Death Adder & New Beggar Prince

[D--]

The source code to the game has been lost for nearly a decade. What was provided to Death Adder, as I recall, was the source to a very early beta version of the game that was about 60% complete -- not enough to do anything with. They also provided us with a 90% beta cart that surprisingly had less bugs than their finished release, but there was too much still missing from the game.

Yes, the game uses a static 8x16 font. That's obvious to anyone. I think what Sparxter was thinking of is how the game handles 8x16 and 16x16 tiles side-by-side in the same engine or the 8x8 two-line monster names, though that is not at all what a variable width font is.

As has been said and ignored repeatedly here, I have no idea why the hell Death Adder advertised to a free, fan translation website. The places he actually should have advertised, like SegaXtreme and Digital Press -- where people actually buy original hardware and prefer to play games on it -- had a much better reception. Honestly, I can't imagine why he posted that at The Whirlpool because it was written to go in this thread this thread (where it actually made some sense). Cross-posting it to The Whirlpool where the only patch related question came from demi (who only asked if it was cart only or if there would also be a patch) and where there was no talk of piracy is just weird.

As for "affiliates and supporters" not being welcome here, I really do not give a shit. My boundless hatred of all of you is well known. My opinion of the translation scene and the people involved in it can't really get much lower than it is, and my continued existence alone is insulting and disrespectful to "many of the people in the scene."

[Lucky Mallet]

I'm not mad at you, Nightcrawler, I respect your work and you have done an excellent job with Dual Orb, and Wozz, among others. Congratulations!

I am, however, attempting to get DeathAdder to make an apology. I agree that he was not very careful in deciding on the statements he made.

As for the font; one would have to understand hacking Beggar Prince in order to understand why the font was limited. Believe me, the original font was bigger and more limited. While they didn't do much to edit it (they could only do so much, anyway) I still don't think it's going to substantially affect the gameplay. In addition, I am personally comfortable with their work.

[Neil]

My boundless hatred of all of you is well known. My opinion of the translation scene and the people involved in it can't really get much lower than it is, and my continued existence alone is insulting and disrespectful to "many of the people in the scene."

If I ever release anything translation related ever again, I am so going to put you in the thanks section.




As long as you don't mind me quoting your boundless hatred bit.

[D--]

Two replies in 5 minutes, this is getting to the same rate as a LiveJournal community ...

Neil: Don't really care. I actually went back over that post to add "boundless" because without that adjective, it just doesn't convey the proper impact.

Sparxster: I think there's a lot about the technical details of Beggar Prince you don't understand ... The font used is just a facelift of the internal font (which was actually lifted from the compiler that made the game, it was actually MS SYSTEM :-/). The game used a mix-mode of encoding where anything before or after 0x20 - 0x80 is detected as a byte to be combined in generating a full 16x16 tile. Most tiles are rubbish except for the 3,000 or so characters actually used in the game. Data detected in the 0x20 - 0x80 range is mapped to 8x16 tiles. VWF was not much of an option because internally, the code is psychotic. It was generated by a C compiler whereas most SNES games were written at least partially in assembler and follow a much more logical flow. This was only exacerbated by the complete lack of debuggers (especially anything capable of tracing and using breakpoints) available for the Megadrive hardware.

By the time creating VWF became an option, it was just dropped since the game looks fine, equals the standards of all other commercially released Megadrive RPGs and all the code was already build around our current format.

Nightcrawler: No RPG on the Megadrive made by any company ever used VWF, not even Phantasy Star IV. The Lunar series did not even bother having a lower-case font. Moreover it beats all fan translation work that has been done on the Megadrive system.  Byuu did make a point about the text windows seeming short instead of stretching across the whole screen, however there is a resolution difference. Genesis is 320 pixels across while SNES is 256. If you work it out, our windows really only have about two or three less letters across than most SNES games (as most SNES releases used fixed 8x16 or 8x8 ).

I really do not care if you want to get into a penis measuring contest with Death Adder comparing work that's been done on one of the most supported systems on the planet and some of the best debuggers on the planet to work done on a system hardly anyone aside from Steve Snake and Sardu has even considered worth emulating with no debuggers available except the DOS 68000 equivalent of Tracer. That's your business. All I am here to do is answer questions when flagrant speculation and misinformation come into the field because, aside from Death Adder, I am the only person who knows anything about the internals of this project who speaks English.

[Nightcrawler]

T
As for "affiliates and supporters" not being welcome here, I really do not give a shit. My boundless hatred of all of you is well known. My opinion of the translation scene and the people involved in it can't really get much lower than it is, and my continued existence alone is insulting and disrespectful to "many of the people in the scene."

Haha! That's an instant classic!

I think the affiliates and supporters thing was probably getting a little crazy.  I suppose I got on my own high horse there for a minute.  The only real unwelcome people would be the ones parading around with the Death Adder support banner like Sparxster was.  We don't need that here.  You weren't doing that.  But, then again, weren't you already unwelcome before?  

You say you hate us, but I think deep down you really love us.  You keep coming back to entertain us.  Life would be so boring around here without you.  We need your spunk.  Here's a poem just for you.


"The Day D was Happy"


D, D the one initial man..
Spouts angry words like he's in a frying pan..
He hates us now.. he'll hate us later..
But because we love him, we shall cater.

Come on down to the bar..
We can all go in one car...
We'll grab some grub and buy a beer..
have a few more and you'll laugh out a tear..

The jokes and drinks will bring good times..
and I will quit making up these stupid rymes...
The end of night will finally come..
but D found a dame and he just might get some!

Again tommorrow the sun will shine..
and D will be a happy guy, rather than a swine..
Friends will he have many..
might even be a guy named Lenny..

Nightcrawler and D, the oddest of pairs..
Chums that might throw each other down the stairs!
But a good beer drinking, woman flirting night they did have..
To reconcile for a day and stroll down the Av.



-Nightcrawler

[Nightcrawler]

Nightcrawler: No RPG on the Megadrive made by any company ever used VWF, not even Phantasy Star IV. The Lunar series did not even bother having a lower-case font. Moreover it beats all fan translation work that has been done on the Megadrive system.  Byuu did make a point about the text windows seeming short instead of stretching across the whole screen, however there is a resolution difference. Genesis is 320 pixels across while SNES is 256. If you work it out, our windows really only have about two or three less letters across than most SNES games (as most SNES releases used fixed 8x16 or 8x8 ).

I really do not care if you want to get into a penis measuring contest with Death Adder comparing work that's been done on one of the most supported systems on the planet and some of the best debuggers on the planet to work done on a system hardly anyone aside from Steve Snake and Sardu has even considered worth emulating with no debuggers available except the DOS 68000 equivalent of Tracer. That's your business. All I am here to do is answer questions when flagrant speculation and misinformation come into the field because, aside from Death Adder, I am the only person who knows anything about the internals of this project who speaks English.

Yeah.. it's not too shabby for a Genesis project. However Death Adder, puts down fan translations for other systems as well. He brought that into it.  And compared to fan translations of other systems(depsite reasons for them being better) to his work and it simply falls behind.  He shouldn't preach how awful fan translations are if his will be no better.

Oh and by the way, let's leave penises out of this!

[byuu]

Yeah.. it's not too shabby for a Genesis project

My turn to brag like the pompous asshole that I am.


Both the title screen and 8x8 font were compressed. Title screen art by the god of 2D graphics, D.


True 680x0 assembler 16x16->8x16 hack.


Crap. Utter crap. All squish tiles, but Langrisser II doesn't have many menus, so it's all consistent at least.

Doesn't really compare to Der Langrisser, but I think it's pretty nice for a Genesis hack, nonetheless.

Oh, and this project'll get released ~probably~ 2 years after Der Langrisser. Unfortunately, the world will come to an end 6 years before DL will be released; so nobody will ever see it.

By the way, Nightcrawler, your poem... seriously creepy :/

[Kitsune_Sniper]

My boundless hatred of all of you is well known. My opinion of the translation scene and the people involved in it can't really get much lower than it is, and my continued existence alone is insulting and disrespectful to "many of the people in the scene."

If you hate us so much, why do you remain here?

Also, why do you hate yourself? Like it or not, you are one of us. You're a romhacker and a translator. You're part of the scene, no matter what you say.

[D--]

If you hate us so much, why do you remain here?

Also, why do you hate yourself? Like it or not, you are one of us. You're a romhacker and a translator. You're part of the scene, no matter what you say.

I love amazingly ignorant things like this. It's like saying anyone wearing blue and gold must be a University of Michigan fan because the school's colours are blue and gold. It's like you're trying to apply furry logic to something as abstract as hobbyist translation.

You know what makes me happy? When I can go my own way, do my own shit, and don't have to deal with you fuckers talking about me, dragging me into totally unrelated, and for some unknown reason suddenly contacting me and asking me for shit. I do not post on your Whirlpool board, RPGd (if it's even around now), use your IRC channels, or really communicate with anyone at all except an occasional message to Gideon Zhi once or twice a month.

Yet somehow you are trying to draft me into a community I hate, avoid and do not participate in, submit news to, or willingly contribute to in any way. That's seriously fucked up.

That's like saying every human on the face of the Earth is part of the scatology scene because we all have to shit.

Why am I still here? I answered that seven posts above here, dumbass. I was ressurrected to answer questions only I had the answers to. And since it seems like the original point of this thread has been served I'll be going now.

[Atrica]

People seem to take themselves and others way too seriously.  

Anyway, scene or no scene, Death Adder acted like a dick and now people want to pirate this game out of spite.  Whether you love or hate the whole translation mess, being a dick towards people and insulting them on their own board is not exactly a good way to sell product.  Now, DA could have simply said something like "We will not be releasing this as a patch, please purchase our cart when it comes out." and it would not have gotten any sort of negative reaction.  His actions were stupid, ignorant and prickish, and were he the president of most companies he'd be fired on the spot.

[Nightcrawler]

Yes.. if the guy just thought about what he was saying for 5 minutes, none of this ever would have happened.  It's been fun and entertaining, but I'm about done with it.  It's run it's course.

[KingMike]

My turn to brag like the pompous asshole that I am.


Both the title screen and 8x8 font were compressed. Title screen art by the god of 2D graphics, D.


True 680x0 assembler 16x16->8x16 hack.


Crap. Utter crap. All squish tiles, but Langrisser II doesn't have many menus, so it's all consistent at least.

Doesn't really compare to Der Langrisser, but I think it's pretty nice for a Genesis hack, nonetheless.

Oh, and this project'll get released ~probably~ 2 years after Der Langrisser. Unfortunately, the world will come to an end 6 years before DL will be released; so nobody will ever see it.

By the way, Nightcrawler, your poem... seriously creepy :/

I can't see your pictures, because your site's gone.

[Gideon Zhi]

People seem to take themselves and others way too seriously.

Words of wisdom for the ages.

And KingMike, that's 'cuz the domain it was on expired. http://www.byuu.org should be working soon enough though (if it isn't already.)

[byuu]

It was. I knew this domain switch was going to be a total pain to pull off :/

There's a 12-hour delay whenever I push any changes to byuu.org.
If I enable domain masking, then referral information is always blank and I'm unable to keep any sort of logs. If I don't, then it resolves the URI completely and people tend to link to wherever the domain is currently hosted, which completely defeats the purpose of having a TLD in the first place.
And no matter which method I use, I can't index anything else from the TLD. With masking, byuu.org/n becomes www.cinnamonpirate.com/n; without it, it just always bounces back to byuu.cinnamonpirate.com.
Both are problems easily fixed by your TLD host not sucking ass.

...and I don't have anymore money right now to get a proper host.

Anyway, here are some working links to the images:
le
le
le

Edit: Aha. Found the problem with the redirects thanks to LiveHTTPHeaders plugin for Firefox.

Code Select Expand

http://byuu.org/n
GET /n HTTP/1.1
Host: byuu.org
HTTP/1.x 302 Found
X-Redirected-By: mod_pointer - http://stderr.net/mod_pointer/
Location: http://byuu.cinnamonpirate.com//n

http://byuu.cinnamonpirate.com//n
GET //n HTTP/1.1
Host: byuu.cinnamonpirate.com
HTTP/1.x 302 Found
Location: http://www.cinnamonpirate.com/n
The request goes to the TLD properly, but since mod_pointer doesn't bother to check to see if the URI ends with a /, you end up with two. And for whatever reason, cinnamonpirate.com's host does weird stuff to '//'.

Fixed it by removing the trailing / in my redirect, even though that's normally a good thing (traditionally on unix/apache, /a is a file, whereas /a/ is a folder).

Now if only there were a way to get the address bar to display the full URI with the cloaked domain, and still capture HTTP_REFERER values...

[fantasyanime_guy]

D, so what are the chances of the PC title of Beggar Prince getting an English release? That would satisfy the emulation enthusiasts wanting to play it.

Since the PC title has a CD audio soundtrack, another good idea would be to release it as a Sega CD game. That way both emulation enthusiasts and people who prefer the real thing would be satisfied.