King's Field 1 remake available in english

[dmpdesign]

Back near the end of last year when I finished up DD I had wanted to do this project but held off because John had told me he was nearing completion of it himself and would be including it with his SOM patch he was working on.

Well unfortunately I have not heard from John for quite some time, so I decided to translate it myself.

Thankfully John's translation of the PS1 game was pretty much everything I needed to get the SOM version into english, so with some help from HolyDiver's gettext program, I decided to go ahead and get it done.

The current release is totally stand alone and supports only english as the translation was done internally to the files within the game...however I am working with HolyDiver to create a text dump of the game so that it can be packed together with SOMex and then easily translated into any other language quickly and simply drop the translation text dump into the games files.

KF1 is a relatively simple game, and ideal to use as a starting point for internationalizing SOM made games.  If we can find a non-english fanbase for the games we are creating, the gettext program and site that Holy is going to manage should make it a relatively easy thing to do in the future.

Hopefully the voice overs for the opening/ending movie aren't too lame :P
Go to the main site for the download link.

[Holy_Diver]

A big thanks to John Osborne for translating the game originally, without which I would not have been able to complete this translation.  Also a big thanks to Mick ******* who developed the text dump tool that saved me countless hours during the process.

Soon there will be a fully functional "EX" version available using Mick's new SOMex tool that will allow for quick, complete translations to a variety of languages all in one download.

First off it's Ex and SomEx. I expect this changed immediately or you will hear from my lawyer. Also people don't have permission to refer to me by name on formal webpages. You can call me Holy or Holy Diver. But I want ******* off there before Google sees it / people start Googling my name

I expect this changed immediately or you will hear from my lawyer

This caused a big tissy because Todd literally thought I have a lawyer from which he was about to hear. I apologize for my dry deferential humor and the overreaction it caused as usual. I really should get a lobotomy or something so these things don't happen.

Long story short I realized I could edit the page myself. Todd afaik is still incredibly offended by this infraction and possibly all the other ills I've wrought upon this world.

PS: I would've said please or gone the PM route but I think I'm, rightly so, offended when people fail to spell my projects names correctly for the umpteenth time

[dmpdesign]

Removed info about you and SomEx from the page.

[dmpdesign]

Hold off on downloading it...I found some bugs in the original game last night during a final playthrough (enemies that are stuck in walls, items that don't work right...it really is lame how bad a job From did with this game).

I updated the files fixing a lot of bugs (even one that froze the game) and uploaded it late last night, but the upload must have tanked part way through because the file is incomplete.  When I get home I will re-upload it, expect it to be available probably around 8:00pm eastern tonight.

[Holy_Diver]

If I may speak... were these bugs in the original game? Also I wonder how many people we know have actually played thru the remake. I kinda wonder how it could possibly be challenging if the Golem monsters on the second floor are the same as the ones on the next to last map.

[dmpdesign]

The bugs were in the original game for sure...its obvious From Software didnt put a ton of effort into this remake...but the bugs are mostly fixable using workarounds.  There are many things that are not fixable that I dont consider bugs, but shortcomings in SOM itself that From never bothered to address...such as not switching to the shop music when you enter a shop like KF1 did (you can do it but once the song plays through it won't auto loop in SOM), the Moonlight and Triple Fang sword do not restore HP and MP over time since SOM can't activate both affects in the item editor, there is no title screen music eventhough the music track is included...that sort of thing.  They dont break the game but I would have liked to be able to fix them.

The bugs I fixed were enemies that got stuck in walls and got the game to crash (From was too lazy to place "set zones" for the enemies to keep them from wandering through walls that allow them to fall through the floor and crash the game.), I fixed the stone masks which were firing their projectiles into the walls instead of at the player, I fixed a bug where the moonstone was not a consumable item and didnt restore magic, I fixed some issues with some events that were improperly written that caused certain things to dissappear when they shouldn't have, and I also had to make some of the rare drops (like the dungeon key which is necessary to finish the game) a crucial item so they didnt disappear if you didnt notice it and pick it up when you kill the monster that holds it.

Overall, the PS1 version of this game is far superior...it really makes me sad to know that SOM couldnt even build KF1 properly.

As for enemies increasing strength, they did put multiple versions of the same enemy in the different areas so their stats are increased in the lower levels, though in my opinion not nearly enough (nor were they in the original game).  All in all I give the game a 8.5/10 for mirroring the original, but there are some features, such as the fact that pitfalls that block special items that in the original game required the feather boots can be walked around in SOM rather easily, that drop its score a bit.

[Holy_Diver]

I knew just from looking thru the maps in the editor there were many aspects that were disregarded, which is why I've always thought the remake should be improved upon by people who care. It sounds like you've already started doing that, however I feel like there should be a distinct branch where improvements are concerned.

Did you make a separate download available for the movie you overdubbed? It would be nice if you could make all the changes available as a patch so people who already have the game in one form or another need not download everything again.

I thought I'd payed close attention to the monsters in the parameter editor. I do not recall seeing any duplicates. I did notice however in the enemy.prm file almost all of the slots were loaded with stats that got stronger and stronger as if generated by some automatic procedure, but ultimately those record appeared to have been disabled by overwriting the lead bytes with FFFFFF. I had to change the logic of some programs to only regard a record by those bytes rather than the strict deletion footprint left by a patched parameter editor.


EDITED: I suppose I do see the duplicates now. I'm not sure where I got that idea unless the original file is different from the one in the KF/SOM/SAMPLE folder.


PS: There are invisible floors in the places where you could've used the Feather Boots (no longer required)

[Madison Lastrega]

I think we all agree, SoM was a rushed project, and once the PS2 was released they just didn't support ANY PC games during that time..So it is what it is...I have TONS of cool ideas some work, some don't,,, the customs I do make work are sweet like ambiant sounds......... Huge maps pieces that cover five squares..... smoke effects (NEW) magic swapping ect........There are not what we want , but are great leaps.... I think that one day for shits and giggles we should ALL Team up in spare time only, work on an open source remake on KF1 that adress some fixes that the rushed programmers forgot...........I do have one idea for music in shops........ create a custom MIDI of the shop music that loops it's self in to a 30 minute File...Use MIDI because the file size will still be small......If any one wants to chill there for 30 minutes then they deserve the music to stop...... see we all can add little ideas that could raise your rating just a smidge.............:).....................ML

[Holy_Diver]

Som only understand wav at the minute, which is completely uncompressed audio unfortunately. You can lower the sampling rate I think, but that's about it if even. From what Todd has told me before there may be a bug in the change BGM event that forgets to set the new BGM Direct Sound Sample Buffer to play in looping mode. If that's true it should be a high priority bug fix. However if you use timers you should be able to get the job done if you have to (though for shopping BGM you don't have access to the timers I guess)

Also another weird thing is sound effects keep playing when you open the menu and then are done when you exit the menu. I faithfully cut the music when Ex pauses so I can probably fix this easily when the time is right. KF2 purists can argue whether this is a feature or not because that game has the same bug.

I plan to do some work in the group collaboration dept at any time. Just doesn't seem to be a lot of demand for that. I suppose I could start by just getting a KF1 Subversion repository up. Eventually I want to make a thin wrapper called Somversion that helps to insure interrelated files are always checked out / back in together (never let a clever name go to waste)

[Holy_Diver]

^That gives me an idea... I think actually the first crack I'll take at the editors will be to integrate Somversion so whenever you open a file it gets checked out off the network and whenever you're done it gets checked back in. And if someone is working on it atm you get an message that says who is working on it / work offline? / try again.

EDITED: That more than 1024 piece per map trick everyone seems to want could be added to the same project.