Estpolis Denki II NTSC-JAP Prototype

It's awesome to see this up and running again, all thanks to you guys for your work on this. :tranquillity:

I never did get a chance to play Lufia II, but I loved the first one.

 

Pictures during the dump:















@Sinrevi:

Waiting your comparaison pictures
We have a lot of pictures of th games now.
Thanks

 

Can you do this?

Battle controls:
Hold Select then press R to enter Debug Battle mode (a sound effect confirms success) (without sound it may be hard to tell)

Debug Battle controls:
Press A or B to cycle through backgrounds
Press X or Y to cycle through monsters

In battle? So we can have every sprite in game and we can compare?

Be note first debug mode need be turned on first
--

Also do you know how to record footage with fraps or something? I would love to see some movement footage..

 

I wasn't home so I couldn't make any =P

I think I've had a battle like that, but it was in the Japanese version in the Treasure sword shrine.

An idea to "cheat" Tia into your party.
(This is assuming that they already worked on Gift mode)

Turn EV Flag 196 on, this will make party members appear in the Gruberik bar, like in Gift mode. Choose Tia and leave the bar and go back to were you're supposed to go.
Actually I suggest first getting rid of Guy, so your team is in the right order. To do so, first take any person from the bar, then talk to the man to remove all your partymembers, then take Tia and Guy back.

Some other things that might be interesting:
(more codes from the final version)
7E05AEEC This will teleport you to the mystic stones room. Perhaps you can already trigger the ending? or you could check if there's anything behind third door that never opens.


This door I mean

7E05AEE7 This will teleport you to the first floor of the Fortress of Doom
I suggest walking into the door of Gruberik's bar or the door of Tia's shop for "activating" the teleporting.

 

Doesn't it require 12V on a particular pin to manage to program bits?

 

Yes, but some of the other commands use VIH (12v) too.

If it was known what he read them as, you could probably figure out when it would have been in write mode and what address lines were active - by comparing the pinouts. The combination probably didnt happen often and like why its not very damaged.

 

I will try next days.
I will use snes9x to record movie in .avi and put them in youtube.

@Sinrevi:

When you will come back to home my friend?
When I will turn flag ON, i push what button?

thanks

 

Well this is looking good especially considering what has happened. This is just speculation but do you think it's possible that damage has been caused to this cart more than once, before Jack Head had it?

Can you check to see what the build date is? Comparing the date to the final build might give us a good idea on what stage of development the game is at. If it's quite close to final it's possible there's more damage somewhere.

 

Maybe some magazine reviewer had it at some point and tried to make a dump of it, but then KABOOM and it was damaged? =P JK

I meant I wasn't home when you posted all the screenshots =P

Some quick gif images before I go to bed:


Guy's victory dance, animated

 

Those gifs make it hard to tell which is the proto and which is the final, for someone who hasn't played the game much...

 

Then why would you really care that much? Just curious, & either way, just look through the pages of this thread, and you will see side by side comparisons. Look at certain details, then look at the gifs again.

I think they are great though! Nice image comparisons, SinRevi!

Glad to see this progressing so quickly.

 

Tia:

I don't see any party members why?





Mystic stones room and first floor of the Fortress of Doom:







I don't see your picture in game why?

nb: I have put 3 codes in same time:

7E057CFF
8380C7D4
7E05AEEC or 7E05AEE7




Videos:

- Estopolis Denki II prototype Intro (first part)

http://youtu.be/FSet8Ddd_rE

- Estopolis Denki II prototype Intro (second part)

http://youtu.be/PMjFb97do-E

- Start a New Game (1)

http://youtu.be/gpnVfpJkAsY

 

It's possible the cart suffered some bitrot from being as old as it is. The crash in Lake Cave could be a corrupt byte(s), or an event that the programmers didn't finish yet.

trevormacro posted a screenshot of the main debug screen earlier in the thread. It just has a bunch of hex values instead of listing the build date like the final version does.

 

@JLukas:

I replay a new game with Snes9x 1.51 to make my videos and I got this error:

stderr.txt (file created by snes9x)

Sound CPU executing STOP at F5E4

 

Hmm F5E4... I think that screenshot will be helpful. Do you get that same text error message when the music is supposed to start when the intro beings to play? If yes, what is the hex code?

 

No I don't have any/the same message in the intro.

Snes9x debug:



With APU too:

View attachment apu.rar

 

I don't know if these are correct or not in the prototype, but here's how you add another party member in the final. It may or may not work for the prototype, so be aware of that.

This is just for Maxim and Tia in your party.

Codes:
7E0A7A02 - This will trigger the game into saying you have 2 party members.
7E0A7C04 - This will put Tia in your party
7E0A82A5 \ These two will point PC 2's stats to be Tia's
7E0A830E /

Hopefully this will help with that issue.

 

Tested but not work.

 

Shoot, then the values are different as I feared. Can't do much else without viewing the RAM Map of it all.

 

And I suppose if you knew that you could figure out the locations that may have been damaged and maybe by looking at the retail release patch it up a bit.