Phantasy Star IV HD

[xfixium]

Hi people. This is your friendly neighborhood Xfixium here. I've known about Phantasy Star Cave for quite some time now. Huge fan of the original Phantasy Star series (As well as the online ones). I've waited for about as long as I could wait for an official Phantasy Star IV remake of some sort to be made. Only for me to get really drunk, and cry in a corner for years. So, I said "f*!k it", I'm gonna try my hand at one. So here we are, standing in a circle, like a buncha jerks.

So, right off, I started making this in Unreal, it's been an absolute pleasure so far. Almost to the point that I'm questioning reality at this point. I've made the entire intro already, sans Rune, Wren, Rika, and Chaz panels. They will eventually be done. I started designing Rika at the moment, but the designs are still in limbo till I get that special tingle in my nuts. I also have been working on a .net Windows tool that reads in the data from the original western version of the rom (I've own a hard copy of the game for like, 35 years or so. Don't come at me with legalities. XD) Big shout out to lory90 (lorenzo), and all that have contributed to the rom disassembly. I want this game to be very closely tied to the original data, before I go forward with any additional content. I want to preserve what made the original great.

So yeah, now my personal goals and battle plan for this.

General information for the game:
HD graphics, 1080 at least
Uses 3D models, 3D engine (Unreal most likely)
Most things will be preserved from the original, viewpoint wise (top down towns and fields, back view battles), just more dynamic animations and camera changes will occur during certain actions
Character designs will be a blend of the original game, and Phantasy Star Online 2 designs (Subtle Tron like techy things blended in)
Changing equipment will display on the character when swapping things around
Add an additional character, that you acquire through a hunter's guild job. Might be a technique using cast type, that the player can customize through a machine factory. (I'm thinking an abandoned forgotten floating factory or underwater type thing.)
More cut scenes/dialog to flesh out the characters personalities further
Pull in enemies, skills, and weapons that weren't available in the western version, eg. Blood Axe, Spiral Slasher, Shadow Mirage, Feeve, map etc.. etc..
Multiple languages (Localization)
New hunter's guild jobs (So that poor receptionist doesn't get punched in the face for having no jobs left)

Optional Thoughts:
Changing gear whilst in battle, maybe have macros that can change that as well
Adding in some different weapons through crafting of some sort, or changing the element of a weapon like Phantasy Star 2 Generations.
The ability to bring back Alys much like Phantasy Star 2 Generations and Nei

Phantasy Star IV Title screen stuff:
http://www.pyxosoft.com/projects/psiv/s ... s4_001.png
http://www.pyxosoft.com/projects/psiv/s ... s4_003.png

An early work in progress Rika base design:
http://www.pyxosoft.com/projects/psiv/s ... s4_004.png

Early model work:
http://www.pyxosoft.com/projects/psiv/s ... s4_007.PNG
http://www.pyxosoft.com/projects/psiv/s ... s4_008.PNG

The Phantasy Star IViewer application so that I can analyze and export data from the rom as I see fit:
http://www.pyxosoft.com/projects/psiv/s ... s4_010.png

I'm currently working on the data reader tool, reading in the compressed dialogs atm. I've read in everything I've wanted to, except the map data, and graphics. I'm still not sure I want to go through the trouble finding/reading the graphics data in. If it's not TOO time consuming, I will read that data in as well. Also, I have plans on putting everything that this project produces up on github, open sourced as much as possible.

Things are very early, I think it's been only 3 weeks development thus far. I've created a topic for it now, because I want to hear from fans of the original series.
What would you want to see in a HD remake of one of the best, if not, THEE BEST RPG ever created?
Any ideas or suggestions?
Thanks for looking!

[DarkMyau]

This looks great so far.

Good luck

[xfixium]

Thanks

[xfixium]

I think I'll make weekly updates on this project. Currently still working on the Phantasy Star IViewer tool. Made some good progress, started reading in map data, palettes, and images. Refined the UI and code, fixed some bugs.

Started with a relatively small map, the Piata item shop
http://pyxosoft.com/projects/psiv/screens/ps4_011.png

The Items page and the Tech/Skills page are done. I also have some buttons that display characters that may use that certain property
http://pyxosoft.com/projects/psiv/screens/ps4_012.png

The Heroes page is just about done. I need to fill in the Equipment portion and get/display the correct palette for the portrait image
http://pyxosoft.com/projects/psiv/screens/ps4_013.png

Lastly, read in the formation and combo data, in the beginnings of the UI
http://pyxosoft.com/projects/psiv/screens/ps4_014.png

[Missagh]

I'm super intrigued!

[xfixium]

Weekly update. All week I have been separating the ROM data to get to the chunks I'm interested in. The map and enemy data. I weighed in on how much time I wanted to devote to the Phantasy Star IViewer tool, and I'd like to get most of this data. I want to use the map data for the base of my environments, and then set a fixed camera. When the equipment is being selected, I want to zoom in/circle in close on the character when this happens.

I started Piata some time ago, actually, that's what kicked this whole project off. I was going to do a simple 3D map, with the original pixel graphics as the texture for Sketchfab. Then I thought, why not do a HD version? Anyways, I've updated the tool and started getting some data I can display.

Some image data from the ROM, I haven't found the palette data yet (Save all the map palettes), nor have I tried yet. So I just selected the palette used on the title screen. This was detailed already by lory90 (lorenzo), again super helpful:
http://pyxosoft.com/projects/psiv/screens/ps4_015.png

This is the WIP of Piata done in Blender. As you can see, I want to get the layout pretty much exact, and I ripped the original map including the parts that you usually can't see, using the walk through walls cheat code:
http://pyxosoft.com/projects/psiv/screens/ps4_016.png

I'm preeeeeeeetty much stating this is the hub for this project. Thanks for viewing! Can't wait to see what next week will bring!

[xfixium]

Thought this was interesting while digging for some battle background data and palettes in the ROM. The acquired Motavia desert background plane map shows 512 pixels worth of background (Which I believe is the full width of the VDP, from what I've read). Yet only 320 pixels of it ever get shown, that I'm aware of. Has anyone else discovered this? I'm new to anything ROM related for PSIV, so I'm not sure what is, and is not common knowledge.

Wide screen Motavia desert background:
http://pyxosoft.com/projects/psiv/screens/ps4_017.png

[Missagh]

This is a huge project! Have you considered to collaborate with others?

[xfixium]

It is indeed a big project. A lot of what I'm currently doing is mitigating the time to code some of the various static data, to be auto generated using some small tools I am creating/will create, based on the original ROM data (Think auto generated c++ code that creates the classes and instance data). I will definitely bring the right people on board, if the opportunity presents itself. As it is, I'm pretty finicky about quality of work. This is a game that deserves the best quality it can receive from it's fan base imo.

Right now, I think I need to show what I can do, acid test myself to the public, hopefully it will garner some attention, and I can get some skilled people on board. That may sound dickish, but I'm in this project for the long haul.

With that said, my goal this weekend is to get all the enemy data at the very least (I'm pretty much there, just need the palette data), and maybe all the map data as well. That map portion is proving itself difficult, as the plane maps, or what I THINK is the plane map data, is not coming into my application as I expected it to. Any insight to that data is well appreciated btw. If it all goes well, that will finish up the Phantasy Star IViewer tool, and I will throw that up on github as a beta this weekend, if anyone wants to tinker with it further. I'll try and clean up the code as best I can.

As always, thanks for viewing and for the feedback!

[xfixium]

Weekly update. I wound up getting all the enemy data, didn't get the palette data, going to look for that this week. I spent the majority of my time trying to get the correct plane map data for maps, but to no avail. I've tried doing a bunch of things, and did a ton of research, but I am not able to get the data read in correctly. At this point, the last thing for me to check is the Kosinski compression algorithm, and double check it's reading everything in correctly. When the bytes are read in (Or what I assume are the bytes to be decompressed), there's not nearly enough data for the number of tiles for the map I'm testing (Which is the small Piata Academy Basment B2 map, where the boss Igglanova is). I have a tool that runs all known compression algorithms on a select range of bytes, and Kosinski seems to be the only one that matches. *shrugs* All the other data is there, tileset wise, and I double check this through the Gens emulator, I also made a memory dump so I can analyze the tile map data in comparison to what I'm getting from the ROM.

My goal this week is to clean up the tool I have written, get intimate with the Kosinski decompression code (ooo lala), and get the enemy palette data. This is most likely the last week I'll be working on Phantasy Star IViewer (I might change the name), so I can get to more dev on the actual game. So far it's been interesting and fun, learning more about this games internal data. Like for instance, there are two places where it has the inventory description for each item in the game, but they're not exactly like one another. One set is missing a period or two, and the other has an English typo. I ran both sets in a compare tool (WinMerge) for giggles.

Rando screen shot, the plane map (Going to be renamed Tile Map) portion of the sprite viewer. The upper number is the tile id, the lower number a byte value for the various flags for each tile:
http://www.pyxosoft.com/projects/psiv/s ... s4_020.png

Thanks for viewing!

[Doctor Hooves]

That PSIViewer tool looks great, I hope this project goes well.

[xfixium]

That PSIViewer tool looks great, I hope this project goes well.

Thanks, I'll try my best.

Time for a weekly update. I spent the last week just refining the PSIViwer tool to get it at least organized for a github alpha of sorts, and for that, I don't have a lot to show. Also, my weekend was taken over, and I didn't get as much done as I had liked. Because of that, I will spend one more week working on it (again lol). I got rid of the resources tab, redesigned it to be a general graphics tab. Separated the dialogs portion, added a shop portion. I optimized the rendering for the drawing code for graphics, it was pretty slow before. I have a list of a dozen things I want to accomplish with it, before I upload. Hoping for a productive week this week!

New work in progress sprite UI layout:
http://pyxosoft.com/projects/psiv/screens/ps4_021.png

Sorry, not much to show this week, but next week should be interesting. Thanks for viewing!

[xfixium]

Weekly update, I got a lot accomplished this past week, finalized all functionality for forms that I have created. However, I decided to reformat the static data, and it's taking longer than expected. Mainly done for convenience and organization, as it's a huge chunk of the application. Unfortunately this has delayed the push, but it shouldn't be much longer. I got through a hefty chunk of it, so about another day or two. Overall pleased with everything, and it should help for anyone branching the application, or when I return to it here and there. I tried to keep it simple, and readable for any .net c# savoy people.

Image of the Heroes section (Although I renamed this to the, "Characters" section later on )
http://pyxosoft.com/projects/psiv/screens/ps4_022.png

I'll update when things are pushed up to github later this week. Thanks for viewing!

[Missagh]

Is the PSIV Viewer a tool to edit the rom as well?

[xfixium]

The initial release will not have that capability. Perhaps down the road it will be implemented? Plus, I already seen an editor out there, so not high on my things to do.

Also, I forgot to mention, the tool's official name is Rika now.