en8/ROMS/Translations/-/docs/Destiny of an Emperor II - ...

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The Destiny of an Emperor-II Translation Project:
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-Confederated Translation Company (Destiny Translations, Gaijin Productions,
Magic Translations, and The Vale)

Whats new in V1.10
====================================================

A graphics bug that had some sprites out of place
when joining or leaving your party or just standing
in overworld maps has been squashed.

====================================================

Introduction:

Hello Destiny Fans!  This is a rather large .nfo file, but the creation of our
DoaE-II English patch was a rather large project, underway for close to two
years.  I would recommend that players and would-be ROM hackers alike read it,
for it is literally chocked full of useful information.

A Policy Statement:

We "amateur" videogame hackers and translators do this purely for fun, for the
love of the games, and also for the many educational experiences and benefits,
with not even the slightest hint of personal monetary gain of any sort.  In
fact, we are hardly "amateurs", except in the "not-for-profit" category.
Collectively, we enjoy a huge amount of formal education, up to and including
post-graduate degrees. Without the benefit of a source code, we have created a
product that we claim is far superior to what a bunch of "paycheck grubbers"
(so-called professionals) could wangle on their best day!

That said, let me issue a warning that if anyone (other than CAPCOM) comes up
with the bright idea of pirating our patch, combining it with the DoaE-IIj ROM,
and selling copies of a DoaE-IIe game for money, the "Liu Bei Legion" will hunt
you down anywhere you might be in this whole wide world.  There is no place to
hide!  I guarantee, if someone tries to sell our patch, his head will decorate a
pointed stick in front of Xinye Castle!  Before we're through with you, Lu Bu
will look like a one-legged Sunday School teacher.  'Nuff said...?  Okay, on
with the show! :)

In the Beginning....

For a while, I didn't know where to start with this text.  I've been involved in
many superb projects with a varied assortment of teammates.  Some projects have
reached completion, while others have languished; but no single effort to date
has meant more to me personally than Destiny of an Emperor-II.  Indeed, it is
one of the two games that drew me into this hobby (the other one being Dragon
Quest V).  My two all-time favorite videogames, RPG or otherwise, are Destiny
of an Emperor (I) and Dragon Warrior (Quest) IV.

The People Involved:

Rather than talk about the game itself at the outset (for true fans KNOW both
the game and Romance of Three Kingdoms legend...), I will discuss instead, the
special people involved in each stage of the project.

Me (Wildbill):

As I stated, DoaE-I is tied for my all time favorite game.  Let's face it; the
game is downright addictive, and I must have played it at least 50 times through
the years since it's release in 1989.  As of 1997, I had no idea that a sequel
even existed, as I did not follow the export market.  But then I discovered the
emulation world quite by accident, searching for information about a possible
English prototype of Dragon Quest (Warrior) V, and a few weeks later I stumbled
into Zophar's Domain, Demi's Rom Hacking WWW Board, and a now defunct RPG news
website, all of which followed amateur translation efforts.  This was in the
days of the "FF2 and FF3 Translation Wars", and it was in this millieu that I
first heard about the Japanese DoaE-II game.

Cataclysm-X:

What a character CX is!  But he and I have always enjoyed cordial relations, and
it was CX who first attempted a translation of DoaE-II, teamed up with Shujin
Rik, as translator.  But CX ran into all sorts of problems with what is now
known as the "ROM-from-Hell", especially with a form of text compression invoked
by a system that uses thousands of bytes for "substrings".  I followed CX's
progress and rantings about the technical challenges, then finally learned
enough about the emulation world to establish a dialogue with CX and other
people who were working on projects of interest to me.

CAPCOM of America:

I wrote CAPCOM a very polite and passionate letter, requesting that they bring
DoaE-II to America, on PC or anything, but they didn't even afford me the
courtesy of a reply.

Dark Force:

For several years, DF has been a mainstay in the J2e and DeJap translation
"companies", and has lent his talented hand to several major releases, including
FF4.  DF also has an abiding interest in the Ro3K legend, both the Chinese and
Japanese languages, and advanced hacking techniques, including assembly language
(ASM).  DF took over the DoaE-II project, a new person for me to badger on
message boards, about progress.  Eventually, DF and I had several ICQ chats and
exchanged a few e-mails.  It was through his tutelage that I learned many
additional details about DoaE-II's substring compression, and ASM problems
associated with converting its extensive Chinese ideographs into English.

A Turning Point:

Then, events took a fateful turn.  About mid-1998, Dark Force told me one
day that he would probably never get around to finishing DoaE-II, that it was
too time-consuming with all the other things he had to do (and quite possibly
the toughest Famicom hack ever attempted), that I should take over the reins of
the project and look for the necessary cast of talented people to help me get
the job done.  So, I did exactly that, became a project manager, or facilitator,
as my only real technical roles have been scriptwriting, some tile work on Shop
signs, the English font, the Chinese table file, some translations of both
Japanese and Chinese lists, and a hand in the Destiny website design and
maintenance.

Jim Price:

Through the first half of 1998, Jim Price and I had worked on Technos Samurai
for Famicom, a game we completed that became one of the first releases of the
newly created Confederated Translation Company (following Magic's SFC Villgust).
As work on T-S was winding down, I asked Jim if he would become the chief hacker
for the DoaE-II project, and he agreed.  Within a few days Jim had dumped the
script, and our project was off and running.  Jim and I started from the English
patch worked on by Dark Force, one that already had a rough English Prologue, Introduction, and font, plus a few other features.  Within a short time Jim had
some more English menues built, and had loaded a few weapons, items, tactics, castles, and even some warlords.  Jim also found the code to expand the menu
boxes, created multi-character tiles to fit in long menu words  like "Tactics",
and started the Title Page conversion.

Musashi:

Musashi was one of the first people I met in the translation scene.  A
contributor to the Earthbound Zero Prototype Dumping Fundraise, Musashi is also
a dyed-in-the-wool Destiny and Ro3K fan.  When I told him I had received the
project from Dark Force (about the same time as I told Jim), I asked him to join
the team, too.  Thus, Jim, Musashi, and I formed an early triumvirate in those
heady early days of this CTC/Destiny/Gaijin DoaE-II project, about September
1998.  It was Musashi who re-translated the Prologue, Introduction, and
eventually, large blocks of the 40,000+ byte Bank-1 dialogue, and ALL of the 40+
kilobyte Bank-2 dialogue.  Musashi also helped design the Destiny Translation
website, and applied some rather impressive finishing touches to those Shop
signs I started.  All of the translations loaded by the previous patch owners
were eventually supplanted by our own work, but having it to start from was
still invaluable to our efforts.

Faraday:

Ah, Faraday!  He is a translator deluxe, from merry olde England, and a pure joy
to work with.  He prefers to translate scripts of games that he loves (and DoaE
does not represent one of his favorite genres), but nevertheless, everything he
did for DoaE-II was absolutely suberb, meticulously researched, and placed in
context with the styles of the period.  Faraday translated the lion's share of
the Bank-1 dialogue, and about 30% of Bank-3 before he had to take a leave-of-
absense to deal with some personal issues.  If anyone wishes to play some of the
fine works translated by Faraday, try SFC Villgust, Technos Samurai, or Phantasy
Star Gaiden, all produced by CTC teams!

Braxton:

Braxton did a lot of quality work on the DoaE-II Title Page, including the
conversion of "Tenchi wo Kurai" to "Destiny of an Emperor".  Brax also did the
sword, and "The Story of Zhuge Liang" logo.  That's the beauty of the CTC WWW
Board.  Usually, when someone posts a request for help, that call is answered.

Robin:

Robin is a good friend and a fellow RPG-lover, also from England, who is a
pretty darn good self-taught, Kanji-reading Japanese translator.  I asked Robyn
to look at the Kana-only DoaE-II bank script, after Faraday ran into conflicts
with his free time.  But DoaE-II has a lot of strange readings that are military
in nature, so Robyn and I worked it out that the most efficient use of his time
was to translate Kanji projects like Mystic Ark.  But Robyn was willing to
tackle the DoaE-II script, and to me, that makes him valuable part of the
effort.

Michael Wishlow:

Mr. Wishlow is either a con-artist or a thief.  At the very least, he is a
person of very low integrity, for I made a flawed judgment, myself, then Wishlow
completed the debacle by absconding with sixty U.S. Dollars ($60).  Times were
getting desperate for the project in late 1998 and early 1999.  Musashi was
coming through with Bank-2, but about the time Faraday got 30% through Bank-3,
and had to halt his DoaE-II work permanently, Jim Price's computer crashed and
he went incommunicado from the rest of us for several months.  Musashi and I
kept working on the translations, Chinese table file, etc.; and I kept
searching for more pool translators.  That's when I decided it would be worth
$60 (about the price of a high-end game cart), to "contract" with Wishlow for a
Bank-4 translation.

(An excerpt from this transaction)

Subject: Re: Translation of SuperFamicom RPGs
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 1999 19:03:07 PST
From: "michael wishlow" <abunaideka@hotmail.com>
To: wildbill@aloha.net
...
>> >michael wishlow wrote:
>> >>
>> >> I have several contracts i'm working on so figure about a week for
>> >> completion.
>> >> Please send payment in either Cash or International Money Order.
>> >> By the time it gets here,i'll most likely have the translation done
>> >> and i'll send the completed work via E-Mail.
>> >> I look forward to working on this.
>> >>
>> >> Send to: Michael Wishlow
>> >>          109a Park Row
>> >>          New Westminster,B.C
>> >>          V3L-2J5
>> >>          CANADA

If any of my Canadian friends want to contact Wishlow about getting this money
back, hop to it, and use the $60 to buy a game cart for dumping, or something
similar....

Demi:

After being screwed by Wishlow, things started looking up again.  While working
in Japan, Demi found a complete full-color 208-page Strategy Guide for DoaE-II,
and mailed it to me when he returned to Ohio.  I scanned it into graphic form,
and send copies around to the various members of the team.  I even uploaded it
for a time, when much of CTC was hosted by Postman77 and his domain, the-liu.
This guide was invaluable, because it correlated Chinese ideographs of every
name and feature in the game (using Furigana), with their corresponding Kana
transcriptions.  This unlocked the door to a successful translation of
EVERYTHING in the game, especially warlord names, some of which were "mangled"
beyond recognition in their Katakana forms.

Izack:

Izack, a Destiny fan from Singapore, volunteered to be our Chinese translator,
and provided just about everything we needed in that area.  His biggest
contribution was translating all of the new Tactics in DoaE-II, and he did it
within mere days!  DoaE-II uses 50 Tactics, 22 of which were present in DoaE-I,
so that left 28 new ones, including 10 special battle array Tactics.
Additionally, Izack translated all of the warlord names from the Strategy Guide,
and helped immensely with the Weapons List, including conversions of weapons
with later era Japanese names, to appropriate Chinese weapons of the Ro3K
period.  He even suggested that we re-name an episode featuring a bottle of
Japanese Sake, to Chinese Jiu, which we happily did!

Taskforce:

One day, Musashi and I were talking about all of the setbacks, key among them,
Jim's mysterious disappearance at the very time when he was reporting progress
on an automated script insertion utility.  I realized that with over half of the
game already translated, I needed to do something to jumpstart the project.  I
made one more futile attempt to contact Jim, then went to one of my most trusted
and reliable workmates and friends in this hobby field, Taskforce.  TF and I had
already finished Villgust, and were planning Phantasy Star Gaiden.  Even though
I knew TF wasn't a history buff, or a big military strategy game fan, he was
certainly capable of writing a script inserter. So, I explained about Jim, and
asked TF if he would modify his Villgust inserter to load Bank-1, and possibly
2.  The rest (hee-hee-hee) is history!  To synopsize briefly, Taskforce picked
up a very early stage of possibly the hardest NES hack ever, and saw it through
to conclusion.  As such, he is the biggest hero of this project.  Eventually,
Jim did re-appear, and gave his blessing to TF taking over, but not before he
(Jim) saw my Chinese table file (many months in the making), posted at the
Destiny website.  Jim grabbed that table file and dumped all of the Chinese
warlord names for us, as such has been the unselfish spirit of our extended
Destiny team!  But much more is to be revealed about TF's work with Insertion
and Pointer Tools, his never-ending wrestling match with Substring Compression,
the dreaded "F2" Warlord List, and all of the other hacking chores he
accomplished.  Look in his technical notes (below) for much more information on
these details.

Varkon:

Sometimes, good things come in threes, and Godsend Number Two was soon to emerge
on the scene.  Shortly after Taskforce joined the project, I cajoled one of our
excellent Mystic Ark translators, Varkon, to translate that very Bank-4 that
Wishlow had been paid $60 to do.  Varkon, a former winner of a competition
called the Japan Bowl, proved to be a translating dynamo!  He believed that
translating one kilobye of DoaE-II script per hour was slow, but it's not
really, when compared to the 60 or more hours the rest of us spend editing,
preparing, and inserting that same 20 kilobyte script that took him about 20
hours to translate.  At first blush it might appear that the translator has
the easiest job of all.  Not so.  All serious translating teams have learned
(sometimes painfully) that projects go absolutely nowhere without serious,
competent, dedicated translators.  The work is exhausting, and translator
burnout is common.  But Varkon finished Bank-4 so quickly (and it became
painfully apparent that Faraday wasn't going to return), that I prevailed upon
him to finish the last 70% of Bank-3.  Once he settled down to it, Varkon flew through the rest of the script quickly, and just like that, most of the DoaE-II translations were completed, achieving our first huge milestone in this project!

Jair:

The third missing link in assuring completion was ASM hacking skills.  Taskforce
eventually loaded the four banks, while the rest of us beta tested, edited,
wrote FAQs, translated manuals, etc., but one of the the biggest bars to
completion (after bank-loading) was the ASM hacking necessary to alter the
routines that controlled how the names in the "F2" Warlord List were displayed
on Status and Battle pages.  The names displayed just fine in straight
dialogues, inserted as a process of not-so-simple variables, as most fell into
the realm of substring compression.  For this reason, editing and formatting
script required that all names reside entirely on one line of insertable
dialogue.  But the biggest challenge was displaying the Chinese (ideographical)
names in Pinyin (English), because each Chinese ideograph used four bytes,
stacked two-over-two, and the four segments were stored at random in a huge
Chinese font table!  In the simple chart below, the 12 c's represent the
segments (of three ideographs) that were available for each name conversion:

cccccc                Zhuge_
cccccc   to become:   _Liang    where:   _ is a blank space.

Enter, Jair... yet another contributor to the Earthbound Zero Fundraise.  To
make a long story short, Jair volunteered to solve these conversion problems,
and actually did so during the Christmas holiday period of 1999.  As Taskforce
proclaimed on the CTC WWW board, "Jair is da man!"

Yan Zhang:

Yan Zhang is a student at a scientific and technical magnet school in Virginia,
and says he enjoys the Ro3K legend and games immensely.  During the earlier part
of 1999, I read a FAQ he started drafting for DoaE-I, then e-mailed Yan, and
asked him if he would volunteer to write an official DoaE-II English translation
Project FAQ and Walkthrough.  As of the time of writing this document, Yan's FAQ
is about 97% finished.

Jainsafel:

A really nice person from the University of Texas in Austin, who is working on
our project's official translation of the Destiny of an Emperor-II Game Manual.
The actual document was severely battered when I received it with the DoaE-IIj
gamepak, but still readable.  At the time of this writing, Jainsafe1's work is
still on-going, but her translations of some of the Tactics are printed in a
section below.

Postman77:

P77 was our Destiny (and CTC WWW board) host for about a year, allowing us
server space and access to his domain, the-liu.  We would still be with P77 had
his partnership not failed with the other server owners.  Hopefully, P77 says he
will be back in the server business sometime during the winter of 2000.

Randy:

A prince of a fellow who offered us a domain for the Lennus-II Translation
Project, and graciously granted the latitude to support a number of projects,
including a new home for Destiny and Magic Translations.  Thanks, Randy!  I hope
you will find some pleasure playing DoaE-IIe while we continue working on
Lennus-II.

World-wide Destiny Fans (and fellow team members):

All of you... you're the best!  Concerning DoaE-II, I've never had a crank e-
mail from anyone, proving that a mature game and series like Destiny of an
Emperor also attracts a mature audience.  It's a real pleasure to share this
game's English patch with y'all!  To the dozens of people who have worked on
this game, offered help, and sent encouragement over the past year-and-a-half, I
hereby dedicate our Destiny of an Emperor-II English translation patch to ALL of
you!

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Tips for Playing Our English Version of DoaE-II:
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I don't want to divulge spoilers, but this game is a little different from the
original, so consider this section a "Tip" page, just like in the game manuals.

(Note:  I rate the Nintendo-of-America version of DoaE-I a "G", whereas the Ro3K
novel and the DoaE-II Japanese script read more realistically, as to how
soldiers might act, fight, and speak while embroiled in a long-running war.
Therefore, as compared to DoaE-Ie, from NOA, I'd rate our game at least "PG", or
possibly "PG-13". But as I mentioned, there are some notable differences
between the original and DoaE-IIe, so here are tips to help players get off to a
good start.)

1.  The first five warlords possess full suites of weapons and armor, but
players will need to use the Equip command before fighting, or even the little
"frito-bandito" types in the countryside will beat you to a bloody pulp in just
a few rounds!

2.  Be sure to designate a Stratigist, or you will not be able to use your TP!

3.  Equipable weapons are warlord-specific, instead of being fully
interchangeable.  Be careful when one general leaves the party, and another one
joins and inherits all of the old equipment.  You may need to visit the armory
to purchase a new weapon.

4.  There is a Vault feature in this game, for storing excess items.  It is
located to the immediate right of the Save-Game desk in Headquarters Buildings.

5.  There are many useful new items in DoaE-II, like Elixirs for restoring TP in
the field, and Tents for regaining both HP and TP.

6.  Elixirs A, B, C, and D carried over from DoaE-I, but we did a more literal
translation than NOA, naming them Herbal, Copper, Silver, and Gold Elixirs.

7.  Previously defeated warlords are not necessarily recruitable after you clear
a battle scenario.  The number of people you can rally to your side and/or keep
on the rolls at the Billetting Facilities are much more limited than in DoaE-I.

8.  For increasing levels more quickly, you may use Training Gymnasiums in
various towns, but it's very expensive, and you can accomplish the same thing by
fighting in the countryside, plus earn much needed "Jin" (Gold).  When your
level is high enough, the Gym operator will tell you to seek a more advanced
facility.

9.  ChiTuMa is available in this game, when Guan Yu leaves the Luoyang area with
Liu Bei's wives in tow, those fine ladies, Gan & Mi.  This is realistic to the
plot of the Ro3K novel, for Cao Cao gave Guan Yu the "Red Hare" in an attempt to
entice his continued service.  Try giving the horse to any warlord (starting
with Guan Yu).  Equip ChiTuMa and see what happens.  I guarantee, you'll like
it, a LOT!

10.  There are regular Steeds for sale in this game, too, but they are not used
to lure enemy warlords to your side, as in DoaE-I.  You will need to experiment
with Steeds to learn what they can do for you!

11.  Many Scrolls are available, that can be read for effecting certain tactical
actions.  Some are special, essential to advancing in the game, while others are
handy for a one-time execution of standard Tactics in regular battles.

12.  Significant new Tactics were designed for DoaE-II, so as soon as you learn
a new one, use it to see what it does.  Check our special Tactics Section for a
brief description of some of those new Tactics.

13.  A few familiar Tactics and Items are missing in DoaE-II, like Gui Huan and
Gullwing (the warping tools).  But the game is quite expansive, and if returning
to previously settled areas becomes necessary, the necessary avenues of approach
will be provided.

14.  Unlike DoaE-I, most of the attacking and healing Tactics may be directed
toward either a single person or the entire group.  Manipulate the cursor
buttons to choose between single or multiple options. (Note: Some multiple
options are availably ONLY in battle mode.)

15.  There are quite a few bugs in various emulators, whether playing Japanese
or patched ROMs, especially in battle mode.  I recommend fwNES V302 for the
best emulation and fewest lockups.

16.  There are also a few minor item bugs in both the Japanese and patched ROMs,
especially regarding Smoke Bombs.  This is either a CAPCOM glitch, or else we
need a new dump and/or better emulation support.  Use Save-States frequently to
safeguard against lockups.

17.  The game begins in Xuzhou, when the Emperor and Cao Cao dispatch the
Brotherhood to chase down Yuan Shao, who is fleeing toward his own brother's
domain (Yuan Shu) of Jizhou, holding the Imperial Seal that he stole from the
ashes of Luoyang.  This is very realistic to the actual novel, except Xuzhou is
really Lu Bu's fiefdom, who appears in DoaE-II within the context of his
expected behavior, but in scenarios that are not necessarily in the correct
chronological order of actual history.

18.  The subtitle of the game is "The Story of Zhuge Liang", who may have been
the greatest Chinese Tactician of them all.  Zhuge Liang is recruited about one-
quarter of the way through the game.  Be careful how you go about waking him up!

19.  Although the characters and castles are very similar in DoaE-I and II, the
plot is vastly different.  If you enjoyed DoaE-I, I believe you will LOVE DoaE-
II.

20.  There are some innovations in this game that became standard features in
SNES games, sequences that I never saw in an NES game until I played DoaE-II.
These tips are not all-inclusive, but should be helpful until Yan has finishes
and releases his FAQ/Walkthrough.

----------------------------
The DoaE-II Tactics Listing:
----------------------------

You will need to master many of these tactics in order to advance and win the
game, especially those counter-tactics against certain enemy actions.

I included the original Japanese translations in the first chart, so players
could see how similar (or misleading) they were, compared to the actual Chinese
definitions provided by Izack.

* Also used in DoaE-I
**Used in DoaE-I and loaded into DoaE-II, but not actually used in the game.

Japanese Translation  Pinyin          Definition
---------------------------------------------------
1.  fire attack       *Lian Huo       Train Fire
2.  hellfire          *Ye Huo         Hellfire
3.  sweltering heat   *Yan Re         Sweltering Heat
4.  heat-resisting    *Da Re          Great Heat
5.  fire god          *Hou Shen       Fire God
6.  water flask       *Shui Tu        Stream
7.  river current     *Shui Xing      River
8.  sea mine          *Shui Lei       Water Lightning
9.  flood             *Hong Shui      Flood
10. water current     *Shui Long      Water God
11. choosing comfort   Luo Mu         Drop Wood
12. choosing kill      Liu Mu         Wooden Stream
13. falling rocks      Luo Shi        Drop Rocks
14. stone throwing     Tou Shi        Catapult
15. barrier            Ji Shi         Valley of Rocks
16. army surgeon      *Chi Xin        Brave Heart
17. copper shaman     *Tong Xian      Copper Shaman
18. silver shaman     *Yin Xian       Silver Shaman
19. well done         *Wan Fu         Perfect Recovery
20. gold shaman       *Jin Xian       Gold Shaman
21. adjournment        San Kai        Scatter
22. deterrant force    He Yi          Crane
23. put on a sword     Bai Ma         White Horse
24. pharmicist         Heng Fang      Square (OFF/DEF up)
25. cold/freeze        Yu Lin         Fish Scale
26. self-protection    Feng Jian      Wedge
27. clan               Yi Wen Zhi     Brotherhood
28. drainage           Bei Shui       Backs to Water
29. silence            Jing Mo        Silence
30. divine             Ba Gua         Eight Diagrams
31. back to beginning  Ce Jian        Tactics Reduction
32. absorb            *Ji Mian        Immunity to Attacks
33. separate          *Ce Mian        Immunity to Tactics
34. poor plan         *Jie Ce         Undo Tactics
35. assassination     *An Sha         Assassination
36. impersonate       *Yi Xin         Suspicions
37. alienate          *Li Jian        Alienate
38. betray             Li Fan         Betray
39. blasting Tool      Fu Sha         Morale Blow
40. reject/denounce   *Bei Ji         Critical Hit
41. reception          Chao Ma        Scold/Insult (Deride)
42. mimic word         Wei Tui        False Retreat
43. conclusion         Xue Lu         Retreat
44. trust              Xing Luan      Break Concentration
45. good luck          Chi Fu         Good Fortune
46. sever repeatedly   Ce Fan         Reflect
47. trap               Xian Jing      Trap
48. total destruction  Jie Zhen       Break Formation
49. kills poison       Sha Du         Cure Poison
50. hot weather        Yan Dun        Smokescreen
51. night watch        Suo Di         Shorten the Road
52. scar               Zhao Gui       Resurrect
53. return           **Gui Huan       Warp
------------------------------------------------------------------

Now, presenting Jainsafel's translation of the new Avalanche and Formation
Tactics, from the DoaE-IIj game manual...

DoaE Manual Translation v1.1
by Jainsafel

-----

pg. 35

-----

Avalanche Tactics

Causes gigantic trees or rocks to fall from above and knock down the enemy.
However, it cannot be used when there are no mountains or hills nearby.  It can
be used against single enemies as well as the entire enemy group.

-----

Drop Wood Tactic        [Luo Mu]        (Consumes 4 SP)

Causes a huge tree to fall above the enemies' heads, knocking them down.

-----

Wooden Stream Tactic    [Liu Mu]        (4 SP)

With this powerful drop wood tactic, gigantic trees are made to fall like rain
and knock down the enemy.

-----

Drop Rocks Tactic       [Luo Shi]       (6 SP)

Causes an enormous stone to fall from above the enemies' heads, crushing their
army.

-----

Catapult Tactic [Tou Shi]       (8 SP)

Using a catapult, continuously launches stones which crush the enemy.

-----

Valley of Rocks Tactic  [Ji Shi]        (10 SP)

Invites the enemy into a valley (or some such) with a blocked exit, and drops
huge stones and trees from above, knocking the enemy army down beyond all
recognition.

-----

pg. 41

-----

Formation Tactics

Lu Bei's army, while fighting, can alter their attack and defense power, ect.,
by means of their formation layout.  Ensure successful battles by changing your
formation according to the situation.

-----

Scatter [San Kai]       (Consumes 0 SP)

The usual senario is that of a non-laid-out formation.  If you use this tactic
when your formation is laid out, then it will return to that regular state.

-----

Crane Formation [He Yi] (Consumes 8 SP)

Loses defensive power in place of heightened attack power.  Its effectiveness is
particularly evident in battles fought on level ground.

-----

Square Formation        [Heng Fang]     (Consumes 12 SP)

Raises both attack and defensive power, but agility becomes extremely low.  When
up against Bai Ma this formation becomes very weak.

-----

White Horse Formation   [Bai Ma]        (Consumes 8 SP)

This was in "The Art of War": The art of war considers 'godspeed' an aim.
Should you lay out in this formation, attack and defensive power will not
change.  However, your agility will rise and you will probably be able to turn
the fight in your favor.

The true value of this formation will be demonstrated when you employ it against
the enemy's Heng Fang Tactic.

-----

pg. 42

-----

Fish Scale Formation    [Ya Lin]        (8 SP)

Decreases the Tactics success rate of your enemy by one-half.  Raises your
attack and defense power as well, but the attack power of the commanders on
either wing lowers to almost nothing -- though their Tactical success rate
rises.

-----

Wedge Formation [Feng Jian]     (16 SP)

Attack power and agility rises quite a bit, but the attack power of the
commanders of either wing (the head and 5th unit of the line) become next to
nothing.  (However, compared to the other three units their defensive power
becomes the strongest.)  Especially effective on level ground.

-----

Brotherhood Formation   [Yi Wen Zhi]    (16 SP)

Attack power and agility rise, but defense power goes down.  Effective on level
ground.

-----

pg. 43

-----

Backs to Water Formation        [Bei Shui]      (24 SP)

A formation Tactic of life or death.  Attack power doubles, and fierce fighting
(a critical blow) occurs with more ease.  But in place of that, defense power is
lowered by half.  Can only be used if near a water-source.  Again, since you
certainly cannot retreat, if you need to, use San Kai then lay out in some other
formation.

-----

Silence Formation       [Jing Mo]       (32 SP)

Temporarily erases your form while in front of the enemy, making it easy to
dodge enemy attacks.  Defensive power also doubles.  However, you become unable
to use Recovery Tactics.

-----

Eight Diagrams Formation        [Ba Gua]        (48 SP)

The strongest Formation Tactic; said to have its origins in The Art of War's
antiquity.  We hear that it involves things called the Gates of Life and Death,
but no more details are known.

-----

Note:  Since I pasted this version of Jainsafel's translation work in this .nfo
file, she and Jair have teamed up to produce a color version of many of the
pages in the actual game manual.  This work can be accessed from the Destiny
website.

----------------------------
Taskforce's Technical Notes:
----------------------------

Well, I'm not really sure where to start.  There were many features in this game
that were not the usual fare for me, nothing at all like the translations I have
done in the past.  I will discuss these issues on a case-by-case basis.

Pointers:

Well, these were certainly fun!  The typical way a pointer works is
characterized by the usage of two bytes that point to an address in the ROM.
Typically, pointers fall within the current bank and are reversed.  Usually, the
last byte of the address is followed by its first byte, that can have a value
added or subtracted.  Well, the pointers in this game worked that way, but they
certainly weren't listed that way.  Instead, the pointer bytes were split into
two separate groups.  Within a given section, all of the pointer's second bytes
were grouped together first, then a similar group of their first bytes followed
them in the ROM.

"So," you say, "what's the big deal?"  Well, for one thing it caused the
programming of insertion tools to be a lot more tedious.  That was a bit of a
challenge.  To begin with, just finding and identifying them was a big pain,
that is, until I finally discovered how they were stored.  Thanks go out to Jim
Price, for giving me a nudge in the right direction.  After I read his text
document, it surely speeded up the process of finding them.

Substrings:

I've examined a lot of games, but I have never seen a substring system as
complex as this one.  Let me explain how a substring works...  You store whole
words or groups of frequently used letters and symbols in one part of the ROM,
then use a couple of bytes to call them in your text.  This is a form of text
compression that is used to save bytes.  Let's say that you have the word "The"
150 times in a rom.  You make it a substring and use the bytes EA 02 to call
that word when you need it.  "The" contains three bytes, but the code to call it
uses only two.  Thus, you save one byte each time you call that word, a savings
of 150 bytes.  Those 150 bytes can now be used for fitting more text into the
game's dialogue.  This primitive, but effective form of pseudo-compression may
be a great tool for adding space to a ROM, but it's hell to program.  And with
DoaE-2 having more than 1,000 substrings in the japanese ROM, they were a
real pain to deal with.

Here is a comparison:  Breath of Fire II, an SNES game much larger than DoaE-2,
has only 256 of these substrings.  Theoretically, DoaE-2 has 4 times as many,
but we didn't wind up using 1000+ English substrings because our combinations
used more bytes on average.  I'd estimate that we still had about 700 or so, and
defining them was a Herculean challenge.  I think that DoaE-2's inserter is
probably the largest for any fan translation to date, although much of that is
just repetitious code, dealing with each case of substring insertion.

The F2 Warlord List:

As if 700 English dialogue substrings wasn't enough, the dreaded F2 Warlord List
also turned out to be a substring list!  Well, this was the hardest part for me.
I wrestled with how to get this to work for many an hour.  I would start to work
on it, then restart that work again, over and over it seemed.  Let me explain
why it was the hardest thing for me in the entire ROM:

Problem 1:  It wasn't just the names in this list.  Each name was accompanied by
a list of statistics and other code that told the ROM what warlord picture to
display, what Chinese to print, etc.  Thanks to Jair, we were able to use the
Chinese bytes for English space, and still have enough room left over for the F2
(Pinyin) names of the warlords.  Otherwise, we would have run way short of
bytes.  As I mentioned, stored among the F2 data were the generals' Strength,
Agility, Intelligence, and a lot of other attributes.

Problem 2:  F2 Pointers...  The F2 Pointers, as with the other banks, didn't
fall into the same order as the text did.  While the first pointer might lead to
the general listed first, the second one might point to the fourth general
instead of the second.  You might say this made the story a bit interesting,
especially during Alpha testing!

I had to devise some way to keep all of those extra bytes intact and the
pointers properly straight, too, while being able to move things around so I
could fit in all of the English letters we needed.  Whew, that was quite a
chore!  I switched from manual to auto-insertion more than once, but finally
wound up using the auto method.  It wasn't quite as hard as I figured, but still
took some manual adjusting of the pointers to get it 100% accurate.

Menu Expansion:

I've done my share of this in the past.  The Gun first showed me this technique
in Villgust.  I quickly reverse engineered the patch he handed me and learned
the ins and outs of it for the Villgust ROM.  I took what I knew from there and
before long determined how it worked with the Game Gear, in Phantasy Star
Gaiden.  The NES, however, does not use the same screen mapping conditions as
the other two platforms, which have similar screen mappers (at least with the
games I did).  The NES horizontal and vertical start positions of a menu are
contained in the same byte for this game (and others I've seen, too).  This was
a bit different.  However, The width and height worked about the same, so after
I found that - and with a little help from a doc left by Jim Price - I figured
out how they worked, and put this task behind me.

An Unexpected Problem:

In December 1999, I lost the current source to the inserter and the most recent
I had was several months old.  There still remained one mistake, but I corrected
that manually when inserting.  Thank goodness it was far enough along that I
didn't have to rebuild it.  There was a lot of missing code in there that I
would have had to rewrite.  Luckily, the EXE I had was the current one, and was
usable.  Had it not been, this project could have been delayed even more weeks
or months.

Conclusion:

A couple of final notes:  This is the largest game I have done to date, topping
even Villgust.  The overall text size is about 100k, which is absurd when you
stop to consider that the ROM is only 512k total.  That's 1/5 of the total ROM,
unheard of, save for this game!  Villgust, which is twice its size, only had
about 85k total, if I remember correctly. (It will probably top it again later
this year when we rework the Villgust script.)  The inserter weighed in at a
final size of 400k.  That's just over 100k less than the ROM size.  The source
(which I do not have a current version of) was well over 2000 lines, and over
100k.

- Thanks to Jim Price for the info he left about the game.  It really helped.

- Thanks to my long-time teammates, Wildbill and Faraday, just because they are
good friends and we always look forward to working together on our next
project(s).  It's good to have you back, Faraday.  I'm sorry you had to go
through the loss of your father, Wildbill.  I've been there, and I know what
it's like.  I knew you're beginning to come to terms with it, and I hope that
fond memories are what stay with you in times to come.

- Thanks to Jair, who has become a good friend as well.  He really saved our
butts on this project!

------------------------
Musashi's Project Notes:
------------------------

Destiny of an Emperor 2 is why I became involved in romhacking and translation.
I had run across Dragonsoft, an old translation site working on games such as
Romancing Saga 3 and Destiny of an Emperor 2. Once I saw the name Destiny of an
Emperor 2 I tried to contact the team in the hopes that I could assist them
somehow.  Well things didn't work out right away and I turned to other projects
to learn the ins and outs of both romhacking and translating.  Thus was born
Gaijin Productions. I personally have invested a great deal of time into
research the Three Kingdoms era and its related fields.  I've read several
version of the novel in addition to researching everything from Sino-Japanese
(Japan was called Wa) relations from that time, to Barbarian nations, to Han
society and culture, to Chinese methods of divining.  I am  also a history major
and have taken many courses in an effort to comprehensively study China (among
other topics).  While my knowledge of the Three Kingdoms era is not perfect, I
will say that it is comprehensive.  I've done more than play Three Kingdoms
themed video games and read poorly translated novelizations (though I admittedly
have done both to an extensive degree).  Game-wise, Destiny of an Emperor 2 is a
superb improvement over the first.  Working with the Destiny team has been an
immense pleasure and a learning experience.  I have attempted to keep the story
historically faithful without violating Capcom's own spin on things.
Unfortunately size limitations have forced us to butcher things here and there.
Despite the severe reduction of the scripts the game is still a Three Kingdoms
game, with all the bells and whistles.  What I do want players to realize is
that playing a Three Kingdoms game or reading a Three Kingdoms novel does not
make you a historian of the era.  If want to claim any sort of expertise in this
area I suggest you dedicate some time in a genuine academic pursuit of the era.
The internet and your local library will not do.  And remember that Destiny of
Emperor 2 is just a game.  Its purpose is not to teach you history, its to have
fun.

---------------------------
Jair's ASM Technical Notes:
---------------------------

I started work on Destiny of an Emperor II in the summer of 1999 and finished
around Christmas, six months and 63 pages of notes later.  I originally offered
to try implementing a useful DTE, but Taskforce had a much more serious problem
for me to tackle.  The original Japanese game stores two names for each warlord,
the Japanese Katakana name and the Chinese name.  The Chinese names appear on
the General screen, the army status screen, and the battle screen.  Taskforce
quickly realized that these Chinese names could not be easily replaced.  That
part of the game would have to be reprogrammed to load and display the English
names.

That was where I came in.  After many hours of disassembling, tracing,
experimenting, and head-scratching, I started to understand how the routine
worked, and I figured out how to load a single letter to the screen.  My first
attempt at a full routine failed to do anything useful, for reasons I don't even
remember offhand.  Discouraged and busy with schoolwork, I gave up for the time
being.  In December, my determination returned, partly out of pride and partly
because I didn't want to let the rest of the Destiny team down.  After a
torturous sequence of debugging, more experimentation, howls of bafflement, and
occasional dances of joy (literally -- ask my roommate), it was finished.  The
technical details are too long to explain here, although I do plan to write up
my entire experience some day.  The routine begins at 7c043 for anyone
interested in studying it.

Working on DoaE-II was usually baffling and frustrating.  This was truly the ROM
from hell, at least to my beginning ASM skills.  On the other hand, this project
improved my abilities immeasurably.  And as wretched as I felt during the months
of confusion, I felt wonderful when I fired up the ROM that last time and saw
the battle screen come up with English names sitting properly in their places.
I was so thankful that God had blessed me with the skill and luck to succeed.
It was also wonderful working with such a great group of people!  I feel honored
to have been a part of this project, and I hope you all enjoy the game!

Special thanks to:

- loopy, for releasing the debugger-enabled build of loopyNES, without which I
simply would have failed.

- The author of 6502.txt, which I constantly refer to for basic 6502 assembly
information.

- Yoshi, for his NES technical documentation, a priceless source of information
about registers and the PPU.

- Taskforce, for putting incredible effort and dedication into a game he doesn't
even especially like!

- Wildbill, for working tirelessly to hold this project together and get it
done.

- Everyone, especially those who have helped me over the years, those who hang
out and waste time with me on ICQ, and yeah ....  All you know who you are.
Yay!  ^_^

-------------
Team Summary:
-------------

Presenting: The DoaE-IIe V1.10 patch

-----------------
What's Been Done:
-----------------

--Everything that we know of.

------------------
What's Left to Do:
------------------

--Nothing that we're aware of.  (We did leave a few Chinese ideographical
nomenclatures on the status page that may or may not be changed in future patch
enhancements.)

-----------
Known Bugs:
-----------

--The occasional battle lockup with many emulators.

--A CAPCOM or dumping glitch with the item-numbering system that occurs
sometimes with the Smoke Bombs.

--A CAPCOM or dumping glitch involved with transferring TNT between warlords.

-----------------------------------
Additional Thank You's (Taskforce):
-----------------------------------

--Loopy.  Like Jair said, the loopyNES debugger allowed him to figure out what
the heck was going on in the indescribably screwy name-display routines.
Without it, that part of the project would have failed entirely and you'd be
seeing Chinese names on the battle and other screens!

--YOSHi, for his NES technical doc, especially the section on the PPU.

--The author of 6502.txt.

-----------
Conclusion:
-----------

Since this is a public beta, please let us know of any bugs other than
occasional, unsolvable battle lock.

Wow! The others and I (Wildbill) may have said it ALL already, but I guess the
most amazing thing is that we actually finished this sometimes frustrating
project, one of the best examples of teamwork I've ever been involved with.
Thanks to all of you.  It took us a long time to complete, but I feel it was
well worth the effort.  And now, here it is for all of us to enjoy forever!