Please help fixing "Impossible Spell Card"

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Did you ever want Day10 background fixed in ISC?

Yes, of course!
1
25%
No, never bothered me.
1
25%
Didn't play, not interested in the game.
2
50%
 
Total votes: 4

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wht11
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Please help fixing "Impossible Spell Card"

Post by wht11 »

First why I think this is important and I can't understand how no one else ever cared (including developer himself): this is the last good Touhou game (and one of only 2 good in now 16 years and counting),
also never received a proper English translation patch, just adds to the flavor.

So why not fix at least that?

Here's the problem: out of the 3 available resolution options (640×480, 960×720, 1280×960), the starting background on Last Day (Day 10) has correct coordinates only for 1280×960. On the other two drawing point starts somewhere in the middle of screen leaving the rest a 3/4 gray void. You can observe the background messed on many videos, say Jaimers playthrough.

Now I know it's merely a blink before the attack part initiates, however I feel the unique high quality of this game makes this a massive issue for overall experience and should've been fixed no more than a week after release. Why not use 1280×960 then? For once and most importantly for me: the sprite scaling is crap on it, high res was improved on later games (which are crap for different reasons, what irony). Here it looks bad. Otherwise it can pose performance issues.

Seeing how there are tools for extracting/repacking this game data I made some attempts on this but... failed in determination shall we say? Mainly from frustration that for developer this is 10min work (including uploading the official patch): knowing what script to edit. I'm getting back to this annually and since I registered here lately I took the opportunity to ask for help if possible. Maybe someone could point me to the file in question? Any other clue? At the very least thank you for reading.
Last edited by wht11 on Wed Jun 09, 2021 2:34 am, edited 1 time in total.
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KennyMan666
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Re: Please help fixing "Impossible Spell Card"

Post by KennyMan666 »

Impossible Spell Card totally has an English translation patch so idk what you're talking about there.
My 1CCs so I can find the list easier myself
<Despatche> you've been a thorn in the shmups community since the beginning, you're largely responsible for the horrible face of modern speedrunning
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wht11
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Re: Please help fixing "Impossible Spell Card"

Post by wht11 »

KennyMan666 wrote:Impossible Spell Card totally has an English translation patch so idk what you're talking about there.
If you don't than let's just leave that part aside, it'll end up more off-topic than anything. The important part for me is getting the stage background working somehow.

In truth it would already be enough and yet an immense help if someone knew which part of the archive I'm looking for, we are talking hundreds files where I'm not familiar with the root at all. Even taking away some sound/image it isn't obvious at all how to correct this kind of background error.
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wht11
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Re: Please help fixing "Impossible Spell Card"

Post by wht11 »

Well, actually I still must correct this anyway, it wouldn't be enough. Maybe someone working on those archives in past could know fast what exactly should be changed in stage script and by coincidence post here... yeah, high hopes, I'll just stick to it and figure it out this time, no way around it.
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KennyMan666
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Re: Please help fixing "Impossible Spell Card"

Post by KennyMan666 »

You would probably be better off asking somewhere more Touhou-centric than here. While the Touhou Patch Center is a site for the translation patches, they do have an IRC channel and a Discord where there's probably people who know more about how to properly modify the game files. Then there's of course also the Maidens of the Kaleidoscope forums.
My 1CCs so I can find the list easier myself
<Despatche> you've been a thorn in the shmups community since the beginning, you're largely responsible for the horrible face of modern speedrunning
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wht11
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Re: Please help fixing "Impossible Spell Card"

Post by wht11 »

KennyMan666 wrote:You would probably be better off asking somewhere more Touhou-centric than here.
Yeah, thanks and I did thought about that both past and now. It was kind of "by the way" to post here, with some luck you never know but didn't expect too much. At the same time I hesitate to post specifically in the areas you mentioned for some random reasons, doesn't really matter. I also thought about github repository for the Toolkit but the utility itself works great, it's bad game code issue, so again not sure at the moment.
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Re: Please help fixing "Impossible Spell Card"

Post by Despatche »

Since Touhou 10, ZUN has basically given up on patching his games, unless the game outright crashes or something equally crazy.
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wht11
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Re: Please help fixing "Impossible Spell Card"

Post by wht11 »

Despatche wrote:Since Touhou 10, ZUN has basically given up on patching his games
Yes, and it seems to this day it wasn't the only thing he gave up on at that time. Of course you can nail it only that many times but in all fairness, he did deliver on arguably more than 10 occasions (including PC98 games in their own right). That's quite something, as to what happened afterwards and why he seemed to lack respect for his own work, only he can know.
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Despatche
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Re: Please help fixing "Impossible Spell Card"

Post by Despatche »

Wat. 11, 12, and 14 (somewhat less so) are all considered to be pretty good games. A lot of people like 13, some like 16. 17 is a perfectly fine game if you just ignore Otter. The PC-98 games are not golden eggs, 02 and 04 are... not that great, though at least 04 is interesting.

Yes, he can no longer no-life these games, and I'll go on and on about 07 and 08 being top class games for the genre, but please don't act like he's devolved into some talentless hack. He gives people what they really want, with what little time he has, whether people want it at a specific time or not. He must necessarily be commended for this, regardless of what actually gets released, and regardless of whether you or anyone else might like what he releases.
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Re: Please help fixing "Impossible Spell Card"

Post by wht11 »

Despatche wrote:Wat. 11, 12, and 14 (somewhat less so) are all considered to be pretty good games. A lot of people like 13, some like 16. 17 is a perfectly fine game if you just ignore Otter. The PC-98 games are not golden eggs, 02 and 04 are... not that great, though at least 04 is interesting.

Yes, he can no longer no-life these games, and I'll go on and on about 07 and 08 being top class games for the genre, but please don't act like he's devolved into some talentless hack. He gives people what they really want, with what little time he has, whether people want it at a specific time or not. He must necessarily be commended for this, regardless of what actually gets released, and regardless of whether you or anyone else might like what he releases.
Well now, certainly I wouldn't like to be misunderstood. The simplest way I could sum up what I meant is that from then on (~10 and later) his games became solely "a craftsman's work, not an artist work". I also consider it might mean something else for anyone based on random factors (first experiences made with different games, on different time or special for other reasons).

But above all I would never deny that his "danmaku" is up to it in any game, so people looking only for solid gameplay in genre should always find it. What I'm looking for is a bit more as a whole experience. I know this is less likely than seeing Final Fantasy released (like literally final) but I do think Touhou would've benefit for a long time if ZUN teamed up with someone close and inspired for either music or artwork (today best both), while focusing himself on making good systems even better. It did wonders for Fairy Wars.
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Re: Please help fixing "Impossible Spell Card"

Post by wht11 »

Brand new poll added! Please kindly share statistical information for motivation rising purposes.
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Re: Please help fixing "Impossible Spell Card"

Post by ZellSF »

Might not be what you're looking for but maybe you can fix your problems with scaling at 1280x960 with dgVoodoo:
http://dege.freeweb.hu/dgVoodoo2/
You can force texture filtering (which is used for upscaling certain things in the game), resolution (which helps with 2D effects due to how the game renders them) and the resampling mode used for scaling from game resolution to display resolution.

It would be more helpful if you showed some screenshots of what you don't like about the sprite scaling.
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wht11
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Re: Please help fixing "Impossible Spell Card"

Post by wht11 »

ZellSF wrote:Might not be what you're looking for but maybe you can fix your problems with scaling at 1280x960 with dgVoodoo:
http://dege.freeweb.hu/dgVoodoo2/
You can force texture filtering (which is used for upscaling certain things in the game), resolution (which helps with 2D effects due to how the game renders them) and the resampling mode used for scaling from game resolution to display resolution.

It would be more helpful if you showed some screenshots of what you don't like about the sprite scaling.
Thank you very much for tips. As it happens I know of dgVoodoo2 and few other possibilities, shaders and so. This is how I used to "get over" it for a while but over time it started to bother me too much, I can't get back to the game.

I don't think screenshots showing what I don't like there between resolutions will actually help here because even more people could end up shaking their heads instead. Best is just settle I want to play the game of 640×480 with that stage background working. It really is that important for me.

What I ended up with is that editing STD files for background script even in most extreme ways didn't give any hints. From any changes made the glitch between resolutions was still reflected. ANM files apart from images hold information for several instructions. Not that many but couldn't learn enough to do anything from there, even look "blind" for it. Worst thing I have in back of mind is that it could end a problem in .exe itself, doesn't seem likely but you never know. Either way I don't know how to proceed for the time.
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