#sf chaos

[claire-starsword]

my sins are undone, I've translated the Chaos scene. I guess I had posted this one here before, but who cares, it's better on the website. look at my tragic robots (you actually don't get to look at the tragic robots because screenshotting chapter 7 without having the saves ready is a pain and i'm not doing it)

[shadowfoxsilver]

A visual guide on scam spotting ft many ocs.

(If reposting any image here please credit me, thanks!)

[emirrart]

29,12,2024

[sfstranslations]

UPDATE: The S-Ranks That I Raised (351)

“I have no interest in the source or the world. I merely want to pay tribute to the memory of my love.” “By catching and killing a child?”

Read Chapter 351: In Discussions (3) now!

Request access to the My S-Ranks translations by sending us your email through our contact form.

[sonic-fankid-showdown]

Poll 4, Round 1.

About Wafer: (by @pokeypoqi) being a chao, she's obviously not actually related to either parent, but id like to think she still counts haha! she's a spontaneous little guy with an aptitude for swimming (ironic, considering who one of her parents is) and is just overall very joyful and whimsical.

About Leonid: (by @deimostes) Leonid is the cyborg daughter of Shadow and Omega, born 200 years into the future during Silver's time! She was created in a freak accident when Shadow got trapped in an old roboticizer. Omega got him out, the roboticizer overloaded with Chaos energy, and boom! A baby. She's named after the Leonids meteor shower, since her birthday is 11/15 (release of ShTH 05 :3) and the Leonids peak around that time of year! (Shadow is a nerd and so am I.) The self-proclaimed "Ultimate Cyborg," Leonid is just as prideful and destructive as her dads. She loves making bead bracelets and gifting them to people as a way to bring some light to the desolate future that she, her dads, Silver and Rusty (Shadow's now immortal dark Chaos Chao) do their best to protect :)

[untitledrockstar-if]

MC dancing as a hobby? mostly just so they can look hot in R's music videos lol

there's not a whole lot of dancing happening in rock music videos and more... stare sulkily into a camera icl

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

SF GIRLS JUST WANNA DROP BASSLINES.

-haC INFO: Spotlight on Lori "Lorax" Black, bassist of American punk rock/ post-hardcore band CLOWN ALLEY, performing live in San Francisco, CA, c. 1985, in the same year as the release of their debut album, "Circus of Chaos."

Source: www.picuki.com/media/2803423427173863207.

[ollypopwrites]

I knew my home team lost when literally no one was in the streets tonight lmao

[chaossmith2]

Anyways Eclipsa not having moon cheek marks bothers me a lot lol

[streetfarterturdstrike]

Capcom says Terry hasn’t canonically seen Ken in 20 years

SVC Chaos came out a little over 20 years ago

Is the implication that the events of that game actually happened? Was the apocalypse that took place in that game the same one Rose was trying to prevent in V? Are all the SNK and Capcom characters sharing a universe now as a result of the world getting reset?

[claire-starsword]

Shining Force Unused/Removed Content

“But Claire didn’t you have a world book to translate?” Yeah! And then I had to check a tiny detail on another book, and saw something weird, and TCRF wasn’t helpful, so I went down a 140+ page long forum thread and downloaded a ROM editor. It happens. And now you’re gonna hear about it.

So, usually i gloss over the gameplay data on these guide books because I assume people have this information elsewhere already due to hacking and FAQ and the like. That might have been a mistake though, look at this peculiar entry on the encyclopedia’s monster data:

Mephisto

Movement: 6

Weapon: none

Uses Demon Breath. As a boss monster, regenerates HP every turn.

If you don’t know/remember, Mephisto is the JP name of the Shining in the Darkness final boss, later revealed to be Darksol and Mishaela’s kid. Looks like he skipped on helping his dad here.

The encyclopedia notes the HP regen of every other boss, but none use this specific phrasing of “as a boss monster”. This makes me think he was gonna be a boss on some battle, and then a regular enemy later on.

The cut feels understandable to me though, he and Darksol are pretty much identical, no point in having both in a game. And if there was any idea already of establishing a lore/connection between the characters as well, putting him as a regular enemy would ruin that. Given that there’s no artwork to go on, it’s also possible that this was actually a generic demon enemy, and the name was just a coincidence and would be confusing. I kinda doubt this possibility though since there’s plenty of other connections between this game and SitD, at least when it comes to design. Hard to believe they’d forgot or ignore the big bad.

Sadly that’s all the info we have to go on for this guy. I’ve looked over with the editor and found no trace of him. Most I can say is that there are a couple Yogurt placeholders among the enemy map sprites, and a couple unused data entries for Dark Mages. But that could be anything. Unless there’s some oversight with the editor, Mephisto was either fully removed, or never implemented to begin with, and the guide book just published out-of-date info by mistake.

The next monster is the opposite, though

Green Golem

Movement: 4

Weapon: none

Can move on water, and has high attack.

I’m legit afraid that this is an enemy from the game that i just forgot and am embarrassing myself here, because the beast is complete. Graphics, data, you name it.

By graphics I mean it is just a color swap of the regular Golem, as its name implies. Stats wise, it has -3 attack and -2 HP compared to the Golem, meaning it’s an weaker enemy. Makes sense since it’s likely made for the naval battles in chapter 5, while regular Golem debut in chapter 6. Still, with how hard Golems are to hit in the regular game, i’m very glad they did not put a thing with the same defense in the previous chapter.

Well, not that glad. On the other hand, according to the editor...

Its localized name is Weed.

And I kinda need to see this in an actual screenshot right NOW.

I do need to finish this post first. Here’s the last, smaller oddity in the encyclopedia’s monster data:

Storm Rover

Movement: 6

Weapon: Swords

Be careful as it can attack with lightning.

Storm Rover is the JP name for the Shellfish enemy of the naval battle. In the final game they can poison, not attack with lightning. It seems the naval battle went through a lot of changes at some point.

Saying they equip swords is also weird but there’s a lot more mistakes about weapons in this guide, like saying the dragonewts use swords and the conches uses spears, so these might be just mistakes. Anyway still shows that this list is goofed and was probably printed by mistake.

That’s it for enemies, but there’s a few more unused NPC sprites, i think.

I don’t remember any of these in game, but do let me know if i’m wrong, it’s hard to remember all NPCs. I will be kinda mad if the cat is in and i just forgot, given that it’s cute as heck, and cats were my first act of hacking in a Shining game. Why was the SF2 cat not like that to begin with.

Now, on to text data. The thing about text data is that it is a list of 2000+ strings. And even though the event data is beautifully organized in diagrams in this editor, I cannot emphasize enough that it is a very elaborate editor, it’s still tough to sit and comprehend all that, especially in a single day. So I can’t say I have fully checked everything out for now, but you know me by now, i definitely did try. Here’s what I’ve noticed.

Lines 41 and 42 here from Simone’s introduction seem to go unused. To be fair, they don’t add anything.

Alef has a line set up for the boat HQ, even though she isn’t available until after the boat battles. The other late game characters (Torasu, Lyle, Bleu, Musashi, Hanzou, and Adam) all have empty strings for this instead. [Update: I have since investigated and this is an issue in the english version only. Shoutout to whoever in the localization loved Alef very much.]

Khris seems to have a surprised line set up for if you manage to enter Alterone’s castle before the merchant puts in a good word for you, which should not be possible in regular gameplay. [Update: I have since investigated this one too and it can be seen with walk through walls cheats, showing Khris is also in a different position of the map as well. The JP version is even more scandalous.]

Anri also seems to have an extra line to continue to reject Max when they meet for the first time, but from what i recall, Nova immediately comes up to convince her he’s telling the truth. Perhaps you were meant to do something to convince her instead.

Otrant also seems to have a line reacting to Max being turned into chicken, however from what i recall, his room is inaccessible when that happens.

Plenty of other inaccessible NPCs seem to have lines set up for this as well, however they are just reusing lines from the NPCs you do talk to. Those generic lines like “what’s a hen doing here?” and such.

Update: I’m sorry for Spreading Misinformation Online, you can explore all of Manarina as a chicken in this game so these lines are not unused, you can even heal yourself off the chickening by leaving Manarina or entering the next battle. The GBA version fixes this oversight by locking you out of a good chunk of the map so i got confused.

But enough of these minor details. We’re here for deleted content. We’re here for plot lines being dumped in the trash. Bring in the kings.

That’s right baby, it’s Adam and Cain losing plot lines again, it’s not just the localization that did it to them. Ever noticed how Adam do not get the usual “character has joined the force” message, and kinda just appears in your team during the Chaos battle? Yeah, that might have been a hasty fix. There are traces of a bigger scene here with Adam, Darksol and Cain, upon which Adam would join the force with the proper message.

Only a single line of these events has survived, in which Adam urges Max to take the Chaos Breaker. This might mean you would have the sword before fighting Chaos, as the pre-battle dialogue with Chaos is right after this in the data. The remaining lines have been wiped, though the code referring to them remains there along with the code for loading character portraits, which is how we get the handy diagram above.

Unfortunately I don’t know enough of this editor to check if there’s leftover animation data on this cutscene. Sprite data relating to it does seem to be present in the map though, check it out:

does this remind you of something?

:)

put this one in the pile of “the GBA version is just what the devs intended all along” with the others. Granted, “intended” might not be the correct word since they did cut it. Why? Who knows. One possibility I see is that they might have felt a flashback would be confusing, the game doesn’t do any kind of perspective change, unlike the GBA version which does hop between Max, Narsha and Ramladu’s POVs every chapter. While Adam loredumping in the og version might be a more boring way of conveying the plot, it is also more in line with the game’s presentation. A flashback might have also posed technical difficulties, like adding a sepia tone to the screen when no other scene requires it, etc. Though SF2 does have a sepia scene, so if that was the case they figured it out eventually.

Another reason might be that avoiding this scene helps hiding how messy it is. Cain and Chaos get beaten up and corrupted, which makes sense. Max on the other hand also gets beaten up enough to get amnesia, and yet does not get captured or killed, but instead, blown across the ocean??? Somehow???? The GBA version adds the concept that Cain’s armor can warp space and teleport, though seemingly putting a heavy strain on the user’s body. While it’s not explicitly said, we can assume Max’s armor is the same, and that he used it to escape, making his injuries and amnesia not just from Darksol. I’m still connecting a lot of dots on my own here, but it’s something of an explanation, while the classic game had no foreshadowing for this. Even if the deleted dialogue here explained, it would feel more coming out of nowhere.

That’s all speculation though. There might be more clues on unused lines of the japanese version, but i don’t have an editor for that. I have heard tales of a debug mode though, so i’ll look into that. For now i leave you with this monster of a post

[shadowfoxsilver]

[sfstranslations]

UPDATE: The S-Ranks That I Raised (350)

He’d never dreamed that he’d see a sight like this—three savage beasts from habitats of land, sea, and sky so distinct that they’d never encounter each other, coming together and combining forces for the same purpose.

Read Chapter 350: In Discussions (2) now!

Request access to the My S-Ranks translations by sending us your email through our contact form.

[sonic-fankid-showdown]

Poll 3, Round 1.

About Comet: (by @sonic-polis) He's 17, and he's a goofball with pounds of mental issues hidden behind a smile. Silver died when he was a little kid, and his relationship with Sonic is strained because Sonic was so depressed that Tails raised him more than Sonic did. He's naturally insanely powerful on account of being the child of two people with insane amounts of chaos energy (and a second unknown energy that fuels Silver and Comet's psychokinesis), so he has to wear two pairs of limiters on his wrists and a set on his ankles. Even with the limiters, he's always shimmering gold because he's constantly right on the urge of going super. He glows in the dark too! He loves flying, sewing and cooking, and while he's a little awkward around new people, he loves making friends! His best friends are my Knuxadow fankid, Wraith, and one of my Blazamy fankids, River. He's a disaster gay who's crushing on both of them. He has a hero chao named Meteor as well (I have yet to draw Meteor unfortunately). He spoils the everloving crap out of him. I don't have much actual story for him yet, but he's gonna be forced to step outside his comfort zone and step in as a hero when the adults are unable to fight.

About Sunny: (by @wereh0gz) Sunny is a chao that Sonic decided to raise on a whim. He grew very attached to them and became invested in seeing them become their best self, training them to be the greatest running chao of all. Shadow eventually helps out in raising them, spoiling them rotten whenever Sonic wasn't looking. Eventually, Sunny started to grow and evolve, and instead of gaining the traits of the critters Sonic and Shadow had them play with, they began to look more and more like their caretakers. They grew, and grew, and grew, eventually becoming not unlike a mobian child, perhaps due to Sonic and Shadow's love for them (and their strange Chaos Energy signatures causing them to mutate.) They tend to emulate their parents a lot (especially Sonic), as it's in their nature as a chao to mimic those around them. They're very innocent but have a bit of a mischievous streak. They are also a bit of a daredevil and love to throw themselves at danger whenever they get the chance. They're an excellent runner, almost as fast as their dads, and pretty good at flying, but are unfortunately an abysmal swimmer.

[claire-starsword]

"Cain" is the intended reading in the JP version. It is likely that the localization team did a first pass at the translation keeping all the JP names, then decided to change some of them including Cain, but forgot to review the enemy names, which are stored in a different place than dialogue.

Here is an interesting translation typo I noticed: in the scenario text, Kane's name is spelt "K-a-n-e", but during the battle against him, it's spelt "C-a-i-n" 😂😂

Never noticed that before.

This battle always used to make me nervous 😅