0.5.3 adds Korean, takes mods from numbers to story events and new units, and lets text fixes reach you without waiting for a new program. HD 1.3, released with it, puts the battle animations in HD for the first time and needs 0.5.3.
Korean
- Korean is the fifth language, translated by 테오 (jung5441), who contributed the whole translation under CC BY 4.0: the story and the battle lines, the interface and the names, with a Korean title logo and Korean faces for the chapter title cards and the battle banners. The first launch picks it on a Korean system, and it is in the language menu; what is not translated yet shows in English. The website has Korean pages too, at /ko/.
- Language packages: a MOD package can add a reading language over English or another built-in one, with its own fonts and pictures. The website has a guide, with a script that makes the template.
MOD packages
- Story mods change what happens in the original stages. A package adds events to a stage: a persuasion, a unit leaving or joining at a chosen level, a replaced or removed unit, new lines, long-term flags, and conditions on the roster or a pilot’s kills. The game triggers and tracks them itself; their state is kept in suspend and intermission saves and cleared by a new game. The first one is on the MOD page: Master Asia Lives. On the Independence Army and OZ routes, once Domon has talked with Master Asia in battle he can persuade him; with 50 kills or more Master Asia withdraws instead of falling and joins after the stage at Domon’s level, in the Master Gundam, with little time left; with fewer the persuasion fails once and the story goes as the original’s. Guide: Story mods.
- Number mods can add new units, with their weapons, battle scenes, icon and pose on a free number. The example is Final Dancouga: after the stage where Dancouga learns the Dancou Kougaken, Dancouga and Black Wing combine into Final Dancouga, Alan rides along as the fifth pilot and the upgrades carry over. Its pictures need HD 1.3. A save made with a package’s new unit and loaded without the package goes back to the title with a banner naming the package, instead of breaking.
- Number mods reach a weapon’s kind: melee or ranged, usable after moving (P), beam (B), parryable, the terrain the attacker and the target need, the skill it requires, its upgrade type and whether it is locked. The 格/射, P and B markers in the weapon lists follow in every language. Map weapons and combination attacks cannot be made.
- MOD battle voices follow the game speed: at 2× and above a line is time-stretched with its pitch kept, or, by a new setting, stays at the original speed or is muted while accelerated. A line cut off by the next one, or by aborting the animation, fades out instead of clicking.
- The save slots show a name mod’s portrait of the protagonist, and the MOD manager breaks Chinese and Japanese paragraphs into lines. The original characters’ AI battle voices are on the website as a voice package.
Text updates between releases
- Text fixes arrive without a new program. The update check (the title prompt and the About page) now also fetches the newest text from the website: the dialogue, names and interface labels fixed since this release, only the files that changed, each checked by hash before it is installed. The About page shows the text in use and can go back to the bundled text; a player’s own dialogue files still win.
- The update check works on Android and the Switch too: the title prompt, the About page’s check and the new-version notice.
Map and screens
- Ground units cast a shadow: their own silhouette under the icon, as in the later games; a flying unit’s shadow sits closer to its icon. With the HD images every shadow is soft.
- A pilot who acts twice a phase shows the crown on the pilot pages, not only in the map’s unit window: the map’s pilot page and the intermission pages, drawn from the ROM’s glyph with the original images and from a redrawn W mark with the HD images.
- Translated labels stay inside their window frames: a value the original draws against a panel’s right edge, like the weapon list’s required skill, now starts further left instead of running out of the frame; split sentences end at their own full stop; a label the original draws twice at one place is drawn once.
- The title demo’s units fade in correctly with the HD images: the palette animation recoloured the whole sprite, so highlights and eyes went dark and the picture jumped between HD and original; it now recolours only the entries the frame shows.
- The Start Campaign box sits bottom left, clear of the ring’s START and of the Library and MOD row; the Extra Scenarios page sees a campaign’s first save at once; the stage info page’s text is a readable size on phones; the whole-map view (C-right; H on the keyboard) is back on the Controls page and can be rebound.
Touch controls
- Hold Back for the whole-map view on the tactical map, since phones have no C button: hold it for half a second. A short press is still B.
- The title’s Library, Battle Viewer and MOD corner show with touch controls and are tapped where they are, so a phone has the MOD entry on the title; the first tap of a run is no longer lost.
Fixes
- Banjo and Daitarn 3 join on the real-robot OZ route as in the original: they were missing from the join event of the stage where they arrive. An old save that should have them is repaired when it is loaded.
- Battle viewer: each Getter form has its own pilot (Hayato in the 2-forms, Musashi or Benkei in the 3-forms), and a viewer battle shows every protagonist’s own face and name instead of an empty label.
- Text: the 13 original characters’ lines were reviewed against their profiles for tone and forms of address, in Chinese and English; in Chinese Aisha addresses Manami consistently, Dancouga’s ground units are 豹战车, 狮战车 and 象战车, ダイガン is 断空步枪 and ムゲ is 穆格 in every line; Traditional Chinese writes 週目 and 龍捲風 throughout.
- The map’s figures sit on their unit in the widened view: a spirit’s +10, the damage and MISS were drawn offset at 16:9.
- The title’s press and a quick load wait for every button to be released, so a held key no longer repeats; the intermission pages close when the game leaves the intermission; labels the original centres are centred in translation too.
HD 1.3
- The battle animations are in HD for the first time: weapon effects, beams (the original shapes kept strictly, Super Robot Wars Z’s look inside), hits, follow-on frames, shields, barriers and the other defence effects, kill explosions, the map’s combination and transformation movies, the special moves’ brush characters and their scrolling backdrops. 29 unit poses are fixed or redrawn, Giant Robo’s frames are added, and the map icons lose the enemy’s and third party’s rings and grey at 60% once acted. Details in the HD 1.3 post.
- HD 1.3 needs 0.5.3: identical pictures now share one file and the program recolours them per row; on 0.5.2 several colour variants would come out alike.
Downloads
Get it from the Install page or from GitHub. On Android, install over the old version and your saves stay; on Windows, extract over the old folder. The HD pack moves to 1.3 this time: download it from the install page and replace the whole hd folder; the Switch has a pack of its own. The previous release’s changes are in the 0.5.2 notes, and the full feature list in the 0.4.0 notes.