A guide to running Touhou games in tate mode using THRotator

[oboewan42]

So I was browsing the "Game Tools And Modifications" section on the Touhou wiki, and I came across not one, but two tate mods. The "Vertical Play" mod has some English-language resources on it, but it only works with 10-13; "THRotator", which this guide will be covering, works with ALL of the Windows games (with the obvious exception of PFV and the fighting games; it even works with the photography games and Uwabami Breakers).

It actually cuts-and-pastes the HUD elements to the top and bottom of the screen, and does a pretty decent job of it. Here's some examples:

http://i.imgur.com/y6mfV.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/hIKlU.png

http://i.imgur.com/nNE0Q.png

The reason I'm writing this guide is that there is NO English-language information on how to actually install and use the damn thing. I ended up having to use trial-and-error and a poorly-Google-translated readme. This guide looks complex but it's really simple; a lot of this stuff is just game specific.

STEP ONE: DOWNLOAD IT

There's a download link on the wiki page.

STEP TWO: EXTRACT THE DLL FILE

There should be two DLL files in the zip file you downloaded. Extract one of them to your game install folder. For Shoot The Bullet and earlier, use d3d8.dll; for Mountain Of Faith and later (this includes Uwabami Breakers), use d3d9.dll.

STEP THREE: EXTRACT THE INI FILE

There are a bunch of INI files in the zip file you downloaded. Each of them begins with a line that says, something like "[THRotator_th12]", "[THRotator_th128]", etc. Find the one that corresponds to the game you want to play and rename the file to throt.ini. ("[THRotator_alcostg]" is for Uwabami Breakers. The one with Japanese characters, which may appear as gibberish characters depending on your system, is for EoSD.)

You also need to edit the first line, so that the part in brackets after "THRotator_" matches the name of your EXE. For example, if your Fairy Wars English patched EXE is called "th128e.exe", you will need to change the first line of the INI file from "[THRotator_th128]" to "[THRotator_th128e]".

Now, extract that file. For EoSD through UFO, extract it to your install directory. For Double Spoiler, Fairy Wars and Ten Desires, extract it to "C:\Users\ABC\AppData\Roaming\ShanghaiAlice\XYZ", where ABC is your Windows login name and XYZ is the name of your EXE. Back to our example, if your login name is "JimBob" and your Fairy Wars English patched EXE is called "th128e.exe", you will need to extract the INI file to "C:\Users\JimBob\AppData\Roaming\ShanghaiAlice\th128e".

(If you're running WinXP, replace "C:\Users\ABC\AppData\Roaming" with "C:\Documents and Settings\ABC\Application Data".)

STEP FOUR: TATE AWAY

Launch the game, and press Alt+Left or Alt+Right to switch between tate and yoko. Note that, in tate mode, menu screens will appear letterboxed; this is normal, it'll automatically do the rearranging once actual gameplay begins. The only other issue is that, during dialogue sequences in Fairy Wars and Ten Desires, the screen can get a bit garbled; this does not affect gameplay at all. The mod is even smart enough to know when you've rotated your display at the video-card level, and automatically apply tate as necessary.

[burgerkingdiamond]

thanks dude, this sounds pretty sweet. I'll probably end up playing these more often now.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

This handy guide would be great to get them Touhou doujins on a tate'd arcade monitor with a candy cab setup indeed.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[Arcade_At_Home]

Great!!! and really usefull, ill try it to play some touhou on my cab
thanx!

[burgerkingdiamond]

I just tried to get this to work with EOSD. It seems pretty damn simple but it's not working. In the game when I press alt + left it does rotate but the aspect ratio doesn't change. It's just the same thing letterboxed and rotated by 90 degrees.

[oboewan42]

First of all, what you're describing is normal for the menus; it'll only start actually tating it when you start the actual gameplay.

If it still isn't working during actual gameplay, however, that means one of three things: either your ini file isn't in the right place, isn't named properly (it should be renamed to "throt.ini" - make sure "hide extensions for known file types" is unchecked in Folder Options), or doesn't have the first line set correctly.

To diagnose: Start your game in windowed mode, right click on the title bar, and click the "THRotator" entry at the bottom. Then, in the window that pops up, click the button on the bottom right.

• If you didn't have your throt.ini file in the right place, or if it wasn't renamed correctly, it should have created a new throt.ini file in the correct place. Find it, and replace it with the correct ini file.
• If you hadn't properly edited the first line of the ini file, it should have created a second section in your throt.ini file. Replace the first line of your throt.ini file with the first line of the second section, then delete the second section.

[ACSeraph]

Quite an old topic to be digging out of the grave, but this is pretty much the only source of THRotator info on the net and I wanted to share some things I figured out with it last night.

I just tried to get this to work with EOSD. It seems pretty damn simple but it's not working. In the game when I press alt + left it does rotate but the aspect ratio doesn't change. It's just the same thing letterboxed and rotated by 90 degrees.

I was having the same problem as this for the longest time, and it wasn't a problem with the .dll or the ini.

In my case I'm playing on the original Japanese games installed straight from the original disc. I also installed the official update patches.

I have no idea why, but the only way the rotator will work properly is if you change the source folder of the game. So in my case I went into computer/C:/Programs and found the Japanese EOSD folder. I opened it and copied all of it's contents. Then I went back to programs and created a new folder called Touhou 6 Embodiment of Scarlet Devil and pasted the contents of the komakyou folder in there. For reasons I do not even remotely understand that caused Throtator to start working.

Same problem with Imperishable Night, and the same fix worked. I hope this helps anyone who has problems using this program.

[Knuckels]

For people who rotation doesn't work with EoSD and the .ini/.dll is good (like burgerkingdiamond), check "Clear back buffer on refresh" (7th line) with custom.exe.

Thank's me later.
Sorry for necro-post. *out*

[Despatche]

Same problem with Imperishable Night, and the same fix worked. I hope this helps anyone who has problems using this program.

Not really sure what's going on here. I just tried both games, and they work without any weird steps.

[shru]

Hey, sorry to revive a dead thread and to sign up just to ask this, but: I was wondering if some kind soul would be nice enough to upload their copy of THRotator? The link on Touhou Wiki is dead, and I've looked through all of the google results for "THRotator" and haven't been able to find it hosted elsewhere.

Thank you.

[genomcorp]

Finally got my PC up and running and would love to play in tate mode as well. As stated above, the THRotator file is no longer available on the Touhou wiki, but if anyone is kind enough to share, it would be greatly appreciated

[marus]

I have it for Embodiment of Scarlet Devil. I thought I saved the full package somewhere but I can't seem to find it. You can use the same .dll file for all of the games up to Shoot the Bullet, but the ini file will need to be modified for each game so it's not ideal. Hopefully someone else can help out with the other games but in the meantime I hope this helps at least a little bit.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/539 ... 20eosd.zip

[genomcorp]

thanks so much Marus!! I was actually just playing Embodiment of Scarlet Devil so this is perfect