------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ReadMe-DvD_Translations-Gorby's_Pipeline-revA.txt This file should be viewed using a mono-spaced font like "Courier". Use a font size where 79 columns are visible. Please don't distribute the ROM file in patched form. Please don't distribute the DvDGorby.IPS file without this file. Thanks. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Gorby's Pipeline - Great Military Operation AKA GORBY no PIPELINE dai sakusen Original Game by Compile Famicom Version Copyright 1991 by Tokuma Shoten Intermedia Inc. English Translation Copyright 2007 by DvD Translations Patch Version: Rev A Release Date: January 22, 2007 DvD Translations dvdtranslations.eludevisibility.org Code Editing by: DvD Tile Editing by: DvD Translation by: harmony7 & DvD ReadMe by: DvD ----------------------------------- CONTENTS ---------------------------------- THE MANUAL (1) Game Description (2) Controls (3) Helpful Hints USING THE PATCH (4) Patching the ROM file (5) Playing the game on an emulator TRANSLATION DETAILS (6) Why DvD chose to translate THIS game (7) Why YOU should bother playing THIS game (8) DvD's Hacking Comments (9) Project Timeline (10) Software Used In This Translation ---------------------------------- THE MANUAL --------------------------------- (1)---------------------------- Game Description ------------------------------ Mikhail Gorbachev, born March 2, 1931, was the last leader of the Soviet Union, serving from 1985 until its collapse in 1991. This game makes a joke that his master plan is actually to take over Japan and that he is going to do this by running a big oil pipeline from his oil fields in Russia to Japan. The goal of the game is to complete a certain number of pipes from the blue liquid on the right side of the screen to the empty pipes on left. Some stages have less empty pipes and some have less water pipes from the right. Each level contains 9 stages. Each stage goes faster than the previous stage until you finish the level. In level 1 you have to make 2 pipes. In level 2, you have to make 3 pipes. Two Russian children are the people who are building the pipeline. To make the pipes, you use tiles made out of groups of 2 pipe segments that the boy drops from the top. The segments contain straight pipe segments and 90 degree angle pipe segments (2)-------------------------------- Controls ---------------------------------- Up, Down, Left, Right - Choose level to start at, you always start on stage 1 Left, Right - Move Tile Left, Right Down - Move Tile Down much faster than normal A - Rotate Tile Clockwise Continue the game after viewing the map B - Rotate Tile Counter-Clockwise Start - Start the game at the chosen level Pause the game Select - not used (3)----------------------------- Helpful Hints -------------------------------- * There are three special object that drop that are not pipes. GOOD) Water Droplet - Drop on the open end of a vertical pipe that has water (Blue) in it and make an entire pipe! If instead the pipe is horizontal, then it needs to hit the ground right next to the open end of the pipe. OK) Drill - Drills a single tile wide hole straight down through (Grey) all your pipes. BAD) Water Bottle - Works the same at the Water Droplet except that instead (Blue) of making a pipe, 4 rows of non-pipe tiles are inserted below your existing pipe tiles! Yikes! * Try to make your pipes as close to the bottom as possible. ------------------------------- USING THE PATCH ------------------------------- (4)------------------------- Patching the ROM file ---------------------------- Original game ROM size: 2 16k program ROM banks & 4 8k character ROM bank = 64 kBytes = 65536 Bytes Games designed for the original Famicom/NES hardware could be 1 or 2 16k program banks and 1 8k character bank. Later, all games made for the NES used special mapper chips to expand the size of the addressable ROM beyond these limitations. This game uses a simple mapper chip to switch between 4 different static character ROM banks. One of these banks is used exclusively for the graphics on the title screen. How to patch the ROM file: You need: 1) A ROM file. The file needs to include the standard 16 byte iNES header followed by the program ROM. With header, the ROM file is 65552 bytes in size. The header should be as follows: 4E 45 53 1A 02 04 30 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 I'm not telling you how to get the ROM file, but once you do, call it Gorby.nes. 3) Patch File: DvDGorby.IPS 4) An IPS patching program Remember to patch the file only after it has been expanded. Recommended patching program for IBM PC: Snes-Tool.exe by The M.C.A./Elite Recommended patching program for Mac: UIPS Using SNES Tool: a) If you haven't already, make a copy of the un-patched ROM. You always want to keep the un-patched ROM around for later revisions of the patch. b) Place an un-patched but expanded ROM file (I'll call it Gorby.nes), DvDGorby.IPS, and Snes-Tool.exe in the same directory. c) Run Snes-Tool.exe d) Type 'U' for "Use IPS" e) Press the down arrow key until DVDGORBY.IPS is highlighted. f) Hit Enter. g) Press the down arrow key until GORBY.NES is highlighted. h) Hit Enter. i) Hit 'Q' to quit. (5)-------------------- Playing the game on an emulator ----------------------- Almost all emulators can play the original ROM file. All emulators that can play the original ROM file can play the translation. ----------------------------- TRANSLATION DETAILS ----------------------------- (6)------------------ Why DvD chose to translate THIS game -------------------- I decided to translate this game because I really like Compile's Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine on the Sega Genesis. It is my favorite Tetris clone game. I later found out that DRMBM is simply the English release of Puyo Puyo for the Japanese Sega Megadrive. Puyo Puyo was originally released for the MSX and then ported to the Famicom and a number of other systems. But it was only released here as Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean on the Genesis and Kirby's Avalanche on the SNES, which are essentially the same game with different graphics and music. I looked up all the Compile releases for the Famicom and noticed this game which was never released in the U.S. for any platform! It had a funny theme so I thought that I would give it a try. Hacking the title screen proved challenging and allowed me to be artistic with the pipes spelling Pipeline. (7)---------------- Why YOU should bother playing THIS game ------------------- It's the puzzle game Compile made before they made Puyo Puyo, the greatest Tetris clone of all time! Sega's Sonic Team who purchased the license from Compile still makes sequels of Puyo Puyo to this day for all platforms. It's easy to learn but tough to master! Still, Gorby's Pipeline is not as fun as Puyo Puyo. It is a well made Tetris clone that definitely shares a number of things with Puyo Puyo. It has two segment rotate-able tiles and things that drop to help you when you are doing poorly. If you generally like Tetris clone games you might really like this game. (8)----------------------------- DvD's Comments ------------------------------- Hacking the title screen was much more complicated than it looks. First off, the NES didn't have enough tiles to do the title screen with just background graphics, so random areas of the title have sprites interspersed with background only graphics. Gorby's, Pipeline, and the subtitle are all made with both sprites and background graphics. Fortunately, I was just able to fit the English title in, isn't that how it always is? Second, the original ROM actually messed up where it positioned some of the sprites. After analyzing the code I am convinced that this is NOT a problem with the dump, but a problem with the original ROM due to the number of places it needed to be fixed. I decided to (had to) clean it up before I could go on with the English title, and so I offer a screen shot of on my site of what the original title screen should have looked like so you can see this for yourself. The subtitle went through 2 changes... I was originally going to put "DvD Translations" as the subtitle as the subtitle didn't really seem to add to the title to me. But, this seemed like it would come off as a little too vain. So, I decided to hack the credits screen to put it there, it turned out that once I found the code, the credits screen was really easy hack and I'm glad I went this way. Second, I was going with "Great Strategy" as "Big Military Campaign" didn't sound right. Lastly, harmony7 put me on the right track, suggesting that the subtitle was supposed to be taken as a joke, that what sounded best was "Bit Military Campaign" meaning that Gorbachev's great plan was to invade Japan by running a big oil pipe from Moscow to Tokyo. (9)---------------------- Project Timeline Highlights ------------------------- Dec 31 2006 - Original Title Screen Errors Fixed Jan 1 2007 - English Title on Title Screen Completed Credits Screen Edited Jan 16 2007 - Subtitle Changed Jan 22 2007 - Patch Released Jan 23 2007 - ReadMe Spell-Checked (10)------------------ Software Used In This Translation ---------------------- * Emulators PC - FCE Ultra 0.94 (debugger) by Bero & xodnizel - Nesticle (used to isolate sprites from background) * Tile Editor Tile Layer Pro 1.0 by Kent Hansen * Disassembler, Table Dumper Table Dumper 6.12.23 by DvD * Hex Editors, Script Dumper - Thingy Version 0.98 by necrosaro * Disassembled Code And Table Analysis WordPad (Win XP) by Microsoft * Manual Creation Notepad (Win XP) by Microsoft * IPS Patch File Creator Snes-Tool Version 1.2 by The M.C.A./Elite ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 987654321098765432109876543210987654321 123456789012345678901234567890123456789