NDS Front Mission (USA) DS (lag fix by thunderdisk)

[RageBurner]

Front Mission (USA) DS (lag fix by thunderdisk)​

A DS port of Front Mission 1st (originally an enhanced port of the first SNES Front Mission with extras on the PS1), the DS version has even more content, making it the definitive way to enjoy this classic.

However, the port was handled extremely poorly, and the game lags terribly when loading battle scenes as well as browsing Wanzer parts in shops or any other kind of interaction that has to do with polling and displaying graphics.

Thunderdisk, an extremely talented hacker at RHDN checked the game out on a whim, at a forum user's behest, and ended up rewriting the whole graphics loading system of the game, removing all loading lag and making the game even snappier than the SNES original.

This is an absolute romhacking miracle that needs to be seen to be believed.

Comparison clip below (left is unmodified, right is lag fixed):

 

[Rising80X]

this is a godsend. just what i needed.

 

[PencoSucio]

Oh man this is so cool!

 

[DAME NINGEN]

Speaking of Front Mission on NDS, does anyone know what happened to the alleged english translation of Front Mission 2089 - Border of Madness? A few years ago, some guy on the internet was recruiting people for the project but I haven't seen anything since.

 

[Plumpodrome Plumpodrome]

fantastic, i'll load this up on my 3ds at once

Post automatically merged: Apr 12, 2025

reporting soon and comparing results to demo gif

Unfortunately fucked up sd formatting to cluster size of 64 and i think that's why TM++ is shitting the bed

Yep, instantaneous, great stuff
thanks Rageburner for the upload

 

[ChronoCloud]

Kaze emanuar levels of based

 

[Plumpodrome Plumpodrome]

fantastic, i'll load this up on my 3ds at once

Post automatically merged: Apr 12, 2025

Is this playable on a real 2DS by any chance?

reporting soon and comparing results to demo gif

Unfortunately fucked up sd formatting to cluster size of 64 and i think that's why TM++ is shitting the bed

 

[Jon-Patrick-S]

Nice upload, I'd had that old romhacking thread bookmarked for ages meaning to try patching it myself. Kind of wild to think it could have just been lost forever if rhdn had fully gone down because as far as I remember the thread itself didn't even get that much attention.

 

[Clxmj]

Jesus that is a big difference, fair play. Good job thunderdisk o7

 

[disgaea36]

Never noticed a lag on the ds

 

[_oBSOLEte_]

Thanks for the info. I'm in the middle of a run with the vanilla version and can confirm that navigating the menus is heavy on the emulator, and trying to reduce the lag with preemptive frames was leading to sound glitches despite a good i7 CPU.

I got somewhat used to it, but I will test this version and report if my save is compatible.

Post automatically merged: Apr 12, 2025

Sadly the ROMhack doesnt accept my savefiles from "1548 - Front Mission (U)(XenoPhobia)" on Retroarch MelonDS core.

I'd have to finish it with that version. I dont really mind any lag as I use fast forward a lot anyway.

If you guys go for the DS version, remember that the game has a slightly lower resolution than the SNES version and also some of the colors are oversaturated and yellow tinted for the DS screen, so I'd adivse using a shader for color correction. Using the hybrid mode I got a preset for that for Retroarch.

 

[Hahahavana]

Insanely cool hack. It always shocks me to see the extent to which skilled hackers can completely change the underlying systems. Another cool example is Pokemon Crown, which is a hack that completely removes the vanilla battle system from FireRed and replaces it with a neat top down auto-battler. How does one even do that?

 

[RageBurner]

It is, for sure. From what I tested, it transitions even faster than the SNES version, making that moot.

Edit: Make sure to check the little clip along the main post so you guys can see the difference. When Wanzers were shot, there was a lot of lag too during battle scenes; no more, though.

 

[ShadowsofCreation]

This looks amazing!

 

[RageBurner]

Even turboing FM DS vanilla won't do much, believe me, I tested this game extensively. The DS's CPU gets absolutely choked because the data loading code is lazy as can be. It also affects Front Mission 1st (PS1), the version in which this one is based) for the same reason.

 

[jon2]

Cool

Now only if someone can also do this kind of thing to Tactics Ogre:Knight of Lodis for the GBA

This FM and that Tactics Ogre were only passable to be played on certain emulators cuz they can be turboed, but on real hardware? Loading times (for FM) and sprite moving and action times (for Tactics Ogre) were a tedious wait...

 

[RageBurner]

Is this playable on a real 2DS by any chance?

The hacker optimized the game code itself, it should work on any kind of hardware, even the DS itself with a flashcard.

 

[ShinnAsukaYESTaylorSwiftNO]

Is this playable on a real 2DS by any chance?

 

[RageBurner]

For those that don't like the FM1 Remake (like me) this is the perfect way to enjoy this game, since the only problem with it is gone.