{"id":44,"date":"2016-09-13T19:06:00","date_gmt":"2016-09-13T17:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.japanese-cake.io\/index.php\/2016\/09\/13\/you-have-mail\/"},"modified":"2020-04-18T16:05:05","modified_gmt":"2020-04-18T14:05:05","slug":"you-have-mail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.japanese-cake.io\/index.php\/2016\/09\/13\/you-have-mail\/","title":{"rendered":"You have mail!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Back from my vacations, I was contacted about a potential patch for the PAL versions of Dino Crisis. As with Resident Evil: Code Veronica, there are several PAL versions (UK, French, Spanish, Italian and German) and except for the UK one they are all localized with subtitles during the game and the FMV playback.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, the game has no VGA support. The game can boot in VGA mode with the disc swap trick (or one of my custom bioses) but the FMV playback does not work on VGA display. Furthermore, if you force the game to NTSC-60hz, the subtitles are not in sync anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This is what you would get with a “simple” VGA patch<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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But DC is a bit special: it uses the Sofdec middleware stack to display FMV. Let’s patch it for VGA then!<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I’ve found it really challenging to patch this game. While the game itself plays flawlessly in VGA, the FMVs change significantly the complexity of the patch, at least the way it is coded. Basically it’s like opening a can of worms. And if you add the subtitle thingy on top of that, it’s a nightmare! But after spending some (read many) hours on disassembling the game, I think I nailed down the way the subtitles are generated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n