Temporal Flux tutorial videos.

[Zakyrus]

Great news I'm about to get a new computer to work on this....hope to have every tutorial possible about the basics of ChronoTrigger editing and events down to 6 videos.. while I do have my stuff on Google Drive backup I might actually re-record at least one final time and then I can cross-reference mix stuff later... but I feel at this point I could do so much better on a video tutorial once I get a PC to work on.

-Z

[TheMage]

Yay!

[inuksuk]

I'm just starting to dip my toe into modding and I'd love a tutorial but I didn't see anything linked in the thread. Possibly I'm a big dummy?

[Mauron]

Zakyrus hasn't released a video yet. If you have any questions, just ask.

[inuksuk]

Aha, thank you. All your plugins for Temporal Flux are great! I'm just experimenting with editing enemy AI now. I'm sure I'll have lots of questions.

[inuksuk]

I've tinkered around with the Cathedral to try to learn what I can and can't do. I'm still learning what's possible to alter with Temporal Flux so I've got kind of a grab bag of questions.

1
How do I alter the "Found the secret Naga-ette bromide!" message? I see that the bromide is not treated as an item, and I can't find the message in any of the menus in the Strings window of Temporal Flux.

2
I think I see how to change what's in a chest: find it on the location editor, find the right chest, choose what's inside. Is it the same process to change the Power Tab to something else, or are tabs treated differently? (I couldn't find the room with the Guardia soldiers in Temporal Flux; it's not grouped with the rest of the Manoria maps).

3
What's going on with Attack 1 and Attack 2 in Hi-Tech? I wanted Gnashers to poison more consistently. I can adjust the % chance of poison on Gnasher Attack 2 no problem, but if I edit Gnasher Attack 1 to also apply poison I get unintended consequences--other monsters seem to call the same attack. I assume I also changed a lot of monster attacks by editing Gnasher Attack 2, but I didn't see evidence of it in the Cathedral.
I believe I can alter Gnasher's AI to just use Attack 2 if I want consistent poison, but I'm curious about what's going on with the attack editing.

4
Speaking of editing AI, shortening a monster's AI script shouldn't break anything, right? I lengthened Naga-ette's script and that didn't seem to matter since there's a dummy block of AI script after Naga-ette's block.

5
Is there any way to control who will be countered after a Double Tech? I got Naga-ette to counter Fire attacks but it seems to be random whether they hit Crono or Lucca when I Fire Whirl. I'd like some consistency if possible since it's the whole point of the Yakra fight.

6
Speaking of the Yakra fight, I tried to interpret his AI script for practice. Any corrections to make?

Code: [Select]

00 00 00 00       // "Conditional; always passes"
FE
01 00 05 0E       // "Attack 1 targeting random PC (OE purpose unknown)
01 00 05 0A       // "Attack 1 targeting random PC (OA purpose unknown)
00 00 06 04       // "Wander mode (06 = Nearest PC)? (04 purpose unknown)
02 0E 05 00 00 06 // "Needle Spin targeting random PC, battle message 06"
01 01 05 0E       // "Attack 2 targeting random PC (OE purpose unknown)
01 01 07 0A       // "Attack 2 targeting farthest PC (OA purpose unknown)
00 00 06 04       // "Wander mode"
02 4D 05 00 00 09 // "Shaking attack against all PCs, battle message 09"
00 00 06 01       // "Wander mode"
00 00 06 04       // "Wander mode"
02 0E 05 00 00 06 // "Needle Spin targeting random PC, battle message 06"
FE FF
1B 02 00 00       // "If count of living PCs is at most 2"
FE
00 00 06 00       // "Wander mode"
FE
17 20 00 00       // "Else if percent chance 32%"
FE
00 00 06 00       // "Wander mode"
FE
1F 04 01 00       // "Else if attacking PC is outside 48 pixel radius"
FE
02 4E 06 00 00 09 // "Counterattack all PCs, battle message 09"
FE
00 00 00 00       // "Else"
FE
0F 04             // "Display battle message 04"
00 00 06 00       // "Wander mode"
FE FF
Edit: Clarified question 5 a little

[Mauron]

1) If you go to a location and click events, the new tab will have all the actions and dialogue boxes for you to edit.

2) I'll use {013} Guardia Forest (1000 AD) as an example. In the events, look at object 29. You have the following:
Startup / Idle
- Choose graphics, position, properties.
- Check if the player grabbed it.
- Return and End to stop this section.
Activate
- Stop PC movement
- Set the item grabbed flag
- Hide the graphics
- Give the player an item
- Set the item index for the message
- Music
- Textbox
- Finish music
- Let PCs move
- Restore default music.
- No end condition, falls through to Touch.
Touch
- Return command, stops processing here.

Any item not in a chest is done through events.

3) There's a limited number of attack headers for enemies. Attack 1 is always header 0, attack 2 can be set in Fiendcrafter. Gnasher attack 2 probably changed the percentage on all enemy poison attacks.

4) Shortening is no issue. I believe the block immediately after the Naga-ette is one of the Lavos boss rush monsters, so you may run into issues there.

5) I don't believe so.

6) That looks right.

[inuksuk]

That's a big help, Mauron. Thank you!

[inuksuk]

Hello! I've had some success editing events, but I tried to add a basic NPC to the End of Time (Location 1D0, Packet 11B) and I've run into some problems. I think I understand that the End of Time is already crammed full of instructions, so my new Object made the section too big. Temporal Flux warns me that the packet exceeds 1700 when I try to Write Mem. I see that my new Object got addressed starting at [171A]; I also see that Object 00 gets addressed starting at [04A1].
1. Is there a way to add Objects to the 0000-03FF range? I can't seem to reorder Objects the same way I can reorder Commands within Objects by dragging and dropping. (Or am I not understanding what my problem really is here?)

2. Any tips for tile editing? I toyed around with adding some real estate to the End of Time but my attempts at, say, making a walkway to another platform by copying and pasting blocks of tiles looked deformed and unuseable. I had a little bit more success by working at the tile quadrant level to make things line up, but it still ends up looking pretty rough. Is it generally hard to edit maps this way, or am I bad at it?

If I did this right I attached my sample Nu NPC for reference.

[Mauron]

- The 0000-0??? at the beginning is data on each object. You can't write to it directly, but it's in use.
- Reordering objects is a pain. You have to cut all the objects you want after the object, then adjust all commands that address an object manually. For right now don't worry about reordering objects, it won't help with the lack of space.

For tile editing, I find it helpful to work with one layer at a time. Layer 1 is the bottom layer, then layer 2 is drawn on top of it. Layer 3 is used for effects like clouds. I use explicit paste to choose what layer I'm working on.

Save the map often, since there isn't an undo. Location -> Write to Memory will update what you reload.

For the Nu NPC, [1722] should be an End instead of a Return.

For fancy trickery, You can delete the [1125] Return, since there's no touch code. It will jump straight to processing the [1126] Return.

[inuksuk]

Thank you Mauron, that's a good explanation. I'll try again with the title editing. I think I was doing L1 and L2 together so I'll try them separately.

[inuksuk]

Your advice about explicit paste was great. My map doesn't look like complete garbage!

I fear I'm getting outside the scope of the thread but I've been trying to learn more about items. Specifically I wonder if it's feasible to edit the status inflicted on a weapon? (For example, change 2x damage to Magic --> 2x damage to Undead.) I see there's a block 0C0262-0C0423 with 5 bytes for each weapon but it seems the data I'm looking for is somewhere else. Searching the offsets for "status", "effect", "weapon" don't seem to turn up anything relevant.

[Mauron]

Weapon effect data starts at 0C2A05, and is three bytes each. The code for 2x damage to undead would be 03 04 80. There's an unused effect at 0C2A3B that can be replaced.

If you're using Itemizer, it will show up properly in the dropdown.

[inuksuk]

Ah, thank you! That's exciting. I've been able to edit the effect data and the changes come up in TF. I'm so impressed with Temporal Flux and your plugins.

[inuksuk]

Hello,
I'm having some trouble using a Byte Math, Value-to-Mem command in the event editor. I've built an NPC to increase the party's stats and I'm having trouble with HP, it being a two-byte value. I've attached a picture to show what I'm trying to do. At [0CBD] I can't seem to save the Value-to-Mem as a two-byte addition; it just reverts to one-byte. This means, for example, when I try to increase Crono's max HP by 20 from 495 --> 515 it rolls back down to 259 instead. Does Byte Math not support 2-byte operations like it appears to? Or is there some other way to accomplish what I'm trying to do?

(Edit) I should explain that I'm loading Crono's Max HP, Power and Stamina into memory; incrementing HP by 0x14, Power by 3, and Stamina by 5; and finally writing the new stats back to Crono's stat block in the section below.