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some love for Albert Odyssey

xhul - Jul 14, 2025

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		xhul		Jul 14, 2025
			Welcome =] Not sure if i'm the only one, but i really think Albert Odyssey deserves some improvement. Recently, i started investigating and though i'm pretty much learning SH-2 asm on the fly, i managed to spot some reference executable|non-executable data locations quite successfully. I'll list the stuff i'm currently working on, or that i'd like to see. Other observations|suggestions are very well welcome, especially coming from veterans who have spent a long time playing the original game. GRYZZ I believe a rework is needed here, for the best, i hope. So far, i successfully implemented MP consumption during battle, the idea being to get rid of unlimited spell usage. I have yet to decide if i give him fixed max MP, or make it level-dependent. In the end, his spells will be processed just like other characters, though i like the idea of keeping him silence-immune. Also, i unlocked the access to his spell menu, outside of battles. I'm not sure yet, but i'm highly considering removing his OP party-healing spell, and give a similar one to Kia instead... MP LEECH SYSTEM When it comes to attack-based characters, the observation is that there's no benefit in using damaging spells at all, since attacks will always do more damage. And just boosting spell damage would basically have the opposite consequence. Nothing revolutionary here, but i had the idea of having attacks build up MP, creating some kind of artificial spell cooldown in the process. In the end, those characters will still attack most of the time, but if the player really wants to maximise DPS, casting powerful spells occasionally will matter, resulting in a less dull gameplay. Though the hack was trickier to implement than i thought, my MP leech routine is working like a charm (in RAM at least, i have yet to actually inject the code, but i already identified a couple candidate files). For now, each successful attack automatically leeches lvl/10 (down-rounded) + 1 MP. Of course, to go along that new feature, i will also have to tune spell cost and damage, max MP per lvl, and MP recovery items. That's easy non-executable data editing for the most part, but keeping things balanced enough will be painful. LOADING TIMES I've identified a couple small routines that are called quite often, each time the game has to transfer chunks of data. The first one seems to basically be sending data to graphic chip(s), but i can't even consider any optimisation at all, my knowledge about communication rules being non-existent. The other one appears to be dedicated to moving stuff from low to high work RAM, and at first sight, it doesn't look optimised at all, like far from it. I'll try to hack it and see how far it reflects on loading times, especially regarding random encounters. MUSIC Something definitely has to be done about that highly anti-climatic music in the Fargasta tower. When i find the time, i'll see about using an existing darker theme instead.

		xhul		Jul 16, 2025
			xhul said: It appears both routines can potentially communicate with VDP or whatever. I tried improving the loops as much as possible, but it seems the original delays are pretty tight already (glitches with further optimisation). So, since i can't really touch the loops themselves, i'll try adding a check that detects if both source and destination are in high|low work RAM, and if yes, jump to a custom code. Unfortunately, the check itself will very likely slow down the display as a side-effect. My last option is adding multiple pre-call hacks, where that matters the most (transitions before and after battles at least, maybe more depending on how easy it is).

		TrevoStuden		Jul 17, 2025
			I loved that game, I'll admit the final dungeon is a helluva ride to get through.... I did finally breakdown and used gamefaqs. Because the elevators and floors, everything gets disorienting. And you are onto something with the magic, the game did start to feel a little too easy towards the end. Also the rate of random battles on the open map, I think could be toned down, but I have no idea how in the hell your going to solve that.

		Waffle_the_Great		Jul 17, 2025
			Albert Odyssey was indeed fun. The loading times though were absolutely horrific for the fights. It had some great music at times too. Loved the air castle theme.

		xhul		Jul 19, 2025
			Aight, i'm gonna be wise and stop my attempt at reducing loading times, at least i tried. Indeed, even optimising the lowest level CD data reading loop (from 7 to 5 cycles for each 32-bit chunk) produces insignificant results, somehow. Or maybe Mednafen is just unreliable when it comes to that, not sure. TrevoStuden said: I definitely want to address that, and i believe i have enough knowledge to do it, actually. It would make exploration less painful of course, but indirectly, loading times before|after battles as well. I've been thinking about increasing difficulty|experience|loot to compensate (even more than what WD did), but that sounds like a lot of work. Any different suggestions? Waffle_the_Great said: Couldn't agree more, absolutely one of the reasons the gameplay is worth taking a look at (if you ask me).

		TrevoStuden		Jul 19, 2025
			xhul said: good luck in your efforts and thanks for helping the saturn community!

		Colin DuBord		Jul 19, 2025
			xhul said: Good Luck man! Cant wait too play the final result!

		Ardiloso		Jul 20, 2025
			TrevoStuden said: Yup, final dungeon is shit. Back in the days I left my saturn powered on more than 24hs (all day playing, had to sleep and go to school) because I couldn't find the end and the save point was faaar behind and I knew I would never finish it if I had to restart. 10 years later on a replay, memory kicked in and I beat it in about 20 minutes but still a shit dungeon.

		xhul		Aug 2, 2025
			Some progress regarding random encounters =] From a reverse engineering point of view, altering the probability itself was too rough for my taste. So, i managed to code a hack that basically increments the used counter every 2 steps, instead of after each one (2 hacks actually, 1 for the world map, and 1 for everywhere else). That's pretty stable, and makes traveling less painful (which should reduce the horror of the last dungeon a bit in the process). I'll probably leave loot alone, but increasing experience|gold gain looks feasible without too much trouble. I'm not sure by how much yet, though (something between +50% and +100%, i guess). That was more challengy than expected, but i already found a way to identify if a battle is the result of a random encounter or not, i think. Indeed, we don't want that specific boost to affect boss battles.

		LTH		Aug 2, 2025
			Nice to see someone working on giving Albert Odyssey some love. Along with these QOL changes, a fully retranslated script and restoration of Japanese voices would be cool to see.

		xhul		Aug 2, 2025
			LTH said: I agree regarding the text, i'm definitely not a fan of excessive (and questionable) humour in RPGs, though it seems some players love what Working Designs did. The voices don't bother me that much, i find the narrator's performance in the intro pretty good, actually. Also, i haven't played the game enough, but i've read that actual voices are close to non-existent outside of the intro and game start.

		KoolFiller		Aug 2, 2025
			LTH said: I''ve actually already created patches to restore the Japanese sound effects in the last couple of weeks. I have one patch that restores all the Japanese SFX while keeping the existing English voices, and one patch that does the same but also undubs the English voice lines. I should be releasing the patches soon, but I have been a little short on time and wanted to test a bit more.

		LTH		Aug 2, 2025
			KoolFiller said: Epic, hopefully the opening cutscene can have subtitles added for the voice over narration if possible, for those that want the JP audio.

		Colin DuBord		Aug 2, 2025
			This is amazing! Just started the U.S. Verison. I’m going to wait till your version is ready now. Looking forward to it!

		xhul		Aug 3, 2025
			KoolFiller said: Awesome. I didn't know they changed the (non-voice) sound effects as well, i wish i had more time to check the differences. Out of curiosity, to which US version do your patches apply? 1.010 or 1.100?

		KoolFiller		Aug 5, 2025
			xhul said: I started with the earlier revision and then I remade it for the later revision. I know there is a typo in the earlier one, and there are apparently minor differences otherwise. There are almost 700 sound effects in the game, many were changed. Actually many in-battle voices were simply removed or replaced with generic animal noises, or grunts. For example, when Gryzz does his main attack, he says something that sounds like "Seeya!" Amon says something that sounds like "Eagle Dance" when he does the Eagle Dance special attack. Certain characters have Japanese voice samples for attacks, magic spells, deaths, etc. (which don't really NEED translation I think). Many other samples have changed, like laughs and stuff. As for voice lines in the English version... It's just the opening scenes, a short intermission narration, and the character Lulu has 2 small voice lines. By the way, I am really looking forward to seeing what you cook up when it's ready. Amazing work you're doing.

		KoolFiller		Aug 5, 2025
			Colin DuBord said: Almost ready. Will be on resources page when done testing. Had a neighborhood blackout while I was fighting Radoria last night, now I gotta get back to it lol.

		KoolFiller		Aug 5, 2025
			LTH said: I'd like to see that too. It will probably be more difficult than subtitling a video though, as the cut scenes seem to be rendered in-engine. I'm also hoping some are inspired to do a full retranslation, but that's outside of my realm for now. For now I'd recommend booting the English dub first to watch the cutscenes, also you can find the intermission narration transcribed on thecuttingroomfloor if you want to play the Japanese dub first and still understand what they are talking about. Personally I think I will favor the version that keeps the English lines but restores the rest of the Japanese SFX, but it's cool to me to hear how both versions sound.

		xhul		Aug 5, 2025
			KoolFiller said: Great that your stuff is compatible with the revision, cause it's also compatible with mine =] Regarding the changes they made, there seems to be more than what's been documented since, according to the file modification times, at least. KoolFiller said: Interesting, looking forward to experience the differences. Thanks a lot for the details. KoolFiller said: Changes to the battle system itself will only work as a whole, and though i've made decent progress patching|injecting executable code, editing|balancing non-executable data will take a while. That said, i plan to release the random encounter frequency change patch first =]

		xhul		Aug 9, 2025
			Just finished the coding of patch V1, the XP|gold buff was more challengy than expected. Now i have to convert from Ghidra language to hex, and test everything put together. I intend to use the 0608E81C>0608FFFF HWRAM region for extra executable|non-executable data. My last fear is that the game actually uses it, but everything indicates that it's not the case, so i have decent faith. If it's as safe to use as i think, injecting extra data will be as convenient as just putting it at the end of the file called "0" =]

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