Warsong: Warsong Graphics Hack

Another victim of localization was Langrisser, at least graphically. When it became Warsong, Treco redid a few of the character portraits. Not really a big deal, and some might even prefer the changes, but this patch will revert the graphics anyway.

This patch is more interesting when combined with D's text hack, which fixes the names to better match Langrisser. Make sure you apply this graphics patch last.






Warsong
Graphics Hack




History
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070103 Initial release




Overview
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This is a patch for the Genesis game Warsong. Warsong was localized by Treco
and some of the graphics were changed in the process. This patch hacks the
graphics back to the ones used by Langrisser.




Applying the Patch
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Hopefully included with this document is a patch file in the IPS format.
You can use any program that supports that file format to apply this
translation patch to your ROM file.




Playing the Game
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Once you've patched the ROM file, simply load it up in your favorite
Genesis / Mega Drive emulator, console copier, or flash cartridge.




Q & A
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Q: This patch doesn't work! What do I do?

A: Make sure that your ROM file is not in an interleaved format. It's also
possible that there is more than one version of the game, or that your
copy is corrupt.


Q: It doesn't work with my copier / flash cartridge! Why not?

This was tested on a real Genesis so you shouldn't have any problems in
that respect. The most likely reason is that something went wrong during
the patching process. See the previous question and try it in an emulator
to see if that works.

Another possibility is that you are using a PAL Mega Drive. This game was
designed for NTSC systems and I didn't make any changes in that respect.
It should still run (probably at the wrong speed), but you never know...


Q: Is this compatible with the Warsong-to-Langrisser text hack?

A: Yes, as long as this graphics hack is applied last. The checksum will be
wrong, but the game will not fail.




List of Changes
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Treco logo reverted to Masaya logo
Title graphics changed from Warsong to Langrisser (in katakana)
Character portraits reverted
Checksum disabled




Hacking Notes
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The biggest problem with this hack, aside from finding the graphics data to
be replaced, was the extreme lack of free ROM space. There was less than 2k
of free space total and little more than 1k of it was contiguous. Further
complicating things was the fact that Warsongs graphics were smaller, so
simply overwriting them was not possible. The data had to be split up and
loaded into RAM prior to processing. As it stands, there are only a few
hundred free bytes left scattered throughout the ROM.


Warsong (U) [!].gen
CRC32: 4B680285
MD5: 146996A42EF0CCA2578F4D56DA2C4206
SHA-1: 9B13A85F39B3F4CC31F54077DF29BBE812405A08