| paleface [sys=NES; cat=Role_Playing; reg=NA] |
| | | There's what seems to be an effective flash-reduction patch for FF: https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/6691/
Tried this patch utility on a test ROM, with apparent success: https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/1040/
(The only other RPG flash-reduction patches I could find were one for Phantasy Star II (didn't try) https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/5535/ and several for FFIII https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/6869/ -- but the FFIII ones didn't stop enemy palette inversion when they attack, for instance.) |
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| | | | Oh wait actually I didn't use the patch utility for the FF one, I just put it in with the same base file name as the ROM and Mesen loaded it automatically. |
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| | | | Thanks to meauxdal for telling me about the flash reduction ROMhack https://selectbutton.net/t/games-you-played-today-vi-iii-in-the-west/13438/1752 , after I'd been kvetching about the recently released "Pixel Remaster" version not eliminating flashing FX (in fact it looks like it added more : P https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFwbxxywuZs). Hack by xenophile. |
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| | | | To avoid having two files knocking around--the ROM and the patch--I'm going to use the Floating IPS patcher (see entry 1581--it's the utility I linked above) to apply the patch permanently to the ROM once I've dumped it with the Sanni Cart Reader (see entry 1526) |
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| | | | Clean cart, can't get a clean dump. Finally had to order isopropyl alcohol and a game bit driver. |
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| | | | Isopropyl applied, still no dice, drat. Game bit works good though and I've found a beat-up (yet "tested and working") cart cheap on eBay, so if that one works I can swap the nice cart case from this one onto that one and it'll look nice buried in my cupboard. : D |
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| | | Second cart, went for a cheap one this time--beat-up exterior but claimed to be tested and working.
Didn't dump, opened it up, battery had leaked all over both sides of the board. = o
Dunked and scrubbed it with isopropyl and an unused toothbrush four times; got it reasonable-looking except for a few corroded traces. Still can't get a working ROM from it. At least it'll look nicer at its funeral.
Next try: going for a decent-looking one at regular price. Auction includes what could be said to be a FF1 screenshot on a monitor. = P Third time's the charm? |
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| | | Third cart--didn't read at first, kept cleaning the pins, reseating, retrying--finally it worked!
I think maybe some gunk got into the NES cart socket on my reader from previous carts I'd dumped without cleaning them; I'm going to keep the non-working first cart (tried cleaning and reading it lots more times, still no dice--gives same invalid CRC every time, whereas this third cart gave a DIFFERENT CRC every time, until it finally worked) as a cleaning cart for the socket, ie, put isopropyl on its pins, then seat it into the socket a few times, take it out, clean the pins, put more isopropyl on them, repeat until maybe not much black stuff comes off--it's particularly on the very end of the pins after I take the cart out of the reader. I wonder if it was that way from the very start with this reader? |
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| | | After playing around with various patch combinations using Floating IPS, this is what I'm gonna try--rather amazingly, they all SEEM to work together, even though Floating reports that the ROM seems scrambled after applying the "RNG - Improved" sub-patch. I've applied them in this order:
Final Fantasy Restored
https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/1631/
Battle Speed 8
New Music Off
RNG - Improved
-- Fixes various bugs in the original game, apparently! Also "enhances" lots of stuff, like text is now in mixed case, random stuff is actually random (that's optional, off by default), characters can now have 6 instead of just 4-letter names, and you can set your own battle speed default (8--all the way up, baby! = ooo). I maybe don't want a ton of changes but still, reading through the bug fix list ("Int" was never even used, for instance??), it seems like a good thing to have.
-- Oh, and it turns B into a Walk Faster button. : D
Final Fantasy Hasted - Basic
https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/7482/
-- Speeds up a lot of scene transitions, like stuff at the end of a fight, going into town, etc. I'm using just the "Basic" level because the regular one adds auto-retargeting if your character's original target in a battle round has already been killed--but that leads me to mashing attack on the first opponent, which gets real boring; seems to me that calling your targets specifically per character, and having to estimate how much damage you think you can do to them in that round, and if you'll take them out, etc, is really key to the tactical charm of the game's original battle system!
-- Start + Select in battle sets all characters to Run (flee).
Pitch Correction
https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/6189/
-- Apparently there are some out-of-key notes in the original sound and the theory is that a rounding algorithm or something may have been throwing things off.
Final Fantasy Flash Reduction
https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/6691/
-- Thanks to meauxdal on the selectbutton.net forum for pointing this out: it removes flashing FX from the game, like when triggering a random encounter, or using various spells (your characters still blink when hit, maybe someone will come up with something for that eventually ^ _^), and even removes screen shake, like when any of your characters takes a hit! This is what let me even consider playing FF again. : D |
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| | | Some of the stuff from the Restored and Hasted hacks was in the version of FF1 in Final Fantasy Origins on PS1--which according to the FF Wiki got a lot of its stuff from the earlier WonderSwan Color port. I know FF1 had a Run button in FFO. The Wiki says there was auto-retargeting, too--so since that must have been how I played through it before, now I'm wondering if I shouldn't use the standard version of Hasted that adds that. But just messing with patches this morning, I found the auto-retargeting really boring, so, I guess I'll try it without for now.
Restored adds a re-translation of the game text, which is one of the things I probably wouldn't have chosen to add if I could have done it a la carte; supposedly it's an improvement or something, but it's got an instance of glaringly awkward grammar in intro text that appears right after you power the game on, so that's not a great start. |
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| | | Ah! The Restored and Hasted patches have been superseded by finalfantasyrandomizer.com, which can apply their quality-of-life improvements without forcing other stuff like the re-translation or re-targeting on you; and it can configure a ton of other stuff, all the way up to randomized worlds, and different overarching quests.
Seems like the way to go. So for starters I'm using this, which does the stuff I wanted (speed-ups, bug fixes, etc), without the stuff I didn't want:
Pitch Correction
https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/6189/
Final Fantasy Flash Reduction
https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/6691/
Final Fantasy Randomizer
https://finalfantasyrandomizer.com
Improved Vanilla
(Randomizer cuts the random encounter start time which stops most of that flash, and it cuts out spell flash by default, but doesn't stop screen shake and probably some other stuff, so I kept the Flash Reduction patch in there.) |
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| | | | (Note to self: not for this game, or others I'm currently into, but here's a list of game randomizers: https://www.debigare.com/randomizers/ ) |
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I last (and probably first) played through this game in 2004, on PS1. I've never tried playing a Black Belt! I tried seeing if they could tough it out at the start with no armor and no weapon but uh no that didn't work. ^ _^
Game's tougher than I remember! Well, I probably don't remember much about difficulty, only that I enjoyed grinding giants or something for a long time, and my notes from the time say my playthrough was 40 hours. ; ) Anyway getting my BB killed on the way to the first castle, and then my Fighter killed one step away from backing out of the castle to pitch tent, those were kind of eye-openers! ^_ ^
And the first boss wasn't bad at all, but then two random(?) monsters after him were just crushing me! ; D
The princess' dress changes from purple to red (palette thing probably) and I thought she was her mom. : P (I skipped the "he kidnapped me" part of her text I guess. : P)
Hah I said Yamauchi at the end instead of Sakaguchi, sheesh. : P
Two women disappear after I talk to them in Coneria, the starting town, and it seems to be due to the FF1 Randomizer (@FinalFantasyRandomizer)--the "Improved Vanilla" preset, anyway; I tried patching the standard FF1 ROM with just that, and they still disappeared.
It's amazing how clear and jewel-like everything looks in this game. It just shines.
OH. The title screen doesn't come up until later. Ohhhh. But I want it now! ^ _^ |
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After the initial quest the game opens up--you finally get the title screen!--and lets you wander around most of the world's largest continent. It feels a little loosey-goosey but there isn't actually that much to access, so it doesn't take too long to explore--unless you miss something. ; )
WELL HECK I checked the manual and there's a gosh darned elf castle right smack in the middle of the elf town on the map that I didn't blunder into; my eyeballs had interpreted its squat castle as ruins! = P So that would be the next thing to do. Maybe they'll tell me about the hole!
Yeah I probably should'a got a dagger or whatever for the mage waaaaay back in Coneria; oh well, now he's got a big elf knife, woo!
I reached lvl 8 which some FAQ had said was about where the Black Belt starts doing better without having weapons & armour equipped, so I stripped off and that does seem to have helped, he maybe isn't getting quite as beat up as he was before and he's still doing good damage. : )
Just realized I've been progressively setting the sound level for games I've picked up recently lower and lower. Recorded some KOF '97:GM as reference audio (which used my MVS KOF 2000 for reference)--that's nice and beefy loud, and I'll try to set all the other games to being about that ear-tingling! |
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Started out with vsync off, that made vertical scrolling jerky though so turned vsync back on. |
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