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Post subject: PLEASE READ THIS SNIPPIT OF THE README BEFORE PLAYING!
PostPosted: Sat Apr 03, 2021 1:11 am 
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Helpful Game Tips:

Once other playable characters have joined you, make sure on the Beast Select Screen that
you go to the top character portrait box and hit left and right to select other characters
so that you can also give them their own beasts.

All spells that show on the Beast Select Screen can only be used if the Beast that gave you
that particular spell is directly vertically or horizontally one square adjacent to the Beast
Master that controls them. If they are anywhere else on the battlefield you cannot use the
spells they've given you on the select screen.

Any scenario that lists more than one victory condition can be completed by doing one of the
conditions listed. You do not have to do both (or more.) Sometimes the text will have slight
changes depending on the condition you choose to satisfy.

However, this is also true for fail conditions. If any one fail condition happens, you've lost
and the game is over. Even if there is more than one condition listed. Only one will make you
lose the game.




Bugs that remain in the released translation that may or may not ever be addressed:

Due to the lack of anyone on the team currently who possesses the skills of assembly coding there
is an unresolved bug left in the text routine that occasionally corrupts a few letters of text at
certain points in the game. These bugs are minor and only last for 1 or 2 letters but it can make
some text harder to read or appear with parts as gibberish. This bug does not happen a great deal
but it is scattered through the game here and there and we have to mention it. Some scenarios play
without issues while others might have a few screens with a word or two with text issues. Please do
not report these bugs, there is nothing we can do about them at this time.

The ending has a bug in it where text scrolls over other text (and also has the text bug mentioned
above.) The text here is mostly readable but it will look messy. This only happens in about the
first six or seven small pieces of text and they're still readable. The rest of the ending text
should work without issue beyond these few screens of text and these screens are really short bits
of text (which is still mostly readable.)

This bug might be resolved but I'm including it in case we missed something. The magic menu might
become messy. We think we've solved this bug but we can't rule out that it could happen at some
point if we missed any of the spell names causing issues.

A couple of the spells appear to be broken in both our release and the original Japanese rom from what
we can tell. These spells either won't activate or appear to do nothing once activated. These spells
might work and we just don't know what they're supposed to do but I wanted to leave a note about it
in case others noticed it.


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Post subject: Re: PLEASE READ THIS SNIPPIT OF THE README BEFORE PLAYING!
PostPosted: Sat Apr 03, 2021 11:03 am 
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Congrats on the release.

It's really a shame that the DTE issues couldn't be resolved. Even though others mention that there were only "a few" glitches, it was my experience that most, if not all, scenarios had text glitches, with most scenarios having multiple. I just hope people realize that there is a very good reason this release is labeled as .75.

With that said, though, I enjoyed playing this very simple strategy game. It's quite basic, but it can get really hard!


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Post subject: Re: PLEASE READ THIS SNIPPIT OF THE README BEFORE PLAYING!
PostPosted: Sat Apr 03, 2021 3:30 pm 
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It wasn't what I wanted either Draken, but it is what it is. And I did label it as V0.75 for a reason. Honestly, upcoming releases could be worse than this with bugs. At least this one doesn't feature any game crashing bugs in it. The one game I have left on my shared plate, Oni II, I would personally like to release even if we can't get the bugs ironed out. Probably as a V0.50. And it has complete game crashing bugs every time you level up and another major bug in ship battles. The game will be fully or mostly fully in English, but I wouldn't call the current state exactly fully playable. We do have someone working on the situation that hopefully has a big enough can of Raid or better yet some Advion up his sleeve, but if not at some point you just have to accept that you've gone as far as you can and it is better to release what you have than to leave all that hard work in limbo for the rest of eternity. But that is my philosophy. Wildbill (the other person with projects left) will handle his as he sees fit and we'll come to a joint decision on Oni II when the time comes.


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Post subject: Re: PLEASE READ THIS SNIPPIT OF THE README BEFORE PLAYING!
PostPosted: Sun Apr 04, 2021 12:05 am 
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Congratulations on the release as well! The translation for this game looks very good, despite the small amounts of various text glitches that may have remained. The writing style matches the characters' personalities perfectly in my opinion and I'm positive that this alone outweighs any possible cosmetic glitches present in the text because of said bugs. By the way, I noticed that there's a few grammatical mistakes in the project page description, but nothing big. I wrote the following game and translation descriptions at RHDN (an edited version of the ones found here at D-D):

Quote:
Game description:
Power of the Hired is a turn based SNES strategy RPG similar to Arc the Lad on Playstation. It was developed and published by NCS's video game division Masaya, which was released exclusively in Japan in December 22, 1994.

The game features a party of four playable heroes called "Beast Mages" that the player must use to fight off overwhelming waves of enemies. The characters are each able to summon two beasts to help in battle and with the help of these beasts, the player is able to tactically conquer each of the game's scenarios. Depending on the beasts summoned, the characters' magic will change and their spell composition will differ. Several scenarios require that the player acts quickly to avoid various dangers, such as a burning bridge that the characters need to quickly vacate in order to survive. Whereas other scenarios require the player to protect NPCs while they are escaping from danger themselves.

Quote:
Translation description:
“Power of the Hired” is the first Strategy RPG that Dynamic-Designs has released in quite some time, but its style departs from several typical conventions that players encountered in “Feda: The Emblem of Justice” and the “Shining Force” series. Similar to how Arc the Lad on Playstation worked, one departure from typical SRPG game play is the lack of town functionalities, wherein characters may walk around, visit shops, speak to NPCs, and so forth. This game is divided into 18 scenarios, all of which must be cleared in order to keep advancing forward. Party composition selections occur in between scenarios, then game play resumes. Another sometimes disconcerting development is to have waves of fresh enemy replacements keep pouring onto the battlefield until the player satisfies a previously stated objective.

Another unique feature of this game is “Beast Magic”. Up to two “monsters” acting as “familiar beasts” per playable character (not just Neina) may be added to the party roster prior to starting each scenario. These beasts can also increase their levels during battle and provide their respective Beast Master various magic spells that can be used in battle as long as they are in a square directly horizontally or vertically adjacent to them.

You may use these as well if you like here at D-D. But again, there's absolutely nothing wrong with the current ones. I merely edited the descriptions a bit to hopefully better reflect the game's features to new gamers. Oh, and thanks again for allowing me to be a beta tester for this fine game! I had a lot of fun with this one, as with Odysselya II.


"Truly, if there is evil in this world, it lies within the heart of mankind."
- Edward D. Morrison (Tales of Phantasia)


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Post subject: Re: PLEASE READ THIS SNIPPIT OF THE README BEFORE PLAYING!
PostPosted: Wed Apr 14, 2021 6:14 pm 
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Well, I am just two battles in, beaten the first two I mean, and I have to say I am pretty surprised at how hard the enemies hit. Like, doing 9-12 damage on allies who have maybe 25-35 HP! Not a game where you want to just rush in and be too aggressive, instead, I think it is going to be a game where moving as an entire unit, slowly, is the best bet.


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Post subject: Re: PLEASE READ THIS SNIPPIT OF THE README BEFORE PLAYING!
PostPosted: Wed Apr 14, 2021 7:03 pm 
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DoubleDvideogames wrote:
Well, I am just two battles in, beaten the first two I mean, and I have to say I am pretty surprised at how hard the enemies hit. Like, doing 9-12 damage on allies who have maybe 25-35 HP! Not a game where you want to just rush in and be too aggressive, instead, I think it is going to be a game where moving as an entire unit, slowly, is the best bet.
Slow massed movement works sometimes, but you'll encounter scenes (chapters) that dictate a greater sense of urgency to position forward more quickly and efficiently. You'll see. As the game advances, you may find that using beast magic combinations in the most effective ways possible may be the only way to clear some scenarios. Some of us never quite mastered that latter approach!


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Post subject: Re: PLEASE READ THIS SNIPPIT OF THE README BEFORE PLAYING!
PostPosted: Wed Apr 14, 2021 8:58 pm 
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Wildbill wrote:
DoubleDvideogames wrote:
Well, I am just two battles in, beaten the first two I mean, and I have to say I am pretty surprised at how hard the enemies hit. Like, doing 9-12 damage on allies who have maybe 25-35 HP! Not a game where you want to just rush in and be too aggressive, instead, I think it is going to be a game where moving as an entire unit, slowly, is the best bet.
Slow massed movement works sometimes, but you'll encounter scenes (chapters) that dictate a greater sense of urgency to position forward more quickly and efficiently. You'll see. As the game advances, you may find that using beast magic combinations in the most effective ways possible may be the only way to clear some scenarios. Some of us never quite mastered that latter approach!

Yes, battle 4 seems to want to rush you with the crumbling bridge. Those mages really hit hard, some of their magic take 20 off! Wow. It took me three tries to beat this one. Had to really think about each move to make sure I was not in a position to be slammed by multiple mages casting that one 20+ magic spell on anyone.

I see that sometimes when an objective states that certain people must not die, it means ALL of them. So, for example, 3 of the townspeople died in mission 3, but one survived and that seems to be enough. Are there any rewards for everyone staying alive or penalities if 3/4 die? (Using battle 3 as an example).

I see the text glitches you guys mentioned but the game works seamlessly otherwise.

Is it important to keep monsters leveled at the same pace as normal characters? Or better to focus on just leveling the main characters? It seems after each battle there are new ones (monsters) to pick from.


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Post subject: Re: PLEASE READ THIS SNIPPIT OF THE README BEFORE PLAYING!
PostPosted: Wed Apr 14, 2021 10:33 pm 
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DoubleDvideogames wrote:
Wildbill wrote:
DoubleDvideogames wrote:
Well, I am just two battles in, beaten the first two I mean, and I have to say I am pretty surprised at how hard the enemies hit. Like, doing 9-12 damage on allies who have maybe 25-35 HP! Not a game where you want to just rush in and be too aggressive, instead, I think it is going to be a game where moving as an entire unit, slowly, is the best bet.
Slow massed movement works sometimes, but you'll encounter scenes (chapters) that dictate a greater sense of urgency to position forward more quickly and efficiently. You'll see. As the game advances, you may find that using beast magic combinations in the most effective ways possible may be the only way to clear some scenarios. Some of us never quite mastered that latter approach!

Yes, battle 4 seems to want to rush you with the crumbling bridge. Those mages really hit hard, some of their magic take 20 off! Wow. It took me three tries to beat this one. Had to really think about each move to make sure I was not in a position to be slammed by multiple mages casting that one 20+ magic spell on anyone.

I see that sometimes when an objective states that certain people must not die, it means ALL of them. So, for example, 3 of the townspeople died in mission 3, but one survived and that seems to be enough. Are there any rewards for everyone staying alive or penalities if 3/4 die? (Using battle 3 as an example).

I see the text glitches you guys mentioned but the game works seamlessly otherwise.
No rewards or penalties related to quantities that I ever noticed. In the very first battle, I believe it's impossible to lose 0 merchants. They get that one guy trapped near that barrier in the middle right and end up pounding him from at least 3 sides, and he's toast! You can't get your guys there quickly enough, and the independent brother/GF team shoot off in whatever random direction.

Those glitches are due to a text expansion technique called dual-tile encoding. Somehow, in the alterations we coded into this game's patch, a tile will occasionally attempt to display more than one character, and we lack the assembly knowledge to re-map everything in new ways to avoid this (assuming enough space for extra text bytes was available in the ROM). Taskforce tried disabling DTE (then I would condense the story, if necessary), but the originally altered DTE routine was linked to other functions, and removing our DTE expansion code altogether would totally hose the game. (Taskforce can explain this better. (I'm just a simple county storyteller!)


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Post subject: Re: PLEASE READ THIS SNIPPIT OF THE README BEFORE PLAYING!
PostPosted: Thu Apr 15, 2021 2:23 am 
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Yeah, unfortunately, the DTE was impossible to completely eliminate because Bongo` programmed other routines around it and the inserter didn't play well without it either. Bongo` has also lost the files so rebuilding the inserter wasn't a possibility. I suspect the bug is caused by the vblank period of the SNES graphics chip if I had to hazard a guess as to why it occurs. I figure something in the SNES gets reset for a short period of time during vblank causing the SNES to pull the wrong graphics for the next 2 characters. Or possibly garble them.

Just for technical background. On old TV's the vblank happens when the laser beam goes from the bottom right side of the screen to the top left side of the screen. This moving of the laser seems instantaneous but takes a small amount of time (much less than a second). This might not sound like much time, but this is plenty of time for a game system like the SNES (and most all game systems) typically to do things in the background and you're supposed to check a register to make sure you're doing or not doing things when this occurs (depending on the situation). This is what I suspect is going on by the infrequency of what is happening but I could be totally wrong. For reference a TV also has a much shorter hblank period when the laser moves from the right side of the screen to the left to start the next line. You can also do things during this period but it is much shorter.


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Post subject: Re: PLEASE READ THIS SNIPPIT OF THE README BEFORE PLAYING!
PostPosted: Thu Apr 15, 2021 7:40 am 
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Thanks for the response guys!

Currently saved before the start of battle 5.

In your opinion, would you say it better to focus the majority of the leveling on the four main characters, or keep it relatively even between the 4 main characters and the many beasts you accumulate?


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