First off: Huge Enormous Gigantic thanks to Laxidman for doing a (de/re)compressor for the stuff that was compressed in hourai. Without this, this hack wouldn't be nearly as cool as it is going to be now. Let me tell ya. So, please go visit his page in support at Laxidman's Translation Page. So what exactly was compressed in this game if it wasn't font or text you ask. Well, all other sprites pretty much for one. A lot of data tables we need to alter for another. And probably even more that I haen't discovered yet. This is a very good compression system for graphics. Not good for text. Hince it wasn't compressed because appearently they didn't want to make 2 systems. How about a screen of a compressed graphic that has been altered for our pleasure. Note that this probably isn't the final version. It might be though. Who knows. These pictures also shows my rearrangement and expansion of menu boxes. This however isn't finalized either. Before and after comparisons of what we thought we might have to use and how its coming along now.

The HP/GP was compressed as well as the big Kanji there that means ABSENT. Without a comrpession/decompression program. That would have had to stay in the english version and that wouldn't have been as nice. Thank you again Laxidman. You deserve it as this was one tough nut to crack, believe me.

I have also been learning SNES asm and am working on 2 hacks of my own. One is the ability to use 8 letter names instead of 5 letter. That should make a lot of you happy. The other is item name expansion. Believe me, these were not good hacks for a beginner to attempt and I'm having more than my fare share of problems. Therefore, I cannot guarentee that they'll work out in the end. But I'm going to show shots of them anyway as even if they don't. I'm pouring a lot of work into them none-the-less. The item hack is getting really far along. But its given me lots of surprises believe me. And they aren't going to be stopping. The name hack is barely started. So I have nothing to show of it. Here though for your pleasere is a before and after item buy screen. Pray that we get to keep this in the final version. It will not be the same with 8 letter item names. Trust me. One more thing before the pics. Laxidman has been my teacher and helped out on all this whenever I asked and however I asked. So he deserves just as much credit on these as I do. Believe me. He has been extremely helpful to me and I appreciate it so much.

You'll also notice with that screen not all text is in english yet. But its getting there. Some of this is not stored in sane ways. It takes a lot of time to deal with it when it isn't.

Finally, Wildbill has been hard at work editing this game. Here is an animated GIF of work in progress shots from him showing some now edited dialog.

As you can see its looking mighty nice. Wildbill is doing a superb job IMHO and even I can't wait to play the final product.

In other news. I neglected to mention Mystic Arc in the last update. As well as a few other projects. Anything I didn't mention is in translation or if the translation is finished, it is on hold while we finish Hourai. Mystic Arc is important because I need to announce that I have taken over the cheif hacking job on this project. This does mean 2 things. 1. Its not without support on the hacking end anymore (even though we have had offers, Wildbill felt I was the best choice in the end). 2. It will actually delay it even more because my plate was already full. For this I apologize, however no matter who did it, this game isn't getting done fast. It has hacking issues like you wouldn't believe. As bad as if it were compressed. But it will get done. It just takes time. Please don't e-mail complaining. We only have so much free time in a day. If anyone wishes it to be done faster, they are free to attempt it themselves but don't look at us to share resources because our project isn't dead. Sorry, I had to throw that in there. It isn't directed at most of you nice folks but a small group that know who they are. We appreciate all our fans, so don't worry. You guys are the greatest.

On the news front. I have finally found an emulator that works with Horai High School as long as the sound is completely disabled. This isn't really ideal when we get to release but at least it will allow me to get back to work on the game again. Especially since my copier plug went out and I haven't had a chance to get a replacement. Lennus II and Horai are the top two priority of the projects on the table. We'd like to get these out as soon as we can. Thats about all I have for now. Keep looking for news of progress hopefully very soon.

Also, an extra special thanks goes out to the ZSNES team which has been looking into the Hourai High School emulation issues. They are working hard to get this rom to a playable state on the emulator. And they don't know how much I appriciate their work on this. It wasn't easy going back and forth between a copier and the computer to get work done.

For a bit of an explanation, All SNES Emu's have some kind of strange music bug that appears to effect the SNES sound processor emulation. In battle, if the music loops the game locks up. It can also lock up in certain areas after loading a saved game. This has made my job as of late a real pain in the neck. However, the ZSNES team has been working to correct what is causing this problem. They have my utmost gratitude and respect for helping us with this issue. A team of translators they don't even know. I REALLY appriciate this ZSNES team.

Lennus 2 inserter is operational and script writing is underway, as seen by the screenshots below. Bongo` still has some assembly problems to work out with the 8X16 texts that relate to menues, and lists of monsters, items, and such, but work is proceeding steadily, and Akujin has translated the additional dumps. But the project is still going to require an indeterminate amount of time before it enters beta testing. Keep fingers crossed for the final hacks!

Lennus 2 inserter is now together and functioning as seen by the screenshots below. That doesn't mean all systems go just yet. Bongo` still has some assembly problems to get worked out. However, with each day this project grows closer and closer to the point that it will get finished. When bongo` is done, the long road of script editing begins. This project is going to require mounds of time on that and beta testing. A release is still a good few months away, but it is in site now. Cross your fingers for these lasts few hacks.

In Horai news, I'm finally getting back into the swing of things. And I'm starting to work on the inserter which I should have had done eons ago. All I can say to my teammates is sorry for holding things up. The inserter is going to be time consuming due to the way it has to be written but it isn't impossible. This game uses embedded pointers, but we have a workaround for that. Anyway, this should also be moving quite good soon with a release to follow also in just a few months. I'll have english screens just as soon as I have the inserter working enough to post them. Probably sometime next week if all goes well.

Mystic Arc is also starting to move again. Necrosaro is busy working on an inserter for this TOUGH project. The pointers on this one are embedded and unlike Horai, there is no work around for it. I don't want to be in his shoes but I'm also glad he is making the effert to tackle this one. The scripts are being initially edited to cut some of that time down as well. This is three projects which all could see a release withen short spans of time with each other.

Finally, the Gizmo source is now online. I have not put comments, or even tried to wade through and make it readable. If your going to look at it, be warned that it is not the easiest script your going to read. It was programmed with speed in mind, not pretty. When you program with speed in mind, pretty isn't a factor. I wouldn't be suprised if after not touching it in a few months I'd have trouble figuring things out and I wrote it. So I expect all of you will have to study it a lot to get anythign from it. However, if you have the time, please feel free to study it. You'll hopefully find something there to spark your programming interest I'd hope (no, not that I'm that good, I'm not) but it is interesting seeing the pointer routine.

Also of note as of late, I've just finished work on the Horai High script formatter. Yes, I've been very busy lately, so this did take a while to get done even though it was a quick programming job. At any rate, now all I need to do is investigate and see if Gizmo can handle the insertion of this game or if I need to do more programming on it first. Either way, this is one step closer to completion. Once I have the game ready on my end, I'll turn it back over to Satsu for insertion and Wildbill for editing.

On the Ranma 1/2 #2 Gameboy front. Akujin has finished his translations of the text (assuming I found it all) and it has been handed back to me for hacking again. Look for this project to have some preview screens posted of real english text very soon.

Finally, one last note, Albert Odyssey is on indefinate hold due to technical issues (it's not canned). We don't want to devote resources to it right now, when we could be using them on projects much closer to completion. While this will definately slow Albert down, it is not cancelled. However, I can't promise that when we have the resources to look into the problems associated with the game that we'll be able to do anything with them. We'll just have to wait and see.

This is version 0.61 of gizmo and only contains 1 bugfix. I had a problem where if you were inserting a script and a pointer fell just right, it would point 256 bytes ahead of the actual location. This is solved. All the bugs that were present in the three byte stuff (I haven't received any feedback so I don't know if they are there or not) are still there. The other bugs either went away for who knows what reason or I just can't remember them after this much time. I know one just went away oddly. Anyway, check it out if you like and remember that the only way I can fix bugs is if you guys report them.

Also, new screens posted to Hourai page. Sorry about the delay getting them there Satsu.

To bring you up to speed on some other projects, Wildbill is still out of commission for now due to RL issues, but should be getting back into the swing of things quite soon. When he does, TnD will be edited (by him), betad and released soon there after. I'd look for this game to finally reach the V1.00 point in about 2-3 months at the most. Probably less.

I'm also finally getting to Hourai High School's inserter this week after taking my own little small multi-month vacation. Luckily I can use the Gizmo core program and modify it for this tricky little insertion job. It may still take a while but an inserter should speed things a long quite a bit. The text on this one have also been sent to Wilbill for editing and it should also see release sometime this spring or summer. Depending on how much of the other Hacking work Satsu has left.

As for MA and Lennus 2. Mystic Ark's inserter is Necrosaro's department. I've talked with him and he says its been a while so it will take him a bit of time to get back into the know on the rom, but he'll start working on it soon. I can't say when to expect a release here, but it is still moving.

Lennus 2 is kind of at a stand still now. Our anonymous assembly person has disappeared without a trace or leaving us anything of his inserter. We are right back to square 1 on the insertion front of this project. If you would like to help with this one, give us a shout. However, keep in mind that this game CANNOT be handled by learning assembly people. It is going to be a difficult task for an experienced asm hacker. People just learning asm need not apply.

Fire Emblem 3 has had a little more translations done as Dave of Gaijin productions came aboard and did the items list translations for us. This project is still in need of a serious translator willing to take on a huge script. Akujin has enough to do as it is and we could use outside help on this game if it is going to get done. Note the scripts total about 300k so only SERIOUS translators please apply.

As for Albert Odyssey and the rest. This game gives me a headache every time I try to figure out how to dump it. It will be getting dumped soon and sent to Akujin who wants to translate this one. This is the next thing on my list right after the Hourai inserter. I'll just have to suffer with that headache as I trace all these nasty little control code issues. The rest of the projects Status lines pretty much sum them up.

Finally, Gizmo should see some bug fixes soon. I haven't had time to touch the source code in 3 months (other than one time when I did do some bug fixes and promptly lost them when my computer reset). Hopefully, it hasn't been so long that I have to study the code to understand what I was doing first. Also, Gizmo will become open source with the next release. You'll finally get to feast your eyes on how NOT to code in VB. My code may work (not 100% accurate either), but it sure isn't pretty.

If you would like to help with any of the projects where we need help noted above, contact me at This Address

Presently, Magic Destiny is jointly and equally managed by three administrative members (Akujin, Taskforce and Wildbill), but our organization actually consists of many additional and crucial people who perform a myriad of tasks essential to our projects. Our associate members have been listed on a team-by-team and project-by-project basis, but the three fellas we listed as admin types will share the joint responsibility of maintaining the Magic Destiny web site.

Any person out there who can solve a critical problem, or has some other needed skill to contribute to a project, may also become a part of Magic Destiny. Similarly, any team member listed here is free to participate with as many other translation groups as he or she desires.

Our only guidelines are harmony and fun!