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61
Other Topics and the Prerelease / Omokage Bridge
« on: July 04, 2020, 08:39:55 pm »
I've developed a bit of an obsession lately with the "alpha" footage/screenshots that are out there. Hopefully my posts aren't coming across as spammy.
So, there's a point in the V Fes '94 Video where everyone's talking, and there's gameplay footage playing on the big monitors in the background. What appears to be Crono, Robo, and Ayla cross a bridge over a river that runs through the continent. At each end of the bridge a location label pops up.
The only place I've really seen this discussed is The Cutting Room Floor page, and they just show a really low-res capture and say that it's hard to read. I have a slightly better one I've been staring at for a while and I think I know what it says.
The text on the top and bottom is screencapped from the video (the only difference is the bottom is deinterlaced, which didn't make much difference). In the middle is my recreation of the same text using the final game's font. It's a little blurry because I stretched it horizontally to try and match the aspect ratio from the video.
I think it says おもかげ橋 or Omokagebashi/Omokage Bridge. The only part I'm really not sure about is the 橋 on the end. The kanji character in the video seems a little simpler/like it's lacking some bits. The overall shape seems right though, and 橋 is the same character for bridge used in the final game's label for Zenan Bridge.
There is apparently a real bridge in Japan called Omokage bridge as well, although it's written as 面影橋. I tried looking up the meaning of Omokage/面影. This site says it means "face; looks; vestiges; trace" and gives the following example sentences:
Later I was looking at some screenshots from magazines and it occurred to me that this bridge that shows up a couple of times is probably Omokage Bridge as well.
I don't know whose tombstones those are, but their presence kind of fits the vibe of those Omokage example sentences above in my opinion. The larger of the two tombstones seems to be the unused tombstone sprite from the Prerelease ROM that Vehek posted about here, so that's kind of neat as well.
I guess that's it. I don't really have an "in conclusion" for this. It's just some odds and ends that have been floating around in my head. Hopefully it's not all stuff that's been discussed to death. If it has I couldn't find those discussions.
Oh, I didn't know where else to mention this, so here's a random tidbit: The bridge in the shots above with the tombstones is 16 pixels/two tiles (subtiles I guess in TF terms?) narrower (meaning vertically on screen) than Zenan Bridge.
Random tidbit #2: I think maybe a playable version of this (or possibly a video tape) may have been sent around at some point. I'm basing this entirely on the fact that we have two shots that seem to be from different moments in the same battle. If it was just a mockup I'd think there'd probably only be one. That's just wild speculation though.
So, there's a point in the V Fes '94 Video where everyone's talking, and there's gameplay footage playing on the big monitors in the background. What appears to be Crono, Robo, and Ayla cross a bridge over a river that runs through the continent. At each end of the bridge a location label pops up.
The only place I've really seen this discussed is The Cutting Room Floor page, and they just show a really low-res capture and say that it's hard to read. I have a slightly better one I've been staring at for a while and I think I know what it says.
The text on the top and bottom is screencapped from the video (the only difference is the bottom is deinterlaced, which didn't make much difference). In the middle is my recreation of the same text using the final game's font. It's a little blurry because I stretched it horizontally to try and match the aspect ratio from the video.
I think it says おもかげ橋 or Omokagebashi/Omokage Bridge. The only part I'm really not sure about is the 橋 on the end. The kanji character in the video seems a little simpler/like it's lacking some bits. The overall shape seems right though, and 橋 is the same character for bridge used in the final game's label for Zenan Bridge.
There is apparently a real bridge in Japan called Omokage bridge as well, although it's written as 面影橋. I tried looking up the meaning of Omokage/面影. This site says it means "face; looks; vestiges; trace" and gives the following example sentences:
Quote
This town still retains something of the old days.Seems like kind of a melancholy/nostalgic word.
Hollywood isn't what it used to be.
At her age, she still preserved the appearance of a young girl.
The village is now different from what it used to be.
Later I was looking at some screenshots from magazines and it occurred to me that this bridge that shows up a couple of times is probably Omokage Bridge as well.
I don't know whose tombstones those are, but their presence kind of fits the vibe of those Omokage example sentences above in my opinion. The larger of the two tombstones seems to be the unused tombstone sprite from the Prerelease ROM that Vehek posted about here, so that's kind of neat as well.
I guess that's it. I don't really have an "in conclusion" for this. It's just some odds and ends that have been floating around in my head. Hopefully it's not all stuff that's been discussed to death. If it has I couldn't find those discussions.
Oh, I didn't know where else to mention this, so here's a random tidbit: The bridge in the shots above with the tombstones is 16 pixels/two tiles (subtiles I guess in TF terms?) narrower (meaning vertically on screen) than Zenan Bridge.
Random tidbit #2: I think maybe a playable version of this (or possibly a video tape) may have been sent around at some point. I'm basing this entirely on the fact that we have two shots that seem to be from different moments in the same battle. If it was just a mockup I'd think there'd probably only be one. That's just wild speculation though.
62
Other Topics and the Prerelease / Attempted Recreation of "Alpha" Screenshots
« on: July 04, 2020, 02:08:40 am »
This probably isn't as interesting to anyone else as it is to me, but I figured I'd share anyway just in case.
It turns out most of the graphics in this "alpha" screenshot are present in the final game, although slightly modified in places, so I tried my best to recreate it. The leaves are used in a few places. I swiped them from Denadoro Mountain and altered the palette. The sky/distant mountains were taken from Denadoro as well, but I tweaked the palette a little and altered some of the mountain peaks to match the screenshot. The ground tiles are from Death Peak, and they use the same palette as Death Peak's ground tiles in the final.
The Heckran sprite in the screenshot is considerably different from the final, but I didn't want to mess with it so I just pasted in the final one. Same goes for the flames.
I did modify all three of the character sprites.
Chrono's sprite seems to be almost identical to the final, except that I had to move the blade of his sword a little.
Frog's sprite is a little different from the final. His feet don't stick out quite as much, and his tongue isn't as big.
Marle's sprite I had to cobble together from two different poses. That exact pose doesn't seem to exist in the finished game. I also changed her hand so that she has a finger extended.
The menu background is basically just the default from the final without the HDMA gradient and with a custom blue palette. I did add some highlighting on the right edge tiles though. Looking at it again now I think the right edge tiles might have just been mirrors of the left edge at this point in development, which would mean mine are slightly wrong.
A few of the Japanese text characters appeared different as well, so I modified them a little. Specifically ざ ン パ ル and ス.
It turns out most of the graphics in this "alpha" screenshot are present in the final game, although slightly modified in places, so I tried my best to recreate it. The leaves are used in a few places. I swiped them from Denadoro Mountain and altered the palette. The sky/distant mountains were taken from Denadoro as well, but I tweaked the palette a little and altered some of the mountain peaks to match the screenshot. The ground tiles are from Death Peak, and they use the same palette as Death Peak's ground tiles in the final.
The Heckran sprite in the screenshot is considerably different from the final, but I didn't want to mess with it so I just pasted in the final one. Same goes for the flames.
I did modify all three of the character sprites.
Chrono's sprite seems to be almost identical to the final, except that I had to move the blade of his sword a little.
Frog's sprite is a little different from the final. His feet don't stick out quite as much, and his tongue isn't as big.
Marle's sprite I had to cobble together from two different poses. That exact pose doesn't seem to exist in the finished game. I also changed her hand so that she has a finger extended.
The menu background is basically just the default from the final without the HDMA gradient and with a custom blue palette. I did add some highlighting on the right edge tiles though. Looking at it again now I think the right edge tiles might have just been mirrors of the left edge at this point in development, which would mean mine are slightly wrong.
A few of the Japanese text characters appeared different as well, so I modified them a little. Specifically ざ ン パ ル and ス.
63
The Great To-Do List / Re: Material Requiring Translation
« on: July 03, 2020, 10:43:31 am »
Thanks, Boo. Just to clarify though, I can't take credit for the find. The untranslated pages are already on the Material Requiring Translation page under "V-Jump Magazines". They are curiously missing from the Chrono Trigger OAV Manga page though. These are Part 8/February 1996.
64
The Great To-Do List / Re: Material Requiring Translation
« on: July 03, 2020, 12:17:01 am »
Not sure if this is really the right place to post this, but I tried translating the two Next Gate Part 8 pages with all of the prototype screenshots. http://imgbox.com/1Zxw9rRW
I don't really know much Japanese, so it's pretty much just a machine translation. I used DeepL (which gives surprisingly good results) and cross-referenced with Google Translate. I don't think there's really any new info here, but I'm fascinated by all of these old shots so I wanted to see what the text said about them.
I don't really know much Japanese, so it's pretty much just a machine translation. I used DeepL (which gives surprisingly good results) and cross-referenced with Google Translate. I don't think there's really any new info here, but I'm fascinated by all of these old shots so I wanted to see what the text said about them.