Chrono Compendium

Marbule Gallery - Completed Fan Creations => Chrono Trigger: Prophet's Guile => Topic started by: FaustWolf on December 24, 2007, 02:07:36 pm

Title: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: FaustWolf on December 24, 2007, 02:07:36 pm
With Magus' portrait down, I'm going to see what needs to be done for the end pic and handle any palette reduction that may be necessary. Chrono'99 says we should be able to use Temporal Flux to swap Chrono's house tile set for the end pic, an idea which I like very much because the tile sets apparently have up to 6 or 7 15-color palettes, making for up to 90 colors or so that we could potentially use if things work out as I'm hoping. Some pointer work may be necessary, and it may not even be possible to "link" all the little palettes into one big one, but we'll have to see.

What's the plan for the pic, exactly? Chrono'99 and Zeality were discussing an ending quote paralleling Schala's final lines in Chrono Cross. I think the current plan is to place that quote after the pic, but I suppose we could always include it in the pic if it's fairly short and would save you guys some time. Depends on what works best with the game's programming.

Chrono'99 and Zeality, have you guys decided on an ending pic to use yet? Will it be the one with Magus standing on one of the sky islands looking out over Zeal palace? It's attached in its original state, along with another version that's grayscaled and that has a short message on it as an illustration of some of our options -- we may have to grayscale it if it's impossible to link tileset palettes together.

As a refresher for myself that others may find useful for the quote, I'm reproducing a bit from the script compiled by Zeality and Terminus Traductions -- Schala's final lines in Cross:

   Thus the curtain closes on another tale.
   
   An eternity has passed...
   Fleeting dreams fade into the distance...
   All that is left now
   Is me and my memories...
   
   But I'm sure we'll meet again,
   Someday, you and I...
   Another place, another time.
   
   It's just that we might not realize
   That you are you and I am me...
   
   Let us open the door to the great unknown,
   Come across another reality,
   And live another today...
   Even when the story has been told,
   Life goes on...
   
   Until we meet again,
   Take care of yourself, my friend...
   
   Forever yours,
   
   Schala "Kid" Zeal
 
 Ending Cutscene
   
 [Schala]
   I will find you...
   Even if I have to search the world over...
   
   Sometime, somewhere...
   
   I'm sure...
 
 ~Fin


[attachment deleted by admin]
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: ZeaLitY on December 24, 2007, 02:33:04 pm
This is the resolution of the CTJ one:

(http://www.chronocompendium.com/images/wiki/4/43/Conceptart.png)

Those four words seem to work well. I was worried that the hack might not have a proper "ending", but the graphic art there really caps off all the emotion Magus has gone through.
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: FaustWolf on December 24, 2007, 02:49:34 pm
Alrighty, thanks for the Japanese ending art! Now I know what we're probably working with size-wise. I know you imported data into the ROM at certain offsets to get the ending art back in the NA version Zeality, but you didn't overwrite any location tile sets for that, right? I'm wondering if we can push the envelope in any way with the method Chrono'99 suggested. But we could always do the same thing you did for the Retranslation, if that's easier.

Geiger's site has a Temporal Flux manual listed as last modified in 2004. Anyone know offhand if that's the latest version? It'll do either way I'm sure.
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: ZeaLitY on December 24, 2007, 02:57:07 pm
The tileset we overwrote was basically a prototype of the tileset used to make the Japanese art. In an unmodified ROM, it's like the last tileset in the list, and looks like a few garbled tiles. I suppose we're going for the 1000 A.D. town residence because it uses a lot more real estate (compared to the art tileset, which, apart from the art, was totally blank).
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: FaustWolf on December 24, 2007, 03:15:44 pm
The Japanese ending pic was definitely limited to 16 colors -- only thing I'm not sure about is whether it's a full 16 or if it's 15 plus one transparency. Zeality, do you happen to know if that peach-ish border showed up around the ending pic in-game? I'll see what I can do with a grayscale ending pic if it comes down to repeating the process you used for the retranslation.

For now, I'll see what we've got to work with if we use the 1000 AD tileset.
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: ZeaLitY on December 24, 2007, 04:24:05 pm
Yeah, that border's there.
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: FaustWolf on December 24, 2007, 04:58:46 pm
Ooh, if the border's there, we might be working with 16 colors then. Hmm... It appears that each location may be taken care of by one 15-color palette - so grayscale may be forced on the ending pic I'm afraid. Picture size should turn out more promising -- it would appear that we'll have plenty of room to work with judging from the Japanese ending pic and what I've seen in Temporal Flux.

I'm still exploring our options regarding the text-on-pic idea I had earlier, and I still have to wrap my mind completely around how the location palettes work, but on the assumption that 15 colors is the max, here's how the ending pic would appear v. how the Japanese ending art appeared. I'll see if I can get a decent sepia-colored mockup to show you guys later.

EDIT: Wow! Looks like it'll take awhile to sift through all the decompressed tile sets to find the 1000 AD interior (Crono's House). You guys have NO need for 1000AD tile sets, right? It would appear that all 1000AD house interiors share the same tiles from what I've seen in Flux.

[attachment deleted by admin]
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: FaustWolf on December 24, 2007, 08:51:54 pm
Anyone know if there's any way to decompress multiple files at a time in Temporal Flux? You'd think Crono's house (i.e., 1000 AD interior tile set) would be early on in the ROM, but go figure. Maybe I'll get lucky and stumble on it next.
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: Vehek on December 24, 2007, 09:31:15 pm
I haven't actually checked by decompressing them yet, but the tiles the 1000 AD tileset uses should be at 2B43A7, 2B4FFA, 2B5C54, 2CF61D, 2B27C7, 2B733E.
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: FaustWolf on December 24, 2007, 09:47:09 pm
OOH! That helps me immensely Vehek! I'll check out those addresses. Wow, they're toward the end of the major tile set section then. That would have taken me a loooong time, because I was just going in order.

Okay, looks like we've got it! Thanks again. One quick correction: the packet starting at 0x2B5C54 actually starts at 0x2B5C53. That's what worked for me, at least. Now for some more artwork insertion! :twisted:

I'll hopefully be able to do an in-game test tomorrow, then we can work out final details on how the artwork should appear before a final patch is made.
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: FaustWolf on December 25, 2007, 12:39:00 am
Oh my goodness gracious, it appears that the palettes aren't linked to the location specifically, but to various objects within that location. An example of what I mean is attached to this post. With some extreme creativity this could be used to our advantage; we'll have to see what's possible.

With regard to any text overlay, I figure that could be accomplished by converting a few tiles into letters and giving them the proper properties in Temporal Flux. That depends on how much space we've got left over; if I can track down the L3 (level 3?) tiles for this set, it might be very feasible. I might be looking at them already, but some palette work will have to be done to see for sure. I imagine the L1&2 and L3 tilesets would be stored together or near each other.

[attachment deleted by admin]
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: Vehek on December 25, 2007, 01:29:57 am
Each tile can be set to use one of the 7 palette sets.
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: FaustWolf on December 25, 2007, 01:56:58 am
Thanks again Vehek! Actually, it just so happens that the ending pic actually looks decent in color with 15 colors! If you folks like the mockup attached to this post, we're good to go as far as major design considerations. What you see when you click on it is the actual resolution I would insert it with. This is the maximum resolution we can include with the tile sets Vehek directed me to earlier. We've got 640 tiles at our disposal, and the attached .bmp will require 620. That leaves an extra 20 tiles we can use for a text overlay if you like.

Now for two questions that are looming in my mind as I'm getting closer to actual graphic swapping. First, TileMolester reads .bmps as 4 bit-per-pixel linear graphics, whereas the uncompressed graphics are in 4-bit-per-pixel planar mode. Anyone know if this will be problematic down the road? I'm hoping I can just do a cut/paste in TileMolester from the bitmap to the tileset and things will be magically taken care of.

Secondly, does anyone have a guestimate of how many tiles can fit onscreen given the SNES', uh, projection capability? The ending pic would look pretty awesome in its current resolution, and I'm hoping we could use some sort of zoom function if it's too large for the screen.

[attachment deleted by admin]
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: Chrono'99 on December 25, 2007, 05:16:24 am
You mean 640 subtiles, don't you? One tile is 16 pixel-wide and a subtile is 8 pixel-wide. The SNES can show 16x14=224 tiles onscreen (896 subtiles). See the first pic I attached. There's an infamous black line at the bottom of each location screen but it can be removed with a memory assignement.

The picture looks fine as is, but are you sure we can't use more colors? As Vehek said, each "Palette" slot in Temporal Flux actually has 7 palettes that can be assigned to each subtile with the "Palette Shift" stuff. I believe Palette Shift 0 is always void, but this still gives us 6x15=90 colors to use.

Ideally, we could have Magus's cape use one palette, the sky another one, etc., but this might be tricky since subtiles are square and the resulting shading might be blocky. A solution would be to have "buffer" palettes (like buffer states in politics) which would have half of its colors (more or less) from a first palette and half from a second palette. I attached a mockup to illustrate what I think we could do. If it's too difficult to do, the current 15-color pic is fine though.

[attachment deleted by admin]
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: FaustWolf on December 25, 2007, 12:16:20 pm
Yeah, I think I meant subtiles -- or whatever shows up in TileMolester when you turn on the "tile grid" switch. Just so we can be absolutely clear on this matter, I've attached a pic of what I mean. We'll need 620 of whatever units are being shown in the screencap, and we've got 640 to play with.

Half the battle is just identifying which palettes out of the 623 total location palettes are applicable to each tile set / objects within the tile sets. Also, it would be helpful if anyone has info about how the palette options in Flux are arranged versus how the data is arranged in the ROM -- Flux says we've got 0xFF, or 256, palettes to work with in locations, but the data holds up to 623 (89 sets * 7 palettes/set), which is slightly confuzzling -- I'm probably just not understanding how things are labeled in Flux or something.

Anyway, yes, if the screen can show 896 subtiles max and what I've been referring to are subtiles, then we should be good to go as far as size is concerned. I'll see what I can do about stuffing more colors into the final result; I've got some tricks up my sleeve yet, which will essentially boil down to what you've suggested Chrono'99. BTW, do we want a text overlay at all (even if it's just a "~fin"), or do we want the picture plain? This consideration shouldn't affect the max number of colors we can use too much.

[attachment deleted by admin]
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: ZeaLitY on December 25, 2007, 01:02:33 pm
We could. In the readme, I have this following the end of the credits:

Code: [Select]

   SERGE ~RADICAL DREAMERS~
   
            This is the first time I've ever seen his true face.
            Even for a guy like me, I'm taken aback by his looks.
             
            His hair sways in the moonlight, as his piercing blue
            eyes survey the environment below.

            His beauty is different than a woman's... there's some
            sort of a fierce, intrepid quality about him.

            He is truly... a beautiful person.

So maybe we could have a very small quote on screen. Then again, text is comparatively huge on the SNES due to the small resolution, so it might just make it ugly. Guess it depends. I'll leave this choice open.
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: FaustWolf on December 25, 2007, 01:36:32 pm
I might just be getting closer to figuring out the palettes. Can someone tell me if, in the Temporal Flux location editor, "palette" actually means palette set, and "palette shift" actually means palette within the set? If so, the palettes in the ROM might just be ordered in the same way they are in Flux. I've got to do more investigation, but hopefully this is the case. It gives us a lot more leeway than I thought we had originally (since Flux will handle the palette pointers for us).

We've got twenty subtiles to work with as far as a nice text overlay is concerned. So five tiles I guess; might limit us to five letters without ROM expansion. Once I do a successful in-game test (I assume I'll start the game and Crono will be walking on the picture as opposed to his room), we can explore text overlay more in-depth.

EDIT: Okay, I think I now understand how the palettes are arranged in Flux. They're actually right in ROM order -- I was having a slight mismatch problem due to defining the palettes in terms of 16 colors when they're actually 15 colors. So Geiger's palette 0, shift 1 is the first location palette of the first set, Geiger's palette 0, shift 2 is the second palette of the first set, and so on. Now that I've reached this understanding, the REAL work can begin.
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: Chrono'99 on December 25, 2007, 07:23:06 pm
The "Another Place... Another Time..." line is definitely good. "Fin" would probably be shown after the pic, on a black screen.

The entry from Serge's diary is equally interesting though. It reminds me of those excerpts from Alazlam J.D. in Vagrant Story; he's a historian from FFTactics who never appears in Vagrant Story, but his excerpt still manage to give a nice flavour to the game (it was something about ghosts and souls or something).

However, I'm not sure how effective it would be to shorten or summarize it... maybe we can show the whole entry on a black screen with the font used for the credits? I just coded it on a test ROM, see the attached pic. There's no comma, apostrophe, and ~, but we can probably graphic-hack them over some unused letters. Hell, perhaps we can graphic-hack the whole alphabet to have a different font. Lower case letters in particular would be nice. It's fixed-width though.

The other question is whether to show the excerpt at the end of the game (before or after the Another Place/Another Time pic) or at the beginning, like it is in Vagrant Story. I think the beginning would be more effective; it makes the whole game seem like a flashback (and RD almost canonical), but it's slightly less "random" than appending it to the ending after the whole adventure.

EDIT: Then again, stating that Magus is a "beautiful person" and then going into an adventure that shows him deceiving people and crushing their right eye may seem too much out of order. Well, maybe putting it at the end is better after all. Thoughts?

[attachment deleted by admin]
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: FaustWolf on December 25, 2007, 07:41:09 pm
I'd considered graphic-hacking over another tileset for the text overlay on the ending pic, so maybe we can get a nice font going and use it for both? Is there another tileset besides the 1000AD interior you guys don't need? How about the Millennial Fair?
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: Chrono'99 on December 25, 2007, 07:43:11 pm
Yeah, the Millenial Fair tileset is not used. (The Telepod tileset isn't used either, but note that its palette is used for a room in Zeal Palace. It's not the same as the Millenial Fair one in any case.)
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: FaustWolf on December 25, 2007, 08:05:31 pm
Ah, thanks for the palette warning. Anyone happen to know where the Fair tile set is in the ROM by any chance? Vehek already gave me one of the starting addresses, so we've got 128 subtiles or 32(?) tiles for a font right there.

What's our timeframe look like now? Are we shooting for a January 1st release, or just as soon as possible?
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: Vehek on December 25, 2007, 08:26:33 pm
The Millennial Fair tileset uses tile packers 7E, 82, 83, 85, and 17.
Those should be at 2AE172, 2B0000, 2B0C55, 2B27C2, and 25B8D7.
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: ZeaLitY on December 25, 2007, 10:00:17 pm
Oh, well, I just stuck that in the end of the readme as a sort of easter egg awesome thing, like Grimmjow Jeagerjaques in the Retranslation readme.

If we really go that route with ASCII text before and after, and use the beautiful person thing, I'd take it out of the readme, I guess. I'd leave in the Prophet art. But for the before section...hm...modified opening?

This associate of Kid's is known to us only as Magil of the Shadows.

A high-class magician of some sort, he looks to be about thirty.

...this mysterious figure who could allegedly slip in and out of the shadows...

At times, it seems as though I'm hanging around someone from another world.

~Serge, RADICAL DREAMERS
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: FaustWolf on December 25, 2007, 10:46:20 pm
@Vehek: YOU ROCK!!

Looks like I've got the palette scheme totally figured out now, so I'll have an in-game test tomorrow at some point for the end pic. Anyone have a favorite font for the beginning/end/ending pic text? If the font is shrunk letter-by-letter, it might look pretty decent as a tileset.

Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: FaustWolf on December 26, 2007, 08:27:49 pm
Attached are the results of my latest palette reduction experiment along with some other versions for comparison. I'm beginning to steer away from the idea of buffer paletting because, at most, I'd only be able to squeeze one buffer out of the seven palette shifts available, and that single palette would have to handle more colors than I could possibly stuff into it. But there are other options that will allow us to end up with something pretty decent.

Now for a description of what you're seeing as attachments. The top-most attached pic is the original 15-color mockup I posted earlier; it is the worst we could possibly do. Below that is a composite image made from seven separate groups of tiles, each group given its own palette. The sky, clouds, and the sky island turned out better this way I think, yet Magus and the turf he's standing on actually suffered significantly. This is only with the computer determining palette reduction, though -- I can get better results by picking the colors personally as I did with Magus' portrait. The last pic is the best the ending pic could theoretically get through optimal paletting for a total of 105 different colors.

I'll probably end up combining the best parts of the 15-color mockup with the best parts of the new version, and perhaps through that process I'll find a way of freeing up an extra palette or two to use on Magus himself. I can't promise blue hair this time, but I'll see what I can do.

[attachment deleted by admin]
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: FaustWolf on December 27, 2007, 06:01:33 pm
Hey everyone, I'm going to be moving my operations from the 1000AD interior tile set to some other set due to the need to use the 1000AD interior in the ending of Prophet's Guile. I'd like to use the Millennial Fair tileset for the ending pic, and it appears I'll have enough tiles, though one issue is bothering me; see the linked pic and see if you can answer a question for me:

http://img180.imageshack.us/img180/3935/questionjc9.gif

The decompressed tileset shown at the top-left is obviously for fair banners and flags, but these at least some of these tiles appear to be used in the animation of said flags. The Temporal Flux panel to the right shows only static animation frames, so I'm assuming I can't work with some of the tiles in this fair set. Has anyone ever tried to overwrite animation frames and re-insert into the ROM? If so, do the overwritten frames appear in Flux, or are they hidden and shown only in in-game animations?

There's an unusually large number of subtiles in this decompressed set (218 as opposed to the usual 128 I've seen previously), so I'm going to assume for now that 128 out of the 218 are accessible in Flux and the rest are "implied" animation subtiles that can't be manipulated in Flux. That would be a perfectly fine outcome, but just in case, are there any other tile sets not being used in Prophet's Guile? What about the 2300AD tile sets?

I'm slowly but surely improving the palettes in the ending pic. My progress so far is attached; compare the sky island and the grass at Magus' feet with those regions in the previous iteration ("7SplitTest.gif"). I have yet to work on the palettes being used for Mr. Beautiful himself.

[attachment deleted by admin]
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: Chrono'99 on December 27, 2007, 07:41:47 pm
I'm not sure, but I do remember facing some problems when I was messing with the Blackbird tileset ages ago (with the animated conveyor belt tiles). Yeah, we'd better use a different tileset just in case. I think some tiles are animated in the 2300 AD tilesets. The Kingdom Trial tileset might be a safer bet (in location {1B6} in Temporal Flux).
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: FaustWolf on December 29, 2007, 01:36:44 am
I still have to revisit the sky coloring scheme to get rid of some obvious blockiness, but here's where the final art is going. I attempted to recolor Magus' cape, but I think it looks like puke in its present state -- I'll let you all be the judges on that. With a bit of reshading it might look fine, but that's beyond my artistic capability. The first pic is the latest version with the seven palettes in use, the second is what it looks like when only one 15-color palette is in use. We could always go with the latter, simpler one; it makes no difference to me. What do you all think? I'd be more than happy to hand over my ending pic tile sets and reduced palettes if anyone is interested in refining the results.

BTW, what are the chances of being able to use an overworld tile set for the ending pic? Would that be harder to implement than using an interior set? If the Millennial Fair doesn't work out, I'll try for the kingdom trial if I can find it; anyone know where the trial set is? A possible alternate could be the 2300AD dome interiors if you guys aren't using those; animations might not be a problem in the domes from what I remember.

[attachment deleted by admin]
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: Vehek on December 29, 2007, 02:23:23 am
Let's see, the courtroom uses tileset 1C. According to the location tileset data, that tileset uses tile packets 96, 97, 98, 99, 9A, AF, and 13.
Those packets should be at 2C0000, 2C0E5D, 2C1B72, 2C2786, 2C36D6, 2FD02D, and 257CBF.

Be careful, whichever tileset you actually modify, the graphics might take more space than the original and will have to be repointed.
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: FaustWolf on December 29, 2007, 11:50:41 am
Wow, thanks as always Vehek. Is there a list of where all the location tile packets are in the ROM anywhere, or is there a mathematical equation I could use to figure that out? I hate to have to bug you for info constantly. :mrgreen:
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: Vehek on December 29, 2007, 12:53:45 pm
I use both:
361C00   361DFF   DATA   N   "Location Tilesets, 8 bytes each, determines which ""packets"" of graphics are used for each location"   2003.11.13
and
362220   3624BF   PTR   N   "Pointers to Location Tiles (224 addresses, first at 252000)"   2004.06.21
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: FaustWolf on December 29, 2007, 02:52:55 pm
Ah, so you go by the pointers. Very good, thanks. I'm on the verge of doing an in-game test with the simple 15-color ending pic and I've got the modified uncompressed tile sets the same size as the their unmodified counterparts. But if the tile sets are compressed using Run Length Encoding (not sure about that by any means; just my guess), is that any guarantee that they'll be the same size as the unmodified compressed tile sets?
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: FaustWolf on December 29, 2007, 08:43:04 pm
Houston, we have a problem.   :?

To make a long story short, here's my notes on the original compressed tile sets and the altered compressed tile sets for the court room interior:

#1 2C0000, (E5D) compressed; (FDF) recompressed
#2 2C0E5D, (D15) compressed; (F7D) recompressed
#3 2C1B72, (C14) compressed; (EB7) recompressed
#4 2C2786, (F50) compressed; (BEB) recompressed
#5 2C36D6, (F58) compressed; (F3E) recompressed
#NOT USING 2FD02D, (280) compressed; () recompressed
#7 257CBF (18D8) compressed; (1908) recompressed

As you can see, the ending pic takes up way more space than what we've got available. The uncompressed tile sets are the same size when altered as their unaltered counterparts, but due to (likely) RLE compression, the blank space in the original tile sets allow them to be compressed more than the art, which has completely solid subtiles. Not sure what to do; I could change the pointers that apply to the court room scene just fine, but that would have a huge impact on tile sets that are adjacent to the court room scene's tile sets. I guess the next step is to investigate which tile sets are adjacent and whether or not that will impact the rest of the hack.

The only other options, as I see it, are to shrink the ending pic to the same resolution as the Japanese ending pic (less quality) and do an insert identical to what was done in the Retranslation, or to scrap the ending pic idea altogether.

Thoughts?

EDIT: Actually, I should mention that only a portion of the tile set labeled #7 above is used, so if I erased the remainder of that tile set and did some rebalancing with the extra space, we might be able to salvage this pretty handily. Also, the tile set "NOT USED" is worth an extra 280 bytes, so I might be able to make use of those in some way. This will take time, though. I might have to spend the next day or two exploring space-saving combinations.

UPDATE: Whew, panic mode over space-wise, at least. Here's my revised notes on the compression and recompression sizes:

#1 2C0000, (E5D) compressed; [E26] recompressed  -16 subtiles
#2 2C0E5D, (D15) compressed; [CF0] recompressed  -22 subtiles
#3 2C1B72, (C14) compressed; [BA0] recompressed  -32 subtiles
#4 2C2786, (F50) compressed; (BEB) recompressed [FINE]
#5 2C36D6, (F58) compressed; (F3E) recompressed [FINE]
#NOT USING 2FD02D, (280) compressed; () recompressed
#7 257CBF (18D8) compressed; (1908) recompressed [14D1] +70 subtiles, - many unnecessary subtiles.

Now for an in-game test....anyone happen to have a savestate handy made just before the trial? Or is there a way to warp to certain events in the game? :oops:
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: FaustWolf on December 29, 2007, 11:45:25 pm
Okay, it appears we have a good data insert. However -- is there some way to work with subtiles directly in Temporal Flux, i.e., move subtiles from the subtile swatch over to the location editing window? Flux isn't allowing me to select anything in the subtile swatch...

I guess it's possible to create custom tiles via changing each tile quadrant to its proper subtile one-by-one, but man, that's going to be tedious. Any tips? How was the Japanese ending art built in the location editor for the Retranslation?

[attachment deleted by admin]
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: Vehek on December 29, 2007, 11:47:41 pm
We didn't need to build the Japanese ending art for the Retranslation. The tileset assembly was already in the ROM, just unused.
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: FaustWolf on December 30, 2007, 12:27:31 am
Oh shoot, okay. This is the first time a piece of artwork has had to be built from scratch within Flux, eh? Guess it's time to hunker down and get a grid over a screencap of the subtile swatch window and just bust it out. It appears that the subtiles start at 0x100 in the subtile select menu, so I'm hoping 0x101 will be the subtile just to the right of that one, etc. etc. I.e., the subtiles should follow logically from left to right, making building custom tiles slightly less painful.
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: Chrono'99 on December 30, 2007, 04:16:48 am
Yeah, it starts at 100 and goes in order up to 10F, then 110 is the next line, etc. It's indeed tedious to changes every subtile like that, but it's easy, at least. Note that you can click directly on the quadrant of the tile in the frame at the left of the TF screen, instead of choosing the quadrant in the scrollbox. Also if you want to refresh the tileset when working on it you can do it just by reopening the location; no need to write memory and save everytime (except to actually save the work, of course).
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: Chrono'99 on December 30, 2007, 04:51:05 am
Now for an in-game test....anyone happen to have a savestate handy made just before the trial? Or is there a way to warp to certain events in the game? :oops:

You can change things with TF but I've made these two event files for you to test the pic. Just import the two in your ROM in TF. The first file changes the load screen so that it loads the courtroom instead of a new game. The other file removes the events in the courtroom as well as the black bar at the bottom of the screen (normally CT has this bar because textboxes placed at the bottom of the screen have some garbage graphics).

[attachment deleted by admin]
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: FaustWolf on December 30, 2007, 12:08:58 pm
Thanks a million for those files, Chrono'99! I'll finalize the ending pic image today (cape shading and sky need to be worked on for the seven-palette pic) and begin building it in flux.
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: FaustWolf on December 30, 2007, 01:55:49 pm
Quick question for those more experienced than I in Chrono Trigger editing -- the ending pic I'm going to insert into the ROM is 31 subtiles (length) by 21 subtiles (height). Will that be able to fit on one screen? Chrono'99 said that the SNES can handle up to 896 subtiles onscreen, but I wanted to make sure there isn't going to be a problem with picture length.
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: Chrono'99 on December 30, 2007, 02:02:35 pm
Yeah, the maximum is 32 by 28 so it will fit nicely.

EDIT: Regarding Serge's diary, there isn't enough space to add commas and apostrophes in the ASCII text graphics, so we have use a tileset as discussed earlier in the thread... but don't worry about it, I've just replaced the Castle Guardia tileset with letters, punctuation signs and numbers from the ASCII graphics. This should take care of the diary and credits.
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: FaustWolf on December 30, 2007, 08:37:47 pm
Phew, thanks for taking care of the text aspect. If we want a New Year's Day release with the ending pic, it's gonna be close. How does the attached pic look? I still detest how the cape turned out (my shading skillz are nonexistent), but overall it's more colorful than the single palette version.

[attachment deleted by admin]
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: Chrono'99 on December 31, 2007, 04:12:16 am
I think it looks okay. Even if there's some minor imperfection, I'm sure players will be more excited than "disappointed" at seeing this pic in the game.
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: FaustWolf on December 31, 2007, 06:36:29 pm
Aw, shoot. Looks like I'm running into a problem with the courtroom location -- the seventh tile packet I used to solve the compression dilemma earlier is apparently only for animations, and doesn't show up in Flux at all. Leene Square, future looks suitable though -- are you guys using that tile set or its palettes for anything?

Leene Square - Future is location 0x02C and uses tile set 0x09. I should be able to find out where its graphics packets with the tips Vehek gave me earlier, but Vehek, if you happen to wander in here, could you perhaps work your magic again, as you're more efficient than I am at that sort of thing?

I'll see if I can salvage the use of the court room location in the meantime. If we do use Leene Square - future for the ending pic, it should be testable easily enough since that's in one of the endings and ending savestates are a dime a dozen on the Net.

It would appear that tile set 0x09 (Leene Square - future) uses graphics packets 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, and 39, with 15 likely being animation data that I won't even bother with. The sixth graphics packet doesn't have anything weird going on with it like its counterpart in the courtroom, so that should solve things. The hack doesn't have any ending scenes with FATE or anything that would require a 3200AD lab tile set, does it?

Okay, even better. Thanks to Vehek's info, I've been able to change pointers such that the courtroom now shows the seventh tile set meant only for implied animations. Booyah! Time for some art insertion.

Doesn't look like I'm gonna get this done tonight, folks, so don't hold your breath. At the present rate of accomplishment, all I'll have to show on New Year's is a ROM with the ending pic inserted in an intelligible fashion. What's more, I won't be able to work on this for the next two days due to a funeral (being a pall-bearer on New Year's wasn't what I had in mind  :cry:), so I'll attach the ROM with inserted data and some other materials in case anyone wants to take this up while I'm out. That'll be up tomorrow morning.

UPDATE: Pic insertion looks good. All that remain are assembly and palette insertion & application. I'm linking to a portable "working box" with all the materials I've been using so everyone can see what I've been tinkering with and continue where I've left off if necessary.

Here's what's inside the zip:

*TrialSet#.bin: Subtile graphics packets extracted from the game, uncompressed. These are labeled according to the order in which Vehek gave me the graphics packets locations earlier in this thread (#1 was pulled from 0x2C0000, etc.)
*TrialSetInsert#.bin: Chunks of the ending pic that I've inserted back into my test ROM.
*Split # Insert.bmp: Finalized chunks of the ending pic, one for each palette.
*Insert: A raw file created in Tile Molester; what you get when you arrange all the "Split # Insert" bitmaps to form the whole picture; this is what I actually stuffed into the graphics packets for re-insertion into the ROM. Each subtile should display correctly when it is assigned the appropriate palette shift indicated in its corresponding "Split # Insert" bitmap.
*GUI.string: A file Temporal Flux gave me; not sure what its significance is, but I'm including it just in case.
*Copy 2 of Chrono.smc: My test ROM after graphics packet re-insertion; load it into Flux and go to the court room / trial location (location 0x1B IIRC) and enable the L1/2 subtiles swatch to see Julie Dillon's artwork in all its 16-bit glory.

Like I say, I will return to finish this, but wanted to give you guys some flexibility in case my absence over the next couple days is going to introduce too much delay into the project's release. In all likelihood I should get back to this on January 3, with a final patch ready on Jan 4.

LINK: http://rapidshare.com/files/80439165/End_Pic_WorkBox.zip.html
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: FaustWolf on January 03, 2008, 07:42:48 pm
We have a successful in-game test!!  :lee:

I'm not sure why areas that appear blank in Flux become "p" tiles; perhaps I can eliminate that by setting them to a different subtile. Palette shift is 0, so these should be blank -- unless palette shift 0 means the tile is transparent, and this is perhaps showing something that's on another layer. The second pic shows what happens when layer 2 is disabled in ZSNES, if this provides any clues as to what's up.

Palettes are still needed, of course. Now, if the colors are 15 bits per pixel and there's 15 colors in a location palette, we should need 225 bits per palette, correct? Or 28.125 bytes, meaning the relative offsets for the first palette would be x0 ~ x28; and the next palette would be contained in relative offsets x28 ~ x56? The third palette would be x56 ~ x84, and so on? I'll try this scheme out; anyone happen to have a list of palette offsets, or know for sure what the scheme is for determining which relative offsets apply to which palette shift?


[attachment deleted by admin]
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: FaustWolf on January 04, 2008, 02:19:41 am
Some graphical quirks need to be taken care of first, but we should have an ending pic patch tomorrow. BTW, I accidently wrote over location palette set 0 instead of palette set 8 in my test ROM; anyone happen to know offhand if set 0 is being used anywhere in Prophet's Guile? If so, that's perfectly fine -- I can do a data transfer to the correct offsets.
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: Vehek on January 04, 2008, 02:31:14 am
That palette was originally the palette I overwrote for the Zeal Palace guest room palette. But luckily for you, I replaced the telepod's palette when asked to revise the palette. So it's not used.
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: FaustWolf on January 04, 2008, 03:50:59 pm
Scheiße! Guys, I'm beginning to suspect that the first color in each location palette is an alpha channel / transparency. Is that correct according to your experiences? Do we actually have 14, and not 15, colors to work with in each palette?

Daaaamn, that's gonna put me back a bit if I'm right. I'll have to re-insert the artwork after adjusting the palettes, though I can keep the tile assembly. Can somebody confirm or deny my suspicion regarding the alpha channel?

UPDATE: Yeppers, testing confirms that the first of the 15 colors in every location palette is an alpha / transparency. This means we'll have to sacrifice a bit more quality, but it can be done. I hope to have an ending pic patch tomorrow. Really. I promise. Maybe.
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: FaustWolf on January 05, 2008, 01:45:47 am
More good news. It appears that the location palettes have not one, but at least two freaking transparencies!! And the transparencies occur seemingly randomly -- I'm sure I've got my palettes aligned correctly in the ROM, yet in one set the extra transparency is in the 13th color's "slot", and in another set it's in the 14th color's "slot."

Is it even possible for an SNES palette to have two alpha channels, let alone at varying positions between palettes? If so, does this mean there is a switch that determines whether a color is a transparency? Or am I just in a really weird Twilight Zone situation here?

I'll try creative use of layers to solve the problem -- luckily I made the whole ending pic on Layer 1, so I can strategically place Layer 2 tiles to "fill in" the gaps left by the alpha channels.

UPDATE: We're getting there. Obviously some more quirks to work out yet, but here's where we're at with the ending pic currently:

[attachment deleted by admin]
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: FaustWolf on January 05, 2008, 01:15:16 pm
Okay, final version. If everyone approves, it's in.

Chrono'99 or Zeality, what are the requirements for the ending pic patch? Shall I keep the .flux file that erases all courtroom events but not the .flux file that skips to the courtroom when the game begins?

Also, I had to scroll the screen to get the pic centered decently. Should I change the scroll locks before making the patch to save you some work Chrono'99, or would you rather handle that aspect?

[attachment deleted by admin]
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: justin3009 on January 05, 2008, 01:17:07 pm
Wow.  That looks good.  The only issue I see is just some excess brown pixels or lighter yellow pixels right next to Magus's arm.  Otherwise that looks uttertly amazing.
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: FaustWolf on January 05, 2008, 01:19:44 pm
Ooh, that's right, there's some dark pixels near Magus' left arm that I want to get rid of. Shouldn't be too much of a problem. The lighter yellow you're talking about Justin -- are they near his right arm? Those ones will be harder to blend in with the rest of the sky, but I'll see what I can do.
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: justin3009 on January 05, 2008, 01:26:32 pm
Wouldn't it be better to savestate their, export the graphics, load them up and then load the palette up in there?  I think that'd be much easier but...Not sure if that helps
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: FaustWolf on January 05, 2008, 01:29:46 pm
It might be more efficient, but I prefer changing the inserted art via TileMolester and re-compressing back into the ROM. That's what I'm used to by now, anyway.

EDIT: How does this look?

[attachment deleted by admin]
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: justin3009 on January 05, 2008, 02:28:05 pm
Better.  Also these

[attachment deleted by admin]
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: ZeaLitY on January 05, 2008, 03:40:39 pm
Wow, I'm not totally sure how to best export this. But I guess I'd better get ready for release time...
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: FaustWolf on January 05, 2008, 03:56:18 pm
Hehehe, actually Justin, that's another sky island off in the distance -- it appears much the same way in the original artwork. If we really want to, I could do away with it by taking advantage of the palette's multiple transparencies, but I'd recommend keeping it in I guess.

You can check the original here:
http://www.chronocompendium.com/Forums/index.php/topic,4887.msg85733.html#msg85733

I could disperse some more dark pixels in that area to make it clearer that that's supposed to be another sky island off in the distance.

Oh, and I'll need to know what Chrono'99 wants for the ending pic patch; should I make the patch such that it includes the artwork insertion and the removal of all events from the court room scene, plus scroll lock adjustments to get it centered on screen?
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: FaustWolf on January 05, 2008, 04:18:25 pm
Here's my suggested revision for the area Justin pointed out. Shall I commence with inserting it?

[attachment deleted by admin]
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: ZeaLitY on January 05, 2008, 05:54:56 pm
Hm...well, if no other changes but things related to the art insertion have been made to your ROM, I guess you could just make a patch with an unmodified, unheadered ROM that could be plugged right into Prophet's Guile. That's why we picked a specific palette to replace, I'm guessing.
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: FaustWolf on January 05, 2008, 06:09:33 pm
Okay, here we go. First, the final version of the ending pic as it appears in-game.

Secondly, the patch. This is already in the readme, but here's what I did:

Original Comparison ROM: An unheadered "Chrono.smc" with the loadscreen.flux file imported (so as to transport the gamer to the court room directly for testing purposes)

Modified ROM: An unheadered "Chrono Art Construct.smc" with both courtroom.flux and loadscreen.flux imported, and artwork inserted and assembled. Scrolling locks modified to make the artwork centered on screen by default.

The goal was to create a patch that retains the courtroom.flux and art insertion changes while negating the loadscreen.flux change.

By negating the "loadscreen.flux", I can't test the ending pic patch on an unmodified ROM without a savestate at some point right before the trial, so this patch is presented blindly. Let me know if any problems are encountered with it, and I'll see what I can do. The fact that I renamed my test ROM from Chrono.smc to "Chrono Art Construct.smc" doesn't make a difference, I hope?

[attachment deleted by admin]
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: justin3009 on January 05, 2008, 07:19:14 pm
Did NOT know that was an island.  XD
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: FaustWolf on January 05, 2008, 07:40:43 pm
I increased the dark pixel density on the far-off sky island, so hopefully it will be easier to discern from the sky. I know what you mean -- in the pic's penultimate edition, it could have been mistaken for random pixels that resulted from a bad palette reduction.
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: Chrono'99 on January 06, 2008, 05:15:11 am
Wow. Awesome work! I'll insert the patch in the ROM I have and post the final ips patch later today. The release time is near!
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: FaustWolf on January 06, 2008, 10:51:50 am
I probably don't even need to say this, but be sure to back up your ROM before you do the ending art work patch. I'm not 100% sure it's not going to have undesirable effects, though I took care to negate the effects of loadscreen.flux in the patch.
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: Chrono'99 on January 06, 2008, 07:23:32 pm
There's something strange with this patch. If it's applied to the Prophet's Guile ROM, TF will refuse to open it (error message), and it will freeze if run in ZSNES. Oh well, I didn't bother trying to understand; what I did to resolve this is simply applying the patch on a fresh, unmodified CT ROM and then manually import the concerned tilesets/palettes/map assembly from that ROM to the Prophet's Guile ROM (I have lots of backups) using TF and an hex editor. It works flawlessly, so this problem is resolved.

However, there's another problem. The ending pic works fine, but the animated flame tiles in Magus' Castle became glitched (see attached pic)! At first, I thought I might have done something wrong with my manual hex copy-pastes, but in fact these tiles are not just glitched in the PG ROM patched with the ending pic patch, they're also glitched in the fresh CT ROM patched with the ending pic patch. This means that the glitch comes from... the ending pic patch. Curiously, the tiles look fine in TF, so it's only when playing the game that one can notice the issue.

I'm attaching a patch which contains the final version of the game. It's basically the version that I thought we'd release (*sigh* we're so close...), except it has this bug with the flame tiles that I noticed at the last minute.

...So, how do we fix this?

[attachment deleted by admin]
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: justin3009 on January 06, 2008, 07:32:50 pm
If you can't fix it by tilesets, you could always replace some NPC sprites with the flames.
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: nightmare975 on January 06, 2008, 07:36:40 pm
I can't seem to even start the game, I select new game, and the after I name Magus, the game goes to a black screen. X_X
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: FaustWolf on January 06, 2008, 07:51:22 pm
Damn, sorry about that. I'll have to get into Magus' room in my test ROM -- is there a savestate repository anywhere for this sort of thing? Found it!

Just to be sure, the names of the patched and unpatched ROMs used as references in Lunar IPS don't matter, do they?

EDIT: Nevermind about the need for testing savestates. I see the problem on my end -- in my test ROM, the lower L1/2 subtiles for Magus' castle, Ozzie's fort, etc., have been overwritten with parts of the ending pic. Hell if I know how that happened -- looks like I did a bad recompress at some point along the way in my test ROM without realizing it. The subtiles in Magus' castle and the subtiles in the court room are not automatically linked in some way, are they? If not, Chrono'99, what I'd urge you to do is to lift all the subtile data for Magus' castle from a pristine unheadered ROM and recompress it into your own test ROM after the ending pic patch is applied.

Waitaminute, even better, I'll try it out for ya if someone -- calling Vehek! -- can tell me where the subtiles for Magus' castle are located. It'll take me a bit to sift through Geiger's NA offsets notes to figure it out on my own.

Oh. My. It looks as if the subtile sets *may* be related between the two locations. I'll have to think on this a bit more. Daaaamn... But if someone could help me figure out the offsets for the Magus' castle graphics packets, it would be a major help.

EDIT: Waitaminute, now it seems Flux isn't showing a change in the Magus' Castle tile packets. It appears that, if I look at one subtile collection in Flux and then switch to another, the subtile list still retains the previous graphics packet. Bah, I'll have to see what's up. But obviously there's a problem with the subtiles in Magus' Castle. I'll explore.
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: ZeaLitY on January 06, 2008, 10:11:40 pm
I see three tiles are messed in in the ending art after my playthrough. It's attached. Two are underneath the shaft of Magus's scythe near the grass, and one on the body of the island of Zeal.

Also, in the second attachment, where Magus is standing you can enter and exit the land around the plateau and the plateau itself. Maybe some solidity is needed there.

I guess that's a wrap! There's still the "others" dialogue in Melchior's throne room scene that should be "other" without the s, but that's the only thing I could find.

Anyone have a savestate of the Programmer's Room?

[attachment deleted by admin]
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: FaustWolf on January 06, 2008, 11:24:14 pm
Thanks for the ending pic pic Zeality. That can be handled easily enough, methinks, with some manual reconfiguring in the final patch. It's the Magus throne chamber that bothers me. And -- ooh! I see Chrono'99 implemented the text overlay. Nice!

I'll get on the ending pic glitches and the Magus room flame glitch tonight, and I'll have either a revised patch or a failure report tomorrow morning.

UPDATE: Aha! I now know the culprit for the problem in the patch I created. It appears that multiple locations use the same graphics packet(s) for tile animations. The reason we can't see the problem in Flux is that Flux doesn't show these animated tiles. I would expect other animated tiles to be affected in the hack, and I'll see if I can get a list together of what those might be. In any case, I should be able to find a workaround.
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: FaustWolf on January 07, 2008, 01:58:55 am
Yeppers, looks like we've got the culprit figured out. Take a look at the attached pic and see what you guys can recognize. Looks like Norstein Bekkler might have been affected along with the candle flames and the court room foreground crowd. This is a graphics packet I overwrote to insert part of the ending pic; figures.

We have a few options. The most efficient is to re-point the sixth trial subtile source such that it draws from an unused graphics packet. As long as things are aligned the same way within whatever graphics packet we decide to use instead of this one, no reconstruction of the ending art should be necessary.

[attachment deleted by admin]
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: FaustWolf on January 07, 2008, 02:35:30 am
 :lee:

Full patch with ending pic glitch and Magus Inner Sanctum flame glitch corrected. Try it and see what you guys think. As long as nobody's planning on making use of the Millennium Fair tile set, we should be good to go.

[attachment deleted by admin]
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: Chrono'99 on January 07, 2008, 08:25:03 am
It glitched something in the Blackbird tileset, but since there are only 3 affected tiles and since they are used only in the Developer's Room, I simply modified the map so that other tiles are used instead. I've attached a pic of the corrected map (see the former version in the Mapping thread). The reactor tiles were neat, but this small modification is probably an easier solution than having to deal with another graphic hacking fix.

I've attached the final(?) patch of the game, as well as a savestate of the ending with access to the Programmer's Room for Zeality.

[attachment deleted by admin]
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: FaustWolf on January 07, 2008, 12:51:51 pm
I guess I just can't win, eh? Let me know if you want me to take a look at restoring those tiles, Chrono'99. Hope it doesn't make things too messed up.
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: Chrono'99 on January 07, 2008, 12:57:37 pm
Nah it's definitely fine. Unless someone discovers another bug or something, this version is probably the final one.
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: FaustWolf on January 07, 2008, 02:02:36 pm
Excellent. Now it's time to give this a run-through. This is the only worthwhile game I've found in the past year; isn't that sad?

*sniff* It's so beautiful. This is like a childhood dream come true. Guys, as a consumer of this wonderful fan product, let me say THANK YOU for all the work you put into this. Jeez, even the little character menu icon is changed to Magus' head. The attention to detail is...inspiring.



Shopkeeper: What can I do for you?

Magus:...Nothing.


HAHAHAHAHA! I knew shops were going to be disabled, but I wasn't expecting it to be due to Magus' sense of self-reliance. Brilliant, brilliant! I'm so glad I avoided spoilers all this time -- this is going to go over great once it reaches the full community.
Title: Re: Ending Pic mini-project
Post by: Boo the Gentleman Caller on February 13, 2008, 04:01:04 pm
Ahh...  Prophet's Guile...

so perfect are thee.