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FINAL FANTASY ENDLESS NOVA - SINGULARITY EDITION

CONTENTS
SE1. Foreword
SE1.1 AFAQs
SE2. Getting This Thing Running
SE3. Changelog
SE3.0. What's Not Fixed and Why
SE3.1. General
SE3.2. Bugs and Functionality
SE3.3. Gameplay
SE3.4. Audio
SE3.5. Text and Dialogue


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SE1. FOREWORD

Well, after a bit of work, here's a heavily updated version of an RPG Maker game some amount of the community still seems to remember a bit fondly. What originally started out as a little bit of audio-editing practice to replace the MIDIs with looping WAVs for a game I had a lot of nostalgia for has turned into a desire to edit the game's spotty dialogue and possibly re-release that version, which in turn became a full-on attempt to fix as much of the game as possible, and make it more accessible than ever.

I have tried to reach out to the original developers about this, but unfortunately I've been completely unable to find them. Their website, velv.net, has vanished from the internet, having gone down some time around 2020 according to Waybackmachine. I imagine by now they've long since moved on in their lives, and probably won't care too much about somebody messing with their ancient project to modernise it a bit. Let's think of this as a version 3.0 of the game.

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SE1.1 AFAQs (anticipated frequently asked questions)

"Can I mod this myself?"
-Of course! It's all I was doing. In fact you'll see the odd point or two in this that actively encourages it. 

"Why can't I open this in the RM2K?"
-You'll need the commercial English version of RPG Maker 2000 to do it, which you can buy on Steam for a very reasonable amount at this point; the old Don Miguel fan translation is highly unlikely to work. That you might be unable to open this is exactly why I made it a stand-alone installer so you can at least still play it.

"Why spruce up a nearly two decades-old RPG Maker game to this extent, you absoultely insane person?"
-I just really love it, that's why. To most people online now this might be regarded as just some mediocre fangame, but I've always had a soft spot for it. For all its flaws and foibles, I think it's a really enjoyable and actually quite well-made game for just what it gets the default RPG Maker 2000 system to do, and this is reflected in the changelog below where the section on bug fixes is by far the shortest - less than a page when viewed in most word-processing software, compared to the pages and pages of text and audio changes. It's the game that accidentally got me into Guilty Gear by using some of its music near the end. And yes, I'm the same ReloadPsi who wrote the majority of that TV Tropes page on this game... and that is also me getting made fun of (without being directly identified) for being a bit too in love with it in the Something Awful thread on it ;)

"Why the name Singularity Edition?"
-Astrophysics innit.

"Why did you change X, Y, or Z?"
-Because I didn't think it was doing any damage to the original work.

"I think it did."
-Not my problem. The original is still out there on Abandonia and other sites; it ain't going anywhere.

"You said you edited all the dialogue, but I think it's still kinda bad?"
-I was avoiding compromising the original work too much, for better or worse. I didn't think it was my place to completely overhaul any given character's speech pattern.

"How can I contact you about this version?"
-I've set up an email address specifically for that: singularityedition@yahoo.com

"I found a mistake you might've missed. Are you interested?"
-Sure, go ahead and let me know, but be as detailed as you can. In particular, I'll want to know if I've used British spelling instead of American by mistake. However, if I disagree with you on anything you point out, keep in mind I'm the one behind this mod and my decision is final.

"Did you get permission for this?"
-Not for lack of trying. I doubt the devs are gonna mind though, considering their website is long dead and the game is on a number of other sites already. In fact, when Jarel Jones made version 2.5 and uploaded it as abandonware, one of the devs liked it so much that they replaced the version on their own website with it.

"Did you know the devs personally?"
-Not really. I used to be a regular on their forums and emailed them once or twice, but that was it.

"Where is/was their website?"
Velv.net can be viewed using Waybackmachine, and a great deal of it has been preserved. As far as I can tell from their update archive, it originally went online August 27th 2002, which I guess makes that the game's original release date as well.

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SE2. GETTING THIS THING RUNNING

Drag the contents of the zip file into a folder somewhere.

Click the installer EXE file and make a note of the folder you install it in. This is in case you choose to install the separate WAV pack (which I strongly recommend; RM2K's MIDI compatibility was always a bit rubbish.) That download has its own instructions on how to install it, but it's easy enough.

When you boot up the game, you'll likely want to press F4 immediately to bring it into windowed mode. For some reason, RM2K hates running in fullscreen on modern systems and has a horrible framerate when it does. If it DOES run well for you in fullscreen mode, cool :P

The controls: arrow keys move, Enter on the numpad selects, and Ins/0 on the numpad cancels selections and opens the menu. A bunch of other keys do the same things but I don't really use them so I'm not sure what they'd be. I seem to recall the bottom row of keyboard letters do the directions and the confirm/menu buttons  in some order or another. If you've got a joypad, that works too, but the mapping varies a bit from joypad to joypad, but it'll be easy enough to find the menu/cancel and confirm buttons. If it's got an analog stick and forces you to use only that for movement, I recommend using a joypad to keyboard program to allow you to map your D-pad to the arrow keys. The original website, velv.net has more detailed instructions specific to the game as well as a full FAQ, so I recommend going there if you really want more info. There are a few things I've changed that the FAQ won't entirely reflect, but I don't recommend reading my changelog unless you've already played the game before (and let's be fair, if you're playing my version you probably did.)

Now I know standards of fan games and indie games in general have gone way, way up since this game was made, but nevertheless, previous players, hopefully you'll get a kick out of playing this updated version, and new players, I hope you can enjoy this one as much as some of us once did! Without further ado, let's get to what's been changed:

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SE3. CHANGELOG

The changes are in various categories, and any changes in said category containing spoilers, be they plot or gameplay, have a big marker at the beginning of that part of the list. While I don't expect any of my changes to be controversial, I've explained and tried to justify the majority of them.

That said, if you've not yet played the game, I don't really recommend reading beyond here anyway as none of it will matter to you :)

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SE3.0. WHAT'S NOT FIXED AND WHY:

-"custom" text prompts in battle, with the exception of dialogue - there was just no way I was going to be able to get through and correct all of those because there are hundreds and hundreds of them and there's way too much room for me to screw something up if I attempt mess with those

-inflicting a status on an enemy that prevents it from taking action (sleep, stop, confuse, etc) still seems to prevent you from scanning it too, but I don't imagine anybody using Scan on anything other than bosses anyway, and guess what they're usually immune to. RM2K only lets you check whether the enemy "can move" when making a conditional branch. While it's technically possible to have the game read their HP, set that to a variable, and then check if the variable is above zero, again, changing them all to do that would take way, way too much time for what it would give.

-the fonts in the custom menus - I don't think it's all that important, plus I think they're a neat little artifact of the old fan translation in which the game was built

-all those moments where Deren's equipment is automatically removed. I wanted to. I really, really wanted to... but that's how the game determines what the starting stats of new party members will be, and if it didn't unequip, every new party member would have their starting stats miles ahead of Deren's, as they'd be determined by his current stats due to his equipment. It was bad enough he was the one character that started with no skills known :P

-I still don't know what the in the hell "dainsev" means, other than it being an anagram of "invades," and I'm fairly sure that's a coincidence

-the game is still full of music from other games. The WAV pack uses, mostly, the original versions of them.

--misspelled music tracks are left that way, because changing every reference to match a changed filename is just unnecessary work

--I realise the idea of taking existing music and renaming it for a project is a contentious issue, but it does mean files can be swapped out; versions 1 and 2 of this game actually had slightly different soundtracks, done by simply swapping out MIDIs with the same filename. Replacing ontheedgeofdespair.mid from FF7 with Goodbye Friends from ToP but leaving the filename as the former would've been equally weird.

--if you're still using the MIDI files, while the majority of them should play properly (subject to a weird little delay in loading; seems the commercial version fixed the piano-only glitch) I think Bleek Road still only plays its percussion and nothing else. I didn't find another MIDI of it that worked.

-Gillionaire still doesn't display the actual amount of gil you win you win after battle, as this is just a hard limit of the RM2K engine. It's not a bug; the way the majority of this game's system works is constantly checking your party state before and after combat. In gillionaire's case, if there's a difference in gil, it adds it to your inventory unannounced, effectively doubling your winnings. Now it would technically be easy to add some obnoxious text prompts after every battle saying "BTW here's another 5000 gil" but that's a terrible idea. Another theoretical way to do it would be to duplicate every single enemy and encounter table, as well as duplicating every map in the game to make the encounters appear in them, but that would be really dumb and bad. Personally I just appreciate the devs putting in a functional item of its sort, so just trust that the item works as advertised.

-Comet Dice still hasn't been put back in the casino. I really wanted to because I think it's a fun and simple game concept (it's like a simplified three-dice yahtzee) but it was doing weird stuff like ignoring your pairs if they were 1s, and attempting to multiply your bet when you won, but then... not staying multiplied and just giving you back the amount you bet. I guess there was a reason the devs left it dummied out. (It would also deduct the amount you WOULD have won after you lost, rather than the amount you bet. That's the one thing I did manage to fix I think, but again, I couldn't quite get the game to behave. Ignoring your pairs of 1s especially stumped me.) The NPC who triggers it is hidden on the map and can easily be dragged up to her table using the editor for you to play against. Do so at your own risk.

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SE3.1. GENERAL

-able to be downloaded and installed without needing to have any version of RPG Maker first - I recommend running it in windowed mode (just press F4 once) as RPG Maker 2000 games don't seem to run very smoothly on modern systems in fullscreen mode for some reason. Admittedly this may also require you to lower your screen resolution just to be able to see it but... \_(._.)_/ If you've any idea how the heck to fix this, by all means, go ahead.

-anybody who's legally got RM2K now (as opposed to the fan-translation) wouldn't have been able to run the original version of this as none of the RTP filenames match, so they all had to be imported in. I wasn't gonna go through and change every single reference in those thousands of objects and events to the correct files, only to miss one somewhere and have the game shut down on you.

-added a minor credit at the end to myself and Jarel Jones (this is based on the 2.5 version he worked on way back when - it used to be hosted on Rangerwiki as well.)

--added myself to the opening under the Edited By, crediting myself for Singularity Edition

-also credited certain composers of tracks not just directly lifted from games where known, in particular:
--Edwin van Veldhoven; Last Ride is an original track (Tonatiuh) by this composer
--PianoAtin; I used their version of Final Fantasy, and while the track isn't original per se, the arrangement and performance are
--Michael Huang for the victory theme

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SE3.2. BUGS AND FUNCTIONALITY

-fixed the odd bug and/or glitch here and there, including:

--when gaining a stat, there was a chance you could cancel the stat gain if you caused a battle or a scene change to take place too soon, because it would announce the stat increase, and THEN apply it once the prompt vanished. I've inverted this, which hopefully fixes it.

--Motor's Desperation works now; used to be greyed out because of issues with weapon attributes

--you can no longer walk along the edges of Ventry Heights on the world map, thus preventing a softlock

--Ice Flans yield ice curtains and the Ice Shell spell during combat instead of the water versions, and they no longer make Lisbeth use the water dungeon's terrain attack

--Multi Thundara now does thunder damage instead of ice

--the digging minigame on Kortira no longer gets you trapped in the ceiling, and the one treasure that never showed up on the map now does

--Meteor Shower's parcels clip through you far less often

--a few enemies intended to display "N-A" for certain attributes in scan weren't doing it properly; this is now fixed (they can't display N/A because it messes with the RM2K text boxes)

--certain Blue Magic spells would give the "X learned Y!" prompt before they animated for the first time; now fixed

--that one fish at the Blue Temple no longer traps you in place and softlocks the game

--Change Party is disabled when the party splits; accessing it at certain points between those caused the game to softlock and it wasn't needed anyway

--some minions in certain fights were supposed to disappear if you killed the main enemy first, but didn't for some reason; now fixed

--riding Cliff's boat no longer causes you to watch Ibis walk across the sea (and also fixed the sequence break possible with said character by roadblocking certain areas at certain times)

--you can no longer sequence break or get stuck by not taking Deren's party to Tazuu Falls when prompted to do so

--I think, I THINK I've fixed the thing where exiting Kogagu Cave in certain ways causes the screen to stay dark. I think. Bane of my bloody existence, that one.

--enemies using White Wind don't heal you any more, just themselves

--some treasures on the world maps couldn't be collected because of coding errors; now fixed

--some prompts to re-equip your party where the menu opened automatically caused their Dainsevs not to change if you also re-equipped those - should be working now though

--hitting cancel at the menu prompts at bridge of the ship doesn't open the locator any more

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SE3.3. GAMEPLAY


-Cure, Cura, and Curaga are no longer light elemental; many enemies were unable to heal themselves otherwise

-adjusted the game balance in some places:

--Deren starts with the Poisona spell learned; lots of enemies poison you early on and it felt weird that the main character of the game was the only one who started with zero abilities

--since we've got Deren starting with Poisona, Ibis has Sleep instead

--Early enemies no longer flee once you've passed a certain point in the story - no later enemies do this and it's kind of annoying how only the early ones do when getting those early kills for gil can be crucial

--Esuna, Remedy, and Purity Chalice heal more statuses, namely everything but death now

--VIT and MAG bonuses have been made easier to get, as they seemed to get absurdly rare a few hours into the game and then remain that way, making those stats unreasonably difficult to increase

--Drain and Osmose (formerly Aspell) are more effective - they barely worked in the original and were basically useless; enemies using it therefore weren't nearly as threatening either

--Lisbeth's Terrain command is tweaked to be more useful - most of the time they were elemental attacks that were useless against almost all enemies in the area, or non-elemental attacks that inflicted a status everything in the area was immune to anyway; the majority of them are now non-elemental, inflict a few more ailments each, and do a little more damage than before. You'll find her Terrain never quite comes up to par with your physical attackers, but she'll always have a bit more use in random battles now.

--various other skills' hit rates have been changed. Bluntly put, Lisbeth and Motor are no longer the by far worst characters in the game :P

--Clear Stone casts Protectga when used by KioSen, as well as Energy Crystal for Multi Drain, and Posh Wallet for Multi Osmose, and their descriptions have been changed to allude to this

--Shield Armor now guards against all four basic elements (indicated as TetraGrd)

--a number of other spells and stat buffs have had their values changed a little bit

-the elemental temples make you more likely to encounter flans in the early areas, and more likely to encounter enemies that yield the 'aga spells in the later ones

-made the digging minigame on Kortira slightly easier; added a sound to alert of nearby treasure (which will eventually stop sounding off if you don't find it in time - the way it's implemented is a bit crude, but see above for the stuck-in-the-wall issue, as my original attempt to implement this actually made that a lot worse!) and added a random chance for treasures to emit a visible signal every so often

-flying to Coyas gives you more control over where you'll land (selecting north or south then allows you to select a more precise spot; Necelia, Yoih, Darum, Kogagu, or Corret.)

-the parcels in Meteor Shower are slightly more predictable (which also contributes to fixing the above issue about them clipping through you too often) though I've found that it isn't making the game all that much easier, so make of that what you will

-later sections where you walk into the trees for hidden treasure have been made slightly less frustrating

-there's an unattended table in the Six Star casino where I attempted to re-implement the Comet Dice minigame. If you fancy getting it working (it was almost fully functional save for a few issues with the variable checking; see "what's not changed" above) the NPC who triggers it is "hidden" on the map and can be seen in the editor. Interestingly, the same character sprite was used for another NPC in Stars Bliss who says she "doesn't have to work today." Makes you wonder...

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(SPOILERS BELOW)
(Well, spoilers in that some players might wanna discover these particular things on their own)
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--since Ibis starts with Sleep now, I made the boss you fight when he joins you have a slight chance to be susceptible to it

--When stealing from Lamia, you instead steal a Loco Weed if you already have Lamia's Tiara; getting rid of the tiara lets you steal another one. It's not like you ever needed more than one.

--Dracozombies cast Shadow Flare like their FF7 counterparts did, but only with Lamia's Tiara equipped, and even then it's quite rare - it's still much easier to get it from Watcher Beta, but it was basically the only outright missable thing in the game otherwise, which seemed odd as every single other item you miss can be farmed for instead, and I'd always been impressed by the lack of missable content

--Lamia's Tiara can be worn by more party members - learning status spells was virtually impossible when only Ellana could equip it, as the game is only able to check whether Ellana is actually capable of taking action, not if she's simply alive, so being hit by Moon Flute or Bad Breath stopped her learning them; now you can put it on another character and defend her against the spells well enough to actually learn them instead of either praying for that 5% miss rate or praying for the lowered priority to go off

--if you still don't have Shiva during the time you're controlling Ibis, he'll haggle down the thief selling Shiva in Corret to half price - it's deliberately quite easy to miss as you really aren't expected to travel that far north at that point

--also while controlling Ibis, if you haven't yet thrown 5000 gil into the well for the final prize, he will give you the option to throw the rest in once you've reached 1500. If you've gone past this already, he won't bother.

--there is a Su Karu Hunter at Finel's arcade once the final dungeon opens up, though he'll only show up if you have Ibis in the party. He'll sell you up to 2800 game tickets, enough to buy the essential prizes for sidequest completion (rubber paste, the ancient scroll, Kirin) in case you really struggled with the minigames, but the idea is that it will not leave you with enough to get the most overpowered stuff; you'll still have to play the arcade games for those.

--Horace at the Astral Tower has access to even better spells in the endgame, but as a tradeoff his services cost more at that point, and the odds of success are reduced

--Cosmic Wheel at the casino multiplies your bet by 100 instead of 10, because that's more in line with how fixed odds gambling works. To that end, the digits you can input for your bet are reduced to 4 from 6; winning on a six digit number with a mutliplier of ten would have caused you to win more than you could carry, as would winning on a five digit number with a multiplier of a hundred. (RM2K's gold is capped at 999999.)

--I hid a single Reagan Greens somewhere on Coyas as I don't think the items available from a green chocobo are exactly game-breaking if you can get them then, so I figured it would be nice to reward exploration. Also, the green chocobo is never seen otherwise as anybody in their right mind is just gonna use a black one the moment they've got the ability to get better greens.

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EVEN BIGGER SPOILER

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Said Reagan Greens can be found in Ress, but only before you fight High Mage.
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(END SPOILERS... FOR NOW)

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SE3.4. AUDIO

(Most of this section assumes you installed the music pack as well.)

-rebalanced the majority of the audio as nobody seems to have individual WAV/MIDI volume settings any more; originally all music was set to play at 70% volume, which meant running it on newer systems caused the sound effects to overwhelm the music, no matter what format it was. If you're still using the MIDIs, they should sound all right, but I can't guarantee they'll play properly as I don't use them any more.

--the menu cursor movement sound was made a bit quieter

-With the exception of Floating Weapon, all songs now play at their original tempo to better accommodate the music pack (the tempo change of that one in particular was so drastic and changed its mood so much that I just had to keep it that way)

-replaced Epilogue; instead of being Where I Belong from FF8, it's now a fairly recent piano arrangement of Final Fantasy by PianoAtin, used with permission (if you're not using the WAV pack - though you really should - this won't be the case)

-Meteor Shower no longer uses RM2K's default assets for its game over or victory themes, and that's all I'm gonna say ;)

-as much as I would've liked to use OGG files due to their smaller size, RM2K doesn't seem to want to know. Nevertheless, if you downloaded the WAV pack, the MIDIs can be replaced with looping (mostly) WAV files compressed to a bitrate that still makes the music recogniseable without compromising the experience too much, now that the majority of internet connections and even the lowest end current PCs are more than fast enough to handle that sort of thing. You're gonna need a lot of space for it (about half a gig) but that amount will probably be negligible nowadays with us all having multi-terabyte SSDs. Where possible, I've tried to locate the original version of each track rather than using rearranged versions of them. There are some exceptions to this:

--Quenlin Theme is still a MIDI, but only because I have absolutely no idea what the source is, and apparently neither did the game's fans

--Last Ride, as it's an original MIDI composition (Tonatiuh by Edwin van Veldhoven) presumably intended for use in MIDI format games and mods and such

--Nap Time stayed as a MIDI, as using WAV seems to make inn music do weird stuff

--Lush Life. I used a version of the song in question (Sailor Neptune from a Super NES Sailor Moon game) that I didn't know at the time to be an arrangement, and later got my hands on the original, but found that said original had very iffy percussion that sounded like it was never quite in time (a dodgy rip maybe?) so I stuck with the arrangement. It also felt a bit out of place against all the PSX-era music everywhere else in the game. I don't remember where I got the arrangement from, so I must apologise to whomever made it for not crediting them as I didn't know back when I downloaded it that it WAS an arrangement! Sorry!

--Battle Theme. There was a fake battle theme going around Kazaa years ago called "FFX battle" that had the traditional bassline, was full of FF8 sound effects, and was actually an absolute banger of a track. This is one of several fan-made remixes of the tune I found, which sounded closest to the old recording, but the version I have used is no longer online, and with that unfortunately I've lost who actually made it. (As far as I can tell, the name "FFX battle theme" was never meant to mean Final Fantasy X, but rather it was "FFX" for being from no FF in particular.)

--Narrow Future (the title screen theme) is now straight up just the vocal version of Duvet itself rather than an instrumental; whether the original devs wanted it in there or not in the first place, but couldn't due to limitations of the time (namely it would've quadrupled the game's download size) I have no idea. It was known for being the theme to some show called Serial Experiment something, but I get the impression that it was picked for the lyrics matching up to a plot point or two, so I don't think its inclusion was just some kind of self-indulgent whim.

--Battle Victory, a semi-original arrangement, was converted to WAV from the MIDI to make it behave better, as was Snowy Hot Spring, also a semi-original arrangement

--Showdown!!! and the final boss themes still play to the end and start again like the old MIDIs, since they behave that way in their respective games anyway. Final Boss Part 1 has one of its loops cut out for filesize however.

--one or two other tracks might not loop because there was no good spot to loop them, or because I forgot

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SE3.5. TEXT AND DIALOGUE

-Yeah, this is a big one:

--tidied up all the dialogue so that the full space of text boxes is used

--cutscene NPCs with no names, but titles like "Soldier A" or "Man B" are changed to be more descriptive, like "helmsman" or "corporal"

--the tutorials that pop up, such as character skills and world map controls, now have the text centred

--corrected spellings and adjusted punctuation throughout the game's dialogue (I tried to stick to American spelling, but I apologise if I've put any Commonwealth English in there by mistake!)

---changed certain words due to a few cases of "was this what he meant?" when a text box just didn't make a lot of sense

---certain enemies whose names appeared to have attempted be more in line with their Japanese name or misspelled outright (such as Methuselah) have been changed

--very few text boxes now cut off mid-sentence, which hopefully will make it all much easier to read in general

--changed a few skill descriptions; some for flavour, some for accuracy, some because I'd literally changed the function

--edited numerous item descriptions

---Phoenix Down and Phoenix Tail were used interchangeably throughout the game; I've tried to change them all to Phoenix Tail as the majority of game dialogue reflected this (and I figured I was less likely to miss one that way)

---spaces added to weird compound words where there was room; only done where it could be consistent (i.e. the weapon attributes; if I'd tried to expand them they'd have stopped fitting)

---most relic descriptions changed to plain English (aside from stat-boosting ones)

----Lisbeth's locket alludes to it having another effect besides just MagBns

---Motor's weapons indicate whether they're handguns or mech arms, which has no effect on gameplay but still

---wisdom orbs now have the spell description on them

---Deren's swords now tell you what skills he'll learn when you obtain them - no more saving and reloading while buying them all just to see

--a few lines of dialogue are rewritten from scratch, either because I accidentally deleted them in editing and therefore had to re-type them from memory, or because they were confusing otherwise. This shouldn't have significantly altered anything, as I didn't intend to change too much what the original creator had actually written, such as it is - again though, more details in the spoilers below.

---a few lines of dialogue were also rewritten very slightly to prevent cutoff in text boxes; this is extremely rare, I was doing my best to make sure no one sentence staddled two text boxes. For the most part I've tried not to be too drastic about it for authorial intent's sake (for better or worse.)

---one or two out-of-place cases of harsher language (by FF standards) were removed (one such word did come up in FF7, but the PC version later removed it, and apparently so did the more recent re-releases of the game, so it's gone)

----yeah, I know, Remake, but that's from 2020, this is from the early 00s, and if I were making references to Remake in this version I'd randomly lower the player's movement speed throughout the game

--the info man in a turban who appears in several early areas now optionally repeats the same core game mechanics (elements, stat raising, cryna) as the one who shows up once in Stars Bliss as well; I never liked how there was only one such opportunity to have it explained that could easily be rejected by mistake.

--the world map tutorial now tells you to use Enter to open the PuPu menu, not Cancel

--menu text was changed so the unused level display on the menu now displays an ID number from 1 to 7 for each character, based on the order they're recruited and where on the screen their stat bonuses appear - has no effect on gameplay whatsoever (despite what some reviewers said back in the day, it's speed that determines escaping from battle, not character level)

--using items in battle consistently reads "[player] used [item]" now, rather than the "[player] [item] used" that some of them were stuck with thanks to RM2K's Steam version being far more flexible in this regard

--as mentioned before though, the "custom" text boxes in battle weren't changed to match as it would've been too difficult, but regular things like "Deren 10 HP is lost" now read "Deren lost 10 HP" because the new Steam release actually allows it

--the vast majority of attack announcements in battle are in past tense, but one or two weren't so they were changed to match

--Spells like Might and Haste no longer tell you how much the stat went up by. Didn't think there was any need for it and the fact they even did was a limitation imposed by the old fan translation.

--altered some regular spell names to be more in line with the FF series in general
---Panacea > Poisona
---Aspell > Osmose
---Araise > Arise
---Protega > Protectga
---Watara > Watera
---Wataga > Waterga
---Gravijia > Gravija
("Araise," "Watara," "Wataga," and "Gravijia" are just holdovers from how they're rendered in Japanese kana)
("Aspell" was a misinterpretation of the Japanese "Aspir," from "aspirate")
("Poisona" is more universally used in the series and lines up with Stona and Esuna)

---I spent a while umming and ahhing about whether or not the "Dispel [Element]" spells should be changed to "Imperil [Element]" but I ultimately didn't go with it. If I've offended all six members of the FF13 fan club, my apologies.

--There are probably some enemy and attack names I slightly changed the spelling of for consistency with the rest of the main series and just forgot about. But...
---one or two enemy names were changed either because the spelling was wrong, or because there appeared to have been an attempt to bring it more in line with its Japanese name. Again, I don't remember all of them, but the ones I can remember to point out:
----Molboro is now Malboro
----Pollensalita is now Poransarita - yes it was Pollensalta in FF7, but it made no bloody sense so I just reverted it to the fully Japanese one :P (I reckon it was meant to be "Pollyana Sarita" but that's just me)
----Methuselah - I don't remember the original spelling used, but I've corrected it
----done away with the space in "Draco Zombie" - really should be either Dragon Zombie or Dracozombie
----should Sacred have been Sekhret? Should Stilva have been Stillve? Probably. They're not, though.

--Ellana's Blue Magic:
---Aqualung probably should've been Aqua Breath, except the animation doesn't convey that at all, so I left it as is
---Sour Lung is now Bad Breath
---Mogri Dash kept its name as it explicitly has the word "moogle" in the description, so I'm fairly sure that was just a deliberate choice and not some attempt at settling the "mogri vs. moogle" debate
---Moon Flute is no longer "Moon Blast" when used by the enemy

--the custom symbols in the equipment menu are gone as I had no way to re-implement them - I've made do with some default ones that match the functions and I think they look fine (a sword for weapons, a circle thing for wristguards, a shield for armour, a necklace for relics that I think might be supposed to be a Taurus symbol, and a little glowy dot thing for Dainsevs)

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(SPOILERS BELOW)
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--added and rewritten a few select lines of dialogue beyond the proofread job. I've done my best to avoid interfering with the original tone and writing of the game, such as your opinion of it may be, as I was trying to be a proof reader first and a script doctor last. However, in certain places, I did rewrite dialogue outright because it either didn't make a lot of sense, or simply didn't explain enough. Your mileage may vary considerably on these changes, so please don't @ me, okay? In some places I've made full-on additions to the dialogue, while doing my best to keep within the original tone of the game, and so with one very definite exception below, I did my best not to be self-indulgent. I'll have an "Ultra Spoiler" list beyond this section where I elaborate on some of the things I outright changed/added. Anyways:

---the marble sidequest's dialogue was changed so as not to sound like a euphemism for being a bit crazy

---made it possible for Deren to examine and remark on the paintings and exhibits at the Nido museum, just for funsies

---keep bothering the congregation at the church in Ress, and the preacher will eventually ask you to stop. I have no idea why I did this :P

---added a few extra lines in Necelia to better explain Finel's migration to space as well as the war

---added a tiny amount of foreshadowing for something that was otherwise a deus ex machina in the ending, and in the same place, threw in a minor explanation for another deus ex machina involving Kiro and Acaden

---Quenlin has an extra remark while describing his collusion with Fesha to Deren

---each character in the party has a few choice words for Fesha at the beginning of the Watcher Omega battle, because why not?

---changed the way one or two more NPCs interact with Ibis and Motor while they're leading the party, but not many, and not significantly. Also changed the way Ibis talks when interacting with certain things to differentiate him from Deren a little.

--Star Fighter now displays text declaring the winner by name rather than just "YOU WIN!", with a "PERFECT!" if said player was on full health

---Deren's many "eh?" have become "uh" so he'll stop sounding like a Canadian or a Scouser whose own words are surprising him, and instead sound like he's hesitating. I realise that's probably normal for where the programmer came from (Brooklyn, according to the game's long-abandoned website) but it clashes with most common perceptions of the word when written, so I went for something more universal. As an aside, I now struggle not to read all his dialogue with a Bronx accent.
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         ULTRA SPOILERS!!!

These spoilers will directly address things I've actually made deliberate changes to in terms of writing and attempt to justify them. As such, even if you played the original version, this WILL spoil those changes, and if you didn't, this goes into detail on the game's plot to elaborate on why I added what I did. Proceed at your own risk; I strongly advise playing the game first before coming back to this. Another big ugly block of dashes and equals signs like this one can be found further down the document if you just want to scroll right to the end.

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---Originally, we learn that there was constant conflict between Necelia and Finel as they were "rival nations" and one day Necelia just kinda won and wiped Finel off the map. The people of Finel became nomads until "an unknown scientist" discovered space travel, and they just went and colonised a bunch of asteroids along Vesta Belt instead. Here's what I changed:
----Ellana's extra dialogue in Necelia somewhat changes the background of this. I never got how an entire nation could be so utterly decimated and become so nomadic and yet have the resources to develop space travel. It took developed nations on Earth many years to get it right, so I rewrote Ellana's explanation to be about a more idelogical war between Necelia's magic and Finel's technology. Final Fantasy games have previously had a backstory or two that included magic defeating technology, and extremely brutally so, therefore I wrote in something like that. I don't have Ellana elaborate on how Necelia won exactly, and I've left it to the audience to imagine that - better strategy by Necelia; Finel being too complacent with their fancy toys; Necelian high mages concentrating their powers to nuke Finel's armies with a big-ass Ultima spell; take your pick - the game never said how Necelia won in the end, and clearly that was by choice. The point is, Finel lost, and overwhelmingly at that. Finel's loss in the magic vs tech war, and their refusal to bend the knee and forsake their tech developments, but instead secede to space with the tech they'd developed, is now said to be how their colonisation of space came about in the edited script. Hopefully that makes sense.

---The Grand Wish takes years of training to learn to absorb and use (Lisbeth has spent her entire life doing so) and yet when Acaden takes Kiro to the Red Temple, it "turns out he's a match" and he's just able to walk into each temple and touch the magic brick for not-dying powers just because. Then, during the ending, having supposedly expended the wish energy, Deren uses "life energy" to teleport the party out of danger. Both Deren's wish compatibility and his ending twist make for some pretty huge deux ex machina. So...
----I've added stuff to the books in the library at Osha that mentions the high "life energy" of certain humans on Coyas (the Necelian royal bloodline in particular - think Dynast King from FF12) and how this makes them strongly compatible with wish energy. It's already established that Specrans can't absorb it without training for several years before doing so. They don't trust out-worlders, so as this also wasn't explained, I figured this was because they were so afraid of their own wish power being used against them Two pigs with one stone. As for why the humans on Coyas never just went and absorbed the Red Temple wish, remember that it was necessary for a Specran who knew it was there to show somebody to the door and have them will it to open, as Acaden did with Kiro.
-----This now also means that Lisbeth has an extra line or two where she implies that she knows all this, but every time Deren mentions absorbing the wish or expending his life energy, Lisbeth reacts, goes to say something, and is cut off with an already-present line that was originally a rather obnoxious handwave, but now instead serves as an interruption for the audience not to learn why right away.

---Quenlin just happened to have a "similar bone structure" to one of the Finel Quartet so Fesha could carry out her plans.
----Well he's some kind of assassin or noble from the original Finel nation himself isn't he? I now have him off-handedly remark that he was "probably a direct ancestor or something" in his usual nonchalant and dimsissive manner.

---The characters now trash-talk Fesha in the Watcher Omega fight.
----This was a missed opportunity in my opinion. Her machinations are indeed directly responsible for all the problems going on, and while some characters have far less of a personal stake in her part in it than others, it's odd that they don't all get to sound off about their feelings on the situation like they do regarding Quenlin. Said dialogue also suggests that Watcher Omega IS Fesha, which the game doesn't explicitly state either way, but in my opinion it just makes sense to assume that.

---KioSen just kind of tags along as a seventh party member to give your untraded trade items a purpose - once he's broken Deren out of the makeshift prison Quenlin puts him in, he doesn't really contribute anything. It's very, VERY loosely implied that Fesha might've had a hand in his whole Freaky-Friday-with-a-toy situation, but we learn nothing beyond the fact he really hates her.
----Yeah... I couldn't really add much to this. I've tried to make him seem like he knows a bit more about Finel's tech once or twice so that he can seem a bit more helpful, but that's about it. He's still a solid party member during the elemental dungeons though. At least I make him say something scathing in the Watcher Omega fight...

---In short, I hope my adding extra lines of dialogue here and there to attempt to patch up some possible plot holes and handwaves won't offend anybody.

---Meteor Shower is now written entirely in wacky Engrish, which was done by running it through Google Translate a few times in a few different languages, and then editing the result slightly to still roughly convey the game's premise, although the game itself is so simple that it doesn't really need it. Aside from some Easter eggs (see below) this is the one thing fully intended to be seen by the player through normal play with which I just got outright self-indulgent, but I hope you enjoy it ;)

---added a silly Easter egg or two, some of which may be a tad immersion breaking, but you have to be deliberately looking for them:
----one of them's in the intro
----one of them's in Ally Luna at a time when you're really not expected to go there
----one of them's in Stars Bliss once you've picked up the Kirin Dainsev
----a couple more of them require you to hold Ctrl and go to where you shouldn't have access to at the time, so you won't even be able to access them without playing in the editor anyway
----I made an event that let me trigger the Watcher Omega fight to test something, but rather than delete it, I moved it out of the player's reach. Should you feel like cheating to find it, I ain't gonna stop you. The line of dialogue that appears before it is an injoke about a certain spelling error that was strangely prolific in the original version.

-this doesn't have much to do with anything, but I love how accidentally well the dialogue aged in places: it opens with a girl being doted on by people calling her "milady," she needs the help of a Doctor Chad after the incident, and then some time later an ancient spirit hits you with an attack named Boomer Rush... and this remark is probably gonna age really poorly in itself :P
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       ULTRA SPOILERS END HERE

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Well I think that's everything, so on that note, I hope you can enjoy this silly little passion project of mine anywhere near as much as I've enjoyed the original over these many years!

-ReloadPsi