Phantasy Star Cave Message Board

Sorry for the delay in replying, I'm busy

Download link: http://www.mediafire.com/?gun6ljll86jb6ug (except the script dump because I'm adding PSG2)

What's the problem with the font? The font has 4 planes, no 3, but the 4th is empty
I changed some routines and maybe I have broken the code, but I depacked/decompressed/extracted all, both games, PSG1 and PSG2, I modified the font and I inserted/compressed/packed all again. I extracted all and the fonts are 100% identical (I have no time for more test).

PSG1 font, extracted, reinserted and extracted again (without changes):


PSG2 font, extracted, reinserted and extracted again (without changes):

CUE wrote:Sorry for the delay in replying, I'm busy

Download link: http://www.mediafire.com/?gun6ljll86jb6ug (except the script dump because I'm adding PSG2)

Thanks, and don't apologize for delay, I understand

[\quote]What's the problem with the font? The font has 4 planes, no 3, but the 4th is empty
I changed some routines and maybe I have broken the code, but I depacked/decompressed/extracted all, both games, PSG1 and PSG2, I modified the font and I inserted/compressed/packed all again. I extracted all and the fonts are 100% identical (I have no time for more test).[\quote]

Yes, I knew for the planes. I created a test font for my encoding changing purpose, with the following planes (the aim was to track what was displayed) :







and the same for plane3 (upload is limited to 3 here but you understood the point). When I pack the resulting DAT file, only plane0 show, whereas if I insert it uncompressed, no problem. I can't explain why. The packed file unpacks itself the same as it was before compression, so the problem doesn't occur from your packer. I suspect some unknown limitation in LZR used. If you want to look into it, I can upload the uncompressed and the compressed DAT files, but I don't need 4 planes anymore

Do you still work on PSG2 ? If yes, we could cooperate. I think I've changed encoding and added VWF for dialogs. I'll add it for menus, but it will break my hack for having right justified text in equip and status menus. I'm working on it now.

Just uploaded the file locally for future downloads if necessary.

Tryphon wrote:When I pack the resulting DAT file, only plane0 show, whereas if I insert it uncompressed, no problem. I can't explain why. The packed file unpacks itself the same as it was before compression, so the problem doesn't occur from your packer. I suspect some unknown limitation in LZR used. If you want to look into it, I can upload the uncompressed and the compressed DAT files, but I don't need 4 planes anymore

Maybe the problem is the palette. Each plane use different colors:
- old plane 0 -> bits 0-1 -> colors 0x00, 0x01, 0x02, 0x03 <-- 000000nn in binary
- old plane 1 -> bits 2-3-> colors 0x00, 0x04, 0x08, 0x0C <-- 0000nn00 in binary
- old plane 2 -> bits 2-3-> colors 0x00, 0x10, 0x20, 0x30 <-- 00nn0000 in binary
- old plane 3 -> bits 2-3-> colors 0x00, 0x40, 0x80, 0xC0 <-- nn000000 in binary

Upload both files.

Tryphon wrote:Do you still work on PSG2 ? If yes, we could cooperate. I think I've changed encoding and added VWF for dialogs. I'll add it for menus, but it will break my hack for having right justified text in equip and status menus. I'm working on it now.

No, I´m sorry, I have no time
I'm busy with lot of PSP/NDS games

I was able to edit the font table, convert it with CUE's sggg program and compress it with his lzr program (-e). Due to old habits dying hard, I manually copied and pasted it into the MAPDATA file at the original location. The sggg and compression works perfectly, with all planes showing.

A quirk I noticed with my computer is that I could only open and save the bitmap in MS Paint; saving it in any other program as a bmp (i.e., Photoshop), would do something to the header that the sggg program didn't like. The easiest way around this is to do whatever I want in photoshop to a duplicate file, then Select All --> Copy Merged. In MS Paint, in the original bitmap file, hit Select All -->Paste, save it, and the edited file works 100%. I have no complaints; CUE has already saved me hours on G2 menus.

I am not sure if this is contributed to some errors you are seeing.

CUE, which PSP games are you working on?

I will upload the files during the week, quite busy (and tired)

Variable Width Font added to dialogues :



I added it to menus too, but I have difficulty in keeping the items' names in Equipment and Status menus aligned to the right (I must compute the total width of an item and then substract.to cursor position. I thought I had it, but it failed on some items while it worked on others, I must figure out why).

Wow! Tryphon, that looks amazing! I had thought that Phantasy Star generation:1's font, while readable and pleasant, looked a bit too thick. It kind of reminded me of Terranigma's font. This looks absolutely superb, and I hope it's added to generation:1 someday. Great job, everyone!

EDIT: Also, I wanted to mess around in AlgoRing but I can't seem to figure out how to get it to work... Do I have to launch a CMD window or something?

I got as far as extracting EVENT.DAT from the ISO. I opened AlgoRing itself but it doesn't let me type anything, and I tried a CMD window but it told me "algoring is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file."

I'm totally inexperienced at this... Sorry for all the trouble I'm causing and thanks again.

SandyLandale wrote:...and I tried a CMD window but it told me "algoring is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file."

A Command Prompt window runs just like classic DOS if you've ever handled it- you have to point to the folder the program is in first. Move the algoring program to a folder just inside the C: folder, maybe "C:\algoring". then open the command prompt, type "cd C:\algoring", hit enter, then type the program name and it should work.

Yes, you have to use the shell (CMD). Then you must go to algoring directory, using the command cd (change directory). When there, you type your algoring command.

I must warn you that, if you aren't familiar to this sort of things (command lines), the use of algoring may be difficult.

I have no plan yet related to PSG1, but if I succeed with PSG2, why not ?

Thank you both, Tryphon and carlsojos, I did exactly as said! However, even after doing exactly as instructed, I'm still unable to type when I load algoring.EXE in the shell. I'm not sure on what I'm doing wrong...

I press the Start button on my taskbar, then hit "All Programs," go under "Accessories," and open "Command Prompt." It opens a dialogue box with the version number and Microsoft's copyright information.

Under that is "C:\Users\Owner>". After the arrow pointing to the right, I type "cd C:\algoring" and press enter.

Then under the above appears "C:\algoring>". At this point I type in "algoring.exe" and press enter once more.

All that loads under that is an underscore. I am unable to type or do anything much other than exit the program at this point.

I'll admit that I haven't ever had to use command lines, but it seems simple enough for me to understand... which is why i'm wondering what I'm doing wrong. Is there an additional step I missed or did I enter something wrong?

EDIT: Actually, after a short while, something else happens.

Under all of the above, the following appears...

Code: Select all

Reading File # 00
1800
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "algoring.py", line 317, in <module>
  File "algoring.py", line 122, in process
IOError: [Errno2] No such file or directory: 'temp/00-00001800.DAT'

Then it takes me back to the "C:\algoring>" prompt. Did I forget to do something?

You mustn't type 'algoring' alone, but a complete statement, for example 'algoring extract mydir/EVENT.DAT' : in this example, EVENT.DAT is stored in directory 'mydir'. It' a good idea to store the original EVENT.DAT in a separate directory since it'll be overwritten by the new one when you'll rebuild. Follow the example given in originl post.

Thanks! I figured it out! But in the end I didn't find what I was looking for, the menu text... Thanks for all your help, Tryphon! This was a fun learning experience.

The menu text is not text (!). It's only a graphic file, I don't remember where it's located.

Other texts in menus aren"t located in EVENT.DAT but in the SLPM file. Modifying them is a little tricky, I'll mke a tool for it too.

Someone pointed me that the font I used was monospaced. So here's a true proportional font (not very nice, but that's just an example) :