An updated Tales of Innocence will be coming at some point. Our intention is to make this the only update to the patch unless it becomes possible to fix the multiplayer somewhere down the line. All of the fixes will be minor grammar issues and bug fixes. There was only one crash discovered and it only occurs in association with a few of the ultimate recipe events. None of the issues were critical, so we didn’t feel it was worth delaying other projects to work on the v1.1 patch immediately. That being said, if you encountered any spelling, grammar, or technical issues that we haven’t been informed of, please do let us know about them so that we can fix them for the updated patch. Eventually we’ll get around to finishing the fixes, though Kingcom wants to get some other projects out the door first and I’m working on several others anyway.

If you follow the Tales of Graces project, you may have seen the announcement that I will be helping on their project. I will be checking the translation and hopefully continuing to assist with the localization process through the editing phases. I had started my work, but after doing a portion of the game’s introduction, decided that my initial belief that I could check the translation without having played the game was misguided. While it’s easy to ensure that a Japanese translation is correct, I can’t ensure that the game is being localized without context. So I bought the game and I’m currently waiting for it to arrive. I am currently taking a break from the translation check for now since anything I do now would need to be rechecked when I had the game anyway. It will take more work and more time, but a real localization is worth the effort it takes to get there. I want to do everything I can to help the project achieve its full potential. Other members of the Tales fan community are also lending a hand to help maintain continuity and quality with the rest of the series and the relevant fan projects.

Tales of Destiny is still on the backburner for now. Well, not completely. I am poking at it from time to time. But as previously announced, work on the project won’t really get back up to speed until both Absolute Zero’s Tales of Innocence and Phantasian Productions’ Tales of Phantasia project are complete. I have plenty of work to do on other projects as-is, so I’m thankful I don’t have two projects in full swing at the same time. Even if Phantasia were done right now, I wouldn’t be able to do any more on Destiny than I already am. When I do get back to this project, I want to give it the attention it deserves.

Things are busy, but fun. Regardless, Absolute Zero isn’t going anywhere any time soon. Hopefully we’ll have your continued support in the future.

And yet both Kingcom and I have still found ourselves compelled to work on Tales of Innocence to some degree… After you work on something for almost two years, it’s hard to quit cold turkey. So we’ve been poking at it, correcting little things that we’ve found, and documenting the typos and small glitches that some people have found as they played. I know this is shocking, but our v1.0 wasn’t perfect. Honestly, I don’t think anyone reasonably expected it to be perfect. It’s never going to be perfect. But people are still having fun with it and that’s good enough for us. I like reading comments from people. I enjoy seeing people playing the game in their own ways. I liked seeing the game skyrocket in the GameFAQs ranks and I liked all of the threads wondering what the heck was going on. They made me laugh. We really had fun watching people try to figure out how to obtain the Versus style. Honestly, I think both Kingcom and I were blown away by the positive reaction to this release. It really made all of the hard work worth it.

There will be an updated patch eventually, but it’s not our highest priority. It’s probably not going to happen right away. We want to take our time and make sure that we give people time to report the errors they find (if they are so inclined). If you want to help us improve the game, please submit bug reports and typos. And, of course, if you have questions about the game, the community here has been very willing to help.

In other news, Shawn over at Tales Union gathered up some of your questions from various forums around the net for an interview. It comes in three parts, so if you’re interested in seeing my answers to some of the answers to your questions, check it out here: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

So… getting back to the matter at hand, Tales of Innocence is, for now, complete. So what’s in store for our heroes next week? Well, Kingcom and I have been enjoying some Team Fortress 2 for the first time in recent memory. Neither of us had a chance to play much during the beta testing, so we’re glad to be back in action. The Engineer Update just came out! What isn’t there to love about that!? Oh, you want to hear about more translations? Well, Kingcom has a few other projects to finish up, Super Robot Wars J and Oriental Blue are the first ones up on the list. I’m sure many of you are looking forward to seeing more of Kingcom’s excellent hacking, so those are certainly projects to look out for (if you weren’t already). As for me, my first priority is the Tales of Destiny: Director’s Cut translation that I’m working on with Phantasian Productions. I’m definitely looking forward to working on one of my favorite entries in the series again. Of course, Kingcom and I have been throwing around ideas for our next project for ages now, so that’s not to say that there aren’t other possibilities floating around out there. But those will be a story for another day.

Today is officially our project’s second birthday. I don’t know if that still counts since we’re done, but there’s never a bad time to celebrate. After a long race that we ran with everything we had, it’s awesome to look back at the finish line. It’s the best. I really do  that the game was everything that you hoped it would be.

Well, we did! Yay! I enjoyed reading the comments from people who were upset about us not releasing the patch in June without even telling you why. As it turns out, we didn’t explain why we were delaying the release because we were not delaying the release. As with many things, June ain’t over ’til it’s over. So there you have it.

Please do read the README since it includes the patching instructions. This post will be relatively short since I know most people just want to play the game.

There is always room for improvement when it comes to projects like this. I know that’s a weird thing to say when I’m releasing something that I’m truly proud of, but I genuinely believe that I could spend another year working on this patch and probably make changes constantly. We’re at the point where we’re ready to draw the line and call it finished. That was our real purpose in setting the June deadline. We needed to have one. As much as perfectionists like Kingcom and myself hate to admit it, perfection is not a reasonable goal. We put in thousands of man-hours on this project and we are ready to send it out to the world. So with no further ado, Kingcom and I are proud to present the Tales of Innocence English translation patch.

DOWNLOAD THE TALES OF INNOCENCE v1.0 PATCH DOWNLOAD HERE!

Attention Mac OSX users: You can use Retro’s DS patcher to patch your rom!

ATTENTION EVERYONE: THE OPENING SUBTITLES IN ALL CAPS ARE SUPPOSED TO BE WRITTEN BACKWARDS! THE JAPANESE LYRICS ARE SUNG BACKWARDS DURING THOSE PORTIONS OF THE SONG!

This fan translation is provided for free by Absolute Zero Translations.

• Please do not attempt to sell this patch in any way, shape, or form.
• Please do not post pre-patched roms using this patch.
• Please do not attempt to modify this patch in any way.
• Please do not use this patch as the basis for a derivative translation.

Any questions pertaining to the usage of this patch can be directed to the Absolute Zero forum.

There is a discussion thread for the release on the forum, but we have also enabled comments on this post. It’s the release, so we figured we should go big.

Kingcom, congrats on your first released patch!

If you are having trouble patching, check out this video from darkspirit456:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=av-tnj9nPDo

You might note that comments are closed on this post. I’ve been thinking about it and decided that it doesn’t make sense to use this disorganized blog comment structure when I have a perfectly good forum. If you would like to comment and participate, I encourage you to do it there. When I get around to it, I will be closing the comment sections of the older posts on the blog. I simply don’t have time to micromanage the anarchy that can happen in the comments, so the forum provides a simple solution.

We’re pretty happy with the results of the beta testing. Although testing isn’t finished, we believe that the patch should be ready before the end of June (unless there are any unexpected issues between now and then).  I can’t give you an exact date yet because there’s still some work left to be done. When I can provide a more specific date, I will. That’s all I have to report for now. Thanks for your patience.

I realize this may disappoint some of you, but the wireless is simply too broken to be enjoyable. Do understand that this decision is not yet 100% final. I am waiting for a second flashcart to arrive so that I can test the wireless more extensively. If there is anything that we can do to fix it, we will. However, for the time being, we feel that it is best to concentrate our efforts on the main game. While we understand that some of you wanted to make use of the wireless features, we cannot delay the release of the patch for a feature that has only niche interest. We feel that it is in everyone’s best interest to have the patch as soon as possible. If and when it becomes possible to fix the wireless, we will release an updated patch.

When I have completed my testing between two flashcarts, I can talk more about when the game breaks and why we think it breaks when using wireless mode. I apologize that I cannot provide more information at this time, but there are simply too many unknowns. We have ensured that the Versus style will be available in the single player mode, so don’t worry about that. In spite of what you might believe, removing the wireless will take less time and effort than either of the other two options. It is unfortunate that it had to come to this, but circumstances being what they are, we feel this decision is in the best interests of both the players and the team. Thank you for your understanding.

When you put as much time into a project as Kingcom and I have, you start to feel like you’ve produced something pretty great. Thankfully, our beta testers have been there to keep us from drifting into the clouds. We’ve been brought crashing back to the ground, but this is all to your benefit. I don’t mean to say that the game has been a complete mess, certainly the work we put into it up until now has paid off. As a result, our beta testers have been able to isolate bugs and help us to improve the text. Above all else, this process has reminded me just how important it is to test the game properly. Despite my efforts to test the game, there were some crashes that I had missed and some textual mistakes I had read right over. But we’re finding them and we’re fixing them thanks to the beta testers.

Unfortunately, we have some bad news to announce. No, the project isn’t canceled. No, the release isn’t being pushed back 30 years. However, it is looking like we may have to disable the wireless multiplayer in the patched version of the game. Please understand that after all the effort we put into making this game as perfect as possible, nothing frustrates us more than the possibility of having to do something like this. Although I said disable, know that it will still be included in the game. If you really want to try it in spite of knowing the consequences, it will be possible. Here’s the deal… According to the testing we’ve done, playing the patched game with both the original Japanese game or the patch results in unpredictable crashes during dialogue. Battle seems to work just fine, but it’s almost impossible to make any progress in the game while using wireless mode. There are some other minor issues regarding item boxes and search points, but those aren’t crashes. You might be wondering why we can’t fix these problems like we’re fixing others. Unfortunately, no DS emulator supports wireless play, so we have no way of debugging the issues. Without debugging, we would have no idea where to start fixing them. Unless we get access to a DS devkit (and that will never happen), we can’t do anything about these issues.

We realize that for most of you, this will make absolutely no difference whatsoever. 99% of you probably never intended to play the game using wireless multiplayer (if you even knew the game had it). As perfectionistic as Kingcom and I are, we aren’t going to put the entire project on hold for years while we wait for emulator that would allow us to fix this. That is why we feel that disabling the wireless is the best course of action. It will allow us to present the full game as we intended but will still allow access to that broken extra for those who really want it. Oh, and for those of you who know more about the game, the Versus style WILL be available in-game without using the wireless mode. This isn’t the perfect solution. There is no perfect solution. We’re doing the best we can with the hand we’ve been dealt. If and when it becomes possible to emulate DS wireless, we intend to release an updated patch that gets it working as intended, but understand that could be years from now. I apologize that it had to come to this, but I hope you understand.

What do you think the best solution is? Some of the options we considered:

1. Disable the wireless (allowing access with a code)
2. Leave the wireless as-is and add extra warnings in-game
3. Disable wireless completely

Kingcom asked me to mention that he used devkitPro to make the fake demo patch. He says it’s a really well-done devkit, so he wanted to make sure and give them credit for it.

As is my custom, I like to give a real update following the traditional April Fool’s gag. You can consider it my apology if you didn’t care for the joke, but I regret nothing. In any case, part of this update was already available to you. Everything that was included in the README for the fake demo patch was true. We really have been making great progress in the past few days. The battle subtitles have been timed and the last of the known bugs have been squashed. In short, we are ready to start beta testing. And so, as of today, we have officially entered the beta testing phase. Perhaps I don’t seem like the most reliable source of information today, but this is the truth.

So what does that mean for you? It means we’re one step closer to the end. No, we do not need any beta testers. No, I do not have a release date for you yet. I estimated that the beta would take a month, but in reality, it will continue until we are satisfied that the game is ready for release. The remaining skits will be edited during the testing phase in order to allow more time for testing. I don’t want to hold off the testing for the skits since they won’t introduce any bugs. I will be removing the percentages from the Tales of Innocence page and replacing them with the date that the beta testing started. In the best of circumstances, the patch could be in your hands in a month, but I would suggest that you expect it to take longer. With any luck, we won’t have any major bugs showing up, but sometimes the worst ones are the least obvious. We will do the best we can to get you the patch as soon as possible, but we don’t want to rush it and sacrifice quality after coming this far.

Also, don’t miss the demo that Kajitani-Eizan released for Tales of Hearts! Unlike ours, his demo is real and it’s good stuff. Check it out here!

I know what you’re thinking… All along this guy has been decrying the concept of the open beta and now this… Well good news, I still am! That’s why it’s a demo and not an open beta! What’s the difference? We’re intentionally limiting your access to the game. The game will be set on a timer. We’ve decided to give you a three hour demo. Appetizers are meant to whet your appetite for the game, not spoil it, after all.

Patching instructions can be found in the included README file.

Tales of Innocence Demo Patch

And while I understand that people might want to comment and share their impressions of the demo, please don’t ruin the experience for your fellow gamers.

Here we’re just showing some of the recent refinements to the menu and shop screens.

In other news, I’m happy to report that everything is progressing nicely. I’m pretty much done. Since I really don’t have anything else to do with the text until it gets edited, I’m just working on playtesting. I’ve already completed a full playthrough of the game and made a lot of little tweaks and looked for bugs. Kingcom is doing a great job staying on top of all of those and I’d say we’ve corrected as much in the last few weeks as we have for many months prior. Yuli is working on editing the events with much fervor. I’m really pleased with her progress. Proofreading is also moving along… I think. Subtitles are likewise progressing. Everything looks like it should be wrapping up around the same time, so I’m just trying to make sure it all comes together right.

And now to drop a bomb on some of you… Lately there have been some questions of “Will the patch work on my flashcart?” The answer? Well, it might, but it might not. Unfortunately, because of the way that flashcarts work, not all of them will work with ToI right out of the gate. Here’s the deal: Flashcarts apply patches when they load the game. The problem is that some carts apply the patches according to the CRC of the rom header. Since the patch will change the rom header, some carts won’t recognize it and there’s nothing we can do about it. Sadly, only an update from the flashcart devs will solve the problem. So now you’re all panicking and wondering if your card is among those that don’t work. Here’s what we know so far:

• CycloDS will work.
• R4 will work.
• Acekard 2s works (tested with AkAIO 1.5)
• Some Supercards WILL NOT work.
• Emulation will work.

So if you’re among those whose carts will not support the patch, I really do apologize. I wish we could do something about it, but it’s totally out of our hands. If you are in that unfortunate situation, your only options are to get a different flashcart, play the game on emulation, or convince the maker of your flashcart to update their database to support our patch. There is literally nothing we can do about it.

Sorry to end on that note, but there you have it.

EDIT: Added information about Acekard. Thanks deets.