Chrono Compendium
Zenan Plains - Site Discussion => Chrono Compendium Discussion => Topic started by: Prince Valmont on May 19, 2008, 07:13:08 am
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Hello, I'm Prince Valmont, and I'm a fellow fan of the Chrono Trigger game and a new member aboard Chrono Compendium.
I'm also an active member in the Wii Homebrew community, and I would like to share some breaking news that could give Chrono Trigger new life on the Wii.
Due to an exploit in a specific Wii game, people are now able to install any VC game that has been ripped. Because of this discovery along with some specific tools provided by homebrew development, we are now able to "inject" certain SNES, N64, NES, Genesis, TG16, etc roms into the VC Games.
Of course, being avid gamers, one of the first titles we tried was Chrono Trigger. It worked flawlessly.
Now, personally, I wanted to see Chrono Compendium's ReTranslation on the big screen. However, this is where we have a problem. The romfile size is too large to inject into the highest sized SNES .wad (wad being VC's file format)(21MB). The original rom is 4 MB and will fit. The ReTranslation is 6 MB and is too large.
My question for the Compendium: Is there any way we can possibly shrink or compress the rom size? For the sole purpose of bringing the ReTranslation to the Virtual Console.
Please contact me if you can help.
For more information, be sure to check out the following links:
http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showforum=108 (http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showforum=108).
http://wiibrew.org/index.php?title=Main_Page (http://wiibrew.org/index.php?title=Main_Page)
http://wii.ds-scene.net/ (http://wii.ds-scene.net/)
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Welcome to the Compendium, and congratulations on your success! Hm, hm, hm, by hesitating to release Chrono Trigger on the Virtual Console, Square Enix has now lost huge profit opportunity -- an example of the inefficiencies of corporatism, perhaps. We are entering a new economic era in which intellectual property holders must MOVE on that property or risk profit annihilation by talented & starving fans. Are you guys worried about legal ramifications at all?
I remember Zakyrus originally split Chrono Trigger+ into two separate ROMs to handle SNES emulator size limitations. I wonder if something similar could be done here?
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I suppose it would depend on whether the Expand ROM could be reversed. If that's the case, then it may be possible to break the Retranslation into two halves, with unneeded maps like certain dungeons blanked and made into the smallest possible size. I have no idea if that'd be enough to take it back under 4 MB, or whether the Expand could even be reversed. I hope the others will see this thread; if not, I'll move it to Kajar Labs.
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Are you guys worried about legal ramifications at all?
There are ways around this.
For one, we can inject the CT Rom into a Virtual Console game we have already bought (but one that has been uploaded and customized for installation).
This way, all that could possibly be shown is that we've been playing a Virtual Console game that we have already bought, but rather with another game injected in it.
I consider this a movement on behalf of the gamers; A wake-up call to Square-Enix, Nintendo, and others who are withholding that the gamers want to play the gems we grew up with, and it would be a financial setback for them to withdraw and hold out. If the actual game were to be officially released, it's in my faith and good graces that we would all purchase it (myself included).
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Any news?
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I wonder what pushed up the Retranslation size in the first place? I know there was an ending artwork added (but that was in the Japanese release in the first place); was it just the text strings that did it?
My first instinct would have been to go after the graphics packets for unneeded areas as ZeaLitY suggests, but it'd be best if we got some technical notes from the Retranslation team before embarking on such a hackfest. For one thing, many areas of the game can be revisited throughout, severely limiting the number of rooms that could be done away with. It might be better to eliminate unneeded text strings as opposed to unneeded areas after all.
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I probably used a lot of space for the title screen. (About $79FF bytes, not including the code).
At the time I inserted the title screen, the first free space was at 423DA3 in Zeality's rom.
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The raw text did it.
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Well, by using the same method of installing VC games on the wii, you can also install emulators. This case, being a version of Snes9x. It runs virtually every SNES game flawlessly and at full speed. Complete with save states.
So it's one way of playing Chrono Trigger Retranslation.
What sounds better to everyone here, though? Emulator or it's own specific channel?
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Wow, excellent work! I know SNES9x has some problems with Prophet's Guile, but I'm not familiar with any retranslation hangups using that emulator, is anyone else?
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There might be an issue with Snes9x on the Blackbird. If you get a chance, play to that point and then try to complete the sequence. If you can make it out onto the wing of the Blackbird to fight Dalton, you've avoided the most common black screen point. Most people playing with emulators other than ZSNES or old versions will suffer a black screen after climbing that ladder.
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I actually played through the entire game, passed the blackbird, to the end of the black dream and lavos. No hangups.
It was beautiful.
Now I'm attempting Prophet's Guile; I just started.
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Ok, another update:
I've been learning more about injecting smc roms into the Virtual Console, and here are my findings.
Upon loading up Chrono Trigger ReTranslation (CTR), the game starts off without the opening message from Compendium (Not sure why), but the pendulum begins to swing back & forth and then the demo will proceed. After the demo plays all the way through once, the screen will turn black and freeze until you reset the VC.
If you start a new game, it will load up normally, but it will freeze to black once the screen is supposed to fade open to Crono's room with his mother opening the blinds.
I had the original version of Chrono Trigger already on my VC, so I was able to load up that save file and continue there. I didn't play much, as I tried starting a new game.
I figured this would be an issue to bring to the Compendium's attention. Is there any thing you could think of that may cause this to happen? I hope that the factors aren't too large to determine a reason.
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Any chance of injecting ZSNES as the emulator instead of SNES9x? ZSNES typically works much more smoothly with hacked ROMs in my experience, though there's absolutely no guarantee that an emulator switch would solve your problems.
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Are you trying to insert the CT re-translation into a Virtual Console file again? Can it handle a 48 megabit ROM?
It reminds me of what happens when you try to soft-patch the retranslation to an unexpanded CT ROM in ZSNES.
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Are you trying to insert the CT re-translation into a Virtual Console file again? Can it handle a 48 megabit ROM?
Yes, I'm attempting to get it to work within a Virtual Console game.
The whole process is still relatively new, and parts of the game are playable, but because of the freezes, it gets me to wonder about the VC's compatibility.
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I find it very unlikely you'll get a 48 Mbit rom to work in the VC. You have to keep in mind that there are only two 48 Mbit games on the system, and they use a different mapper chip to be able to address 48 Mbit. (not an expansion chip though)
So... it comes down to figuring out how Nintendo designed the VC emulator to handle memory mappings. If their approach was anything like snes9x or zsnes's they will tend to use generalized memory maps called lorom and hirom, which are not applicable to a 48 Mbit rom anyway (it's sort of like a hybrid of lorom and hirom, and hirom and lorom aren't even real memory maps anyway, they're approximations.) So... I think 32 Mbit is probably the limit, unless Tales of Phantasia or Star Ocean hit the VC any time soon. Then you could just restuff that file.
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Hey, good to see you around here Math. Your discourse on lorom and hirom makes me thankful that I started with PSX hacking and not SNES hacking; I think a lot of people don't appreciate just how much expertise is needed to hack the oldies.
Prince Valmont, have you had any luck with Prophet's Gulie on the VC?
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I guess I don't particularly understand why the retranslation is 48 Megabits.... I wouldn't think it would much larger than the US Translation. Was it due to automatic expansion that Temporal Flux does? (Like, did he need Temporal Flux to insert the script?)
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Yeah, according to ZeaLitY it was mostly the text strings, though Vehek pointed out that the title screen change may have been partially responsible as well. Am I understanding correctly that the VC uses completely uncompressed equivalents of the SNES ROMs? For example, Chrono Trigger is 4MB or so as a .SMC, yet it was advertised as being 32 megs.
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4 MB = 4 Mega BYTES = 32 Mbits = 32 Mega BITS
:|
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I'z been skooled. :lee:
That settles some confusion I've been having for years.
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In any case, my point is that I really really doubt Nintendo has thought as far ahead as to implement the memory map for ToP and Star Ocean, although that memory map was first described in Nintendo's own development manual, so I suppose it's possible they have, but I wouldn't count on it. Has any one taken the time to decipher Nintendo's format for the WAD files. Surely there has to be information in there for managing a memory map, or else Nintendo is just as lazy/haphazard as free emulator developers. In free emulators, special memory maps tend to be handled as exceptions and are specially handled, and everything else is lumped into two basic memory maps (lorom and hirom). But even so, they have to have a way to distinguish between even lorom and hirom as I'm sure at least one hirom game would be out on VC by now. Lorom, aka mode 20 mapping, was used more so towards the start of the SNES's career, with many games gradually using hirom later on. (CT is hirom) Both memory maps have their advantages and disadvantages so it's not like one is better than the other. One other possibility is that the retranslation patch is not the *correct* 48 Mbit memory mapping that Top and SO use. But given that they run fine in emulators without any extra patching makes me think otherwise.
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I don't think the dictionary strings were changed in the Retranslation. Do you think that could have saved enough space?
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well... if the size is the case all we need to do is divide it in two parts. like the Final Fantasys.
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I don't think the dictionary strings were changed in the Retranslation. Do you think that could have saved enough space?
I don't know enough about CT to give a definite yes, but assuming there's at least like... 32K of free space total in the original game I'd say most likely yes.