Hey guys. The mobile version of Epic Battle Fantasy 4 is around 15% complete – most of the graphics have been updated to work on mobile devices. If you recall from the EBF5 port, this involves replacing any visual effects that use filters, which don’t work correctly on mobile, and also making the game fill up a 20:9 aspect ratio.

In the EBF5 port, this meant that some areas of the map had slightly different color schemes, as the color effects had to be reproduced with different methods. The EBF4 map didn’t play around with color effects very much, so you probably won’t notice many such changes. But you may notice battle graphics such as magic circles look a bit different with their alternative glow effects – and a few have been replaced entirely with different versions.

The aspect ratio change will be much more dramatic, as EBF4 was originally made in a 4:3 aspect ratio, and the battle menu also cut off the bottom of the stage. In this new version, in-battle animations should look a lot more impressive as they will fill almost twice as much screen area. Sometimes this is achieved by simply stretching or repositioning graphics, but some graphics have been expanded upon with new details. Battle backgrounds in particular are now much larger, as I’ve demonstrated a few posts ago.

I’m not promising anything for certain, but it’s quite possible to copy most of the aspect ratio changes to the Steam version of the game later. This would also include the removal of filters, so the game may run a bit smoother too.

Overall, there’s not as much work to do as in EBF5, due to EBF4 being a smaller scale game. But in a few ways, there’s more work, since EBF4 was not programmed with future updates in mind like EBF5 was, so a lot of the code is lazy.

To be continued…