Ye Olde Blah

Anyone ever thought about participating in a 3d (Shining Force III-style) remake of SFII?  Are there any such projects out there?

Not a remake, as far as I know.
You have to be careful getting too close to the fire with copyrights.

I like the concept of an updated Shining Force 2, but as Elv said you have to be careful with copyrights. I've seen a few (unrelated) projects get shut down over the years, and the closer you get to completion the higher the risk, sadly.

I'm working on a remake of Shining Force II... not 3D though, but close to the original game. It's already possible to play a full battle from the original game. Maybe I should make a demo version available for download?

That would be extremely cool! If you need somewhere to host the download, let me know and I'll sort it out :)

That would be great. Currently it's 12 MB zip-packed (mostly due to the soundtrack being WAV, perhaps I'll find a way to transform it to a more compact format such as MP3).

No problem. You can email it to me at ty@shiningsource.net and I'll put it online asap.

The demo can be found here: http://www.shiningsource.net/downloads/sf2-remake-01/

I followed the instructions and downloaded the necessary packages, installed them and restarted.
I get a windows(xp) error telling me it has encountered a problem and the program doesn't start.  I'd be happy to privately send you the error report for windows if that would help you at all.
It's a pentium 4 HP laptop, running win xp sp2, without anything else running in the background.  It plays warcraft 3 quite happily.

That sucks! Such an error message should only appear if the necessary packages have not been installed. I guess you've rebooted the computer after installing the packages. In that case it ought to be working. I don't know why it's not working.

Is anybody else experiencing this problem or is it working on everybody else's PCS?

Yes, please send it to me. Maybe it will tell me something.

I've had the same error on my PC (XP service pack 3). Installed both frameworks beforehand, but no joy. I'll try it on my Vista box later to see if that helps.

It works on the PC on which I've programmed it (Windows XP Service Pack 2). That was the only PC on which I tested it until today. Now I've tested it on a Vista box, and it doesn't work. I immediately get a window that reports that the "application doesn't work any longer". It seems to be a problem related either to the Microsoft XNA Game Studio 2.0 or to Microsoft Visual Studio 2005, with which I programmed the game, not to my code, because I tried another game programmed with these environments and it resulted in a crash, too. Well, I'll try to find out what causes the crash on this PC. If I find it and manage to fix it, maybe it will then work on your PCs, too. I've searched for the error code on the web and found something, now I'll try a debugging tool to find it more.

With the debugger I got to this:

LDR: LdrpWalkImportDescriptor() failed to probe C:\Windows\assembly\GAC_32\Microsoft.Xna.Framework\2.0.0.0__6d5c3888ef60e27d\Microsoft.Xna.Framework.dll for its manifest, ntstatus 0xc0150002
(e70.f08): C++ EH exception - code e06d7363 (first chance)

So the problem definitely is with the XNA Framework and not with my code. The reason why it works on the PC I developed may be that on this PC there's the complete XNA SDK installed, while on the PC where it doesn't work only the runtime is installed. I'll try what installing the SDK on the problem PC will result in.

Yes, it works on this PC if the whole XNA Game Studio 2.0 is installed.

So, the solution is:
1. Download and install Visual Studio C# 2008 Express Edition: http://www.microsoft.com/express/download/#webInstall
2. Download and install XNA Game Studio 2.0: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=df80d533-ba87-40b4-abe2-1ef12ea506b7&displaylang=en

It's a big download, so I'm not satisfied with this solution. One can't demand from every gamer to download a full programming language and a framework. Therefore I've asked on the Microsoft XNA forum if anybody knows a better solution.

It's Microsoft's fault: Their Microsoft XNA Framework Redistributable 2.0 is buggy. :-( I wonder why apparently nobody else has yet had this problem and this hasn't been fixed yet?

Well I installed it on my main computer just now and it worked without any additions.
When I ran the dotnet thing this time was different from what occurred on my laptop though, as my main pc already had a full dotnet thing on it.

So I'll try the updates on my laptop when I get the chance to try to work out the minimum download.
PS: That battle,... oh that battle.  I think I played that battle 50 times trying to level up Kiwi.  :)

Great work though.  Felt you could implement the quit function though!
Didn't get a chance to really test it out, but will do on my laptop.

OK. I'm curious if it will work on your laptop, too, if you install the .Net 2.0 servicepack 1 as I mentioned in my private message to you. If it works, then I'll update the readme.txt so that it will mention the three files and hope that these three files will make it work for everybody.

I'm planning to include every function of the game, save & quit too. My dream is to make a complete remake of Shining Force 2 except the scenes in between the battles (instead I will probably just include textual summaries of the storyline, similar to Shining Force Gaiden/CD). I'll do this in my sparetime in the next months/years if God wills. What you can currently see took me about half a year of programming.

I also have several ideas how Shining Force could be improved - if somebody could help me with the graphics and music, I'd like to create a completely new game based on my code.

Nope, no go on the laptop.
Have installed both of the files you suggested with no luck.  Haven't tried the ones you posted in the forum here yet.

That's bad news. I'll continue asking in the creators.xna.com forum, maybe one day we will ultimately find out what is missing. In any case, it's a big disadvantage of XNA that it's not simply possible to download the game, unpack and run it. Maybe I'll try to recode the game without XNA. The advantages of XNA are that synchronization is very easy to achieve and it has powerful routines for sprite handling and other essential things. But it's possible to code these things oneself, it's just more difficult.

At http://forums.xna.com/forums/t/1988.aspx they write that the following files must be installed in order to be able to run XNA based games:

Elvenfyre: Is DirectX 9.0c installed on your laptop?

Shining Force 2 Remake
Demo version 0.1.1

Requirements:
The game is programmed using XNA Game Studio, so you need to download and install some additional files to run it.

If you use Windows XP, these files are:
DirectX 9.0c: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=2da43d38-db71-4c1b-bc6a-9b6652cd92a3&DisplayLang=en
.NET Framework 2.0 Redistributable: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=76064
.NET 2.0 Servicepack 1: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=15fb9169-4a25-4dca-bf40-9c497568f102&displaylang=en
XNA Framework Redistributable: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=78244

If you use Windows Vista, these files are:
DirectX 9.0c: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=2da43d38-db71-4c1b-bc6a-9b6652cd92a3&DisplayLang=en
.NET Framework 3.5: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=333325fd-ae52-4e35-b531-508d977d32a6&DisplayLang=en
XNA Framework Redistributable: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=78244

--

These are the recommendations I got from the people at creators.xna.com. Please try if it leads to success.

I've found out that the following file is essential for running the game on my PC:

Microsoft Games for Windows - LIVE Redistributable v1.2
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=d6a69b9f-2aef-4125-b162-edf0ae922caf&DisplayLang=en

If everything previously said fails, then I recommend trying to download and install this file.

Works for me now - very impressive too!

All I had to install were DirectX9.0, and the XNA redistibutable (I already had .NET 2.0 & 3.5 installed). Not having DX9 seemed to be what was causing the trouble.

That's great news. I was told that the problem often lies with DirectX 9.0c because it's possible that only some parts of it are installed on the PC, and then the user thinks it's installed completely and so doesn't even try the download links.

Oh bother I forgot to try the direct x level on my laptop again.  I'll be sure to do it soon.

Also, wouldn't mind waxing philosophical with you on your future project ideas sometime.

I've talked to Aaron Stebner, one of the developers of XNA Game Studio, and we came to the conclusion that the following files should be sufficient to get Shining Force 2 Remake to run:

Windows XP:
DirectX 9.0c: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=2da43d38-db71-4c1b-bc6a-9b6652cd92a3&DisplayLang=en
.NET 2.0 Servicepack 1: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=15fb9169-4a25-4dca-bf40-9c497568f102&displaylang=en
XNA Framework 2.0 Redistributable: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=78244

Windows Vista:
DirectX 9.0c: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=2da43d38-db71-4c1b-bc6a-9b6652cd92a3&DisplayLang=en
.NET Framework 3.5: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=333325fd-ae52-4e35-b531-508d977d32a6&DisplayLang=en
XNA Framework 2.0 Redistributable: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=78244

What would interest me: Is the game displayed in a window or in full-screen mode on your PC? On mine, it's in windowed mode, but it happened once that after switching tasks, it suddenly became full-screen.

Windowed on mine, and stays that way even after an alt-tab.

OK. I've not decided yet if I will make the final game windowed or full-screen.