Hello again! So, we’d hoped to have a smooth release. And, for the most part, it was pretty good! But, as you know, there were several typos and a range of technical issues. This patch should address the most major of issues: a memory leak that affects players after hours of play; certain subsets of players with certain configurations with flashing, freezing, and crashing; and cleaning up a couple unpolished features.

Have no fear! It’s the age of day one and continuous patching, so we’ve put together a patch to our patch to patch your lives up in this patchless time.

Update Details

This update should fix a lot of major technical issues that have been reported over the last month. It also includes fixes to a bunch of typos, as they always slip through. Click here for the downloads page, or at the top of any page.

For those of you with frequent crashing issues, please try disabling “Controller” > “Update on device change” in this new build. It is known that this doesn’t fix it for everyone, especially if your crashes seem specific to battle, but hopefully this helps some players.

For those of you who had issues installing the game on Windows 7, Windows 8.1, and Linux (under Wine), please try this updated build.

For Linux players especially, try running the installer and unchecking all dependency components after being sure DirectX 9, LAV Filters, .NET 4.7.2, and Visual C++ Runtime 2017 (x86 and x64) are available for the program.

To install the patch, download the installer again and run setup once more.

Minimum Requirements

Based on the game’s minimum requirements (listed in the Japanese manual) and the overhead of the mod, here are what we believe to be the minimum requirements of the patched game.

Operating System: Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8.1, or Windows 10 1607+ (64-bit operating systems only!)

Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8.1, or Windows 10 1607+ While 32-bit OSes may run the modified game, LAA (large address aware) is enabled on the EXE to better support 1440p and 4K display. The installer is 64-bit only. While the original game supported Windows Vista (it did not list support for Windows XP), we don’t have plans to test and determine what would be needed to keep that support.

CPU: As per the original: minimum: Pentium 4 1.3 GHz and up; recommended: Core 2 Duo 2 GHz and up

As per the original: minimum: Pentium 4 1.3 GHz and up; recommended: Core 2 Duo 2 GHz and up The mod shouldn’t require much more of a powerful CPU than those olden days.

RAM: 4 GB or more. While the original game required 1 GB or more, the overhead of the mod is around 400 MB, and Windows 7 and later started recommending 4 GB for basic operation.

4 GB or more. While the original game required 1 GB or more, the overhead of the mod is around 400 MB, and Windows 7 and later started recommending 4 GB for basic operation. Hard drive: 3.0 GB of space required.

3.0 GB of space required. 1.3 GB for the base game’ 650 MB for our English assets; and 900 MB for any “additional” features.

Display: 800×600 (32-bit color) and higher.

800×600 (32-bit color) and higher. All the way up to 4K is supported with the mod, but it must be a 16:9 ratio (narrower adds letterboxing).

GPU: 512 MB of VRAM, supporting DirectX 9.0c and up.

512 MB of VRAM, supporting DirectX 9.0c and up. Note that some players seem to be encountering frequent crashing with Intel GPUs and GPUs with a low amount of VRAM. The current suggestion is to be certain your computer meets these minimum requirements.

Sound: DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card

Full Changelog

Mod/Functionality

Fixed an issue where the mod was allocating extra resources on every PNG load, eventually leading to a memory leak characterized by white textures and a non-functional save menu (JoseJL).

Fixed an issue where the save menu would not function without the savefile game data folder (Ribose).

Fixed a crash if the message log is empty when opened (JoseJL).

Implemented the “auto-advance delay” setting into the UI and corrected its behavior. Now it properly delays the auto-advance by the given milliseconds, and it does not double advance (Ribose).

Fixed an issue where the targeting would get stuck in battle when playing with keyboard or controller. Previously, this was caused by the location of the mouse cursor over the units, and was thus mitigated by the player changing the battle rotation or moving the mouse (JoseJL).

Fixed 59 Hz display settings being stepped down to 30 FPS mode (Ribose).

The selection cursor animation is now affected by turbo in the save menu and message log (Ribose).

Improved rendering performance, especially for certain Intel GPUs (JoseJL).

Adjusted window render size failsafe to occur earlier, fixing ultrawide displays that would otherwise crash on first launch (5120×1440 has a dimension above 4096, the highest supported). Also fixes the rare potentiality of settings inconsistency on the first launch (Ribose).

Removed Tinyformat and use STB sprintf in most places instead, which should address a certain potential crash (Ribose).

Fixed the message log storing 501 items instead of 500, and more strictly remove items from it on load and adding items. Fixes a buffer overrun that was causing many items to appear to have a voice to play when they didn’t (Ribose).

Implemented a new setting under “Controller” called “Update on device change”. For players with wireless Xbox controllers and certain other controllers that are experiencing frequent brief freezes or crashes, try disabling this setting and only manually updating your controllers using the “Update” button (Ribose).

and only manually updating your controllers using the “Update” button (Ribose). Fixed an instance of Lloyd being voiced in both “included” and “additional” voice acting when both are enabled during the first scene in Central Square (Ribose).

Fixed the movie_evo support not scaling the video or subtitles properly (Ribose).

Fixed and simplified the Dpad and analog stick input code. Controller field movement should now be actually 360 degrees like mouse movement is (Ribose).

Stripped out the Tinyformat library. The mod now uses STB sprintf() everywhere it can. This may fix crashes for some players when they try to open the Options menu (Ribose).

Fixed a resource leak that leads to crashing after a shimmer effect (JoseJL).

Minor adjustments to improve save menu performance on non-solid state drives (Ribose).

English Files

Subtitle timing has been adjusted on the movie_evo ending video to match where Cerulean Blue Romance actually plays (Ribose).

Ending movie has been updated to the latest version (Sorcerian).

A number of typos, grammatical issues, translation issues, and text errors have been corrected (KillScottKill, Catasplurge, Ribose).

An unimplemented Japanese string in the scenario and another in the monster unit files has been corrected (Catasplurge, Ribose).

Missing translated textures were added for the EXTRA character menu and Camp Menu (Sorcerian).

ZeroLauncher

The installer should now update its visual state when it completes, and should not freeze while copying large files.

The installer now sets the correct uninstall registry key for the original FSetup5 program to still attempt an uninstall.

Fixed a cryptic error that can occur if the ED_ZERO.exe isn’t in the default location and an upgrade is attempted.

Implemented an uninstall option to the installer itself. The intended procedure to uninstall the modified game is to: (1) Click File > Uninstall. (2) Follow the prompts. (3) Go to Add/Remove Programs, and uninstall the ZeroLauncher program.

The installer should now gracefully handle invalid registry values.

The installer should warn and prevent installation in the root of the filesystem, or without a FALCOM outer folder. This is required for the FSetup5 uninstall program.

The installer should now detect giving it the zero_w8/ED_ZERO/ED_ZERO executable and switch to the zero_w8/FSetup5 install-from-media procedure (should work for physical Zero as well).

The installer should accept Visual C++ Runtime status codes 3010 (“restart required”) and 1638 (“newer version present”) as success. After all, these mean VC++ is already installed in some form, which is enough for the mod.

Updated a lot of strings on the installer for consistency.

Corrected the positioning of various graphics and labels on the installer, and the scaling of graphics on high DPI displays.

Added a component selection for players to skip reinstalling components that they know they already have. This should be particularly useful for Linux players.

Added Visual C++ Runtime (x64) for the xdelta3.dll install step to function.

The installer is now targeting .NET 4.7.2, as this is the lowest I would take it to keep DPI support, native ZIP decompression support, and C# tuple support.

The installer is now 64-bit only since the xdelta3.dll install step requires it.

The installer may be run from the Application Files folder without modifying file extensions. The install step is intended to be a lightweight method to make sure the .NET Framework is installed for the program, and to add it to the start menu for convenience. It can function on its own without those conveniences, as long as the .NET Framework is installed.