Comprehensive Changes from Japanese to English .hack//Infection

[Xu Yuan]

Well, I managed to get a hold of the Japanese //Infection so I decided to crack open the files to take a look at what is there and more importantly, what is missing... interestingly enough a lot of things are missing in the Japanese //Infection that is complete by the time of English //Infection. A lot of character portraits were changed, some were literally rough sketches in the Japanese versions and the Japanese versions don't have Wallpapers past the normal ones, (well they technically do with a crudely drawn number of the wallpaper it is meant to be in the corner). Many weapon designs past //Infection are absent, with just the placeholder basic model in their stead. So it looks as if they were still building the games at the time of Japanese //Infection. There is one more interesting aspect however... Terajima Ryoko may look quite different in //Infection judging by her textures compared to the rest of the games, that will be an interesting comparison for certain.





(They likely weren't sure what they wanted to do with Marlo yet as the two states of his design would show)








In the end they wanted to make everything orderly so all PC's look forwards in their portraits, rather than to the side or what have you. That said I think I like this original portrait for Sanjuro better than the used one.



Here are Terajima Ryoko's textures between versions...

(Normal Infection)


(Japanese Infection)


In addition, though the //SIGN NPC's are fully present in the English //Infection they are missing completely from the Japanese version. Bizarrely enough Sieg's character is also missing, despite him appearing in an early scene in //Infection. I'll have to pay attention to see what model is used then.

Seemingly, some file of Skeith's called "Ske_Skl" (Skeith Skill?) is missing from the original //Infection. I imagine this would be Judgement, but how odd that it wouldn't be in Japanese //Infection. Fidchell is also missing several files related to his prophecy and his skills, this follows with the rest of the phases.

Now here's an interesting change! It would seem the design for Macha wasn't yet finalized. Several design portions are missing and the face is remarkably featureless.

Now in the files themselves, the special events of the original //Infection have several discrepancies in later volumes. My bet is that they may have never planned to add //SIGN characters into the game at any capacity, as those are the likely excluded events that would be included already in the English //Infection, and owing to there being no NPC's of them in the first place, or their weapons.

idolItemList does appear to be in place, but there is no IdolSubitemList at All in Japanese //Infection.

Now in the actual game itself...

There is no thread about version changes, because there haven't been any. The World's version is only 2.01 (thanks to Kuukai for pointing that out).

Orca has a different avatar picture. Oddly enough dungeons nor fields have "Area Info" that must have been added later.

Treasures were more randomized, for instance the first two chests you open the tutorial ordinarily have two spell scrolls. In this version I got a Resurrect and a Burning Oil, the latter cannot be obtained in chests.

Second time around I got a Restorative from both chests. Third time around I got another Restorative but I got a Fortune Wire from the Fortune Wire chest...

This becomes alarmingly clear why that is when I take a closer look at the files. There is no SukaItemBoxList (Fortune Wires for when you trip a Trapped Chest) nor a DangerItemBoxList (A list of items that can be obtained from Trapped Chests) (There is also a separate lists for Jars and such, but I can't find the file to it). There is only areaItemList and IdolItemList and all treasure chests link to areaItemList. That explains that part at least.

Boy, does it feel strange to open a Gott Statue and get a single item...

There is bizarrely no "NEW!" mail sign on mail when you get... new mail. Hah.

When you go to talk to NPC's while running for some reason Kite will assume a fighting pose.

Wow! Yikes! I had no idea they put So Much effort into the localization (or at least future volumes) though not noticeable in gameplay the Event System was reworked from the ground up. Event command numbers don't correlate between the two versions at all and there are some unusual event commands that I simply can't place in Japanese //Infection.

Seems like Sieg uses the generic Blademaster with helmet on model, it is likely that they redid his design when they wanted him to show up in the final battle and knew that //ZERO by this point had given him a definitive design so kudos to the localization team putting in that little extra effort!

But that's enough for me now, I'll post more changes as they come.

[Lindz]

Ohhh I wonder what the original character portraits are like! Ryoko to!

If there are no wallpaper beyond the basic ones that really cripples the Ryu Book unlockables. Just music and cutscenes huh? With one less category for unlockables I'd guess the requirements for getting the remaining stuff goes up?

Kite being in his fighting stance just talking to PCs in town is pretty funny! I guess there was no differentiation between targetting breakables/chest/monsters and other players yet?

[Xu Yuan]

Post updated now with pictures!

Ah, by wallpaper I meant those you can obtain in //Infection, I should have been clearer.

I imagine it is that exact reason you list, but it only happens if you run up to the target and interact, if you're walking or standing still you'll be... well standing still.

[Xu Yuan]

And it took a bit of doing (took a while to find event coordinates in the Japanese version) but I managed to hack Terajima Ryoko into the party! And... at first I didn't think too much of it. Her colors looked a little paler and the Ankh on her collar was pronounced, but aside from that I didn't *think* too much was off...



Then I loaded her up in //Infection, her Japanese counterpart is like looking at an almost entirely different character. She's shorter, her dress is less refined, her wings are almost the size of Balmung's and I believe her stance is a bit different, the halo is also a bit larger in all.



An extremely different design aesthetic, that's for certain!

[Kuukai]

Wait, are these localization changes or mainly just Quarantine changes? Wasn't some of this fixed by the end of the Japanese games?

[Xu Yuan]

Wait, are these localization changes or mainly just Quarantine changes? Wasn't some of this fixed by the end of the Japanese games?

Oh no, it's just Japanese //Infection compared to English //Infection to see how much things have changed. The Japanese //Infection gives us an almost "beta" view into the system and as seen in the case of Terajima Ryoko some beta character models while it makes it easier to be impressed by the improvements to the Japanese //Infection to English (the notice of Sieg to give him a unique model for one) I imagine much of this is fixed in the Japanese Mutation.

[Lindz]

Go home beta Ryoko, you're drunk.

Kinda like that Wiseman portrait!

Outside of the tutorial dungeon do chests drop "breakable"-only items like the Burning Oil example? Cause if so thats awful. Trying ta find locations for weapons/armor in localized IMOQ is hard enough, have additional things like that in the drop table would make it soooo bad!

[Xu Yuan]

Go home beta Ryoko, you're drunk.

Kinda like that Wiseman portrait!

Outside of the tutorial dungeon do chests drop "breakable"-only items like the Burning Oil example? Cause if so thats awful. Trying ta find locations for weapons/armor in localized IMOQ is hard enough, have additional things like that in the drop table would make it soooo bad!

Beta Ryoko is an odd one, but I can't shake the feeling that I've seen that model or at least that face before, maybe //Fragment?

As for drops, oh they're horrendous in Japanese //Infection... You can get any basic kind of healing item and elemental power ups, Sprite Ocarinas, Fortune Wires, the irony is that I haven't come across a single scroll yet, which is about all you would expect from chests once they patch the matter, which is admittedly a bit of a shame. I've also noticed that it doesn't matter whether you use a Fortune Wire or not on a chest, you will still get the item anyhow, just take some sort of hit in the process. I've also noticed that the starting equipment, save Repth, has no skills attached. Bracers no longer have Juk Rom, Leather Armor no longer has Vak Kruz. I noticed this in //Fragment as well. I guess these little additions were made to make the game a little more accessible?.

Looks as if certain enemy types like Wizards aren't programmed to run away, so they just stand there stupidly while you destroy them.

Here's my thinking on improvement...

If I were to do an overhaul of the game, I think I would include more in treasure chests. The idea of such items in Chests are not necessarily a bad idea, but I would then remove them from the stores then so finding one would feel a little special instead of just something you could have bought in town if you really wanted to. To this end I would also revamp the Trapped chests and have Fortune Wires only obtained from randomly dropped chests instead of 10 GP per one and obviously increase the worth of the treasures inside. Maybe even throw in a couple restructured Power-Up Books that would increase a given stat by only 1 (0A to a +1 increase) to really keep the players interest.

How about you fellows? Do you have any thoughts on how to improve the original Quadrilogy? I mean, I love them to death, but I'm not so blind to their flaws.

[Lindz]

I've also noticed that it doesn't matter whether you use a Fortune Wire or not on a chest, you will still get the item anyhow, just take some sort of hit in the process.

Thats an improvement over menu -> scroll to fortune wire -> select fortune wire -> yes -> it gets used. A *true* improvement however would be "have a fortune wire in your inventory while selecting a trapped box? okay fortune wire gets automatically used. don't have one? take dmg still get item".

Looks as if certain enemy types like Wizards aren't programmed to run away, so they just stand there stupidly while you destroy them.

Helloooo easy mode. Helloooo invalidating the hanged man/moon usage. Both of which are pretty bad.

How about you fellows? Do you have any thoughts on how to improve the original Quadrilogy? I mean, I love them to death, but I'm not so blind to their flaws.

I like your idea of there being stat book items. G.U. & Link had an unlimited amount of 'em depending on how much ya really wanted to grind for 'em and IMOQ already has unlimited elemental stat books. The non-elemental ones should prolly be pretty rare though even if they are just +1's. Could give out a couple as freebie Ryu Book rewards to.

My main wanted improvement? Reduce the the map size!! Its wayyyy to large. An ontop of that the character portraits/hp/sp take up a good chunk of screen space to.

Maybe slightly slow down menu movement speed. Its really fast to the point that it feels "slippery" to me. Its like wait no I swear I only pressed left once I didn't wanna end up all the way over in this other tab!!

Enough storage space ta hold one of every item /mistral. Multiples of the same equipment should stack imo. Lower their selling price abit to make up for the fact that ya can walk away from a dungeon with all of its goodies in tow.

The "Items" part of the item menu needs a small adjustment. Right now it goes:
Health Drink
Healing Potion
Healing Elixer
Antidote
Restorative
Resurrect
Mage's Soul
Artisan's Soul
Emperor's Soul
Recovery Drink... wait why's this all the way down here and not directly below Healing Potion?!

Obviously having all of the Grunty upgrades (first person switch, select, search) from the start would be good to.

Having "event" PCs running around towns like all the others would be nice. Justice, Peace, Aquamarine, etc.

I could just be bad at area creation but it seems like its waaay easier to get Fire fields than any other element. Electric areas feel on the rare side to me.

Add all the BGM to the Audio Player. The "Perfect" OST has 68 tracks whereas the audio player only has 52 tracks. I mean if they're on the disc(s) why not use 'em?

On your desktop the Left/Right controls should be reversed. Right should move you down the list and Left up it. Up/Down stay the same of course!

Localize Parody Mode?

[Xu Yuan]

I've also noticed that it doesn't matter whether you use a Fortune Wire or not on a chest, you will still get the item anyhow, just take some sort of hit in the process.

Thats an improvement over menu -> scroll to fortune wire -> select fortune wire -> yes -> it gets used. A *true* improvement however would be "have a fortune wire in your inventory while selecting a trapped box? okay fortune wire gets automatically used. don't have one? take dmg still get item".

That is very true... //Fragment handles this in a manner where you can tie it to a skill trigger. That also works well enough.

Looks as if certain enemy types like Wizards aren't programmed to run away, so they just stand there stupidly while you destroy them.

Helloooo easy mode. Helloooo invalidating the hanged man/moon usage. Both of which are pretty bad.

Last playthrough where I rushed through I made great use of the Status Scrolls,(and later the Anshou Twin Blades, which has both Sleep and Paralysis) some enemies are surprisingly weak to them. Drill's for instance are highly susceptible to Sleep. Feather enemy's are weak to Paralysis and Sleep, Armors and Knights (flying things with swords that seem to kill you in an instant) are susceptible to Charm and even Dragons can be put to Sleep fairly easily (later Dragons are more difficult to quell). But Charm even works on Astro Viking's and Astro King's. Wander can be easily put to Sleep and the list goes on! I really learned this latest playthrough how useful those scrolls really are. (Still no weakness for the Mimics! Why CCCorp?!)

How about you fellows? Do you have any thoughts on how to improve the original Quadrilogy? I mean, I love them to death, but I'm not so blind to their flaws.

I like your idea of there being stat book items. G.U. & Link had an unlimited amount of 'em depending on how much ya really wanted to grind for 'em and IMOQ already has unlimited elemental stat books. The non-elemental ones should prolly be pretty rare though even if they are just +1's. Could give out a couple as freebie Ryu Book rewards to.

Wait, what?! I thought that was just BBS nonsense? You can actually get Elemental books from Gott Statue Chests? I'll need to examine things more closely. I was also considering that removing all of those special Twin Blades you get from the special keyword dungeons (Rusty Nails, Nil & Despair, etc) and changing enemy's data drain drops so that finding a rare item in a chest would really be a special occasion. (Also modifying all of those idiotic Rusty Nails esque weapons to actual weapons and the Goblin Garbage into real gear wouldn't hurt either).

My main wanted improvement? Reduce the the map size!! Its wayyyy to large. An ontop of that the character portraits/hp/sp take up a good chunk of screen space to.

You make a great point, a bit beyond my scope (anything with modifying graphics is outside of my scope) but it would be highly appreciated.

Maybe slightly slow down menu movement speed. Its really fast to the point that it feels "slippery" to me. Its like wait no I swear I only pressed left once I didn't wanna end up all the way over in this other tab!!

Enough storage space ta hold one of every item /mistral. Multiples of the same equipment should stack imo. Lower their selling price abit to make up for the fact that ya can walk away from a dungeon with all of its goodies in tow.

That's the first I've heard of that being a problem. But an option like that wouldn't have hurt anyone.

Elf's Haven is a bit tricky... There looks to be enough room for At Least 150 items, but then the following data is Ally Trade Lists. It may be easier to repoint it... but I wonder if the game would have the data capacity to display all... what is it 600-700 items in the game? Even if they are in separate menus. Lowering selling price would be a definite improvement. Everything you would ever want from the store is far too cheap and items sell for far too much. I'd likely look for the /2 divisor and make it /4 to try and make some semblance of getting items.

The "Items" part of the item menu needs a small adjustment. Right now it goes:
Health Drink
Healing Potion
Healing Elixer
Antidote
Restorative
Resurrect
Mage's Soul
Artisan's Soul
Emperor's Soul
Recovery Drink... wait why's this all the way down here and not directly below Healing Potion?!

i can explain this from a programming view... they made every other one of these items, then realized they needed an interim stop-gap between 400 and Full HP, so they rigged up their dummy Para Repth spell and tied it to the Recovery Drink, probably quite late into production if I had to take a guess. Making it fit in before Healing Elixir would be difficult because the Soul's don't use a Skill reference like... everything else there, so that would need repointed. However that might not be too difficult, but yes that has always bothered me as well.

Obviously having all of the Grunty upgrades (first person switch, select, search) from the start would be good to.

I don't even remember how to unlock those! Admittedly Grunty raising has always been my least favorite part of the original Quadrilogy.

Having "event" PCs running around towns like all the others would be nice. Justice, Peace, Aquamarine, etc.

I could just be bad at area creation but it seems like its waaay easier to get Fire fields than any other element. Electric areas feel on the rare side to me.

Add all the BGM to the Audio Player. The "Perfect" OST has 68 tracks whereas the audio player only has 52 tracks. I mean if they're on the disc(s) why not use 'em?

On your desktop the Left/Right controls should be reversed. Right should move you down the list and Left up it. Up/Down stay the same of course!

Localize Parody Mode?

It was always strange when some PC's you never saw before show up in one quest and are gone for good. It made no sense why Heavy or Alicia couldn't have been a Gardenia groupie or NOVA to have some issues with Marlo and poor Erick doesn't even get his name shown in game! (The Twin Blade that greets you when you warp into Expansive Haunted Sea of Sand)

It's not your imagination. The game seems to have a preponderance for Fire Fields, By the end of the game I had collected at least 70 Burning Oils in all, but only 6 Sports Drinks. And this was sticking strictly to the story (and character side-quest) fields.

I think the missing tracks are mostly all cutscene tracks which aren't Actually in the game's BGM system but only exist in the various FMV's.

The Desktop movement is something I never noticed.

Parody Mode is a bit trickier... while still existing and the text still seemingly in place, I don't believe the voice files are present for it any longer.

[Lindz]

I really learned this latest playthrough how useful those scrolls really are. (Still no weakness for the Mimics! Why CCCorp?!)

Cause Mimics are jerks in every game they're in ever! I got taken down a peg by one in the final dungeon of DQM: Joker recently >.<

Wait, what?! I thought that was just BBS nonsense? You can actually get Elemental books from Gott Statue Chests? I'll need to examine things more closely.

[Omega] Chosen Hopeless Sea of Sand - Lv.95 Fire
- Firelore: Fire Element +2
[Omega] Chosen Hopeless Ice Wall - Lv.95 Water
- Sealore: Water Element +2
[Omega] Chosen Hopeless Night Grass - Lv.95 Dark
- Darklore: Darkness Element +2
[Omega] Chosen Hopeless Far Thunder - Lv.95 Earth
- Earthlore: Earth Element +2
[Omega] Chosen Hopeless Treasure Gem - Lv.95 Wood
- Forestlore: Wood Element +2
[Omega] Chosen Hopeless Capsule - Lv.95 Thunder
- Stormlore: Thunder Element +2

Granted I prolly pulled these from gamefaqs or something forever ago, an its prolly been longer still since I last tried 'em but I think they're legit?

I was also considering that removing all of those special Twin Blades you get from the special keyword dungeons (Rusty Nails, Nil & Despair, etc) and changing enemy's data drain drops so that finding a rare item in a chest would really be a special occasion. (Also modifying all of those idiotic Rusty Nails esque weapons to actual weapons and the Goblin Garbage into real gear wouldn't hurt either).

Those negative p-atk/m-atk weapons have a legitimate use actually. If you've ever tackled the Item Completion Event you'll know why but basically ya need ta DD stuff from very low level baddies but you kill them in one hit with normal weapons?! With these you do crap damage which is good because then instead of one-shotting 'em you can actually get Protect Break on 'em. All of the classes have I think at least 2 of these so your allys don't go one-shotting baddies either.

You make a great point, a bit beyond my scope (anything with modifying graphics is outside of my scope) but it would be highly appreciated.

I guess its not a simple as saying "hey map your height/width is now 240x240 instead of 480x480"?

Elf's Haven is a bit tricky... There looks to be enough room for At Least 150 items, but then the following data is Ally Trade Lists. It may be easier to repoint it... but I wonder if the game would have the data capacity to display all... what is it 600-700 items in the game? Even if they are in separate menus. Lowering selling price would be a definite improvement. Everything you would ever want from the store is far too cheap and items sell for far too much. I'd likely look for the /2 divisor and make it /4 to try and make some semblance of getting items.

Ya there's over 700. I was just exaggerating at keeping one of everything because yeah scrolling through it all would stink! But just enough space to have one of every rare armor/weapon plus a couple extra regular ones'd be good enough.

i can explain this from a programming view... they made every other one of these items, then realized they needed an interim stop-gap between 400 and Full HP, so they rigged up their dummy Para Repth spell and tied it to the Recovery Drink, probably quite late into production if I had to take a guess. Making it fit in before Healing Elixir would be difficult because the Soul's don't use a Skill reference like... everything else there, so that would need repointed. However that might not be too difficult, but yes that has always bothered me as well.

If thats how things went down its a really big oversight on their part lol. A 400 HP recovery item was never gonna be useful long enough ta get to the full one! I didn't know items/skills were so tied together, I mean I knew there is an item for almost every non-physical attack magical skill in the games but still. Does this mean there dummy scrolls for say RF and PHA summons for instance?

I don't even remember how to unlock those! Admittedly Grunty raising has always been my least favorite part of the original Quadrilogy.

Ya don't unlock them so much as they were things added as the games went on. In Infection if you're in first person view while summoning a Grunty you can't unfirst person view until you get off it, the opposite applies as well. This was changed for Mutation. Grunty select was also added in that. In Infection using the grunty flute in the field would put you on 1 of the 2 or 3 gruntys ya raised randomly. In the other games they let you select the one ya want from a list. Grunty Search was added in Outbreak, press triangle and Grunty A auto-runs to the dungeon entrance (unless it gets stuck on an object hehe), Grunty B will take you to the nearest magic portal, and Grunty C will take ya to the nearest grunty food. To standardize the game it'd be nice to have these things in from the start I think?

It was always strange when some PC's you never saw before show up in one quest and are gone for good. It made no sense why Heavy or Alicia couldn't have been a Gardenia groupie or NOVA to have some issues with Marlo and poor Erick doesn't even get his name shown in game! (The Twin Blade that greets you when you warp into Expansive Haunted Sea of Sand)

Its sad that these one-off PCs are good enough to have voices but not ever be seen in the game again x.x; Might be a pain to add 'em to the Ryu Books though, not ta mention giving them non-fanfic tier dialogue and a set of trade items.

It's not your imagination. The game seems to have a preponderance for Fire Fields, By the end of the game I had collected at least 70 Burning Oils in all, but only 6 Sports Drinks. And this was sticking strictly to the story (and character side-quest) fields.

Even when using the random area feature its just like "here how about a fire area? maybe you'd like a fire area? we've got some hot deals on fire areas!" Glad its not just all in my head! G.U. was pretty bad in its story area usage (seriously just 1 cloister visit? 3 or so desert/cliffs?) but at least with its area creation system you could visibly see the type of area you were making!

The Desktop movement is something I never noticed.

Ya its super minor because why wouldn't you just use up/down but its there. In this and other games right moves you to page 2 of a menu, ya? So you begin to associate right as going forward/progressing (or heck just play Super Mario Bros.) and left as going back. But for some reason the desktop menu associates left as moving down the list and right as moving up!


I guess another thing I'd dream of seeing "unified" across all games is the area creation system itself. For some reason (all? some? idk) areas have some difference to them between games. Be it the starting point on the field, spring of myst location on the map, dungeon room layout, gott statue location, even a regular treasure box location. Create an area in Infection an take a snapshot of its field map and dungeon one, also mark points where treasures are. Now visit that exact same area on the exact same server in Mutation and... ??? Atoli would be in despair if one of her favorite areas changed for no reason (don't tell her that the area she drags you to with the small flower field changes upon later visits to no longer having those flowers...)!

[Xu Yuan]

Cause Mimics are jerks in every game they're in ever! I got taken down a peg by one in the final dungeon of DQM: Joker recently >.<

Heh, at least in other games there isn't a chance of running into a group of 1-4 in every room with a possible fight and actually act like... well Mimics, I still haven't forgiven CCCorp for that Physical Tolerant Mimic near the middle-end of Quarantine (and this enemy is called for the rest of the story dungeons as well), where no power down skill will work on them..

[Omega] Chosen Hopeless Sea of Sand - Lv.95 Fire
- Firelore: Fire Element +2
[Omega] Chosen Hopeless Ice Wall - Lv.95 Water
- Sealore: Water Element +2
[Omega] Chosen Hopeless Night Grass - Lv.95 Dark
- Darklore: Darkness Element +2
[Omega] Chosen Hopeless Far Thunder - Lv.95 Earth
- Earthlore: Earth Element +2
[Omega] Chosen Hopeless Treasure Gem - Lv.95 Wood
- Forestlore: Wood Element +2
[Omega] Chosen Hopeless Capsule - Lv.95 Thunder
- Stormlore: Thunder Element +2

Granted I prolly pulled these from gamefaqs or something forever ago, an its prolly been longer still since I last tried 'em but I think they're legit?

Those words all seem vaguely familiar... but only the end-game has them, hmm? A better idea would probably make it so that Level 30-50-70 could contain the Level 1 Elemental Books so that it doesn't feel like it comes too late.

Those negative p-atk/m-atk weapons have a legitimate use actually. If you've ever tackled the Item Completion Event you'll know why but basically ya need ta DD stuff from very low level baddies but you kill them in one hit with normal weapons?! With these you do crap damage which is good because then instead of one-shotting 'em you can actually get Protect Break on 'em. All of the classes have I think at least 2 of these so your allys don't go one-shotting baddies either.

...A fair point. A solution then would be to sell these items in stores and change it's reference to a normal weapon somewhere down the line (there's enough to spare two) instead of a Rare Item.

I guess its not a simple as saying "hey map your height/width is now 240x240 instead of 480x480"?

Not without also modifying the size of the cursor, and the icons (of which they use a surprisingly ridiculous amount on the Field itself) else that would look really strange.

Ya there's over 700. I was just exaggerating at keeping one of everything because yeah scrolling through it all would stink! But just enough space to have one of every rare armor/weapon plus a couple extra regular ones'd be good enough.

I agree. 150 *might* accomplish that. It would feel a little more open at least. I blame the lack of space on Kite's inability to realize there's a PC Housing system.

If thats how things went down its a really big oversight on their part lol. A 400 HP recovery item was never gonna be useful long enough ta get to the full one! I didn't know items/skills were so tied together, I mean I knew there is an item for almost every non-physical attack magical skill in the games but still. Does this mean there dummy scrolls for say RF and PHA summons for instance?

Well it is worth noting that Pha Repth becomes available in the same game as Recovery Drinks, they may have just used Healing Elixirs at first before they realized that this was making the game imbalanced. There are no unused scrolls in the game, but you could tie those skills to a scroll easily enough like say if you wanted to turn the Elemental Down spells into Level 3 Summons it would be a simple matter.

Ya don't unlock them so much as they were things added as the games went on. In Infection if you're in first person view while summoning a Grunty you can't unfirst person view until you get off it, the opposite applies as well. This was changed for Mutation. Grunty select was also added in that. In Infection using the grunty flute in the field would put you on 1 of the 2 or 3 gruntys ya raised randomly. In the other games they let you select the one ya want from a list. Grunty Search was added in Outbreak, press triangle and Grunty A auto-runs to the dungeon entrance (unless it gets stuck on an object hehe), Grunty B will take you to the nearest magic portal, and Grunty C will take ya to the nearest grunty food. To standardize the game it'd be nice to have these things in from the start I think?

It would be nice yes, probably were updates as the games went on. Thanks for the refresher course on that.

Its sad that these one-off PCs are good enough to have voices but not ever be seen in the game again x.x; Might be a pain to add 'em to the Ryu Books though, not ta mention giving them non-fanfic tier dialogue and a set of trade items.

As I recall there are several unused trade lists. 12-1D following Helba are unused before reaching Wing and after Alpha Ichigoro a fair amount of unused space, but that may have been set for later NPC's like the SIGN crew, Kazu, and Sieg.

Even when using the random area feature its just like "here how about a fire area? maybe you'd like a fire area? we've got some hot deals on fire areas!" Glad its not just all in my head! G.U. was pretty bad in its story area usage (seriously just 1 cloister visit? 3 or so desert/cliffs?) but at least with its area creation system you could visibly see the type of area you were making!

Haha! Thankfully though there are a Lot of Fire Fields it's not too difficult to make a custom field of an elemental choice or nearly any level.

I guess another thing I'd dream of seeing "unified" across all games is the area creation system itself. For some reason (all? some? idk) areas have some difference to them between games. Be it the starting point on the field, spring of myst location on the map, dungeon room layout, gott statue location, even a regular treasure box location. Create an area in Infection an take a snapshot of its field map and dungeon one, also mark points where treasures are. Now visit that exact same area on the exact same server in Mutation and... ??? Atoli would be in despair if one of her favorite areas changed for no reason (don't tell her that the area she drags you to with the small flower field changes upon later visits to no longer having those flowers...)!

That's kind of strange... I never, Ever noticed that! It does point that they may have updated their Dungeon Generation software at some point during the games releases. I'll take a quick look at what you mean though since I have both Infection and Quarantine installed.

Well, since I have the Japanese version of Infection here and this is a thread meant to highlight their differences I'll see if Hidden Forbidden Aqua Field is different from version to version...

Looks like the field parameters are still the same Level 2 Wood Field.

Well the field was definitely different but aside from one room that instead had an Egg rather than a Treasure Chest the first floor was the same.

Ah, here's another change from Japanese to English Infection. The range of Tiger Claws is displayed more than what it Actually hits. In English Infection this is actually reversed. The range is increased more than the target display shows.

So let's check it out in Quarantine...

Oh wow! Yeah, the field was relatively the same except for the lack of a Magic Portal on the way to the dungeon, but the dungeon in Quarantine is completely different! Nothing is the same as far as architecture goes! In Infection it is a 4 floor dungeon, let's see if that still holds true...

Still 4 floors, but as mentioned it looks completely different. Good catch! I don't think that's ever really been noticed before. Also that's a bit silly about Atoli's field losing those special flower graphics if you go back there.

[Avatar_Crim]

So I am a little lost. Do you normally come across the character Terajima Ryoko in infection? I don't remember that person at all.

[Xu Yuan]

So I am a little lost. Do you normally come across the character Terajima Ryoko in infection? I don't remember that person at all.

Terajima Ryoko was hacked into the party in both cases in English //Infection and Japanese //Infection by forcing an event to give her Member Address instead of its original function, I probably should have explained that from the start.

You would not normally meet her until //Outbreak (since she doesn't start playing until then) and the character at the top of that post is from the Japanese //Infection meaning that they hadn't finalized her design at that point. It's a beta model so to speak, this is also reflected in her earlier artwork as seen by the sketch, she looks more akin to that then to her final design. There may also be a slight change with Gardenia where she looks more somber instead of angry, but since Gardenia is already in //Infection that can't really be considered beta by any stretch, just a slight design change.

[Avatar_Crim]

oh ok. i see. thanks for clearing that up. I was starting to think I missed something important or some extra lol.

[NCDyson]

Im actually researching a lot of the code in the game, for instance how the fields/dungeons are generated, but haven't gotten far enough to replicate their maps yet.

I was going to say that if the japanese infection is missing files that the us version of infection has, if its just from the data.bin, it could just be that they used the data.bin from quaruntine in infection, since i dont believe there's any change in it all, in fact i think i actually ran a binary compare on the two files and they were identical. As far as parts of other files, I dunno.

Regarding the Graphical things like the map/player HUD, I've actually been looking in to modding all that for fragment, and was mostly successful modding the player hud, just missing a couple of vital parts. Want to try to make an optional patch that would make it more like GU's hud, which doesn't take up near as much space. As far as the map display, I think I can actually get that to scale down, I'd just need to find the routine which draws it.

[Xu Yuan]

Im actually researching a lot of the code in the game, for instance how the fields/dungeons are generated, but haven't gotten far enough to replicate their maps yet.

I was going to say that if the japanese infection is missing files that the us version of infection has, if its just from the data.bin, it could just be that they used the data.bin from quaruntine in infection, since i dont believe there's any change in it all, in fact i think i actually ran a binary compare on the two files and they were identical. As far as parts of other files, I dunno.

Regarding the Graphical things like the map/player HUD, I've actually been looking in to modding all that for fragment, and was mostly successful modding the player hud, just missing a couple of vital parts. Want to try to make an optional patch that would make it more like GU's hud, which doesn't take up near as much space. As far as the map display, I think I can actually get that to scale down, I'd just need to find the routine which draws it.

I am glad to see there is someone with more talent looking at the game's coding. I tried to take a look in Edit Dungeon at some point as well and I couldn't understand a bit of it. I did decode all aspects of DXXXX.room and .gim though. At least most of it. My notes on that should be in my topic somewhere, but I imagine you've already moved beyond that. I imagine that looking at Fragment's auto-dungeons may provide a clue as well. Also! As mentioned somewhere along the volumes they changed their dungeon structure at some point in time, when you go to a random dungeon in //Infection and revisit it in Quarantine the dungeon itself will be completely different.

There are several files with different sizes between English and Japanese Infection, let me do a quick comparison...

Yes, the gcmn, which is where you've said much of the gameplay sector is located is roughly 400 KB smaller in Japanese //Infection. If it is gameplay related it may possibly be the Item Box, Trapped Item Box, and Fortune Wire Item Box listings. The other files are expected (Snddata being a little larger in English //Infection) and a couple of other byte variances here and there.

Kuukai and I have theorized that English //Infection is an interim version between Japanese Mutation and Japanese Outbreak since by the time of English Infection they planned for the //SIGN crew to make appearances where there is no data regarding any dealings with //SIGN in Japanese Infection. What is missing in the English Infection to make it definitively exactly like Quarantine are several AI changes where were implemented into Japanese Outbreak (and American Mutation) and Subaru, Tsukasa, and Sora have no files related to being playable characters. The closest there is are files called "SpcDmyTbl" which seems to contain several pointers.

[SSJScygoku]

o-0 wow that is very enlightening, quite the contrast between the Japanese/American versions but then again most of the games had been released in Japan so they could tweek aspects of the games. I'm glad they decided to after reading some of this @.@

[Lindz]

I think the semi-surprising thing is that they did do some changes between games. I imagine not everything was set in stone from the start, but IMOQ's changes are alot less noticable then G.U.'s were!

o-0 wow that is very enlightening, quite the contrast between the Japanese/American versions but then again most of the games had been released in Japan so they could tweek aspects of the games. I'm glad they decided to after reading some of this @.@

Seems alot of JP games get polished up for western releases. DQ8 and FF7 come ta mind as examples! Though I do now wonder if the Infection/Mutation & Outbreak/Quarantine THE BEST releases were based on the international versions changes? I'd guess only Infection would greatly benefit from it but still.

[SSJScygoku]

Seems alot of JP games get polished up for western releases. DQ8 and FF7 come ta mind as examples! Though I do now wonder if the Infection/Mutation & Outbreak/Quarantine THE BEST releases were based on the international versions changes? I'd guess only Infection would greatly benefit from it but still.

I take it DQ8/FF7 has quite afew issues aswell that got fixed for release ?_?

It would make sense if they were, perhaps after getting feedback from the US sales they decided to re-release them in that format?