User blog:RottenBlock/Rance 1 Rebuilt

This is a patch for the English version of Rance 1: The Quest for Hikari, which fixes numerous bugs and adds a lot of extra polish.

Features
Be aware that save files are not compatible between my version of the game and the HGTP original.
 * Bug Fixes for the Original Game:
 * No more map bug! The map no longer turns all green or red, becoming unreadable
 * The BGM item (sound test) works properly now! The original game charged you 500 gold for nothing! Built from scratch!
 * Lots of minor fixes! Like, at least a dozen. This was a very buggy game, with plenty of oversights besides!
 * Tidied the text:
 * Fewer spelling mistakes, consistent punctuation, less ugly line breaks, just gave it a nice scrub.
 * No weird blocks of code showing up in the middle of dialog!
 * Monsters don't have "ZHA" in front of their name for no reason!
 * And more!

Download the patch below. To install, simply copy the files to your English Rance 1: Quest for Hikari folder and overwrite the originals.

Download: MediaFire

Please contact me below or on my message wall if you have any concerns with the patch, especially if you run into technical problems or if you see any text that writes outside the text box. I've done my best to fix both problems and I'd hate to have missed any!

Bug Fixes
Note that all of this game's glitches are from the original Win95 release, not HGTP's translation. Note that these patch notes include spoilers!

Map Glitch
The map glitch is just like it says in the features list, and it was arguably the most irritating bug in the gaem. The map used to turn all green or red when moving from map to map, making it impossible to look around. No longer!

BGM Item
Ever wondered why the BGM item disappears when you buy it? It turns out the devs didn't even implement it. You pay 500 gold, you "get" the item, but it's not programmed to do anything or even appear in your inventory. Looking in the code, I found nothing but unused, incomplete sound test menu code, so I had to build the whole thing from scratch! It's 100% new, so I'd appreciate if you gave it a play!

Minor Fixes
In addition to the above, I also solved numerous smaller bugs and oversights: Note that I did not fix the inconsistent interface decisions between different parts of the game, like how the Haunted Mansion uses a different interface and line break rules than other dungeons; or how the coliseum uses an entirely different fight system with numerous changes. These aren't a "bugs," per say, so I decided to let them live, except for a few minor tweaks here and there.
 * There game forgot to add text colours to major character dialogue in numerous places. These should now be fixed.
 * I've added the missing "Back" button on the Camp -> Use Items -> Fight Related.
 * Remember the thief who blocks your path and demands 200 GOLD to get out of your way? If you tried to pay him, he'd leave, only for the game to loop back to him asking for cash! I imagine no one noticed because they were just fighting him! Now he stays away if you choose to bribe him.
 * Another problem with that same thief: if you battle him, the battle music used to keep playing after the fight ended, and would continue until you left the room. It goes back to the regular dungeon theme now.
 * Fixed the glitch where the two thieves would return to attack Furara even after you rescue her. They were supposed to stay away, and the game even has a missing "greeting" scene to show that Furara was still alone, which has been restored.
 * Gave the two thieves something to say if you have the Haniwa Bronze Statue and talk to them again, instead of the game going silent.
 * The game no longer declares that Rance is gawking at Furara's... "crotch face"...? Which was just the game smashing two variable results together.
 * After defeating the thieves' boss, trying to look at "Girl" gave the same results as looking at "Floor." You could leave the room and come back to get the right results, but don't worry about it, the patch will give you the right results immediately.
 * Added back some missing dialogue related to the dusting maid. First off, I restored her entire missing "Ask" menu. Second, she has alternate greeting and farewell dialogue that are never used. I changed things so that they show up if you H her a second time. If you didn't already know, the game already gives her extra dialogue if you H her a second time, so this seemed like the natural place for the missing dialogues.
 * The Reader spell will now work properly on Yuran.
 * The game will no longer glitch out if you use the incredibly obscure alternate entrance to the Haunted Mansion. If you didn't know about it, you can get into the mansion without a key if you try the door at level 31 (most players will probably beat the game at 14 or 15!) or higher, and the game used to break in the process.
 * You now get the proper game over sequence from freezing to death, including Alice's advice for that situation. The game was accidentally going through the abbreviated "joined the thieves" Bad End sequence.
 * Multiple but extremely minor fixes to the mansion library. Rance is supposed to cycle through books if you "Take" them, but the sequence was poorly implemented. Rance no longer looks at the High School Physics book twice in a row during your first visit, and a missing book, "Unbeatable English" shows up as intended. The game was looping past it by mistake.

Tidying the Text
This patch features "tidied up" text from HGTP's translation. Note that this is NOT a new translation. I can't read Japanese. All the text is based on HGTP's original whenever possible. Instead, the patch fixes certain inconsistencies, as well as most spelling mistakes, irregular uses of capitalization and irregular punctuation (this includes adding conjunctions where it seemed appropriate). The patch also also touches up a few minor grammar and sentence structure issues, but I wasn't as thorough about that because I wanted to leave HGTP's translation as intact as possible. I only outright replaced text if it was too confusing. Unfortunately, Rance 1 is so full of references, surreal shit, and crappy 80s adventure game writing that a lot of lines were confusing! In some cases, I did check out the original Japanese text for the intended meaning. But no promises.

In the spirit of leaving HGTP's translation untouched, I left proper names unchanged while I was at it. Yes, that means Nami is "JAPAN-ese," not "Nipponese," Kanami's first name is "Mitou," not "Kentou," etc. Even mistranslated monster names like "Field Rinks" were left the same. I also didn't try to fix the game's use of mixed present and past tense, because there are just too many instances (besides the extra work, I couldn't decide which one it was trying to use!). The only exception is I changed it so that Lia is now consistently referred to as "princess" instead of a "queen." I get what HGTP was going for, since she's the power behind the throne and basically a queen, but her title was "princess" in the original, and other games (including the remake) back that up.

I also chose to change how the translation uses line breaks, which took up most of my time. The short version is that the game now uses full paragraphs whenever possible, though there are still line breaks between dialogue and narration (most other exceptions concern something in the code). The original Japanese text put line breaks after virtually every sentence, and would sometimes indent text for style. This didn't always work in English, making a big mess. The Alicesoft Translation Tool added even more line breaks and that created even more scattered text. By editing the code by hand, I was able to get things looking a lot nicer and more consistent.

Weird Blocks of Code
In HGTP's original release, the Alicesoft Translation Tool inserted three chunks of its own code into the game's narration! I don't know how this happened, but they're gone now. (Note that I'm not talking about the BASIC code you see if you use the Reader spell on the Info-Store girl, that's a deliberate gag.)

ZHA?
I have no idea why HGTP put "ZHA" in front of every monster's name, but that's gone now too.

The Quiz
If you didn't already know, HGTP changed some of the questions in the optional quiz that appears mid-way through the game, basically replacing a few arbitrary gag questions with trivia about the game world. Good call, in my mind, it's a lot more playable now. One problem: two of the new questions have to do with later parts of the game, and you can't go back to the quiz at that point! In the spirit of HGTP's translation, but also in the spirit of playability, I've replaced those questions with new ones that you CAN answer at that phase of the game.

Author's Note
This patch started as a simple fix for the map glitch. Unfortunately, something was wrong with the English game files (I suspect the Alicesoft Translation Tool is to blame). I eventually got to the point where I was just copying and pasting HGTP's text into the working Japanese game files, not daring to use any automated tools to speed things up, because for all I knew they'd cause the same errors! But since I had gone to all that effort, I decided to go the extra mile and fix any errors in HGTP's text. This led me to discover the game's other numerous bugs and lost content, which I fixed as I came across them.

I hope you give the patch a chance, and that you enjoy the cleaned-up text, the bug fixes, and maybe even the sound test. Most of all, I hope it gets you to play Rance 1 again, or to give it a try if you might have given it a pass. I know at least one person that has trouble getting into the game because of its age, so I hope this patch will lower the barrier a bit while we wait for someone to announce an English localization of Rance 01.