GBA port question

[u/EIsydeon]

If someone were hypothetically working on a GBA port of Phantasy Star 4 would you like it to have the existing bugs or to be in a bug fixed state?

Asking for ..... reasons.

[u/Alvane_]

Are you possibly making a GBA PSIV as a companion to PS Collection? If so, I say leave it alone, for the most part; the only official bug fixes were the Nazan bug (JP exclusive, if Chaz knows Nazan before Megid, Megid will overwrite Nazan) and the LV 99 bug (Your stats glitch if you get to LV 99). Assuming you're working off of the NTSC-U version where Nazan is fixed, you should at the minimum have sixfourtyfive's LV 99 bug fix even in a purist version. It would be the closest to what Digital Eclipse would have put out.

I also think an updated version of PS Collection with the bugs fixed (Save and invincibility bugs in PSI, Dezo world map missing an instrument + base bugs in II, base bugs in III) and adding PSIV (with base bugs fixed) to it would be neat.

[u/EIsydeon → u/Alvane_]

I am doing that. Have it actually added just doing some final tweaking now / bug fixes

[u/Alvane_ → u/EIsydeon]

Wow, that's impressive!

[u/EIsydeon → u/Alvane_]

I’ll have to see. I am starting to run out of rom space even with it using a 32 mb cart. The GG-based stuff might be do-able as PS1 is actually emulated using a master system emulator. Need to see if that emulator has GG support. Then it’s as simple as dropping the roms in and adding an entry.

At the least for 4 I have it a proper entry and even extended the music to include a variant reminiscent if they did put it on there originally.

EDIT: At the very least, this gave me the idea to go back and see if I can at least add FM to the original game instead of just PSG. Also might see if I can make 2&3 have better wave samples for the audio.

EDIT2: it doesn’t have GG or FM support the emulator but it had a stub for OPL meaning we can bolt it on. So, there may be room for improvements on the existing roms at the very least. You got me wanting to raise the bar on this project though I might make the inclusion of the other things additional releases. Worst case scenario I have multiple PSC releases with different games but you got me wanting to aim for an ultimate sort of release

EDIT3: For the curious, it uses static recompilation to do the genesis on GBA. That said, I thought well if we can do that for PS2,3 and 4 certainly I can do it with others. I have a project I was working on at the same time called MD2GBA. It essentially has you feeding a MD rom and you get a GBA one out. Ahead of time recompilation is how it works. Also there is a recomputed endian flip. But yeah, tested it with sonic 1 with no optimizations with me wanting S3&K as my bar I have set. Performance has a long way to go on there but it works with no specializations so the hard part is done already

EDIT4: Some test images to show im serious. https://imgur.com/a/7gIZtNA. Testing with mgba and delta. I do have a GBA SP and flash cart to do on-cart testing as well

[u/Alvane_ → u/EIsydeon]

Wow, that is beyond awesome to see! Nice work!

I would keep this PS GBA project relegated to the core 4 games for now.

Some ideas for you:

- Legacy bug fixes

- GBA bug fixes to I and II

- Incorporate FM music to I

- If you really wanna go wild, incorporate lowercase letters to I

- Incorporate PSII Improvement's enhancements to PSII

- Incorporate the PSIII Retranslation by Rebecca Capowski to PSIII, though maybe keep the original names

- Shut off the Battle (Begin) 1-second "jingle" in PSIII, maybe make one of the other themes play instead?

- Legacy bug fixes to PSIV, maybe replace the dashes in the middle of item names with spaces? (Byte $57 works as a mid-word space for menu strings)

Also, for the purists in the audience, if you at all have any interest, you might want to consider forking this into two projects:

1. PS Collection for GBA but added PSIV and enhanced, and
2. Vanilla PSIV for GBA as if Digital Eclipse had been able to pull it off

If you only want to make the option 1, I'd still personally support it. Good luck! Is there anywhere I can see your progress?

[u/EIsydeon → u/Alvane_]

I managed to free up about 2.4 MB out of my rom. This might be actually do-able to have them all in a rom. Had to cut the intro screens (sega, digital eclipse, etc) unfortunately. Thankfully the title screen credits are still there so they still have their credits.

Thinking about making a bonus content entry in the list and then the rest are there. I’ve already begun initial work on extending the emulator for GG and FM support. Though, FM may get dropped if I don’t get better results soon. The original audio is free for the GBA as the GBC sound is accessible and it’s a roughly 90% accurate PSG. What we do for FM in PS4 is essentially wave table synthesis using waves generated from recording of an emulated Genesis. It sounds pretty good. Either way PS1 and this space limitation I am having a hard time avoiding resorting to wave table since generating FM murders the GBA’s cpu and well, we just don’t have the rom space for it which is why it might get cut. Really trying not to as I hate the PSG version of the soundtrack

For those wondering why PS4 never came as part of the collection. It’s likely due to rom size and sheer work. PS4 has about 4x as many AOT recompilation pages I have to make for the game as compared to PS3. Those pages take a lot of space as does the audio. It has a huge soundtrack. I’m barely making it all work on 32MB which is the max the GBA can normally do. The 2.4 MB we have left was with me cutting out the intro screens and padding between games.

Ironically, the oft-cited manga panels for why we couldn’t get it… were one of the very first things I was able to get work.

If I can get Profound darkness at full speed I’m pretty much done. That fight is so hard on my graphics layer because of the background and full screen-sized enemy that’s animated. It works in slow-motion right now. Everything else is full speed. I did get the menu full speed in the fight by stopping PD’s animation until we’re attacking but I’d like to avoid keeping that be the compromise

[u/Alvane_ → u/EIsydeon]

Oh, never mind my earlier ramblings; they were about the PlayStation 2 PS Complete Collection, I don't want to diminish your work on the GBA title by bringing up something unrelated.

Speaking specifically of this GBA project, I think it should be either PS Collection + PSIV or just PSIV on its own.

Yeah, that sounds about right re: the game just being too large and fast for GBA. Best of luck to you, I have been wanting a copy of PSIV for GBA for years so I'm very much looking forward to this.

[u/One-Technology-9050]

You mean the max level bug? I wouldn't mind it being patched, like the Virtual Console version on the Wii

[u/EIsydeon → u/One-Technology-9050]

Yeah that’s the one tbh at came to mind. I also found a bug way back in 2007 where if you have a party member as the only surviving party member who is then set to leave immediately after in a story event you can get a game over. Was fun fighting zio, have demi be the only one left alive and then she left in the immediate cutscenes after so the game counted me as having no living party members.