Doshin the Giant 1

[whyat]

I know this may be a bit of a necro bump,  but I need a bit of clarification. Does the debug code work on a commercial n64dd doshin disk with a commercial N64dd? I'm trying to figure out if it is something in the normal game that is accessible or only accessible through a patched rom written to a blue 64dd dev disk.

[ozidual]

The code in this post:

https://krikzz.com/forum/index.php?topic=5882.msg48411#msg48411

* DO NOT turn on TYCONF.SU option 15. Debug

The code can be entered with just a controller - no need for a hacked ROM.  It should work on a 64DD, but I cannot test it since I do not own a 64DD.  It works on a Disk ROM in MAME and PJ64.  It works on the Cart Hack on the ED64 (v2.5 and v3.0). 

Read that post fully though.  There is one setting (I also listed above) you can set in the Debug Menu that crashes things.  In PJ64 and MAME, it just freezes the game.  On the ED64, it messes up the SD card.  You have to fully reformat it to get it working again.  I worry a little about what it might do on the original hardware (possibly overwrites part of the original ROM on the disk). 

Also note that you have to erase your save game to access the menu.  It only works on a fresh game.  It will stick with that fresh game though, so your saves will all be affected by the changes you make until you erase your save game again. 

There are some neat settings in there like a grid that overlays the land and spheres that will surround anything you can interact with.   It is fun to play with.  I still don't know what the majority of settings do since they aren't obvious, so if you find anything out, please post it here.  I'd love to know.


EDIT: An update on this project.  The translation is still in process.  There are some hacks left to do like adding subtitles to the spoken parts, increasing the characters per line to more than I think 20, and possibly add in lower case letters to the Night text.  None of these hacks are necessary.  If someone else takes over and finishes my translation hack with text, it'll still look decent.  Personally, I plan to do the final hacks when I have a translation.  It'll just be easier to do.  In the meantime I'm keeping busy with other translation hacks

[whyat]

^^ thank you.

[ozidual]

No translation yet but... I fixed the cart hack problem!  Download the fix here!

In the past I called it the Ground Hog Day problem or something like that.  Basically the game only worked for a few days.  After that point, you'd finish a day, start a new day, and you'd begin at the beginning of the day you just finished.  There was also no morning text.

When you start a new day in Doshin, it pulls the current time, and sets an end time since each day lasts the same amount of time.  When a day finishes, it pulls the time again.  If the current time is less than or equal to that end time sometimes it saves, but at some point it doesn't anymore.  To create the Cart Hacks, Zoinkity had to remove the RTC code since it was 64DD specific.  Instead he hard coded the creation date for the game.  I spent a few weeks trying to restore RTC for Doshin with no luck.  I can get it, but then the controller doesn't work (they're tied together).  Instead, I hard coded the game so that every time it pulls the time, it actually pulls the end time, and adds about a day's (in game) worth of time to it.  So the current time pulled at the end of a day is always greater than the end time.

This means that you can now save your game mid-day (pause menu - choice 3).  You can play each day all the way through, and know for sure that the next day will start properly.  When you start that new day, you will get morning dialogue for 1 day as well. 

While digging through the time code, I found something else.  On a gamefaq out there, it mentions that if you start a day on January 1st, you'll get a surprise at the end of the day.  It is really just a single texture change, so not too exciting.  I did however find out that there are other similar single texture changes for: 2/14, 4/7, 7/4, 10/1, 10/15, and 12/24.  This may not possible in the cart hack since it is set for 11/5/1999.  I guess if you played enough days you'd get to 12/24 and 1/1.  Maybe?

Oh, one last thing.  I have confirmed from a couple of sources that turning on "option 15. Debug" in the debug menu does not crash an actual 64DD.  In fact, it works great, and you can even adjust Doshin's size by pressing left/right on the Dpad.

[Kerr Avon]

Ozidual, is it possible to play the current Doshin the Giant 1 translation on an Everdrive 64? Apologies if I'm doing something wrong (I probably am...), but I can't find the translation for use on the ED64.

[ozidual]

There will be, but no translation yet.

What I have released:
  - Patch for Cart Hack (otherwise the game stops working right after an in-game day or two)
  - Debug Menu controller code (one option does not work on ED64 v2-2.5)
  - Disk hack that has almost everything but the translation (not meant to work since it is still in Japanese).  This is more of a proof of translateability.

The translation is currently in limbo.  Last I heard, it had progressed far, but real life hit the translator hard so it's on his "to do someday" list now.  I'm not pushy since I have more than enough projects to work on

EDIT: Is there interest in just a menu translation?  Main menu and pause menu?  I could probably throw that together in relatively short order.

[ozidual]

To play the game my first time through, I translated a bunch of it myself using machine translations and the GameCube version.  The menus were mostly from the GameCube version so I just ported them over to my cart hack fix.  The fonts in the textures may or may not have matched each other since I was testing fonts too.

Anyway, I added a patch to the main post with the Main Menu and the Pause Menu translated.  It's not much, and it's possible that it will change in the final translation, but there you go.  I do not plan to translate any of the gameplay or release any of my personal translation work for Doshin.  Too much of it was machine translated, and Doshin deserves better than that.  I might release a few more menu translations, but that's about it.  We'll see.

I still fully expect to release a full translation of Doshin some day.

[Kerr Avon]

Ok mate, thanks.

[ozidual]

I updated the patches in the links on the main post to apply to the latest ROMs available on LuigiBlood's site. 

[grifaz]

Thanks so much for all of your work, ozidual.
Just a shy question as I think this is right now the only messaging board on the world wide web that's still active on this matter, is there still some work being done on this translation?
I'd like to forward a donation to you if funds are needed for the project.
Let me know if there is anything at all - apart from coding itself, I'm an absolute noob in that regard - that can be done to support you in this endeavour.

[ozidual]

Thanks so much for all of your work, ozidual.
Just a shy question as I think this is right now the only messaging board on the world wide web that's still active on this matter, is there still some work being done on this translation?

I love questions!  I believe this project is dead in the water right now.  Way back in the day the translator needed a break.  I kept up with him from time to time, but I haven't heard from him in a couple years now.  I don't have any of the translated text so we're at step 1 on the translation portion.  I'd love to get back to working on Doshin 1!  I would probably need to update some stuff since this was my first translation project ever, but it's ready for text right now.  I've even made some notes on Doshin 2 and purchased a copy in the hopes that someday I could make it so both are translated and playable together.

I'd like to forward a donation to you if funds are needed for the project.

Thanks grifaz! But all of my work in these forums is done free of charge.  I don't accept money for work unless it's from the owners of the game.

Let me know if there is anything at all - apart from coding itself, I'm an absolute noob in that regard - that can be done to support you in this endeavour.

If you have any experience translating or know someone who would be interested in translating Doshin (not Google translate), I would brush off my notes and get right back into it!

Aside: The same goes for Sim City 64 just to get the word out there.

EDIT: Shiren 2 is still my priority now.  I just want to put that out there, but it is good sometimes to have a couple of projects going at once.

[grifaz]

Thank you ozidual, you're a legend. I am unfortunately not far enough advanced in Japanese, I taught myself some 800 characters to read years ago but never put the knowledge to practical use. Shoot me a PM if any other work comes up in the future.

[VideogameScrapbook]

Here's the Doshin the Giant GameCube English manual with the pages split to be in order. You can find it through my Google Drive shared folder under Manuals > Nintendo GameCube:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1wiwd-v34ImTVyV_LTN8O8Hx3pTlZCqUz?usp=sharing

You can either use a CBZ reader program, or you can unzip the CBZ file to see the separate JPG files.

To create this, I used NConvert to losslessly split the earlier shared scanned JPEGs into two separate files, renamed the files based on page number, zipped the edited files, and renamed the file extension to cbz.

[ozidual]

Here's the Doshin the Giant GameCube English manual with the pages split to be in order.

Nice work!  They look so much better split up like that   Thank you!