What is a patch?

[Xalibar]

I've read something posted in other topics with people mentioning a patch that they used on a japanese FF game that made it english or something. What is a patch and what does it do exaclty? And how do you put it on the disc?

[Mirage]

A patch is a fix to a flaw or a mistake in a program.

Your question is too wide to give a specific answer. It usually involves downloading a program, making a copy of the disc and applying the change before burning it back to a disc.

[Jowy]

What game specifically are you trying to patch?

[rubah]

translation patches (usually .ips files for snes emulation) take the entire body of text (or less than the entire body of text) and replace it with text in the desired language.

as long as you aren't too interested in deviating from the original character limits, it's not too difficult to do, but patching a game to change the functionality, or to make room for longer messages, alter sprites or game mechanics, etc require actual programming knowledge 8D

it's pretty interesting. I never bothered until someone in japan released a patch for SNES FFV called Ancient Cave that basically turns turns the game into a roguelike

[Shorty]

Relocating to the General Final Fantasy forum! :)

[Xalibar]

A patch is a fix to a flaw or a mistake in a program.

Your question is too wide to give a specific answer. It usually involves downloading a program, making a copy of the disc and applying the change before burning it back to a disc.

I believe the translation patch that was mentioned is what I was referring to. It was awhile ago the people where talking about FF X-2 international + last mission (the japanese version) and that there was an updated patch for it that made it playable and understandable for them.

[Mirage]

You need a modified PS2 to be able to play if after patching it. Do you have this?

Alternatively, if you have enough juice in your PC, you can emulate it.

[Xalibar]

What is the moddified PS2? What do you do to it?

[Mirage]

Either pay someone to install a chip in it, or do it yourself. Other options are swap discs with slide cards, but that is a really terrible solution. I think there exists softmods too now which is just a memory card with a special sort of program stored on it which will let you play unauthorized software (which a patched game is).

PS2 are made to only execute code that is authorized by Sony. That's why you can't just copy a game with your PC and expect it to work. Because you need to copy the game before you can apply the patch, you cannot get it to work without modifying your console to accept unauthorized programs.

Or, as I also mentioned: Use a PS2 emulator on your PC. You will need a 2.6 GHz intel CPU or better to be able to run most PS2 games through emulation without getting slowdowns within the game. You will also need a reasonably good graphics card.