Chrono Compendium

Marbule Gallery - Completed Fan Creations => Crimson Echoes => Topic started by: ZeaLitY on October 08, 2008, 04:56:22 am

Title: Buzz and Release Planning
Post by: ZeaLitY on October 08, 2008, 04:56:22 am
This thread will outline all our plans for release and fueling buzz. Discuss and provide feedback.

PRE-RELEASE

0. BSNES Playthrough

Someone at ROMHacking.net mentioned that BSNES should be used with CE at least once to see if the old black screen bug happens.

1. www.crimsonechoes.com

Needed items:


2. Secrets Contest

I've been thinking of a way to have a contest for playing the game, and here's my idea:


3. Wii / Other Release Handling

http://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php/topic,8536.0.html
http://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php/topic,8460.0.html

We'll test Crimson Echoes on the Wii's current SNES emulator and verify that it works. Once we verify, we can include in the readme and release notes instructions on emulating CE on Wiis for people who own them. We'll also post a message about CE's release on popular Wii hacking sites. Wii's best SNES emulator is a version of Snes9x, so we can go from there with a warning.

Quote
Not particularly, at least nothing special for the roms - of course, one has to brave the standard installation of the home brew channel and emulators..  I havne't finished "testing" with thesem emulators as of yet.  In CE, walking into some areas with Chrono in your party seemed to freeze the game (The top of the mountain in the prehistoric era) as did a few small things in PG (going to the ocean palace, although that only happend once today and I haven't tried again.  Oh, and some save points don't seem to work in CE - but nothing special... just a fun video.

It's also possible to inject the roms into a virtual console channel, giving them their own spot as if they had been downloaded from the Wii Shop Channel - but this is risky, and if executed poorly can brick your system, so i have not tried it.

4. Prepare Soundtracks

CE will have two soundtracks. The first is an SPC archive like the Prophet's Guile EP, containing all the game's music and custom SPCs with rearranged instruments, etc. The second will be a sort of "music from / inspired by" collection of rare remixes named around events or themes in the game.

5. Maintain News List

To simplify the absolute chaos of release day, we should prepare in advance where we'll post news. We should also make a list of gaming sites we'll send the news to, like Siliconera or other ROM hacking sites. Destructoid will probably run this news!

Submit News / Ask for Review

http://www.romhacking.net/
http://www.digg.com/
http://www.reddit.com/
http://www.slashdot.com/
http://www.infendo.com/
http://www.siliconera.com/
http://www.gamespot.com/
http://www.ign.com/
http://www.destructoid.com/

Post News

http://s14.invisionfree.com/ChronoCrisis/
http://mp3guy.proboards2.com/index.cgi?board=ChronoTrigger
http://www.forumplanet.com/rpgplanet/chronicles/index.asp
http://p204.ezboard.com/bchronotriggernovelproject29201
http://invisionfree.com/forums/Spectral_Wars_Gaya/
http://www.ultrapublications.com/forum.html
http://chronosforums.yuku.com/forum/view/id/1
http://forums.eyesonff.com/forumdisplay.php?f=25
http://boards.gamefaqs.com/gfaqs/gentopic.php?board=196917
http://boards.gamefaqs.com/gfaqs/gentopic.php?board=950181
http://boards.gamefaqs.com/gfaqs/gentopic.php?board=562913
http://icybrian.com/forum/index.php?showforum=2
http://www.neoseeker.com/forums/index.php?fn=browse_forum&f=824
http://www.neoseeker.com/forums/index.php?fn=browse_forum&f=6183
http://www.square-enix-forums.com/index.php?&showforum=41
http://www.squareinsider.com/forums/index.php
http://www.sonicretro.org
http://www.vgmix.com/forum/
http://www.ocremix.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=9
http://zip.4chan.org/v/imgboard.html
https://www.7chan.org/vg/

6. Make Translation Tutorial

Someone's already expressed interest in translating Crimson Echoes to another language once it's out, so we can make a small tutorial for using Temporal Flux to translate.

POST-RELEASE

1. Create a Walkthrough

We'll create a walkthrough and release it one month after the release of the patch, as not to spoil people. Nonetheless, we should pre-prepare a list of hints for predictable problem areas (think of the cave in the demo 2). This'll be stuff like the Singing Mountain puzzle; we'll try to make the hints as general as possible.

IN PROGRESS

1. Readme - IN PROGRESS

http://www.chronocompendium.com/Term/CE/Readme.html

2. Youtube Promotions - IN PROGRESS


3. Digg and Reddit Bomb - IN PROGRESS

I'm going to create a thread in most forums taking signups at a GMail account / Chrono Compendium user account. There will be one e-mail sent out to everyone two weeks or so before release, when we know the release date, telling them to prepare for that day. Then, there will be a second e-mail as soon as CE is released and the Digg / reddit stories created to upvote them. This is a covert operation because this thing is technically not allowed at the sites.

Current number: 265

4. Create Sigs, Logos, and Banners - IN PROGRESS

http://www.chronocompendium.com/Forums/index.php/topic,7385.0.html

COMPLETED

X. Contact http://thepiratebay.org/contact about mirror hosting.

No reply.

X. Create Approved Screenshot Set

For use in promotional materials, we need to create an authoritative set of screenshots before release that we can use to promote anywhere. We'll make sure there are no spoilers. By setting in stone which screenshots we'll use, we'll avoid the problem of having to go back and take new ones, risk spoiling something, releasing too many...

X. CE Team Ranks

CE team members will get primary usergroup ranks with a new special icon, except for jsondag2, ZeaLitY, and Chrono'99 (who will have Guru of Life, Entity, and Guru of Reason). Unless you guys want the rank, and I guess you might, yeah...

X. Make Release Levels

All releases will have a headered / unheadered patch, readme, and Lunar IPS. Emulator version will have ZSNES thrown in. Developer version will have ZSNES and Temporal Flux included.
Title: Re: Buzz and Release Planning
Post by: Chrono'99 on November 23, 2008, 10:35:19 am
*knock knock knock*
*opens door*

Guys, I'm back. What can I say...we all know how real life, jobs and whatnot can take out a lot of our free time, but I feel kinda bad for having left this site for such long periods of time :( I hope this didn't cause too much hassle regarding the development of Crimson Echoes (apparently it's near completion so I guess things went okay). The release of CT DS really gave impetus for me to get back to Chrono "work".

Seems like I have a lot of things to catch up, so if there's anything you (Zeality, jsondag, or anyone on the development team) want me to do in priority I'd gladly do it. In any case, I'm going to have a look at the latest CE ROM version and probably help with debugging, polishing and that sort of things.
Title: Re: Buzz and Release Planning
Post by: Agent 12 on November 23, 2008, 01:40:07 pm
(wakes up....grumble grumble who knocks at this time of the night)

CHRONO 99!!!!!!!!  Welcome back come on in!

Were pretty much waiting for Zeality to finish up with dialogue and Nightmare to do one more map ....BUT......I was actually telling him to base it on the Chronopolis map that you created haha so if you still got that lying around we can put that in the rom. 

The way dialogue insertion has been going is Zeality sends me an excel file once he finishes a chapter, then i put it in.  Zeality is worried he has a corruption touch haha.  I just finished my 4th time going through the ROM haha, I have one unfinished bug which i PM'd JLukas about.  The casino is using the same memory address as the blackbird so when i set the first bit PC1 "doesn't has his equipment" and doesn't fight haha.  So the latest patch is not the one you are playing but there's literally ..like 2 small bugs fixed.  published patch is now the latest

Anyways....enjoy the ROM.  It's not as good as what would have happened with both of us working together (I feel like up to the atash kedah scene is a product of both of us doing event coding).  If you want to Chrono'99ify a chapter let me know.  I think there's time for you to tweak scenes if you want but  I personally don't think we should push back the release date anymore than we have.  We are lucky enough to have a boost from CT:DS being released and though it sort of ruined our ending I don't think that should stop us.


--JP
Title: Re: Buzz and Release Planning
Post by: ZeaLitY on November 23, 2008, 03:21:47 pm
I still have two presentations before the second week of December, so if you play through and want to keep writing dialogue, by all means, I trust your skills. I guess the only huge change is that the decision in 600 A.D. really does create three sets of dialogue for 1000 A.D. villagers, but that'll only matter much later on (I've already written the three sets).
Title: Re: Buzz and Release Planning
Post by: Chrono'99 on November 23, 2008, 05:27:11 pm
Were pretty much waiting for Zeality to finish up with dialogue and Nightmare to do one more map ....BUT......I was actually telling him to base it on the Chronopolis map that you created haha so if you still got that lying around we can put that in the rom.

Sorry which map are you referring to? I probably still have it somewhere, but I don't actually remember what it is.

Also, do we have a precise date for the release or is it "as soon as possible"?
Title: Re: Buzz and Release Planning
Post by: Vehek on November 23, 2008, 05:37:30 pm
The map he's talking about is probably the one here:
http://www.chronocompendium.com/Forums/index.php?topic=4743.msg87190#msg87190
Title: Re: Buzz and Release Planning
Post by: Chrono'99 on November 23, 2008, 06:35:22 pm
Okay, I put that overworld in the latest ROM and posted the patch at http://www.chronocompendium.com/Forums/index.php?topic=5209 .
Title: Re: Buzz and Release Planning
Post by: FaustWolf on November 30, 2008, 01:12:21 am
Oooh, looks like beta-testing phase is coming up. What state do you guys want the ROM in when I record a video for Youtube promotion? Should we do a brief "Ha! It's Alive!" preview as a Christmas gift, and then a fuller trailer a week before release, or just one trailer right before release showing off the final polished ROM?

In any case, I'll need suggestions as to what music to use to set the mood and guide the types of scenes I should capture.
Title: Re: Buzz and Release Planning
Post by: Agent 12 on November 30, 2008, 02:29:02 am
Let's wait till we have all the dialogue in before we do the videos. 

However I have thought about youtube videos and I'd like to request the song um.....i think it's called ladies and gentleman?

---JP

EDIT:  yup ladies and gentleman by saliva
Title: Re: Buzz and Release Planning
Post by: nightmare975 on November 30, 2008, 03:29:11 am
Let's wait till we have all the dialogue in before we do the videos. 

However I have thought about youtube videos and I'd like to request the song um.....i think it's called ladies and gentleman?

---JP

EDIT:  yup ladies and gentleman by saliva

I say Foreplay by Boston, but Saliva is good too.
Title: Re: Buzz and Release Planning
Post by: FaustWolf on February 05, 2009, 03:30:31 pm
As soon as the Chapter 23 dialogue is inserted, I'd like to do a run-through and gather video clips. I'll make a preview vid with "Ladies and Gentlemen" and I think ZeaLitY may have had another idea for the preview(s) too. I'll probably do a "regular" and an "extended" preview.

Title: Re: Buzz and Release Planning
Post by: Agent 12 on February 05, 2009, 05:17:10 pm
Yea I'm going to send out a private beta invite after chapter 23 dialogue is inserted.  And I was going to send you a very long PM FW :).  This is getting exciting!

--JP
Title: Re: Buzz and Release Planning
Post by: ZeaLitY on February 05, 2009, 05:49:28 pm
We might hold off until I can do my first run-through, which I PROMISE will be like, a sacrificial hours-long effort over 2 days, maximum. While doing through dialogue, I made a lot of mental notes for scene whines and tweaks, and I'll also get the music down.

The beta testers are sort of taking a bullet for playing the game in an unfinished state, so if JP does those scene whines and also implements music changes (not including NEW music, which will be inserted after beta testing since it's hard hack stuff), it'll be a better experience for them. And the emotional impact of the scenes will be more, leading to more constructive criticism of how to present things, etc.

God, exciting.
Title: Re: Buzz and Release Planning
Post by: FaustWolf on February 05, 2009, 05:55:46 pm
That's cool, I can hold off until the dialogue is at its peak so we can show it off properly. Before I haul off and do a teaser video I guess we'll need to talk about what kind of content should be shown and what kind of content shouldn't be spoiled.
Title: Re: Buzz and Release Planning
Post by: nightmare975 on February 05, 2009, 06:10:09 pm
I think the teaser's beginning should have Scars of Time, mimicking Cross' beginning, but one the buildup ends, we change to ladies and gentlemen.

Every time he says boom, we should do a transition to a new scene.
Title: Re: Buzz and Release Planning
Post by: Agent 12 on February 05, 2009, 06:50:42 pm
Yea, we'll insert zeality final scene whines before beta testing to minimze beta testers' bullet wound :).

Though they'll still have some i'm sure since chrono'99 is still polishing.  But it's worth it to release it sooner I think.

Couldn't agree more with nightmares idea.

--JP
Title: Re: Buzz and Release Planning
Post by: ZeaLitY on February 05, 2009, 09:32:49 pm
Yeah, and I've got several humorous ideas for 10 Youtube vids with my voice narrating like the Rated R movie guy who recently passed away. I've got several, but to give you an idea:

Video opens with one silent second showing Lavos in his pocket dimension
That "IVE GOT THE POWA" song form the early 90s starts
Lavos's two little growths pop up for battle and animate
After the song goes for couple seconds, I come on
LAVOS HAS THE POWER
CHRONO TRIGGER: CRIMSON ECHOES OUT NOW
WWW.WHATEVER.COM
GET THE POWER

Just, a lot of surreal, ridiculous viral ideas like this. The "IVE GOT THE POWA" thing is a meme from GameFAQs about Lavos's theme.

Edit: Ugh, watching the PG and Magus Unmasked videos (and Unmasked now has 35,000 hits, what the holy fuck), I'm almost starting to cry here. I am starting to cry. This...this feeling is addictive! We're...about to release something so...amazing, and it's going to make so many people happy...god, we've got to give it our very best...this is what the springtime of youth feels like!

(http://chronofan.com/Zeality/soyx6.png)
Title: Re: Buzz and Release Planning
Post by: FaustWolf on February 05, 2009, 10:04:48 pm
Your voice is probably the only piece of audio not copyrighted by Warner Music Group, so that should be great. Looks like "Ladies and Gentlemen" may fall under a WMG copyright, but there's some Saliva music videos allowed on Youtube with an advertisement overlay (doesn't get in the way too much). I'll do some experiments and see if I can sneak it through undetected.

Yeah, the Time's Scar lead-in will be great. I'll get the basic audio track worked out in Audacity and upload it here for everyone's perusal even before I start the video.

We should definitely have a ton of preview vids for this. Videogame fandom will be completely overwhelmed in new Chrono goodness.
Title: Re: Buzz and Release Planning
Post by: Agent 12 on February 05, 2009, 10:37:02 pm
FW, if you want me to make any scenes for you I can whip them up real quick.  For example the beginning of the song might look good with norstein bekkler on a black background or something :shrug:

Also....how far away should the compendium stay from these.  it'd be awfully horrible if we got hit right before release cause of this?  Maybe FW should make a new youtube account?  I would suggest not putting chronocompendium anywhere on it.  And maybe we should remove some of the CE references once we start throwing these out there?

--JP
Title: Re: Buzz and Release Planning
Post by: FaustWolf on February 05, 2009, 11:33:52 pm
The Bekkler idea's great. I can easily whip up an animation of Bekkler on a black background in my (albeit aged) animation software to save you the trouble on that one.

json, do you mean staying away from copyrighted audio or just separating the videos from Compendium affiliation entirely, i.e., to avoid a potential C&D from Square Enix?

For audio, it may seem kind of trite, but we can rely on fan music like Chrono Symphonic or some favorite Chrono remixes if worse comes to worst.
Title: Re: Buzz and Release Planning
Post by: Agent 12 on February 06, 2009, 12:05:36 am
oh no I dont care about the audio at all haha.  I was just wondering if we want to associated the compendium with this viral advertising thing or just make it look like it's coming out of nowhere.  Once it's released I odnt really care cause by then it's too late.  But right now it's possible to stop it......kind of...shrug.  I'll leave it up to zeality.

--JP
Title: Re: Buzz and Release Planning
Post by: FaustWolf on February 09, 2009, 03:26:48 am
As far as the audio, we're now in business and can use anything we like -- turns out a simple 3% change in pitch is enough to throw off Audible Magic's audio fingerprinting software. Probably not something I should go around repeating, but I'm so happy right now.

So we'll have three versions at least:

1. ZeaLitY preview
2. "Time's Scar" transitioning into "Ladies and Gentlemen"
3. One with a Dead Can Dance song (because I just have to).
4. Maybe one showing off impressive in-game audio.

If we use an alternate account to upload the preview videos, we won't be able to take advantage of ready-existing subscribers to our Youtube channels, but maybe it's for the best.
Title: Re: Buzz and Release Planning
Post by: FaustWolf on February 11, 2009, 03:49:46 am
json, you said elsewhere that neither the Fall of Guardia nor the Reptite World should be shown in the preview. Would you mind showing just a peek of the Reptite World, with an ambiguous scene in which Crono & co. confront some Reptite time travelers? Naturally it wouldn't be given away that the reptite time travelers are from a Reptite Dimension, or even time travelers, I just like the idea of ambiguously showing that there are Reptites in the game, without giving away why they're there or anything.

Also, the antagonist should probably be left ambiguous, but is an ambiguous scene with King Zeal's sprite allowed to grace the preview video(s)?

I think I'll definitely want to show off new techs.

I guess I'll keep an eye out here for more discussion from the CE team on what should or shouldn't be shown off.
Title: Re: Buzz and Release Planning
Post by: Agent 12 on February 11, 2009, 04:07:02 am
Hm......I suppose there's no harm in showing scenes with reptites since singing mountain was in the first demo and that had reptites. 

It's cool to show the zeal sprite, again i think that was in the first demo.

and of course, new techs are a must. 

I'd like to hear other peoples opinions too.


--JP
Title: Re: Buzz and Release Planning
Post by: nightmare975 on February 11, 2009, 04:25:47 am
Should we flash a screeny of 1 AD?

Or just the redone 12,000 BC map?
Title: Re: Buzz and Release Planning
Post by: ZeaLitY on February 11, 2009, 05:26:30 am
Hm, what about Lucca and Robo in the robot base? As long as it didn't show any dialogue. And maybe them on the OW?
Title: Re: Buzz and Release Planning
Post by: ZeaLitY on March 06, 2009, 07:28:36 pm
SNES9x emulates well on the Wii:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6ODKG0bvq8&feature=channel_page

Who knows if it'll work for the entire game, though. I've asked this guy if he has special instructions for emulating to put in the readme.

Edit: Same issues as SNES9x.
Title: Re: Buzz and Release Planning
Post by: ZeaLitY on March 08, 2009, 03:14:40 am
Feature writing has begun:

http://www.chronocompendium.com/Term/CE/Feature.html

Go ahead and interview yourselves. I've made a bare outline that'll be fleshed out in the coming days. When we decide how this'll be presented, we'll go ahead and get it ready to activate one week after the CE release.

The "Director Commentary" is going to be a collection of chapter-by-chapter comments from the developers. For instance, in Chapter 21 or whatever, I'd say "I tried to make it seem as if Belthasar and Melchior were reluctantly following King Zeal. Maybe they were afraid of being killed if they resisted, or maybe they wanted to keep a close eye on what he was doing. And perhaps they even wanted to see if Zeal would be resurrected. I also loved "x" scene, etc. etc."

The anatomy sections are just going to be little one-page things about those four technical aspects (or more if someone suggests). Like, "anatomy of an event", where we take some screenshots of a Crimson Echoes location in Temporal Flux's event editor, talk about coding it, and how it turned out in-game, etc. and then do it for a map, enemy AI, etc...just fun little behind-the-scenes things.
Title: Re: Buzz and Release Planning
Post by: Agent 12 on March 15, 2009, 06:24:37 am
Before and after!

(http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/3267/dorinofieldsbeforeafter.png)

Wow.....I dont remember if I planned on this being the final product but that's just gross.  I think when I was making it I was going to have a HUGE battle going on so i needed tons of empty space...then i realized you can really only have so many sprites on the screen before things fall apart.....of course chrono'99 proved me wrong with his 1 AD battlefield ( a few years later :) )

(http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/3191/mystictunnelbeforeafter.png)

What can i say....i hate....hate......hate......hate the cave tileset....whoever cleaned this up must have ridiculous patience :)
(http://)

(http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/6010/beastforestbeforeafter.png)

Someone must have cleaned this up already by the time i took this screen shot cause my first beast forest did not look this good..at all
(http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/1259/chronpolisbeforeafter.png)

Again...this isn't the first, first chronopolis...the first chronopolis i made was not nearly this good looking.  However check out all the missing stuff.  No mother brain, no melchior room, no inn.....you also can't see from this pic but no savepoint, and no entrance room either.  Oh i should have taken a pic of before/after elevators...99 (i assume it was him) did some smart stuff with the conveyerbelts

(http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/3230/dinopolistopbeforeafter.png)

What can I say....probably 99's best maps.  Amazing....the chrono cross reference, somehow making a habitable looking place out of that tileset (look at the "table" and "chairs" in his) ....just amazing.


(http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/8283/oneadbeforeafter.png)

*laughs*

(http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/5397/prehistorybeforeafter.png)

I like how from this picture you can see that we really listened to the fans by making the path to singing mountain more obvious.....i'm sure people still won't be able to find it but hey we tried.  Also...no lava is definitely better.  Oh yea...the reptite lair just sorta dissapeared huh?

(http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/5819/reptite1002beforenoafte.png)

Yup...1005 reptite used to have an OW, and this is it....i think we made the right decision with the locaiton based overworld

(http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/8014/reptitecontestbeforeaft.png)

Again....amazing work with the tilesets by chrono 99 here. Why in the world did I think it'd be a good idea to use those trees....it would cause me a ton of grief when I eventually got sane and switched to prehistory trees

(http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/7452/reptitefuturebeforeafte.png)

Oh hey guys i have a genious idea, let's put chronopolis OW AND the future reptite OW on one map.  *sigh* That's why it's the future reptite OW is so squished on the left

(http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/4958/robotfactorybeforeafter.png)

While chrono99 didn't change MUCh with this, the details really make a difference (as you can see).  Plus..man just changing the palette makes it a million times better right there.

note to self, gotta grab before/after DBT and 1005 reptite cave locations.

--JP

Title: Re: Buzz and Release Planning
Post by: ZeaLitY on April 07, 2009, 10:57:55 am
Digg army is now at 240. With a couple more pushes, maybe we can get 400. If even 100-150 of these people upvote, it should be enough for frontpage.
Title: Re: Buzz and Release Planning
Post by: ZeaLitY on May 03, 2009, 05:11:08 am
Updated with a contest idea and final requirements for the website. Feedback needed for contest; what prizes can we give out besides forum ranks?
Title: Re: Buzz and Release Planning
Post by: Chrono'99 on May 06, 2009, 10:27:26 am
What constitutes a "secret" though? There are so many optional stuff in the game, ranging from actual sidequests to easily missable one-liners... We could be getting flooded with reports, including reports on things we might not consider secrets.
Title: Re: Buzz and Release Planning
Post by: Agent 12 on May 06, 2009, 04:18:27 pm
I think prophets Guile did good with the sort of thing Z's talking about?  It was pretty obvious what the "secret" was.  We could pretty easily add something like that?

--JP
Title: Re: Buzz and Release Planning
Post by: ZeaLitY on May 06, 2009, 06:01:59 pm
We can just go ahead and say:


But these might be spoiling it if we say this, yeah...