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Shining Force 3 works !

Written by cafealpha 10 comments
Additional testing of my test cartridge showed that Shining Force scenario 3 was "working" well when using memory expander hack

By "working", I mean that game was working fine (no freeze, black screen whatever) while looking for save data on SD card.
I didn't verified if save data was consistent or not, this can be verified and eventually fixed later

data/images/20150915_sforce39.tb.png
Game is looking for SFORCE39 save data ?!

Logs show that game is looking for SFORCE31 save data, which is normal, but after that it is looking for SFORCE39 save data ?!?
I suppose this is some debug stuff that was left as-is, or maybe something for game beta testers ? Please let me know if you have more informations about this


It "works", but there's still a lot of code to write/cleanup/etc before release !
At first, I should add some "log to SD card" feature, this may be useful when we will enter beta testing stage

BTW, I'm looking for a name for my "SD card-based memory cart for Saturn" project.
The only requirement is that the name needs to be easy to remember. Suggestions are welcome


Edit (2016/02/12) : nearly 5 months after, everything works more or less so that I took a couple of videos of Pseudo Saturn Kai in action
data/images/20160212_xzibit_video.jpg
Video in video ?

More next week month

Edit (2016/03/16) : took longer than expected to add subtitles to the videos, but everything is finally ready. Thank you for your patience

data/images/20160316_shining_force_3_sd_memcart.jpg
Shining Force 3 Scenario 1 SD Memory Cart test
Game is accessing save data from cartridge's SD card. It works


data/images/20160316_shining_force_3_sd_memcart_makingof.jpg
Shining Force 3 Scenario 1 SD Memory Cart test (Making Of)
Same as above, with also log messages display on my dev laptop


10 comments

#1  - hitomi2500 said :

Great work! Maybe SFORCE39 is a save from a demo? I never played it, so i don't know if it saves at all, but afaik it sports the same party as episode 1.

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#2  - cafealpha said :

@hitomi2500 : you're probably right. I forgot there was a demo disc for it. PS : you should play Shining Force 3 someday. In fact I made this SD cartridge in order to play scenario 2 and 3 :)

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#3  - vbt said :

great job cafe-alpha !!!!

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#4  - hitomi2500 said :

Hey, don't get me wrong, i never played demo, but i finished episode 1 back in 2004. And then my sister fell in love with the series, so i even remember seducing her into learning japanese for the sake of playing episode 2 and 3. (alas, that failed, she found translation at gamefaqs).

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#5  - cafealpha said :

@vbt : Thank you ! It's cool to see it working after theses years. (I started toying with SH2's UBC in 2012 !)

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#6  - cafealpha said :

@hitomi2500 : Oh, you played scenario 1 before me :) That's a real waste scenario 2 and 3 weren't officially translated. Hopefully SF3 Translation Project now allows to play all scenario in English :]

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#7  - Knight0fDragon said :

SFORCE39 is a special memory file that is used to enable features in the game. I am working on trying to recreate this file to see just how much opens up. Demo games are saved as the normal SFORCE31 header. What is funny is the demo files are located on the final discs, so it is possible to load up a demo, save it (you need to patch or use game shark codes to do this) Then load up the battle in the US disk to play.

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#8  - cafealpha said :

Thank you for the additional information !!
This article is quite nostalgic for me, because it was written in the early times when Gamer's Cartridge started to work with commercial games, so thank you too for commenting here after all these years :)

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#9  - Knight0fDragon said :

Haha, no problem. Had you brought this up over on shiningforcecentral.com I could have answered it for you years ago LOL. I stumbled upon this when trying to find rare or unknown releases of SF3 to further my projects. BTW, do you still make these? Would be interesting to allow for on the fly patching instead of patching ISOs.

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#10  - cafealpha said :

Rather than a Gamer's Cartridge (that is limited to do hacking), I would recommend an USB dev cart instead. Both are officially discontinued, but if you want one to translate or enhance games (especially Shining Force 3 !), please send me an email : https://ppcenter.webou.net/contact/
BTW, you need to be patient if you're located in USA because as EMS is not available, it took three months (!) for a small package to arrive there.

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