Xanadu II Translation Development Blog

[Black Tiger]

I'm currently working on a 100% pixelart version of the official English logo (no fonts or photoshop effects used).

That's very nice, actually. My only complaint would be the giant "II" is a bit too giant, and obscures too much of that neat design in the center of the background. I think a slightly slimmer variant would be the bees knees.

I literally just threw it together to show where a II will go. It should be relatively big though, but I did envision slimmer.



If elmer is up for changing the palette, here is the kind of thing that could be done (using 13 colors):

[SamIAm]

You guys realize that we cannot go over 32 pixels in height, right?

That whole thing is 63 pixels high. The X alone is 43.

Let's squish it down:



You have to work that into something that looks good. This image is only scaled to 480x64, too. Once you take it down to 240x32, it starts having major problems. I scaled this down to the proper size, then scaled it back up:



And don't forget, that's (proportionally) 240 pixels wide, but Xanadu 1 only allows 224.

You might be able to make this concept work, but I have to say, if you set such a low ceiling/floor in order to make the background II work, the actual words are probably going to have to be tiny.

[Phase]

Another interesting concept, nice job on the font 

Well, I added 4 new colors to my concept and did some blending/anti aliasing with them was able to squeeze a little more detail out over my last pic also remade the 2 since the last one was a little jaggy.

[SamIAm]

Looking good, Phase.

Here's my first crack at changing the outline to use differing shades of light blue like the original does. I had thought there were only two, but there are really three shades in there, and the original has four bands total, with the colors arranged from top to bottom like 1, 2, 3, 2.

I originally tried to use four bands, but in short, this forced only the tails of the f and g to have the fourth, brighter band, and it looked weird. This has just three bands, in the order you would expect. It seems to make a nice gradient if I put the first two bands higher up, and so those two are each only 7 pixels tall. I might alter them later.

Or, I might do something completely different. 

Also, I added automated drop shadow on the left. This is the same color as the internal shading. I tried adding it on the bottom as well (see how the light is coming in from the upper right?), but that actually looked bad. If I do attempt to add bottom drop-shadow, it will have to be done in a customized and sparing kind of way. This is good, though - it means I don't have to resize anything to fit 31 pixels.

[SamIAm]

One more.

It occurred to me that with light coming in from above, the tops of each letter should have the lightest shade on them.

Here, I not only brought down the banding, but I changed it so that the larger letters have slightly different boundaries. I think it works, and it makes it look more like natural lighting.

The bottom band is only about 14 pixels high now, instead of 18 like before.


(238x32)

The next big thing to do is start thinking about how to use other colors via the open palette spaces to soften this. If you zoom in, you can see that Phase's logo has a lot of anti-aliasing to soften it via colors not yet set by the game, while mine has none and works in the game as-is.

Maybe we could agree on a set of extra colors to use so that poor elmer doesn't go insane trying to accommodate different palettes for each entry?

Bear in mind, we still don't know how anti-aliasing is going to look coming out of real hardware. That's something to test sooner rather than later.

[spenoza]

It is really funny to me that with all the hard work and hacking that's gone into this so far from the two of you, the title screen text has dominated conversation here for days. It SEEMS like such a trivial thing, though the attention we've all been giving it is a clear indication that that's entirely incorrect. It is something people see every time they boot the game, and sets the tone for the experience.

[esteban]

I really like several of the mock-ups...

It is really funny to me that with all the hard work and hacking that's gone into this so far from the two of you, the title screen text has dominated conversation here for days. It SEEMS like such a trivial thing, though the attention we've all been giving it is a clear indication that that's entirely incorrect. It is something people see every time they boot the game, and sets the tone for the experience.

"The last 2% requires 98% finesse." —Pliny the Middle-Aged

[Vimtoman]

I really like several of the mock-ups...




freudian psychology says you dont like any.

[elmer]

If elmer is up for changing the palette, here is the kind of thing that could be done (using 13 colors):

That's lovely ... but I really don't know how you expect me to get it into the game! 

Changing the palette is OK, it looks like I should be able to do that without any consequences.

But as SamIAm posted above, and as I've posted a few times, the limit for Xanadu 2 is 240x32, and the limit for Xanadu 1 is 224x32.

Now, it is technically possible for the PCE to display your larger logo as 64-high sprites instead of 32-high sprites, and I suspect that you're counting on that, but practically it would be a nightmare.

Ignoring that I'd have to do a lot of messing around inside the display code to do that, including possibly re-writing that "sparkle" fade-in effect, there's also the problem of memory.

I haven't looked at the memory footprint of Xanadu 1 yet, but I have taken a look at Xanadu 2, and there really isn't any free!

The Xanadu 2 opening video uses all the available memory in the PCE, including loading data into the audio memory.

The 8KB of code is almost completely full; there are only 54 bytes free for patching. That's not a lot, especially since I've already got to patch it to deal with the English names of the game's characters.

There might be a way to make it work ... but only if I remove "THE LAST OF DRAGON SLAYER" sprite, and even then it would be one heck of a lot of messing about.

Then there's Xanadu 1 ... I'd still have to check out if there's a hope-in-heck of changing it from 224 pixels to 240 pixels.

My instant reaction to putting it in is "no way".

But if you keep on working on (and it gets an exterior drop-shadow  ), then I like the idea of it enough to spend the time to see if it is even possible.

It just may well not be.

BTW ... I'm really not loving seeing Xanadu 1's purple in Xanadu 2. Is that what you're going for, or just a quick mock-up?

[geise]

I'm currently working on a 100% pixelart version of the official English logo (no fonts or photoshop effects used).

It's 240 x 64 pixels.

I wasn't sure of the cursive at first, but I have to go with this one.  They all look pretty good.  This one I think goes with the graphics on the title screen the most.

EDIT:  NM.  I didn't see he 240x32 limit for Xanadu 2.

[Black Tiger]

When I grabbed an old copy of the original logo sprite that I thought was the one elmer originally gave me, I apparently opened the first pic I made to draw the English logo beneath. Anyway, I started out basing everything on the correct dimensions  efore that and it was only when I found I had way more vertical room than I expected, that I started giving the X most of its size back.

It won't be a problem fitting it within 32 pixels of height, as only the largest letters are that tall already. I just need to see how I can make a "II" sit behind and be legible enough, but shaving a couple pixels off the talkest letters will likely do the trick. The 9 free colors in the current palette that elmer mentioned earlier are all this needs. It will also fit in Xanadu 1 no problem as if you compare it to the original "Legend of", you'll see that I actually spread the words apart further to accomodate a horizontal version of the official logo with that giant X. Now I can push them back closer together.

Obviously there's no need for any of that stuff Sam posted. This is pixelart that I drew one pixel at a time and not a photoshop job. The X is just going to be resculpted.

[Bonknuts]

The Xanadu 2 opening video uses all the available memory in the PCE, including loading data into the audio memory.

The 8KB of code is almost completely full; there are only 54 bytes free for patching. That's not a lot, especially since I've already got to patch it to deal with the English names of the game's characters.

I'm not sure what you mean. I just looked and there is a ton of free space in a lot of banks, as well as vram itself, for the title screen part. The opening data gets loaded afterwards (xanadu 2 is using the new cd read lib routines, so it won't break on $e009).

 

[elmer]

I'm not sure what you mean. I just looked and there is a ton of free space in a lot of banks, as well as vram itself, for the title screen part.

We're talking about different parts of the game.

The Title Screen has plenty of free memory (RAM) ... VRAM would be a matter of "juggling" the free space that's there ... you'd have to change the VRAM that the "sparkle" uses ... and double the "sparkle".

The bigger problem is the "Opening Visual" ... that's part of the opening cutscenes.

That's the one that's full.

Again ... it's less a case of VRAM, but more one of RAM and hacking-space to modify the code to change the playback.

BUT ... I just tested it, if I change my compressor to "optimal" mode (which is unbelievably slow, and incredibly painful to use), I can free up about 6KB of RAM, which just might be enough. 

The opening data gets loaded afterwards (xanadu 2 is using the new cd read lib routines, so it won't break on $e009).

Put a breakpoint at $339e, that the routine that the game uses to locate a file on the CD ... when you return from that, the game maps in the bank with the CD loading code and calls it.

And there's still the question of Xanadu 1, and its 224 pixel width.

[Bonknuts]

Does the intro/prologue overwrite the titlescreen area/data or does it share it? I see the 54 bytes you're talking about. What about the tail end of cdram? A quick look showed decent strings of free bytes there. If you ran the intro/prologue through bizhawk emulator and did a CD logger, you'd know for sure.

[elmer]

Does the intro/prologue overwrite the titlescreen area/data or does it share it? I see the 54 bytes you're talking about. What about the tail end of cdram? A quick look showed decent strings of free bytes there. If you ran the intro/prologue through bizhawk emulator and did a CD logger, you'd know for sure.

It loads up banks $68-$83 inclusive.

Bank $84 contains the CD loading code + some other stuff.
Bank $85 is the decompression buffer and gets constantly overwritten.
Bank $86 contains the CD directory and various data buffers that get overwritten at various times.
Bank $87 contains ... something, and also gets overwritten.

BUT ... you're absolutely right ... the (CD sector?) buffer in the last 2KB of Bank $87 does not get overwritten while the Opening Video is loaded and run, which means that I've actually got plenty of RAM to play with, as long as I can get it loaded somehow ... and I have a pretty good idea of how to do that.

So ... we've established that it should be possible  to hack the game to get Black Tiger's new 64-high logo working in Xanadu 2.

Now, can you just figure out if it's possible to expand the logo to 240 pixels in Xanadu 1's Opening Visual, and then I can get back to rewriting CC65's code-generation!