Making an English version of Typing of the Dead Arcade

[Yubm12]

Is anyone playing Typing of the Dead with 2 Dreamcast Keyboards via Maple Buss connector? I can only get player 2 working with a dreamcast keyboard and want to try to problem solve this. The Left side doesn't recognize the keyboard when plugged in, the right side works like a charm.

 

[ManoShu]

Hello, while I am aware that the forum is dedicated to physical cabinets, I ended up finding this thread in my search to netplay an english version of TotD on Fightcade. While the US Dreamcast version is available, for now it isn't possible to play with keyboards.

However, the NAOMI version works, and so I wish to use the modified file (which I was able to patch and test locally on flycast-dojo), but sadly the netplay expects the totd.zip file, not the netboot .bin one.

So here's my question: Can I somehow "revert" the .bin to the MAME .zip format? If is not something viable, how can I change (or if someone more knowledgeable can do this big favor) the patch file to apply on the needed files (as I assume applying on the .zip directly will have compression as an extra layer of complexity)?

Thanks in advance and sorry for bumping such an inactive thread.

 

[ccatalyst]

Hello there everyone, i just received an original typing of the dead cab from japan, and even though it is a lot of fun as is, i would love to convert this to English. I have been following the threads , but maybe i am misunderstanding something, so i apologize if i missed anything, if anyone can please clarify this I would greatly appreciate it.
In the thread I saw this post
https://www.arcade-projects.com/thr...ping-of-the-dead-arcade.106/page-8#post-69508
and it says the patch is for an English version, but from what i have read this is still not close to complete as textures and text bubbles such as instructions, etc were not working properly and the file was posted back in 2018, if you continue to fast forward to page 11 user Maramilitia speaks about a more completed version with proper textures around the speech bubbles, which i believe the older version was lacking. However I cannot find out where to download that newer bin file in order to try it with our netdimm. I also read other people trying to convert it to a Dvorak keyboard setup, but since i am using the original keyboards that came with the game, i wont be needing any of the Dvorak conversions,etc. If anyone can please point out where to download this newer .bin file. with the correct text bubble textures i would greatly appreciate it.

Many Thanks
Rick

 

[nem]

I don't think @maramilitia ever released anything.

I was thinking of setting up a Dreamcast in mine. I haven't actually tried it. I'm not sure if there's an issue with the Japanese keyboards.

 

[Stupid Dufus]

I was thinking of setting up a Dreamcast in mine. I haven't actually tried it. I'm not sure if there's an issue with the Japanese keyboards.

Japanese keyboards on an English DC copy of the game? Works fine. I have two Japanese keyboards and played both JP and EN with a friend and had no issues.

 

[twistedsymphony]

I don't think @maramilitia ever released anything.

I was thinking of setting up a Dreamcast in mine. I haven't actually tried it. I'm not sure if there's an issue with the Japanese keyboards.

I ran a DC in my cab for this game for a while. the USA version works fine with the JP keyboards.

biggest issue with a DC is are just console things. no way to turn off attract mode sounds, continues are capped at 5 or so, there are menus to navigate, settings are exposed to the players, and if someone leaves it on a menu it's going to sit there and never time out, burning the image into your monitor,

all perfectly fine if you're just playing yourself but problematic in a party setting or other public/semi-public situation.

 

[Hynerich]

I haven't looked at this game since I gave up a long time ago because of the texture limitation/engine limitations I ran into.

As for how to use a DVORAK layout yes it would be possible. The key map I provided is the hex representation of the ascii table ripped from the US HOTD which should be a keymap for all US-based keyboards - https://www.ascii-code.com/

Being armed with the hex values for each character and knowing the differences from DVORAK to QWERTY is just a matter of shuffling the hex around as needed.

Perhaps a visual will help:

Here you can see how the two keymaps look - hex on the left, text representation on the right. If I were to flip "A" and "B" around it would make it so in a QWERTY environment when I type "B" "A" would appear on the screen thus changing the keyap.

If you were wanting to do this on the Dreamcast version the same should apply as well. Use the base string of either JP or US depending on which version you're remapping and you can likely just search the entire gdi track in a hex editor for the string to replace.

Pushing this ancient 2015 thread up after posting what I thought was my novel idea

I have read through all 13 pages of this thread and I'm in awe of how deep some of you crazy people are able to dig into these roms.

I wonder if the current state of discoveries (especially the one I quoted above from @sammargh) would allow for a "PAL Patch" of the US Dreamcast release of Typing Of The Dead. While it does technically work to play the US Rom on a PAL DC with one of the PAL keyboards (German, French, UK English, Spanish), it's a pain to adjust for the different mappings. I'm personally used to typing on a German layout (QWERTZ) and if I press "Z" on my keyboard it registers as "Y" in the US rom of Typing Of The Dead.

Would it be possible to release .xdelta patches which humbly remap the keys for German, French, UK English, Spanish keyboards? Since I'm not equipped with the technical knowledge to do so, all I could give would be kudos and/or money

 

[Hynerich]

Yippie! So I tracked town derek (ateam) on Discord and based on the groundwork of @sammargh he was indeed able to edit the ASCII values in a HEX editor to swap the Y and Z keys. The resulting .xdelta patch worked on my PAL Dreamcast with PAL (German) keyboard!

During testing however, I noticed that more than the simple Y-Z swap is necessary.

Also the "?", "-" and "'" (Apostrophe) need to be changed around.

I devised this graphical representation of which keys need to go where (on normal and shifted layouts):

 

[Hynerich]

I cross-checked with this guide (https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/dreamcast/250638-the-typing-of-the-dead/faqs/11212) which summarizes all words and sentences that appear in the game are in alphabetical order. I'm pretty confident that after the key swap I visualized above, no other alterations should be needed.

 

[Hynerich]

After consulting with @ateam and @MetalliC on Discord, they advised against swapping individual key values.

Instead, they proposed swapping the whole key map of Typing Of The Dead with one that is known to support European keyboard layouts.

I first tested and proposed DreamKey 3.0 as it fully supports QWERTZ layouts but after they dug into the rom, they found that the key map is in a different format than the one used in Typing Of The Dead.

Yesterday, I tested all PAL games that support the keyboard peripheral on this handy list: https://segaretro.org/Dreamcast_Keyboard

After testing, I found out that only these games are properly localized for European key maps:
Phantasy Star Online Ver. 2 v1.000 (2002)(Sega)(PAL)(M5)[!][req. serial] (in game)
Phantasy Star Online v2.011 (2001)(Sega)(PAL)(M5)[!][req. serial] (in game)
Toy Racer v1.050 (2000)(Sega)(PAL)(M4)[!] (in game's web browser)
Sonic Adventure v1.003 (1999)(Sega)(PAL)(M5)[!] (in game's web browser)
Worms World Party v1.002 (2001)(Virgin)(PAL)(M9)[!] (in game)
(all TOSEC)

Since both ateam and MetalliC are busy with other things, is there anybody here on this forum that could help with swapping the key maps from above games with the one in Typing Of The Dead and compile an .xdelta patch so that I can test it?

I myself have no skills with digging into roms or even hacking or coding, sadly

Thanks everyone!

 

[Hynerich]

Happy update time!

I got approached by Widge and he offered to swap all individual keys for making German QWERTZ keyboard layouts work.

Long story short: Case closed! All is good now in Typing Of The Dead QWERTZ land.

He published the German patch (and also a patch for UK keyboard layouts) on his GitHub: https://github.com/Widge-5/totd-dc-keyboard-patches