📝 Posted:

2021-05-13

🏷️ Tags:

rec98

meta

Last updated: 📝 2026-03-16

Secured a 20-hour RL workweek to leave plenty of time for this project, Touhou Patch Center's commissioned MediaWiki update work is also nearing completion, time to reopen the store! Since it's been a long time, here's an overview of where we currently are in each game and binary, and what the next logical step would be:

• TH02:
  • MAIN.EXE: The final PC-98-specific low-level rendering functions are blocked by a single inconsistent and thus undecompilable assembly instruction. Rather than going for 📝 code generation and turning the rest of the function into a mess, I'd like to introduce a new build step between compilation and linking to patch "mistakes" like these. This would be an investment of 1-2 pushes into more readable code. Otherwise, I could continue with
    • player shots and the control code for the three shot types,
    • lasers,
    • player character movement, or
    • bomb rendering.
  • MAINE.EXE: main() and the congratulation picture screens.
• TH03:
  • MAIN.EXE: Netplay will definitely require all rendering code to be fully RE'd. Too many rendering-related functions draw from the same RNG as gameplay, so their update code must be isolated from their rendering so that rollback can work deterministically.
    Aside from that, we're still missing a lot of essential gameplay structures, with 99 of the not yet RE'd functions not being related to specific characters. Once those are done though, 📝 decompilation is expected to progress very quickly.
  • MAINL.EXE: The stage start screen, which will be nice to have for the 📝 upcoming multilingual translations commissioned by Touhou Patch Center.
• TH04:
  • OP.EXE: Finalizing the ZUN Soft logo animation, and then we're done!
  • MAIN.EXE: There's a lot of partially reverse-engineered but not yet decompiled code, including all of this game's custom entity types. Covering that would significantly boost finalization% for very little money. Otherwise, we could go for either
    • Gengetsu's boss script
    • HUD rendering (in parallel with TH05)
    • player update code (in parallel with TH05), required for all midbosses in this game
    • player shot control functions
    • the end-of-stage bonus calculation
  • MAINE.EXE: High score name entry.
• TH05:
  • OP.EXE: Finalizing the ZUN Soft logo animation, and then we're done!
  • MAIN.EXE: Got quite a lot of segment splits where we could immediately continue:
    • midboss and boss script code, either continuing with the in-game order and the Stage 2 midboss fight, or going directly for
      • Mai & Yuki,
      • the Extra Stage midboss,
      • or EX-Alice
    • stage tile rendering
    • player update code (in parallel with TH04)
    • items and extends
    • bomb rendering
    • the single-color areas of boss backgrounds, which use the GRCG's TDW mode
    • HUD rendering (in parallel with TH05)
    • boss sprite rendering boilerplate
    • player shot collision detection and rendering
  • MAINE.EXE: The staff roll animation.

But as always, you can request pretty much any other part of any game. We're now at a pretty good place as far as arbitrary requests are concerned, as I simply can't decide myself where to put all the current pending contributions in the funding backlog. 😅 By spending only the missing amount of money to complete any of those, you can capture any of those "fractional" contributions towards a specific goal.

The next specific requests are going to set the priorities of this project for quite some time! The best strategy: Spend a low amount of money on something very specific, and watch as existing generic contributions will necessarily have to be put towards making that specific goal happen 😛