Messages

16

Chrono / Gameplay Casual Discussion / Re: Why the Chrono Cross Hate?

« on: July 03, 2009, 06:05:30 am »

Talk about bad karma....
One question, did you write those,Chrono'99  
I think not, perhaps Zeality?

I found it on GameFAQs some time ago.

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Chrono / Gameplay Casual Discussion / Re: Why the Chrono Cross Hate?

« on: July 03, 2009, 05:40:51 am »

http://ctsucks.awardspace.com/

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General Discussion / Re: European Trip Memoirs

« on: June 29, 2009, 07:55:44 am »

Great photos! I didn't know Stonehenge had cement blocks added in.

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General Discussion / Re: Micheal Jackson is dead!

« on: June 26, 2009, 02:53:31 pm »

2009 is shaping up to be a very bad year overall

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Chrono / Gameplay Casual Discussion / Re: My Tribute to Crimson Echoes

« on: June 26, 2009, 10:33:06 am »

Very nice performance. It's like a CT song arranged in the style of CC. I always thought the ending of "To Good Friends" sounded like a very early version of the Arni theme.

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Lavos, the Planet, and other Entities / Re: A natural evolution of Lavos...

« on: June 25, 2009, 11:39:30 am »

Anywhos, viruses and bacteria are a form of cellular organisms so obviously they can evolve to a multicellular state like animals have. Likewise, I state this.

Actually viruses are neither cellular nor organisms, which means they're technically not "living" things at all.

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General Discussion / Square Enix Sued for Unfair Business Practices, Unjust Enrichment

« on: June 25, 2009, 11:12:33 am »

A federal class action lawsuit has been brought against Square Enix by a Final Fantasy XI player, seeking more than $5 million for what is alleged to be "unfair business practices, false advertising and unjust enrichment".

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3174941

Digg it: http://digg.com/gaming_news/Square_Enix_Sued_for_Deceiving_Customers

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Submissions / Re: Some Chrono Art.

« on: June 24, 2009, 08:22:44 pm »

If anyone can get me a decent image capture of the Kasmir, King Zeal, and King Zeal as the Dream Lord sprites shoot 'em on over to me.
I'd gladly do some "C" themed artwork for them.  (What is Kasmir anyway? A panther demon like Lynx, or just a monster with sort of a spikey head? His head kind of looks more like a Bomb/Balloon from the Final Fantasy games.)
Also, I'll probably finish up that Modern Guardia Soldier sketch I added from before so we can have an un-official "Agent 12" portrait. 

Kasmir doesn't have any artwork but his head is sort of a mix between a CT Gargoyle's head (for the general shape and eyes) and Slash's face (for the small nose and big lips). Also it's hard to tell but his two spikes are slightly asymmetrical (one is upstraight and the other goes slightly more diagonal). His legs are small compared to the rest of his body and are supposed to be like those of a rooster or eagle. Finally, his regular sword has a wavy, serpentine ridge on the blade.


There was a King Zeal in UCT2? That's intriguing. CE King Zeal's design is based on Ancient Mede/Persian Lords, although I made his beard very short or he would look like an old geezer (that and I actually made the sprites before doing the sketch, so the beard isn't visible on the sprite):

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/PLATE2BX.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4b/PLATE3DX.jpg


King Zeal as the Dream Lord looks like a living version of the demon statue from Magus's summoning room, but with a bit of hair remaining (and blending into his curvy horns) and a bead necklace, really huge spikes growing directly out of his back, and actual legs, although he's down on his knees. You can wonder if he can actually stand upstraight with that much weight on his back (just as you can wonder if he's controling the fusion or is being submited to Lavos's will). The blue "Lavos eye" grows out of his navel when he casts a spell. His silhouette is meant to very subtly recall the Tower of Geddon from CC:

http://www.chronocompendium.com/images/wiki/8/8e/Dead_sea.png

(Random, off-topic fun fact: In one of the early plot drafts for CE, a biomechanical "Geddon" machine actually was the final boss, but it was too FFX-2-ish.)

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Site Updates / Re: SUMMER'S CRY ULTRA UPDATE! A lot of stuff plus CE chapters!

« on: June 22, 2009, 06:40:42 am »

I agree. Remember, these endings were not polished at all; they were in "alpha stage" so to speak. If the C&D hadn't struck, and if we had time before the release date, I would have liked to polish them way more. Still, Agent 12 made an awesome work considering he coded them all in like two weeks or something.


As for Serge, Wazuki and Lynx, I don't know ZeaLitY and Agent 12's opinion but for me it was a definite no-no:

1/ These are alternate endings; Project Kid shouldn't happen in most of them. The Radius and Garai ending could have happened without Project Kid if the Einlanzer wasn't mentioned.

2/ CE was meant to show new things, not rehash events that we already know happen and that we already saw in the other games. That's why we eventually made the Fall of Guardia a seemless part of the game, totally integrated in the plot and joining several CE story arcs together (King Zeal, Dalton, Kasmir, Coyopa), rather than make it the big final scene in the ending of the game (i.e. it's a totally ordinary part of the game instead of being the "destination" of the game). It's also why we can basically summarize the game as "This is the story of Alphard" rather than "This is the story of how Schala merged with Lavos".

And I guess a 3/ would be that we didn't have sprites for Serge, Wazuki, Lynx, Harle, and adult Lucca, though if we really needed them I would have made them one way or another.

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Site Updates / Re: SUMMER'S CRY ULTRA UPDATE! A lot of stuff plus CE chapters!

« on: June 21, 2009, 07:13:20 pm »

I think the Japanese hub's name is Chrono Center.

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Submissions / Re: Chrono Fan Fan Art

« on: June 21, 2009, 03:06:34 pm »

Thanks, everyone. Tushantin, that would be awesome! If you do, note that he has a very short beard; I'm not sure if it's noticeable in this pic (it looks like his neck).

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Site Updates / Re: SUMMER'S CRY ULTRA UPDATE! A lot of stuff plus CE chapters!

« on: June 20, 2009, 01:41:39 pm »

Thanks for the feedback, everyone.

Knuck, I agree with a lot of your points. Most of them are due to the fact that we didn't polish the game as much as we could have; the team had settled on a release date of May 31, and I was too burnt out to actually make the most out of the remaining time (or to refuse the date and prolong development, for that matter).

About maps:
- Most new maps were faulty, they had either:
* Bad tile placement
* Too empty at parts

I agree with "too empty". Most of my polishing involved reducing the size of the locations. Generally I think the best rooms are those in which the player can see at least two walls wherever he is standing. It feels wrong when you're standing near a wall and can't see the opposite wall without having to scroll the screen.

- Usage of glitchy tiles. ok I'm talking about the destroyed ocean palace and that last dungeon (which was indeed awesome) but you could have avoided using glitches. They look wrong, especially in the fangame realm.

The destroyed Ocean Palace was definitely one of the hardest maps to manipulate. I still think the destroyed OP rooms were better done in Prophet's Guile, but it still didn't look perfect. I disagree with avoiding map glitches in the DBT dungeon though. It's a place which is specifically meant to look glitched and wasted; the way the team made conscious use of these glitches is a testament to the fact that CE was a ROM hack and never pretended to be an official installment.

- Lack of new sprites
- Lack of new tiles
- Lack of new graphics overall. New graphics make the game more attractive, and it helps fix problems like glitches. =p

More new sprites were done and meant to be inserted but we hadn't come to it when the C&D struck.

Sound:
- Lack of new music
- Lack of new sound effects, though this is minor
- Changing music too much. Like, some videos ago there was a scene where we had 3 songs in the same dialog
- Some songs simply didn't fit the scenes imo.
- The 2300AD song in the 1000AD map felt wrong because of the snowstorm effect

We hadn't come to the music arrangement and new music insertion phase yet.

- Monsters. There weren't any new monsters. I mean, we had bosses like Kasmir but I expected and overhaul of the monsters, even if just changing palettes for some of them.

1,000% agreed. I always assumed we would palette-swap the old enemies and change their names at some point, but we never actually did and when I realized it I was in my "burn out" mood so I just let it slide away, but it's definitely a shame.

- Some of the names felt not Chrono, like Ashley. Though I liked most names

Ashley? If you're thinking about Ash, the kid, it's a character from Chrono Cross (the assistant of Toma XIV).

- The dreamtime (or whatever it was called) felt off. Maybe I expected new graphics, dunno. The battle that occurred there felt rushed.

1,000,000% agreed. When I drafted that part of the plot it was supposed to be an amazing, flashy place with fantastical DBT-like energy bubbles floating around and emanations sprouting out of magical stromatolites and other crazy things. However, I was away (busy with school) when this part was actually mapped, and the result is honestly underwhelming. We could have done better with time, and palette changes and a custom layer-3 effect.

- Marle killing Cambyses (or whatever he was called) with poison felt completely not Chrono. You should have made them just make him give up or lose a battle, but death by poison is so wrong

Agreed. I didn't really like the idea of assassinating him.

- Sidequests felt completely rushed. Go there, kill X, receive Y. Go there, find Spekkio

That's because they were. (though things like the Samuel minigame still came off well I think)

- Lucca liking Crono is just a No imo

Agreed. The first time I saw this was in the playthrough video, and I rewatched that scene at least five time because I just couldn't believe we went there  What the Frozen Flame showed the characters was not necessarily the truth, but we shouldn't have relied on this copout explanation IMO.

- The Cedric dude using the Flame to kill people felt so wrong. Specially when the players were on his side. I liked the Reptite timeline Cedric more =(

This I disagree. It's 1 AD, an age of foundation myths. It makes sense how everything was more violent back then. Think Old Testament, Greek and Roman mythos, etc. The players weren't so much on Cedric's side as they were just trying to "go with the flow" to avoid removing Guardia from history. IMO the Cambyse stuff feels wrong because the assassination was as gruesome as it was easy. Cedric or his men could easily have poisoned Cambyse themselves; it feels weird that the players have to do it themselves. Fighting Cambyse in a duel and having him die due a desperate move of his own might have been better, perhaps, though his sprite lacks fighting animations.

- Guardia's fall felt wrong, specially with the Mystics siding with Porre.

Medina didn't side with Porre, they sided with Porre's grievances, which are legitimate. And they didn't really plan to attack; the attackers were Kasmir's troops from the Middle Ages and the secret Porre Black Wind units led by Dalton; Kasmir and Dalton were both acting under King Zeal's orders.

- Most important: As much as I like Gurren Lagann, I dislike how Lavos' race was just an anti-spiral ripoff =(

Never saw Gurren Lagann, but from what I've just read on Wikipedia there doesn't seem to be meaningful similarities. The race of Lavos embraced evolution, they didn't reject it or wanted the destruction of the universe. Maybe the hints weren't clear enough, but the race of Lavos and humanity are one and the same in CE. Chrono Cross told us that humans act like Lavos; CE points out that Lavos acts like humanity as a whole too. The Dream Devourer is different and has a corrupted view and objective.

Anyway, thanks for the feedback. I think there are other peoples that think like you but didn't feel like posting or something. I say post your feedback, everyone. We'll take anything, whether it's positive or negative. If you post something negative, chances are I'll agree with your points most of the time.


EDIT: Also, yeah, Ayla uses something akin to Elemental power. Her Pangea animation for instance was actually an attack from Azala in CT, which was "Telekinesis, teleports a stone!" or something.

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Submissions / Chrono Fan Fan Art

« on: June 20, 2009, 12:15:49 pm »

Aurora Anrui (Chrono Crisis, and probably Chrono Ark too):

Original designer: Lena Andreia / Angela Song


King Alphard Zeal (Crimson Echoes):

Original designer: me, based on the character created by ZeaLitY


Maia (Chrono Ark):

Original designer: Lena Andreia


Crimson Echoes wallpaper:


Aha, it's funny how my art of King Zeal is less polished than the other pieces... This is because I drew it as a rough sketch that wasn't meant to be colorized at first, but eventually I still colorized it for fun, without cleaning it first.

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Chrono Trigger DS Analysis / Re: The Time Devourer Issue

« on: June 20, 2009, 09:33:45 am »

Also, remember that Serge is somehow special. Schala chose him instead of Crono for some odd reason. >_>

Serge is Schala's soulmate. The ending FMV depicts an alternate version of Schala Kid looking for an alternate version of Serge (who happens to the player). Remember, this FMV doesn't depict the future, it depicts an alternate dimension. Maybe even multiple alternate dimensions if the Schala Kid that wrote the diary and has a photograph isn't the same as the other(s). If Schala Kid and Serge are destined for each other in that alternate dimension or these alternate dimensions (not to mention Radical Dreamers), it's safe to assume they were destined for each other in the Chrono Trigger/Cross dimension too, from the very start.

I – So you wanted to connect the works with the relationships between Serge and Kid, and also Schala.

Kato – To pin it down, Serge and Kid were where I tried the hardest, moreover making a ‘boy meets girl’ kinda thing. A kid named Serge meets a girl named Kid and together they get wrapped up in an adventure. From the world he doesn’t know about secrets are slowly revealed, about Serge himself, Schala from the past, and how fate is tied in. This could just be an ending where boy meets girl and they do their story, but perhaps there’s another dimension, another story, a different meeting, and a completely different life story that you could have. I persistently tried my hardest to get the player to question things like this.

I – So for a good ending movie, you tried to use the crossing point of a young girl and her other side to imagine “a story in another dimension.”

Kato – Yeah, like that. I thought that was the perfect material to use to give meaning to a parallel world. In each independent parallel world there would be respective developing stories. If we did it that way, people at home could use the experience of Serge in the game’s worlds to think about the reality of their own world. Maybe somewhere in our world there’s a Kid, and surely someday we will find and meet. For a long time I’ve wanted realizations developed from games to not just stop with the game, and now I feel I’ve done it right. There’s a message that comes after the ending movie finished, and I hope that all players will understand these words that have come from my heart. That’s what I’d love to have happen.

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General Discussion / Re: The Chrono Compendium - <you fill the slogan>

« on: June 20, 2009, 07:28:56 am »

The Chrono Compendium - UNUSED UNUSED UNUSED UNUSED UNUSED UNUSED