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

Okay, this report will be somewhat disjointed and diverse, but that matches the manner in which our work frequently evolves.

First of all, since Ritchie submitted translated Blocks 000 and 007, because of heavy work with Slayers, I haven't even had time to format them, but I DID insert them, in the forms in which they arrived. Once I sent Ritchie Blocks 001 and 002 to translate next, I began to calculate and examine how the 69 blocks might break out among the eight character scenarios.

Backing up a bit, I recently pondered how little we actually know about the nuts and bolts of the Burning Heroes storyline. Sure, Ritchie's FAQ covers the details of walking through the game to its conclusion, event by event, but reading bits and pieces of his translated dialogue, his FAQ, and some of the sparse data on the game story that's available at other web sites, I still don't have a good grasp on what is actually happening in most of the character scenarios, especially the Gaou segment. For example, I'm still not clear on who Asuka is, whether this person is a man or a woman, and any other pertinent details about who is doing what to whom! That is, I don't know YET. In time, I WILL sort out everything.

Okay, in addition to refining a bit of the early Ryu scenario after Bongo` successfully loaded a variable width font, I took note of the fact that much of what I had received in files 000 and 003 through 007 appeared to be unrelated to the Ryu story. So, I embarked upon an effort to try to "unlock" the first four characters in the game and see how far I could go from there. Not only did I succeed in initiating game play with the first four characters, I was able to play through the first town of the Gaou story, Dawn Town, and even enter the countryside to walk around and fight monsters! By locating, translating, and inserting just one string each from files 13 and 14, I was able to unlock the Laila and Naga stories, too, even though I saw no additional English strings past the beginning Chapter page of the latter two scenarios because we haven't translated that far yet.

Here is how the initial scenarios of the game are constructed:

Character #1 Ryu (file 003); completion unlocks Character #5 Ryouga
Character #2 Laila (file 014); completion unlocks Character #6 Shen
Character #3 Gaou (file 006); completion unlocks Character #7 Chocolate
Character #4 Naga (file 013); completion unlocks Character #8 Mebius

Playing one complete scenario will obviously require a number of file translations that will be random (out of their dumping order), but that is usually the rule, not the exception in the work that we do. I'm just happy to have made it this far this soon - to repeat a much overused RPG line!

So, check out the graphic that depicts early scenes and strings from both the Ryu and Gaou stories and also showcases our new VWF. Herein, I have performed polish work with the Ryu segment but not Gaou's.

A few more files from Ritchie, and I will be hollering at Bongo` for some menu insertions!

Update edit: I made some headway with interpreting the Gaou Scenario introduction and have revised the animated gif to display this sequence. As I proceed deeper into the story, I will learn more details and that will point the way to making specific revisions to the introduction, if necessary. This is the nature of writing RPG stories, as Draken mentioned and I know. It's tougher, more time consuming, and more challenging than any other form of writing. In essence, while Bongo` is reverse-engineering the game code, we writers are reverse-engineering the story!

The Chaos Seed script is also made up of disjointed scripts - none of which follow any logical order. It is truly a PAIN IN THE BEHIND! I blame it for being one of the main reasons this project has taken me so long to get a polished first draft completed.

Its great to hear about all the progress for Burning Heroes, Chaos Seed and Slayers. It seems like so many things are being accomplished. Would you consider doing a "state of the translation group" address sometime to just give a short rundown of how the various projects are progressing. I'm sure that some people just look at the front page of the site for news and don't really delve into the forums.

Good idea... Meanwhile, here's an updated graphic that displays refined graphics of the Gaou scenario introduction.

It's looking great Wildbill! Both the script and font look very nice and polished. By the way, doesn't the Ryu scenario start with the title "6 years ago..."? Or perhaps I'm confusing that with some other line that appears elsewhere in the game? Well anyways, nice work! It's great to see that this game is progressing nicely!

As you are, I am also confused about that time line string and where it should display. If you have a chance, play through that portion of the Japanese ROM and see if the line appears there.

As soon as I format 000 and 007, I'll send them to you. I'll also send you the early English patch which just became worthwhile about a day ago, but the moment you receive an item from any source (gift, treasure chest, etc.), the game will crash.

Bongo` will probably get Chaos Seed and Slayers well in hand soon, then we'll ping on him for some early BH Misc file insertions, battle, and item support. This game is just a short distance away from achieving full playability with some English support. As long as we have Ritchie on the team, we'll make steady progress with that all-important English support!

I just checked right now and it seems that all four inital characters (Ryu, Laila, Gaou and Naga) all have "Part 1 - Land of Beginning" at the intro as in the screen shot you have provided above. I can't quite recall where this line appears in the game, but I do remember seeing it somewhere when I played the game with Ryu and Gaou. It might appear at the beginning of either Ryouga or Chocola's intro. I don't know about Shen and Mebius as I've never actually unlocked them.

Man, I sure wish I still had a save state. I played this game from start to finish on my old computer. The only thing I had saved on a CD was the game itself and Deltaflame's old translation patch. I'll try playing a little more of the game in it's original unpatched Japanese form today to see if I can find that "6 years ago..." line. I wonder where it appears...?