The Wozz Final Beta came to a close a few weeks ago. I did hit a several week long period that I couldn’t work on anything due to a horribly stressful, overtime filled few weeks at work, but things are back on track now. A good number of bugs were discovered, but they were all fixed! The game is fully playable from start to finish. Why no release then, you ask?

It’s all about the polish and fluff. Honestly, I could release a patch right now, but I am purposely holding out for a few reasons (queue the jeers):

• Polishing. Misty, our Wozz script editor, is going to play through the game for the THIRD time, as the third character, for one more additional script edit. You can’t argue with wanting the script to be as good as it can possibly be. It will be worth the wait for a quality script. :)
• Fluff. I’m working on a little thing of two I’m quietly going to include in the final patch. After 4 years of hard work, I’m going to leave my mark on this game. I shall say no more.
• More Polishing. Due to my recent final decision to leave the items in an 8 character limit format (Another story for another time), I’m going to go through all the item names one more time to fix them up to better fit this format.
• After over 4 years of working on this game, I think I deserve to hold back release while I finally, at long last, get to play the final product from start to finish.

When this patch is released, it will be the FINAL release. I don’t ever intend on working on this game again (Bar fixing one or two potentially undetected bugs). It has taken up a much larger chunk of time in my life than it’s worth and I will be happy to finally put closure to this project and never look back.

So, be patient, it will only get BETTER…

-Nightcrawler

You heard right! Wozz has entered final beta. Over the past few weeks the beta testing team has been reporting everything from grammatical script errors to crashes while I have been fixing them one by one. I coded a nice little bug tracking system for the job and it has definitely kept things much more organized than ever before. Being that the game is different depending on which of the three characters you choose, testing and fixing bugs in this game is three times harder and it’s necessary!

A few of the testers are about 80% through the game and I have fixed about 75% of the reported bugs so far. So, things are moving along very well. I anticipate at least a few more weeks yet before everyone finishes and all bugs are fixed. After that I intend to do a final play through personally and take care of any last minute polishing I may decide to do.

This lengthy project is coming to a close. This game will be worth the wait though to anybody who likes humorous, satire-like RPGs. This game was pretty advanced for it’s time including primitive branching storylines depending on character, an invention system, vehicles, robots, a wide cast of characters, beautiful diversity of areas visited, and a good soundtrack to top it off! So, here’s to finally seeing the release of this game in the near future!

-Nightcrawler

Cheese usually goes good with everything and I couldn’t come up with a creative headline, so… there you have it! I have been very active with Wozz over the past two months. I have been giving out some mini board updates and I figured it’s about time I gave an official public update.

Let’s see, since the last update, I’ve finished the major hack I started a long time ago to address the root cause of many of the problems encountered in the first round beta test. Long story short, the routines and hack I originally created for English text were for the compressed main dialog. It was later discovered that some of the uncompressed battle text (which also used some of these routines) called assembled strings from RAM AND ROM rather than JUST RAM from the uncompressed location like the main dialog. Basically, my original code couldn’t handle all the different sources the text was coming from properly. While I did this, I also fixed a handful of bugs I discovered along the way as well as added all the missed strings from the original script dump. I then moved with an update to the inserter and it appears everything is inserted and working properly again! All the crashing bugs I tested from the initial beta test were gone.

After this, I sifted through a lot of the mess left over from the RPGOne incomplete work after the fallout. I went through and took care of missed and neglected 8×8 text such as the battle tactics menus and teleport location names. There were a few technical issues there as well. All the 8×8 text now has a translation. I’m not 100% happy with it because it’s really a hack job from Akujin’s old patch, Johnny’s incomplete work, and my own mashed over top of it to make it all work. However, I’m not about to redo it all the right way either at this time. The first public patch will have the 8×8 as is until the day comes where I become motivate to finish it the way it should have been from the start.

So, that pretty much brings us up to date. What’s next? I’ve got a few battle text messages and status effects that need to be done and that’s it. These are tough to find because they are all called or assembled individually via assembly code, so I can only see where they are coming from when I get them to happen on screen, which is a crapshoot.

A second round beta test is about to begin to test the large amount of work that has been done over the past several months and work out the final kinks in the script and stomp any remaining bugs. The game should finally be playable from start to finish without crashing! )

The game has three playable characters and the dialog is different depending on who was picked. This has contributed to making the testing process and bug fixing process more difficult along with a pretty complex text storage system when it comes to SNES games. It’s been a tedious battle, but we’re winning and the war is nearly over. Wozz will be completed and that’s the bottom line because Nightcrawler said so!

-Nightcrawler

Dual Orb 2 is still going strong several years after it’s original release thanks to some great hackers over at mteam! This new version is for all the Polish-speaking fans of the game. This translation is officially sanctioned by TransCorp and is based off the TransCorp English translation, but mteam is responsible for all the Polish work. They even corrected some bugs left over from the English translation! )

This patch is mostly complete. The story dialog is 100% completed however due to complexity of the main menus, they remain in English for now. Due to the lengthy Polish translations of the 8×8 text, the author decided to leave the 8×8 text in English. Even the two line item expansion from the English version was not enough space for suitable Polish translations according to the author.

The author took great care in beta testing the work completed was on this patch is top notch. If you speak Polish, you should definitely give this patch a try and learn about the wonderful game that is Dual Orb 2!

You can download the patch from mteam’s page or here on Transcorp.

-Nightcrawler

It’s been a long while since I’ve updated. We even SEEMED to skip Christmas this year at Transocrp! You know I’ve made it a habit of giving gifts to the community every Christmas, and this one was no different. However, this year I gave a gift that is probably much more valuable than any of my translations could possibly have been.

For those that don’t know what I’m talking about, December 23rd 2005, I launched ROMhacking.net. That has taken up a lot of my time and run me a bit thin, but that hasn’t changed anything with any of my translation projects. I’m still doing them, and progress is just as slow as it’s been since I joined the ‘real’ world several years ago. ; )

Another setback and contributing reason to no updates was back in December, I also bought myself a new computer! I got an AMD dual core X2 3800+ clocked at a nice 2.6Ghz each at the moment. Anyway, it took me a long time to build it, transfer all my programs, and get things up and running on the new machine. Due to some new file organization I did, it’s been a bit of task to pull my work and tools back together and get everything going smoothly again.

One last setback was the fact that it was really a pain in the rear to update Transcorp sometimes, so I wanted to do something about the news system first. My experiences with ROMhacking.net opened up a lot of doors for me. In fact, I loved the open news system I coded over there so much, I ported the code over here to Transcorp and converted the site to have database driven news! The site looks identical, but under the hood, it’s all dynamic, and I simply have to whip up this update in a form and can preview it exactly how it will look on the page. MUCH easier. I should have done this a long time ago! So, here’s your update as a result. I MIGHT even update the site more often, but I can’t make any promises. ;)

Regardless, I’ve been back in the saddle this past week and am trying to get back in gear. I have to take some time to ‘re-learn’ what I was doing in the last hack I was working on for Wozz. Back in the end of November, I learned what was probable cause of many of the script bugs. It was a shortcoming in one of my hacks to the script engine. It’s going to be a pretty large amount of work to fix it. I set out in December to try and fix it up and got about half way through, when I drifted away from it to get ROMhacking.net launched. So, now I need to try and get back to the point I was at mentally again after being away from it so long.

So, no need to worry. I’m still here, I’m still working, and nothing much has changed. :)

-Nightcrawler

No eye candy or any significant developments to report this time around. We have a little Wozz news to report and some of it isn’t all good. Wozz has still been the focus and there hasn’t been any time for any of the other projects lately. My time has been spread a little thin lately due to my latest hobby project, which for those who don’t know already is a new Romhacking/Translation web site to combine contents of the old Romhacking.com and The Whirlpool. Details can be found on the forums in the Romhacking section. But that’s not related to Transcorp, so on with the Transcorp related news.

We’ve got a little good news and a little bad news. Which should I start with? I pick the good news. The good news is that I received an edited Wozz script back from the editor and inserted it into the game. It looks like the script is in its final form minus a small round of changes when the editor does a final play through. However, a final play through is not possible yet due to several issues and bugs. That leads to the bad news.

Things were going along good until I went through and tried to finish up some odds and ends that were never quite finished. I found some additional battle text I didn’t know existed and have run into some tough problems. The battle text in Wozz is completely hard coded. Each string is specifically loaded and/or pieced together in it’s own piece of assembly code. There is no way for me to dump the text and each string must be handled individually and some assembly editing for each one. This is probably the most unfriendly format text can be in for a hacker. I believe Dragon Quest 5 also had some text stored like this. It’s tedious and time consuming. And to top it off, I ran into some problems inserting some expanded battle text strings. It is unlike any of the other text in the game and fails to work with my expansion code. So, I need to modify some code and continue on with this very tedious task. So, this has been a pretty significant slow down for the project.

This is frustrating times for me and the Wozz project. I’m sitting here with a game that is fully translated, but is plagued with several crashing bugs and tedious issues to work out. It is simply not playable yet despite 100% of the dialog text being inserted. I’m doing my best to truck on through these issues to make something release worthy, but it’s not easy and it’s certainly time consuming. So, we’ll have to see how things go. I’m eager to wrap this project up, but can only do so much.

On a side note, I have completed scripts(first round anyway) for Emerald Dragon and Tenshi No Uta now. These projects will resume as soon as Wozz is finished up, however short or long duration of time that may be. ;) So, let’s keep hoping for the best!

-Nightcrawler

Greetings to all from the man who crawls in the night! THE Nightcrawler of the translation scene is back again to bring YOU the news you’ve been wondering about. All concentration as of late has been on Wozz. The other projects have been in the backseat for a little while waiting for Wozz, but they are very healthy indeed and new developments for them are not far off. They were all completed to a good pausing point.

The Wozz project page has been updated with some odds and ends related to Wozz including the manual intro manga translated by Jonny and Akujin(which I apologetically forgot to include on the site last time I updated). Also added for Wozz was a link to an original concept artist’s page, and translated excerpts of the character bios and beginning of the manual! These items have also been added to the download page. Go get them while they’re hot! IN ADDITION: I added the soundtracks to Tenshi No Uta, Herakles IV, AND Emerald Dragon. Wow! Go me for updating! Anyway, let’s dive right into the Wozz news!

Things have been going steady and great as of late for Wozz. As you can see from the screenshots, the focus has been taking care of misc. text and things that have been overlooked until now. The main things I took care of include the treasure and skill text, after battle text, ‘Telepa-Box’ text, and place names! I kept finding more and more odds and ends that I had forgotten to translate and/or simply missed! However, I have been knocking them out faster than ever before! Everything is coming together. The edited main dialog script is just about complete and I anticipate going into second round beta in the near future!

I suppose I should address the most recent RPGOne update as it has caused a little bit of discussion here and there and people have been inquiring. It’s really plain and simple. Due to ChrisRPG’s inability to handle private and public communications, all future collaboration and partnership has been terminated. And that’s all I have to say about that.

This really isn’t going to effect the Wozz project. It will be completed and it will be 100% translated. The amount of polish on the first public patch is left up in the air yet, but it will be perfectly playable. So, the train is moving right along full speed ahead! Enjoy and seize the day at end! Cheers!

-Nightcrawler

Hey! This is just a quick update to let everyone know I am back online and back to work! I knew Verizon was going to be trouble and boy was I right! Took them nearly a month to straighten everything out and I still lost my e-mail address! I had to submit a complaint to the BPU(Board of Public Utilities) for the crappy service I got. So, finally at long last I’ve settled in after moving, gotten some net service, and life has started to resemble a state of normalcy again!

Just to let everyone know, my old e-mail address is no longer working. I have updated the bottom of the page with the new address. The new address is crawlerNOSPAM@parodius.com(Of course take out the NOSPAM part!). While not much has gone on in the last month, there has been a small bit of romhacking news.

The first round of testing is coming to an end. One of my testers has completed the game, and between the three of them, they’ve done a great job reporting many technical script issues, missed strings, and bringing several other things to my attention. I fixed several crashing bugs and have gotten to work taking care of the missed strings. I am in the process of redumping with the missed strings and sending them off to be translated. There were only about 30 or so missed strings in the entire game and they were caused by 2 shortcomings in the dumper detecting text in Wozz’s scripting blocks.

In the meantime, the script editor has been working hard on editing the rest of the script. In the coming weeks, I will finish taking care of the missed strings, and start working on the reported script issues and a few things I glanced over. Upon completion of the editing, and fixing the reported issues, I will start a second round with the way the ‘final’ dialog should be. I’m still debating what I’m going to do with the 8×8 after the ‘fallout’. I have a temporary translation for everything in place which I may use for a public patch until I get motivated enough to do the work the right way. If anyone out there is reading this and is interesting in doing some Wozz 8×8 work, please by all means let me know. I’m still fed up with the whole situation with RPGOne and haven’t touched it aside from getting a rough temporary translation in place for everything.

That will do it for this update. The next update should be full of more juicy information as now that things are normal again, I should have a bit more time to devote to working on these projects! The scripts for Tenshi No Uta and Emerald Dragon are both very far along and it is time to look into working out the kinks for insertion in both those games. With that.. Nightcrawler Out!

-Nightcrawler

Hello Transcorp fans. This is just going to be a quick update on where things stand. Things have been very busy for me lately because I’m moving! I’ll be moving into a better place and living with my girlfriend! ;) Yes, it’s true.. some romhackers DO have a girlfriends and lives! So, I’ll be without net access for awhile. So, I don’t know when you’ll hear from me again or even if I will have the same e-mail address. I’ll be sure to inform everyone when I am back online and if my e-mail has changed. So, if anyone needs to contact me in the next few weeks, hold off if you can. Chances are I will still be able to get all my e-mails anyway, but who knows. I don’t trust Verizon! Now onto the Wozz update!

Things are still going strong for Wozz except for ChrisRPG’s lack of help. I’ll get to that in a sec. The first round of technical beta testing has begun and I have been busy logging untranslated strings and fixing crashing bugs. There are a good handful of issues to work out, but all in all, it’s basically playable. The script is currently being edited and I expect to have the final draft script in the near future. So, things are going great there. Now onto what’s not going great.

Apparently ChrisRPG and I have fallen out. (Prepare for the.. *scene drama*! haha) He was responsible for alot of the 8×8 work in Wozz. He promised to do a whole bunch of work and has been reassuring me since September 2004 that it was getting done and not to worry. He gave me no indication that he would not do the work. He promised Wozz would be a priority and it would get done. To this day, he has pretty much delivered NOTHING. So, now I have a huge pile of somewhat incomplete work that Jonny gave me that is relying on Chris’s work. Chris showed no desire to finish any of it. And with nothing to show since September of last year, I am forced to deal with it myself as the rest of the project is coming to a close.

So, unless ChrisRPG magically decides to do any work, I will have to redo a whole hell of alot of work. When confronted, he claimed other things in life took priority. Normally, that would be fine. But don’t lead me on for almost a year while 2 other people are depending on your work, and give no hint that nothing is getting done or you’re not going to be able to do it until the end.

In light of that, I am trying to sort of morph the work that Jonny gave me that does work on it’s own with some of the 8×8 from Akujin’s old patch to have some sort of temporary solution(meaning I would release an intermediate patch like that) since it will probably take quite some time for me to do all the 8×8 the right way. I’m disgusted with that portion of the project and don’t want anything to do with it at present time so I will be focusing on fixing up the dialog issues.

Before I go, I’d like to address an unfortunate event that has happened to another fellow hacker. As you may have read, fellow hacker Kammedo(of YnT) has recently been involved in a serious car accident. It is truly eerie that another veteran hacker has been in a severe accident. Myself and Darkforce of DeJap were also involved in serious accidents in the past. I can really feel for him since I’ve been there before. But, we are all tough SOB’s and come back stronger than ever! So, I’d like to wish a public speedy recovery to Kammedo on behalf of Transcorp and it’s fans. With that, I’m signing off for an indefinite amount of time! Hopefully it will only be for a couple of weeks. See ya!

-Nightcrawler

Wow.. I’ve got to say the last several weeks have really been an upset here at TransCorp. I still haven’t recovered from all the things that have been going on. As you can see from the screenshots, there’s been a ton of progress lately! I’ve been working like a dog and devoted much of my time to moving Wozz closer to completion! But that’s not all! There have been several other bits of news related to Tenshi No Uta as well! The past several weeks have more than made up for the lack of progress over the past few months. I’ve updated the Wozz progress page, and screenshots page. Enjoy the news! I know I did!

AKUJIN CAME BACK FROM THE DEAD…*AGAIN*!! After over *1 year* of silence, I get a nice friendly e-mail from Akujin with a completed Wozz script like he never missed a day! I nearly had a heart attack! That gave me renewed motivation to get back in gear on Wozz. I pulled that sucker off the backburner and cooked a full course meal! I fixed all of the previous bugs I was having with inserter. Then I went to work on a new script formatter for Wozz. I finished that as well. THEN.. I said.. I came this far.. why not keep on going! So, I proceeded to insert all 249 blocks of text back into the game and work out problems as I went along. So, now.. here we are.. All 249 blocks are inserted back into the game!

So, what happens now? Next will be overlapping action time! I will be sending the current script out to an editor for a final revision. During this time, I will have some people beta testing(Sorry, closed beta) the game with current script revision inserted to address all the technical issues that will be discovered with the inserted script. I have play tested about 2 hours with the inserted script and have found a few issues that need to be worked out already. When the playtesting is completed and all the kinks are worked out, I will insert the final script and a final beta test session will begin. That should do it and officially complete the project on my end!

I have been in contact with ChrisRPG in regards to the other side of the translation. Things are coming along with the menus, items, etc.. Chris is interested in doing an 8×8 VWF for the item names and some other work. Hopefully we can start combining work soon and our finishing times will coincide with each other.

So, all the new work is behind us now. All that remains is improving what we’ve already got! So, be prepared because it’s a sure thing.. Wozz *IS* coming!

Good fortune has also smiled on the Tenshi No Uta project. I spent a good deal of time working on my dumper in hopes to finally really get the text out of the game this time! It was no easy task and probably one of the most complex tasks I’ve done yet! Rest assured, I did it nonetheless. But that’s not all! Not only did I dump the script, but I also got a translator to translate it! She has been doing a very good job so far and shown a genuine passion for the game. I feel confident that she will see the project to completion AND do it in a timely manner! That’s saying alot! Things are moving right along with Tenshi No Uta!

The progress fairy sure did sprinkle some progress dust on TransCorp lately! I’m going to try and get out of this horrible quarterly update habit I’ve been getting into and update more.. So.. keep checking back. I’m looking for a backup script editor for the Wozz script. If you are interested, e-mail me or drop me a line on the message board. May you all have a great day!

-Nightcrawler