcart?” The answer? Well, it might, but it might not. Unfortunately, because of the way that flashcarts work, not all of them will work with ToI right out of the gate. Here’s the deal: Flashcarts apply patches when they load the game. The problem is that some carts apply the patches according to the CRC of the rom header. Since the patch will change the rom header, some carts won’t recognize it and there’s nothing we can do about it. Sadly, only an update from the flashcart devs will solve the problem. So now you’re all panicking and wondering if your card is among those that don’t work. Here’s what we know so far:

• CycloDS will work.
• R4 will work.
• Some Supercards WILL NOT work.
• Emulation will work.

So if you’re among those whose carts will not support the patch, I really do apologize. I wish we could do something about it, but it’s totally out of our hands. If you are in that unfortunate situation, your only options are to get a different flashcart, play the game on emulation, or convince the maker of your flashcart to update their database to support our patch. There is literally nothing we can do about it.

Sorry to end on that note, but there you have it.

I forgot to mention that the opening and ending subtitles will now be ON by default. Someone on GBAtemp brought up the point that people who want to see the translation might be missing out on the first line and we felt that was a good point. This is a translation project, so the last thing we want to do is make people miss part of the translation. If you don’t want to see the subtitles, of course, you only need press the Select button. Holding Select before the video starts will prevent the subtitles from appearing at all. So everybody wins.

The technical aspect of these subtitles is actually pretty interesting. Unlike the battle subtitles, I couldn’t use sprites here. The 2D hardware was completely turned off, so I had to change the actual video frame to insert the subtitles. This is all done at runtime, of course.

Naturally, the ending song will also be subtitled. This means that not a single Japanese word remains untranslated. Every voiced part of the game has a corresponding subtitle.

You may not notice it when you’ll finally play it, but we have also changed many smaller things to enhance the game. Most are just to support English text (a/an detection wherever it is necessary, redesigned menu screens, etc), but we also changed some things beyond the normal text. The game seemed pretty rushed in quite a few aspects, most notably the menus. The battles are awesome and fluid, but the menus were very unrefined. The (very object oriented) menu engine is really well done, no doubt about that, but they didn’t take real advantage of it.

One of these changes is shown in the second screenshot. The stat numbers originally displayed the difference between the old and the new stat, but we thought it wasn’t very intuitive. So now we changed it to display the actual new stat, making it easier to compare weapons and styles with each other. In addition to these and similar changes, we have also fixed a few bugs. The game doesn’t crash if you encounter an invisible enemy in a guild dungeon anymore, and you will also get the displayed amount of money when selling a weapon with bonus parts.

I think some people might be interested in a few stats about this project. Aside from the text, there are 150kb of assembly code, several hundred changes to the original code, and 160kb of C++ code to dump and insert all the necessary data. Everything has been changed to work with the translated text in a very natural way.

And finally, throughhim already posted it in the comments, but some people don’t seem to understand it. There will be no release this year. We planned to and we wanted to, but it ultimately didn’t work out. It will most likely be released early next year, and no, this does not mean the first weeks of January.

This last week, Kingcom started having some issues with the GPU on his computer, but thanks to the donations that we’ve received, we were able to get him a new one right away. Your donations have helped the project avoid hitting what could have been a serious snag. So really, thank you from both of us.

In other news, I am very pleased to announce that as of yesterday, November 7th, 2009, the base translation for Tales of Innocence is complete. As those of you following me on the forum know, I had been working toward daily goals. I was originally hoping to complete the skit translation by the end of November, so we’re several weeks ahead of schedule in that regard. I decided a week ago to triple my daily goal and attempt to finish the bulk of the translation before I started my full time job. While this pace wouldn’t have been sustainable over a longer period of time, it allowed me to complete the translation well ahead of my original plan. That means that only editing and beta testing stand between us and a release date. While Yuli and I will be doing our best to get through the editing as quickly as we can, we don’t want to compromise the quality of it.

As for a release date, that’s something we can talk about once the beta begins. And speaking of the beta, we are NOT looking for more people to test at this time. If we do need more people, we will contact people who we think would make good testers. I appreciate the enthusiasm, but posting comments that you want to be a beta tester isn’t going to help anyone’s case at this point. It will be a closed beta of people that we know and trust.

Well, that’s about all I’ve got for now. Until next time. ^_^

So I’m still working on the skits. Yes, they’re taking a long time. No, they shouldn’t take that much longer. The next main update I make on the blog will be when the skits are complete. I am currently moving more quickly than I have in many months, so believe me when I say that ToI is getting the best I have to give right now.

Once the skit translation is done, I move on to editing. Once the editing and hacking are complete, we start beta testing. That takes as long as it takes, then we release. So, well, it shouldn’t be too much longer. It’s still a bit too far out to nail down an exact date, but the end is definitely in sight. Don’t start warming up your flashcarts just yet, but excluding any serious disasters, it’s probably safe to start looking forward to the release.

I’ll try to make the next update a video one.

We’ll update again when we have something we want to show.

Yeah, I really don’t know what to say this time. The video compressed really horribly. I updated the percentages on the Innocence page if that’s your thing. It isn’t really mine. Okay, glad we got that out of the way.

Scribblenauts is coming out soon. Go buy Scribblenauts. I’m buying it. I’m buying it at a store with money. Actually, I already paid, but I’m picking it up at store. Go buy it.

That’s all I’ve got. Good luck and all that.

150 skits are done.

300 skits remain.

So there!

Pushing this patch out by the end of summer would be rushing it too much. Don’t bother asking about it. I have learned my lesson – giving people a date only gives them an excuse to whine about it. It was stupid of me to provide a date, and that’s why I won’t be providing one any more. So the new release date is going to be everyone’s favorite “it’ll be done when it’s done”. If you are willing to wait and want to continue to follow the project, awesome. If you have lost all faith in me, feel free to leave. I will not ask you to stay. We’ve been working on this project for one year and still people complain about how long it has taken. Many projects have taken much longer. It’s ridiculous that people are unable to wait even that long for something that costs them nothing. All you have to do is sit there. That is all I’m asking anyone to do.

Just because I’m not telling anyone my intended release date doesn’t mean that the pace of the project will change, it just means that it’s no longer public information. My eyes remain focused on the quality of the project. The goal is in sight, but I’m not going to sacrifice my standards for speed. When the day comes to release the patch, I will be able to proudly present it to everyone. Until then, I thank you for your patience.

My mic sucks. I’m sorry about that. I’ll get a better one for next time.