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61
Chrono Trigger Modification / Chrono Trigger Playstation Research
« on: July 21, 2020, 03:02:04 am »
I was recently inspired to investigate the PS1 version again.
This research was done on the Greatest Hits release.
Most of my investigations were done on the field module. Elsewhere, like the overworld, menus, and battle, the contents of memory may be different.
The $7F0000 block of SNES memory is mapped to 0x8010000 in Playstation memory. This includes the decompressed location event data.
$7E0000-01FFF->0x802E000
$7E2000-FFFFF->0x8020000
DIALOGUE TEXT
Contrary what halkun said, the internal ROM has been modified with the English script - just the dialogue as far as I can tell. The dictionary entries are elsewhere - more on that later.
For both names and dictionary strings, the game automatically inserts a space, UNLESS what follows is a punctuation mark. This may complicate reinserting text without a mountain of duplicate entries for every punctuation mark or an inserter that can account for it.
There are some external dialogue strings used in place of the ones from the ROM, but I'll get to that later.
Music IDs
The first two are listed here because since they weren't included in the Japanese SFC release, there was no guarantee that they'd be in the same slots as the English SNES version we're familiar with and mainly hack.
51: Battle 2
52: Singing Mountain
53: Underground Sewer (no water)
54-5B: Memories of Green
5C: Time To Rest -After the Battle
5D: One Sunny Day When We Met
5E: Scattering Blossoms
5F: A Meeting with Destiny
60-7F: (glitch version of faraway times?)
COMPRESSION
The Playstation version has its own compression format for its data.
It's a typical LZSS implementation, except that it always works in 2-byte units instead of single-byte. So a control "byte" is two bytes long even though only the first byte is used and it writes two bytes at a time instead of one.
References: lower 5-bits are length (add 2 to get the number of 2-byte segments to copy), upper 11 the distance back to copy from (multiply by 2). Distances before the start of the decompressed data produce 00 00's.
(Edit - a prior decompression/compression tool exists - Squaresoft's portings file extractor)
File - GAME1\KOK.BIN
This appears to be part of the field module.
It contains two compressed files.
The first, decompressed to 0x9FC00 of memory, is known to contain among other things, the dictionary strings, credits text, and some replacement dialogue strings.
Dictionary strings come before their pointer tables. The first set are single-byte text codes, the rest two-byte codes, starting with E0 XX.
Mostly, the replacement text is for button references (they were probably more important in the Japanese version), but there a few that don't fit that pattern
The second part contains parts of the CT ROM. It gets stored at 0x123000 of memory.
I've only manually matched up a few parts of it.
Attract mode
Back when I started studying the PS1 version, I was planning on doing a write-up and providing codes or a patch for what I could get working of the attract mode. For now, this is just a list of some of the obstacles I ran into.
The game has a routine that constantly checks the current location and probably some other stuff to determine when to play a movie.
When I tried using the edited-warp method (see "Game Notes" in Geiger's Chrono Trigger Database) to view endings, the credits didn't display.
This research was done on the Greatest Hits release.
Most of my investigations were done on the field module. Elsewhere, like the overworld, menus, and battle, the contents of memory may be different.
The $7F0000 block of SNES memory is mapped to 0x8010000 in Playstation memory. This includes the decompressed location event data.
$7E0000-01FFF->0x802E000
$7E2000-FFFFF->0x8020000
DIALOGUE TEXT
Contrary what halkun said, the internal ROM has been modified with the English script - just the dialogue as far as I can tell. The dictionary entries are elsewhere - more on that later.
For both names and dictionary strings, the game automatically inserts a space, UNLESS what follows is a punctuation mark. This may complicate reinserting text without a mountain of duplicate entries for every punctuation mark or an inserter that can account for it.
There are some external dialogue strings used in place of the ones from the ROM, but I'll get to that later.
Music IDs
The first two are listed here because since they weren't included in the Japanese SFC release, there was no guarantee that they'd be in the same slots as the English SNES version we're familiar with and mainly hack.
51: Battle 2
52: Singing Mountain
53: Underground Sewer (no water)
54-5B: Memories of Green
5C: Time To Rest -After the Battle
5D: One Sunny Day When We Met
5E: Scattering Blossoms
5F: A Meeting with Destiny
60-7F: (glitch version of faraway times?)
COMPRESSION
The Playstation version has its own compression format for its data.
It's a typical LZSS implementation, except that it always works in 2-byte units instead of single-byte. So a control "byte" is two bytes long even though only the first byte is used and it writes two bytes at a time instead of one.
References: lower 5-bits are length (add 2 to get the number of 2-byte segments to copy), upper 11 the distance back to copy from (multiply by 2). Distances before the start of the decompressed data produce 00 00's.
(Edit - a prior decompression/compression tool exists - Squaresoft's portings file extractor)
File - GAME1\KOK.BIN
This appears to be part of the field module.
It contains two compressed files.
The first, decompressed to 0x9FC00 of memory, is known to contain among other things, the dictionary strings, credits text, and some replacement dialogue strings.
Dictionary strings come before their pointer tables. The first set are single-byte text codes, the rest two-byte codes, starting with E0 XX.
Mostly, the replacement text is for button references (they were probably more important in the Japanese version), but there a few that don't fit that pattern
- Ayla and Lucca talking about "soup"
- Taban offering Crono a sip of his drink in the ending - this line got mentioned at a Japanese BBS as a change in the PS version
- Receipt of the Prism Helms - upon further research, this line didn't exist in the Japanese SFC release, it was added for the English release
The second part contains parts of the CT ROM. It gets stored at 0x123000 of memory.
I've only manually matched up a few parts of it.
- Field sprite related data - palettes, graphic pointers, sprite assembly pointers, animation data & pointers, sprite data
- Bank C0: End of bank C0, starting from 0xF300
- Location exit data
- Unknown data pointers and data from 3DF290
Attract mode
Back when I started studying the PS1 version, I was planning on doing a write-up and providing codes or a patch for what I could get working of the attract mode. For now, this is just a list of some of the obstacles I ran into.
- The title screen with its event code managing the warps and stuff for the attract mode scenes is not actually loaded on boot
- The pendulum mode7 scene also displays the intro movie
- All the credits screens calls crash the game
- Attract mode battles don't load all the data necessary. The main part I know about is the party has 0 HP/MP, causing a game over.
- Some of the side-wipes in the overworld scenes don't work
The game has a routine that constantly checks the current location and probably some other stuff to determine when to play a movie.
When I tried using the edited-warp method (see "Game Notes" in Geiger's Chrono Trigger Database) to view endings, the credits didn't display.
62
News Submissions / Re: The Chrono Memorial edition
« on: July 08, 2020, 08:00:13 pm »
There's an entry for this in the encyclopedia, under the merchandise section.
https://www.chronocompendium.com/Term/Chrono_Memorial.html
https://www.chronocompendium.com/Term/Chrono_Memorial.html
63
Chrono News / Re: New Chrono Trigger "Alpha" Screenshots from Weekly Famitsu Sep. 23, 1994
« on: July 08, 2020, 04:27:00 pm »Do we have those 3 B&W artworks anywhere? I've never seen them before.The ones on the left are apparently staff artworks (as opposed to Toriyama's official illustrations).
Quote
スタッフイメージイラストThe ones on the right, were in the Player's Guide.
ゲーム制作中には、開発スタッフのひとたちが、いっぽいイメージカットをがいていたん描いていたんだ。エンディング以降のイメージもあってちきちょき超貴重！！
Google Translate:
Staff image illustration
During the game production, the development staff were drawing and drawing a kind of image cut. There is also an image after the ending, so it's very precious! !
DeeplL:
Staff Image Illustration
During the production of the game, the development staff drew some cutesy images of the game, and I was able to draw I was there. There's an image after the ending, and it's tiny and super precious!
https://www.chronocompendium.com/Term/Supporting_Material_Translation.html#V-Jump_Player.27s_Guide
Remember back when we got those images?
64
Chrono Trigger Modification / Re: A silly question...
« on: July 06, 2020, 05:25:25 pm »
I examined the English PS1 version a bit last year, mainly as part of an investigation to see how much of the attract mode functionality was left. The text inside the internal ROM was replaced, but I guess maybe the "dictionary" compression entries might have been elsewhere. It was different than the one used in the SNES translation.
65
Fan Art / Re: Recent original CT art
« on: April 28, 2020, 07:45:42 pm »Quote
Maybe my memory of seeing them on the Compendium was incorrect.We have several of them scanned, long before that Twitter thread. Unfortunately, the Compendium didn't have the ones for Lucca or Marle either.
https://www.chronocompendium.com/Term/Chrono_Trigger_OAV_Manga.html
66
General Discussion / Re: Chrono Compendium Down?
« on: January 04, 2020, 05:59:37 pm »
It's just one of the spammers again.
Original:
https://www.reddit.com/r/chronotrigger/comments/8wdyt0/chrono_compendium_down/
If you look carefully, the wording feels odd to ask here at the Compendium itself.
Original:
https://www.reddit.com/r/chronotrigger/comments/8wdyt0/chrono_compendium_down/
If you look carefully, the wording feels odd to ask here at the Compendium itself.
67
Time, Space, and Dimensions / Re: Timeline (another possible timeline?)??
« on: January 04, 2020, 04:58:54 pm »
This is a rip-off thread. TC (JenrasGomes) has previously spammed.
Original:
https://www.chronocompendium.com/Forums/index.php?topic=7488
Original:
https://www.chronocompendium.com/Forums/index.php?topic=7488
68
Chrono / Gameplay Casual Discussion / Re: Crimson Echoes playthrough with youtube annotations as MP4
« on: December 24, 2019, 12:56:07 pm »
As the thread title mentions, they were (pop-up) text annotations -- which Youtube killed and deleted this year. Trig's revival of the thread this year went over some efforts to retrieve them.
69
General Discussion / Re: Deleting Spam Like...
« on: November 16, 2019, 03:40:49 am »
Well, Google didn't do well for me either in finding old topics with the same text. I mostly used the forum search. Except for one.
Here are the originals from here I've found that got copied by the spammers, and the year they were originally posted.
A couple Chrono ideas (2010)
Validity of Crimson Echoes Cart (2016)
Lavos Theme Extended? (2017)
Original story idea inspired by Chrono Cross (2010)
A theory about "Time Counciousness" (2007)
I generally haven't been reading everything that's been posted, but recognizing the Lavos theme one was what made me look more closely at the other spam posts.
Here are the originals from here I've found that got copied by the spammers, and the year they were originally posted.
A couple Chrono ideas (2010)
Validity of Crimson Echoes Cart (2016)
Lavos Theme Extended? (2017)
Original story idea inspired by Chrono Cross (2010)
A theory about "Time Counciousness" (2007)
I generally haven't been reading everything that's been posted, but recognizing the Lavos theme one was what made me look more closely at the other spam posts.
70
Chrono Trigger Modification / Re: Temporal Flux Plugins
« on: August 08, 2019, 04:45:10 pm »
Okay, I'm getting sick now of how hacking knowledge has been forgotten. We have had music imports in the past.
https://www.chronocompendium.com/Forums/index.php?topic=6839.0
(The command-line tool should also be available in utunnels' bundle of tools.)
You might want to check the FF6 hacking community; they did a lot of stuff from my early experiments with Romancing SaGa 3 editing tools.
Even if you want to make a visual editor, there's no need to re-do all the research into the note data. That was done years ago for other iterations of its SPC engine in other communities.
I might try to retrieve that experimental Impulse Tracker module to MML converter someone made.
https://www.chronocompendium.com/Forums/index.php?topic=6839.0
(The command-line tool should also be available in utunnels' bundle of tools.)
You might want to check the FF6 hacking community; they did a lot of stuff from my early experiments with Romancing SaGa 3 editing tools.
Even if you want to make a visual editor, there's no need to re-do all the research into the note data. That was done years ago for other iterations of its SPC engine in other communities.
I might try to retrieve that experimental Impulse Tracker module to MML converter someone made.
71
Chrono Trigger Modification / Re: Meu projeto
« on: June 21, 2019, 03:33:08 pm »
I don't remember that particular usage, but my first thought was the Kajar riddle. I think that used the Epoch naming screen and some memory checks, but I don't know how many steps were involved. An important part being that the letters would have to be entered in the editor as hex.
72
Chrono Cross Modification / Re: Chrono Cross 70-80% NTSC Beta (Disc 1 Only)
« on: June 13, 2019, 10:53:49 pm »
Seems the Compendium keeps a copy. Check the encyclopedia page. (The Compendium has gotten bolder I guess; the single-disc project is hosted too, but not in patch format.)
73
Characters, Plot, and Themes / Re: After 19 years I still don't understand how Lavos resurrected....
« on: June 09, 2019, 03:36:47 am »
I haven't gone through everything in the recent threads, but remember, Richard Honeywood claimed to have consulted with Kato in clarifying some things for the English script. What's unclear is which parts that covers.
When I posted those translations, the only interview mentioning this I could find was the one from the FF Compendium (the one with the 2001 date on the interviews page), where he listed a few examples.
When I posted those translations, the only interview mentioning this I could find was the one from the FF Compendium (the one with the 2001 date on the interviews page), where he listed a few examples.
74
The Lost Sanctum - Completed Items / Re: Radical Dreamers music: "Original Japanese Title"?
« on: June 02, 2019, 12:52:36 am »
They're fan names/descriptors, from Ms. Kotoi's Radical Dreamers site.
Specifically here: http://radical.or.tv/midi/rdmidi.htm
Hmm, looks like Zeality never got around to putting their origin on the music page like he said he would in the thread in the Great To-Do List.
Specifically here: http://radical.or.tv/midi/rdmidi.htm
Hmm, looks like Zeality never got around to putting their origin on the music page like he said he would in the thread in the Great To-Do List.
75
Chrono Cross Modification / Re: Want to use Gameshark to alter a few things. Need help. (SPOILERS for the game)
« on: May 22, 2019, 11:55:16 pm »
As documented on the page on initial stats, Serge's name becomes Lynx when his element is set to Black. So, fixing his color and his name are the same thing.
The way stats are organized is documented on the enemy data page.
Working backwards from known memory address/cheat codes, the address for Serge's innate color is at 0x6EBC9 in memory. The code to set his color to white should be 3006EBC9 0008.
The way stats are organized is documented on the enemy data page.
Working backwards from known memory address/cheat codes, the address for Serge's innate color is at 0x6EBC9 in memory. The code to set his color to white should be 3006EBC9 0008.