Ar tonelico II: Melody of Metafalica

This page details one or more prototype versions of Ar tonelico II: Melody of Metafalica.

This prototype is documented on Hidden Palace.

A prototype of the US version of Ar tonelico II was released by Hidden Palace on March 20, 2021 as part of "Project Deluge". Built on September 22, 2008 (about three months before the retail release), the game at this point has a lot of half-translated things and a vast amount of debugging options.

Debug Menus#

The game boots into a massive list of debugging options used to test various aspects of the game.

Game Start#

Start the game in debug mode. You can use R3 to finalize the main game loop and back to the debug menu.

Before starting the game, the program will check whether the free RAM is enough, and will refuse to start if free RAM is too low.

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This menu contains lots of submenus, which are various categories of dialogues. If you entered a last level menu, the game will show a dialogue balloon containing the message, and a string. These strings looks like:

qvc_map_and_talk_ext.xls I 5 (Under <Message Test>/NPC Message, where the message is 'That old man looks like quite a sucker.')
divers_therapy_reaction_data_inc.xls H 3 (Under <Divers Therapy Test>/Reaction Message, where the message is 'I hate you.')

The message whose corresponding string ended with 'ext.xls' can be found in the game's ERX. And the message whose corresponding string ended with 'inc.xls' can be found in the game's ELF. The characters are all full-shaped and encoded in Windows-31J.

Controls#

Use the D-Pad to change message entry.
Use ○ to go back.

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The menu entries in this menu can be divided into two groups according to the ending 'Gp' and 'Tx'.

The Tx represents the method how the program cuts a texture from a large TIM, and Gp represents how the textures make up a scene, window image, etc.

However, any 'Tx' entry after the entry 'Q002dTx'(including) should toggle the display mode through pressing SELECT after entered. Or you will see nothing. The naming of these entries correspond with the QvMap id.

Some 'Gp' entries looks collapsed, if you enter one, the program will alarm it can't find the file, and some other errors and assertions aiming will be reported.

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The HigScene will freeze the program when running on a real console. PCSX2 will report TLB Miss and keep running, so you can press ○ to go back. But if you press ×, the program will crash the emulator.

In Hig entry, you can use the Left/Right Analog Sticks to change the model's position, and R2+Left/Right Analog Sticks to change the model's rotaion.

Debug Output#

The debugging output can be printed to the console of PCSX2 in the beginning (The string "---CacheClear!"), then nothing printed though the same subroutine still working and if you break at the point, you can see the string that passed to the subroutine is perfect. Maybe it can work on DTL-T10000 via DECI2 or something else, but I don't have one, so I will appreciate it if somebody can make further research on it.

However, if you want to see the output with PCSX2, patch the ELF, where the offset is 0x2E1CC8 (where the printf-like subroutine located), from 0xB0 FF BD 27 8A 00 0F 3C to 0x14 87 0E 08 00 00 00 00, and at 0x2E1E60 (where the puts-like subroutine located), overwrite with 0x2D 28 80 00 3E 00 04 3C 14 87 0E 08 70 0E 84 24 25 76 0A 00.

Also, the cheat code

//Redirect printf-like routine
patch=1,EE,203E0CC8,word,080E8714
patch=1,EE,203E0CCC,word,00000000

//Redirect puts-like routine
patch=1,EE,203E0E60,word,0080282D
patch=1,EE,203E0E64,word,3C04003E
patch=1,EE,203E0E68,word,080E8714
patch=1,EE,203E0E6C,word,24840E70
patch=1,EE,203E0E70,word,000A7325

does the same job.

Debug Controls#

General#

Map Test#

Battles#

Voiceover Differences#

The intro to the game in this build is voiced over, while the retail version is not.

Watch on YouTube