Found a general bug in glory of heracles 3
aqualung — Tue, 12/29/2009 - 07:47
Hello. I've found a bug that I think it has nothing to do with the translation, but with the game itself. There's a point in which the game crashes if the main hero's level is at 96 or above (I was playing using a PAR code that gave me 65535 exp point after each battle in order to level up quickly).
The place where the glitch occurs is
SPOILER WARNING, IT REVEALS A CRUCIAL PART OF THE PLOT
after freeing Prometheus on mount Olympus, when you have to teleport to Legasis to see a conversation between the kings of Athens and Trantia. They shake their hands and then there's a hearthquake and the party falls into a hole. Before the party starts falling, the game freezes with a black screen.
SPOILER END
I suspected that the glitch could be caused by some parameters in the party stats, like the exp. points or the level, because I tried the original unpatched game from the last normally saved (not savestate) place and the same thing happened. So using the search code function, I found the address where you can change the hero's level, and it's this one: 7E08505F (it was easy to find after searching the address where the character's current exp is located, because it gave me the clue about where to look, 7E08XX, so I didn't have to check all 430 possible addresses returned to me by the search code function for the value "99", hehe).
This code modifies the value in ram and change the level to 95 (5F in hex value). Then you can change it again if you want, although I don't know if there are some other places in which the glitch may occur again (I suppose I must be near the ending already).
By the way, I googled "7E0850" and found a japanese website with PAR codes for this game, where there's also a warning about the level glitch (thanks, google translator ;) ). The site's url, for those interested, is: http://homepage3.nifty.com/game-sfccode/hercules_no_eiko3.html
Last but not least: thank you very much to all the team for that excelent translation, I wanted to play the heracles saga for a long time.

I forgot
aqualung — Tue, 12/29/2009 - 09:16Sorry, I forgot to add I'm using zsnes 1.51
You aren't the only one who
DaMarsMan — Tue, 12/29/2009 - 12:41You aren't the only one who has had this problem. I figured it was something to do with the original game. I may look into it and make something that fixes it. Maybe I can find out why it's bugging out and include the fix in the next patch. Game freezing bugs are a big deal.
Potential GG code fix
ugetab — Tue, 12/29/2009 - 22:47I've already hacked quite a number of GG codes to be released at a later time. After adding a fix code for some level-up issues, I played through the entire game without serious incident at maximum level, among other code effects(mostly found some multi-line length strings that weren't cut into multiple lines. Likely part of the patch, but minor. Barely worth calling an irritant since the translation is good)
If the patch authors feel that such a code could be useful to the general populace, I'll release that one immediately for your testing and everyone else's use.
It prevents, at minimum, the level 99 issue for the first character join.
That could be useful. Does
DaMarsMan — Wed, 12/30/2009 - 17:39That could be useful. Does the hack use an assembly patch?
Sure. It's a GG code. All
ugetab — Wed, 12/30/2009 - 20:48Sure. It's a GG code. All Game Genie codes are assembly hacks.
It's just that it's temporary when used as a code, and screws with the default activity of the code if left on all the time. If you could point me to some dead space in the ROM, I could probably code a level 99 test into the routine, but this assumes that not only do you want cheaters not to suffer, but it also relies on fixing anti-cheating measures that were likely setup that way on purpose.
It's not exactly a simple fix to rewrite the routine, but with favorable info, I could probably put it together pretty quickly.
A rough estimate puts the ASM fix size at less than 16 bytes of code with hard-coded 4-byte jumps and some code optimization. Not going to bugger with any programming in case this is another flash in the pan submission.
It wont matter how large it
DaMarsMan — Thu, 12/31/2009 - 06:40It wont matter how large it is. I have unlimited space for my assembly.