Topic: Partial (yet extensive) rewrite of the PlayStation port

[Grimoire LD]

Wow... I don't know what to say...? Why would Square opt to change such small insignificant numbers? It's not like a 100HP or +4 attack power will make the game any more or less difficult.

[Gemini]

It took me a while to find some of the info in the GBA code, and some bits are still unknown, like the actual frame count for each sprite entry. If I can reorganize this better, along with town tile sets, most of the visuals in the game should one-up in a single blow. Too bad I have no freaking idea how tile sets are loaded on the GBA; needs more debugging.

 
Now working on a new rendering procedure for the field module:

This is from Baron town's map. The drawing info about NPC seems to be stored at 7E:0900 and it follows this structure:

Code: [Select]

typedef struct tagNpcRender
{
u8 unk00;
u8 id; // ? 0x20=continuos frame h-flip
u8 movement; // 00=no movement
u8 x_pos, x_tile;
u8 y_pos, y_tile;
u8 unk01[4];
u8 unk02; // doesn't do a thing
u8 move; //
u8 palette:4;
u8 flip:4; // OAM flip flags
u8 frame; // seems like a frame counter
} NPC_RENDER; // located at 0x900 in ramI still need to identify most of this mess and also locate x/y screen coordinates, plus the actual map data in RAM. With these tasks out of the work table, I can pretty much ditch the SNES interpreter and render everything natively with improved graphics and performance.

[Gedankenschild]

Oh wow, it's really amazing how deep you're going here! Especially since PSX hacks seem to be such a rare thing anyway. [...] OK, so I just had to double check - I think you were indeed involved in every single one I was aware of! 
It's been some time since I played the PSX version, but it did have the occasional slowdown, didn't it? I don't even remember it much, beeing disappointed with the porting quality I barely touched it... 

Since Grimoire LD mentioned the choice of Portraits I'd like to insert something here:
Couldn't help myself and searched for some more info on the mobile version. Now I realise that version has different Portraits as well. It looks like they touched up the GBA version's - it's hard to tell because of the poor quality but there's certainly something going on:



Rosa GBA looks sort of disfigured in comparison, doesn't she?! And Rydia should have left the place where time flows differently a little earlier, hmm...

[Grimoire LD]

Bah, they would... admittedly though the phone ones look much better. I hate a lot of the portraits for GBA. There was something endearing about that look of fiery determination on SNES Cecil's portrait that they just tried too hard on in the GBA port. His Mobile version is better, but that one looks a little too Asian.  Rydia's GBA original portrait is Abysmal. That look of caution in her original portrait is absent and as you mentioned, looked like she's in her 30's. Rather than late teen-early 20's which is fixed in her other portrait, but she looks a little young there, but it is better at least.

Eh, I always thought their Edge was fine.

Rosa looks a Lot better than her GBA abomination, softer features, but something still looks off though.  I don't like either of these Kain's though. They both pale in comparison the the SNES's darker take on Kain's portait.

[LordGarmonde]

Agreed about Kain   

[chillyfeez]

Rosa looks a Lot better than her GBA abomination, softer features, but something still looks off though. 

It's that collar...
She looks like she stole her cloak from a large-bodied pimp.

[Dragonsbrethren]

Personally, I'd see about getting an artist to touch up the original SNES portraits with more color. Maybe it's just nostalgia, but those were easily the best.

[JCE3000GT]

Personally, I'd see about getting an artist to touch up the original SNES portraits with more color. Maybe it's just nostalgia, but those were easily the best.

^ What he said. 

[Gedankenschild]

The originals are pretty good for 7 colors, no doubt. The original twins are my favorites - original Palom is the most mischievous of all. I felt they looked a little babyish in the GBA version as well...
The people who touched up the monsters should have done the profiles as well! But since that isn't gonna happen anymore I tend towards the mobile version as my new favorites, at least from what I've seen. (It should be said that this is a total daydream, Japanese fans obviously can't be bothered to preserve their stuff...) 

And it's true, Rosa really doesn't have that collar anywhere in the artwork... 

[Dragonsbrethren]

Actually, the WSC version and early shots of the GBA version did touch up the originals, but unfortunately also had to cut them down in size to fit the low screen resolutions.

[Grimoire LD]

I cannot agree with these sentiments more...

From Best to Worst...

SNES - PSP - DS - Mobile Phone - GBA

SNES retouched FFIV portraits would be fantastic.

As you mentioned nothing shows Porom's proper innocence and Palom's mischief in his eyes. To be fair though, no version has screwed up Dark Knight Cecil. It's kind of difficult to screw up a menacing armored face though.

@Dragonsbrethren, they did? Are there pictures of these nicer looking portraits?

[Gedankenschild]

Oh yes, I think I remember early GBA screenshots where they used the WSC portraits, right.

JCE3000GT has some menu screenshots at his site:

http://www.jce3000gt.com/ff4wsc_et.php

They use more colors it seems but it really doesn't jump at you. They did a better job at downsizing while still improving monsters IMHO.

And not just Porom's innocence, but that wiser than her years thing!
Just one clarification: When I talk about what my favorite portraits are, I mean for this hack. There is some very nice artistic stuff in the later ones, but stylistically the mobile ones SEEM to be the best fit for this hack to me. (And I like Rosa's quite a bit - just like a princess) 

[Grimoire LD]

That is another good find. You're right they did touch them up a bit, a shame they couldn't do more though.

[Gemini]

As long as they don't break the menu layout, any mugshot should really work, even the original stuff Amano created.

Meanwhile, in the land of dragon-clones:

Cains, Cains everywhere! Slowly grabbings bits of information from the original rendering routines. I still need to figure out how the NPC status structure works exactly, but so far the result isn't too bad.

[Deathlike2]

Rosa GBA looks sort of disfigured in comparison, doesn't she?! And Rydia should have left the place where time flows differently a little earlier, hmm...

Rosa looks like she needs a nosejob. Rydia got too serious.

Hey Gemini... what happened to the FF4 SNES/SFC revised/upgraded graphics that was supposed to be the GBA port's equivalent (the menus, backgrounds, etc.)? I haven't actually been keeping track of that.