Hoping to make your life's design a bit more dynamic!

I second that. Richie's contribution to our work really gladdens the heart and offers credibility to this project.

Yes, happy Thanksgiving to all.

BTW, I released Slayers V0.25 alpha (10 of 40 scenarios written) to the production team last night, including Red Soul's first submission who will help us with story refinement and the resolution of technical anomalies. RS is a huge Slayers fan who loves the series, is very familiar with the characters, and is highly enthusiastic about the future release of this game. Filler, who has held the guts of this project intact for 10 years, is the "boss", the man we aim to please. Bongo` just sent another goodie package of refinements that I need to sneak some time to open and check out, maybe some highly desirable shop fixes. After all of my family goes to bed, maybe I can do a little Slayers work, but right now it's movie time and a bit of elbow-bending, some vino de la casa with the wife!!

Dallas Cowboys 24 - Oakland Raiders 7

Yup, life is good!!

Ritchie just forwarded translations of Blocks 000 and 007 and requested that we send him untranslated Blocks 001 and 002. As I suspected, Block 000 is part of the Ryu Chapter. Why the Ryu game started in Block 003 is anyone's guess, something only the original programmers can answer, but Ritchie is in the process of catching us up on the block translations by actual numbering sequence. I suspect that Blocks 002 and 003 will also include subject matter that concerns Ryu and his father, Adam.

I am also speculating that the Ryu chapter will conclude somewhere prior to Block 10. I am basing this estimation upon the fact that Burning Heroes contains four unlocked characters at the beginning of the game, and four additional fighters that can be unlocked as the "starter set" completes their stories. Since we have dumped almost 70 files, this is what the math suggests, that we are approaching the 12% of dialogue translation completed. Our entire D-D family is quite happy to be progressing steadily with Burning Heroes!

Ritchie's work is so outstanding, I'm hoping he will have time to help us all the way through. As a bonus a short time ago, Ritchie also sent us all of the shop item translations and their prices, as lifted directly from the BH Guide Book. Once we match them with the dumped items, this will save us a tremendous amount of time inserting English item names into our working patch.

Speaking of unlockable characters, with the debugger enabled,were all teh characters enabled? I can't remember...

I haven't been inside the debugger world yet (don't know how to access it), but I'm not sure how much we'll be able to tell before loading more English files, unless the debugger works from that same basic start menu.

Ritchie has just forwarded translated Blocks 000 and 001 and requested Block 008 and the monster/boss list. If we have that second item dumped, it will have to be in the misc file system, I believe. Otherwise, it could indeed be one of the 69 blocks, and I will have to start opening them until I find it!

Here are Ritchie's almost verbatim descriptions of the first eight blocks he has translated:

block 000 - the ending for all 8 heroes after they (each of them) have defeated the final boss. World Map part 3.
blook 001 - the Nagha and Mevious' senerio/Ryu and Rouga's scenario. World map part 1.
block 002 - the Raira and Shen's scenario/Gao and Shokora's scenario. World map part 1.
block 003 - the Ryu and Rouga's scenario/Nagha and Mevious' senerio. World map part 1.
block 004 - the Raira and Shen's scenario/Gao and Shokora's scenario. World map part 1.
block 005 - the Gao and Shokora's scenario. World map part 1.
block 006 - the Raira and Shen's scenario/Gao and Shokora's scenario. World map part 1.
block 007 - the Ryu and Rouga's scenario/Nagha and Mevious' senerio. World map part 1.

When I get these formatted, Bongo`, I will send them to you, Recca, and hey, Deltaflame. I will be happy to keep you updated with early block copies, as well, as these files flow in and I do initial processing.

By sheer numbers, this puts us at about 12% of dialogue translation. The raw dumps range from 1.5 to 50 kb in size. The largest one translated so far is 003 at 34 kb. The smallest is 004 at 14 kb, so none of the small files have come up yet in the numerical sequence. 25 of the 69 blocks are under 8 kb, so that leaves 44 blocks between 11 and 50 kb in size, with 8 of those already translated.

Any way we organize the data, this is a HUGE job, and we appreciate Ritchie's steady pace with it. I will continue to process partially formatted blocks into the working ROM in their straight numerical sequences. I see no point in trying to target the blocks out of order, in an attempt to track a specific scenario, but little-by-little, the eight scenarios will "unlock", and we will arrive closer to the promised land!

Fellows, this is exactly how the analytical side of the intelligence profession works. We start with an identified need and define a goal and and approaches we might employ to reach and satisfy it. Then, we identify the technical collectors of information and agents in the field to gather data and specific components of the problem. As bits and pieces of information and items flow into our management shop, we evaluate the data and organize it into a matrix that enables it to take shape, as we continue to identify and process additional details of the problem. In time, through validation, re-validation, and brainstorming, we put together a picture of something that starts to make make sense. Through trial and error and further analysis of existing and missing details, we gradually fill in the gaps logically, sometimes through a process of extrapolation. Finally, as the whole effort nears completion, we polish and shine it, then send it off to the end user, customer, and/or policymaker!

In time, I could take the whole trained lot of us to a tent in a war zone somewhere and help some field marshal win a war with your talents!! As civilians, however, the rest of you - if captured I'm afraid - would be shot as spies! I, on the other hand, since an officer holds his commission for life, would simply invoke my Geneva Convention rights, hee-hee...

You know that kind of talk reminds of the stuff I read in The Art of War by Sun Tzu.

IIRC, there was a part on the loyalty of Generals when captured that you'd want them to die than to rather switch sides and betray. Or maybe it was something in the middle. And who cares about the Geneva Convention, as long as you win, you won't have to worry about it. Not only do the spoils of war go the victors, but their version of history and rules as well.

So I have an rar file with as much as I could possibly find that had some kind of translated piece of information. I know somewhere I have the quests information, as I have a version of the rom with the translated stuff put in.

I can attach it to this post if needed, or do you want me to email it somewhere? Should it go to you WB?

rwthw

Thanks! e-mail is preferred. You can click the email icon at this location. memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=54

Ritchie just sent us file #008 and requested 009. Here is how he described it:

Block 008 is for Gao and Shokora's scenario/Raira and Shen's scenario. World map part 1.

008 did not unlock any new character scenarios, but it expands our knowledge in the world of Gao. We don't have menu support yet anyway. We are in the midst of preparing Slayers for release. Once we add a few basic routines to BH though, we'll be able to penetrate the story and other characters deeper.

As always, we are appreciative of Ritchie's support!

Nice, that's great news. By the way, I was kind of curious about that international font. On the front page, it was stated that a graphically talented person is needed to create the needed unicode characters. I've never actually made a font so I don't quite know the steps involved in making one. Would it not suffice to use a font such as "Times New Roman" or "Centaur" to make the needed letters for insertion or are more complicated steps required? This all sounds interesting, it's going to be a great project!