Water Margin animal (rare vast fame)

[Pepper-98]

That's the game's test to see if there's a working save battery.  Try enabling and assigning a .sav file (what the emulator uses to hold save files) and see if that helps.  It'll play fine if the test fails, but you won't be able to save your game through its save method (you can with save states, though.)

[tymime]

Thanks. I'm not sure what I was doing wrong before, but I couldn't get past the error screen. Seems to be working alright now- although it crashed a couple times before I set the save type to SRAM.

[Superjustinbros]

I'm going to provide some information which will hopefully help in later parts of the game:

*Certain "Gift Beasts" that you earn have abilities in the overworld; the rock Beast can smash boulders and the long, water-themed blue dragon Beast can travel over water. However somehow I was able to make the Beast cancel one or two of it's abilities in the overworld, causing me to get stuck. There's also a Beast that enables 2x movement speed in the overworld, which could help on many occasions, especially this timed area in the desert area where you need this Beast to win.

This game also has it's share of Boss Beasts not shown in that grid, the first one appearing right after the timed section I just mentioned. It's at Level 99 and you have to lose against it to continue the story.

This is also mostly personal preference, but I found the sword-wielding ghost Beast from the fifth row and first column really helpful. Shame there's not a full English walkthrough like with Shi Kong, it'd be so helpful incase I decide to do a second playthrough for the sake of sprite ripping or something.

[fergzilla]

Alright, Taizou's blog posts convinced me to try out this game (and be more active in this forum), and I actually like the concept of mixing an ancient Chinese story with Pokemon-like mechanics, especially since I'm a huge creature buff. I feel that this has the potential to garner a fanbase of sorts. I mean, those hilarious Pokemon Diamond and Jade bootlegs did generate a Western Telefang fanbase.

This game so needs to be fan-translated into English. People were able to do Harry Potter 2/3 translations, partially complete NES Pokemon Yellow translations (though granted, the latter was based on an existing legit game, but it still proves that we can be able to change font height/width in a Chinese Pokemon-like RPG), and even a complete overhaul on Shenzhen Nanjing's Chinese NES Final Fantasy 7 (again, based on an existing legitimate work, but still proves that even basic straight fan translations of bootleg games from Chinese to English are possible), so why not give one of Vast Fame's RPGs a try at translation?

Or at the very least an online English strategy guide, even if spoiler-free for the sake of understanding what to do? I'm actually having a hard time with this, and I only figured out which rooms can heal my monsters. I also don't know how to obtain more of the game's equivalent of "Pokeballs", or, as the game puts it, 安魂符 ("an hun fu"/"requiem breaks", apparently), especially without cheats. I only found one in a well in the first town, and I keep wasting it in each attempted playthrough (it's non-regeneratable, btw). I feel like such a noob for that. The game apparently has a Baidu Baike article (Baidu Baike is the Chinese government-approved answer to Wikipedia), but trying to make sense of it through Google Translate just results in breaking my mind. Even I can't decipher the cheats section. What am I supposed to do? And at what point should I input the cheat?

Heck, even a full video playthrough/longplay of Water Margin Animal on YouTube would be a great help, too, because at the very least it'll give people a visual idea of what the game is like and what to do! Though an 8-part partly cheaty Let's Play already exists on Youku (China's approved answer to YouTube), it'd help if another playthrough reach more international video streaming sites as well, and without cheats too.

I hope this pep talk from me gives enough encouragement to increase interest in this game.

On a related note, I can tell you right now that your starter's name is Yù Qílín, or..."Jade Kirin"/"Jade Unicorn"...apparently... looks more like a dragon than a unicorn to me...

[taizou]

fergzilla

Aug 10 2014, 10:09:39 PM

This game so needs to be fan-translated into English. People were able to do Harry Potter 2/3 translations, partially complete NES Pokemon Yellow translations (though granted, the latter was based on an existing legit game, but it still proves that we can be able to change font height/width in a Chinese Pokemon-like RPG), and even a complete overhaul on Shenzhen Nanjing's Chinese NES Final Fantasy 7 (again, based on an existing legitimate work, but still proves that even basic straight fan translations of bootleg games from Chinese to English are possible), so why not give one of Vast Fame's RPGs a try at translation?[/quote]honestly, I would like to do something like that one day, but my romhacking skills are nowhere near good enough to change a 16x16 font to an 8x8 one ):
Nanjing's games are kind of a special case because their text engine already supports both 8x8 and 16x16 characters simultaneously. If you look at stuff like punctuation marks and numbers in their games you'll see they're usually 8x8 - it's easily possible to replace the Chinese text with ASCII text in a Nanjing game without any ASM hacking whatsoever. even I've done it:


sadly with Vast Fame's RPGs its not so simple. it's certainly possible, but it'd take more advanced hacking than I'm capable of, and I'm not sure if there's anyone out there who both has the skills and is interested in doing it...

[fergzilla]

Funny you should mention font sizes... I believe the Famicom version of Shui Hu Shen Shou already has an 8x8 font too. This is even demonstrated in the intro, where they use a lot of punctuation and use the number 108 a lot (presumably in reference to the 108 monsters that need to be collected, which in turn could be a reference to the "108 Stars of Destiny" in the original story)



Now it's only a matter of resizing some text boxes to support 2-3 lines.

Though...the Game Boy Color version is superior in every way. For example, I get money and experience points from defeated monsters in the GBC version, while I only get exp in the Famicom version. Also, keeping in mind that the GBC version is Taiwanese Chinese, while the FC version is Mandarin Chinese. Still, wouldn't hurt to try one's hands on either version...

I just wish enough interest was garnered to make a fanbase and fan translation for this Water Margin-based RPG for the Game Boy Color....even if it means learning how to replace and manually resize fonts for translation... I understand how fan translation can be a tough process based on that alone, but I have seen so many amazing examples of complete patches that overcome that hurdle. Granted, Shui Hu Shen Shou is no Mother 3 in any aspect, but it still seems like an interesting overlooked RPG that deserves to be known more anyway. A man can dream, can't he?

(Wasn't the font in Harry Potter 3 2003 resized for the fan translation anyway?)

[taizou]

Yeah, that's Nanjing's Famicom port so it has the same text engine as their other games.. Waixing made one too but I dunno much about it. I wouldn't want to translate either of the Famicom ports though - for me they're just way too inferior when the original is available.

(Harry Potter 3 was different to their RPGs btw - it had no text printing engine to speak of, the text was just treated as graphics so it was super easy to hack the cutscenes however you wanted to.)

[fergzilla]

Hm, that is fine, fair enough! For me, I'm going through the game semi-blind in Chinese and trying to screenshot every one of 108 monsters' entries from the game's equivalent of the "Pokedex" and post them online to see if that garners some attention. Since making my first post in this thread, I have acquired a slightly better understanding of the game, but not by much.

Hm, got any tips and background for learning both Chinese and hacking, btw?

[Pepper-98]

fergzilla

Aug 10 2014, 10:09:39 PM

Or at the very least an online English strategy guide, even if spoiler-free for the sake of understanding what to do?[/quote]Someone scanned the Chinese strategy guide (which isn't hard to find a copy of) but that's about all there is at the moment. Someone a while back did a walkthrough of Vast Fame's other Pokemon clone, Shi Kong Xing Shou (which I saved (most) of) but he never did any of the other games.  Shame, since Water Margin seems like a much better game overall.

[fergzilla]

It's fine, I found a Youku walkthrough of the entire game (which I linked to earlier) by searching up 水浒神兽, which helps a ton. Maybe I can write up that spoiler-free guide as soon as I'm done playing the whole thing and watching the walkthrough again. It'll probably consist of basic stuff like "GO TO BOTTOM LEFT PATH", "TALK TO RED PERSON", "GO THROUGH LONG CONVERSATION", etc.

Spoiler: click to toggle

Also, at one point, some of your allies turn out to be creatures in disguise. What the.... plot twist much? Anyway, this is an even more intriguing reason for the entire game to be translated.

The guidebook also helps, as it has all the creatures with their descriptions in more discernible Chinese characters (I swear, I try drawing some more complex characters on certain online translators/dictionaries, and even use apps to translate through photos and they still wouldn't register correctly) and correct palettes for more accurate viewing. I do plan on posting rough translations of all the entries on somewhere. Still though, I might want to screenshot the entries from the game anyway for extra quality/that retro feel. Maybe even do a self-imposed "draw them all" challenge on the creatures.

Man, that Vast Fame makes some really quality games, even by unlicensed standards. They might as well be the best in making unauthorized games, because they cared that much. Too bad they are obscure compared to more inept developer companies. One way to lessen their obscurity would be to make their RPGs readable in actually good English.

Perhaps the fan translation could be a collaborative effort: one person smart enough to resize the font to 8x8 and modify the text printing engine to accompany the changes, and one person (or more) to do translation. Hmmmm.... I have at least seen a fan translation of Battle Mania Daiginjou/Trouble Shooter Vintage make use of three different varieties of 8x8 font (each of which can be activated through a code by the translator) when the original font was 16x16 (this was the type of game where the text would "print" like a typewriter one letter at a time during cutscenes between stages), and a Pulseman fan translation made use of a varied width font when the original Japanese used a monospaced font... I could think of more, but I don't want to talk too much...

[fergzilla]

OK, so I showed a Chinese chat friend the game, and while he didn't get far yet due to crashes and whatnot, he did have something to note about the game that could help in a potential translation since he was fluent in the language: he said that the script in the intro used "old words". Presumably, he most likely meant that some characters spoke in some form of classical Chinese to reflect the original Water Margin story's age. So, a possible English equivalent would be an Olde Englishe translation to match how the first Dragon Quest/Warrior game for the NES was localized. (the Chinese friend could also be possibly talking about the difference in Simplified/Traditional Chinese, but the way he said it is very vague at best)

He also said described the story as "bloody", something that wasn't conveyed through the graphical limitations of the GBC alone, but ehhhh, it's not like the original story (as well as numerous cheesy live-action adaptations) didn't had its fair share of body counts either. Ehh, sorry for the double posting, apparently this entire forum can play dead for days at a time sometimes.

Oh, and just found out that all the Chinese names of the creatures in the "Pokedex" correspond to a name or nickname of the 108 Stars of Destiny by their respective numbers exactly. I especially like how creature #107 鼓上蚤 (Gǔ Shàng Zǎo, "Flea on Drum", supposed to represent Shi Qian) is quite literally a flea on a drum, made me laugh.