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WIP / Re: [WIP]FF7 Refined
« on: 2022-11-24 00:43:44 »
Yes, I've had to make many adjustments to boxes to ensure they fit with the new text. Thankfully, Makou Reactor makes this mostly easy by streamlining much of the process. There is an auto-resize button that will adjust boxes automatically to fit the new text, and will even account for character names if they are longer than the default. But there are a few text boxes that weren't properly formatted in the original translation which require me to go a step further and dig through all the scripted character events and make sure they are resized correctly. When I first started this project, I was not familiar with how to do that, so there are still some early segments of the game I will need to return to in order to really polish them up, but as it is now, they're still at least technically functional so it's a low priority thing for me right now.
As for how I selected where to start first, it just all around made sense to start with the beginning of the game and work my way forwards. That way I can easily create a save file from the beginning and test things out as I go. It also quickly became apparent to me that reading through lines of dialogue divorced from the actual context of the gameplay can be really difficult at times to understand what exactly a character is trying to convey. That's where it becomes doubly helpful to just jump back into a save file and run through the dialogue in context so I can get a better sense of how I should rephrase it if it needs reworking.
A great example of this actually is just the most recent thing I worked on; the climb through the plate ruins above Wall Market in order to reach the Shinra building. There's a section where Cloud explains the timing on when to jump onto a swinging wire in order to make it across, but the original wording of it was always kind of vague and confusing, so you could end up wasting a lot of time doing trial and error with the jump. So by playing through it again and getting a feel for it, I think I rephrased it in a way that should be a lot more clear to players on when exactly they should jump across.
At any rate, alpha version 0.4 is ready for download. This is just a small update I wanted to get out before the Shinra building, as I probably won't be releasing another update until I've reworked the entire building, and that could take some time. This update just cleans up the remainder of dialogue at Aeris' house before heading out to Wall Market and then climbing the ruins to reach the Shinra building.
As for how I selected where to start first, it just all around made sense to start with the beginning of the game and work my way forwards. That way I can easily create a save file from the beginning and test things out as I go. It also quickly became apparent to me that reading through lines of dialogue divorced from the actual context of the gameplay can be really difficult at times to understand what exactly a character is trying to convey. That's where it becomes doubly helpful to just jump back into a save file and run through the dialogue in context so I can get a better sense of how I should rephrase it if it needs reworking.
A great example of this actually is just the most recent thing I worked on; the climb through the plate ruins above Wall Market in order to reach the Shinra building. There's a section where Cloud explains the timing on when to jump onto a swinging wire in order to make it across, but the original wording of it was always kind of vague and confusing, so you could end up wasting a lot of time doing trial and error with the jump. So by playing through it again and getting a feel for it, I think I rephrased it in a way that should be a lot more clear to players on when exactly they should jump across.
At any rate, alpha version 0.4 is ready for download. This is just a small update I wanted to get out before the Shinra building, as I probably won't be releasing another update until I've reworked the entire building, and that could take some time. This update just cleans up the remainder of dialogue at Aeris' house before heading out to Wall Market and then climbing the ruins to reach the Shinra building.