Breaking Frog's Curse

[Rjenyawd]

So. Out of curiosity:

Temporal Flux + some custom sprite creation + a ROM data expansion hack

has the possibility of leading the way to a "Breaking Frog's Curse" mod, right? It's something I've wanted seen done in the game since my very first playthrough, when I was 9 and realized that even if I beat up Magus on that cliff, Frog was stuck with his curse until the end.

...but I just realized that we may have all the tools to do this now. The 8th character patch isn't really necessary for this, (like I previously thought) if we have extra room in an expanded data bank somewhere to just create a new human spritesheet and reference that, right?

I mean, theoretically we could just change all of Frog's sprite calls and animation assembly to the new sprites after the second battle with Magus, (regardless if you fight him or not). Then just script a short new scene in temporal flux to showcase the 'transformation' and BAM. Human Glenn for the rest of the game, right?

Is this possible? Or am I just radically pipe-dreaming? 

[Mauron]

It's possible, but tricky. The sprite data originally loads data from the ROM for each character slot - we need to conditionally change what data it uses. I've played with this in the past, but it doesn't quite work at the moment.

[Rjenyawd]

Awww. Well, boo.

So trigger predefines it's sprite calls before the game starts instead of at every instance the character is used?  So, effectively, my method above would only be useful if we wanted to change Frog's sprite for the WHOLE game.   

The 8th character patch may be the easier work around for this then. 

Guh. Flames of Eternity had my hopes up.

I cracked open that rom recently to look at the pallet data for their new character portraits, and ended up rabbit hole-ing down to the added Human Glenn sprites. 

[Mauron]

It might be possible to move the whole table to RAM, which would take care of everything except the palette, because of the way battle and shops handle that data.

[Random Factor]

Actually, in terms of magical lore, the different nuances in magical powers, the reality they're bound to, etcetera, it is possible to break frogs curse by destroying the magician that put it on him, while in a different situation would forever keep him locked in the shape of the frog. In the other regard of keeping Magus/Janus alive, doing so might compel the magician at some point to remove the spell. The amulet itself being imbued with the powers that you find upon not granting magus mercy has to be correlated to Schalas Pendant and has magical powers of its own. Also depending on it is how comfortable does Glenn become as being the frog and does he want to return or not?

In chrono cross, it starts bridging alternate reality theory and so doesnt even have to be the same Glenn, just attached across the realities and there is another chain-break to the magic spell along a different variety.

[Mauron]

Defeating Magus gives the only human Glenn appearance in one of the endings. I think the lack of a gameplay change was technical limitations.

[chrono.source]

This brings forth another interesting debate as to what Glenn's curse was bound to. since Magus is killed off and he remains a frog, it stands define Magus as only a catalyst for the transformation. Since Glenn only seems to change back after Lavos is defeated, is it bound to the magic created from Lavos? Or was this all just a coincidence and the spell just had a time delay when wearing off?

[Mauron]

I think it's Magus, since defeating Lavos with Magus alive doesn't turn Glenn back.

Playable human Glenn might have been considered, but that would have required a lot of extra data. It's probably the same reason the 8th character was cut from the game.

[Rjenyawd]

Random Factor: Sure. From a narrative standpoint, that could be the case. It's also possible Magus doesn't have much control over the transformation spell. (it's already been established with Flea, that shape changing is a different magical ability all together.) If Magus had already mastered it, or even just used it often, maybe he would have magicked a better prophet disguise than just throwing on a cloak with a hood.   

I also really like your question on whether Glenn has become complacent in his new form. It's a cool and metaphorical theory that insinuates that Glenn's own personal guilt may be keeping him cursed. Ie: He remains a frog because subconsciously he believes he deserves the punishment, and it doesn't fully break until he forgives himself for his inaction/cowardness/Cyrus' death.

 If we were ever able to make a playable human Glenn mod in the future, maybe we can look at what part his (re)transformation takes place. Have it be after his optional confrontation with Cyrus' ghost in the ruins, instead of after the battle with Magus. That way, it ties more in with Frog's own personal struggle and forgiveness with himself as opposed to the "kill the bad guy, break the curse" motif.

...Buuuuuuut in real-world talk; realistically, I agree with Mauron.
Frog not reverting back to a playable human form during the game was probably a time/software/memory limitation during development. The curse was too big of a narrative point in the game. They couldn't just leave the reasoning for his failure to 'break it' and revert ambiguously open ended. If there was meant to be a deep plot related reason, it would have been explained. But it wasn't.  Instead, the game presents a showdown with magus as an insinuated solution, and then gives you the Human Glenn ending as a "see you DID break the curse!" sort of bare minimum apology tie-up.

[Random Factor]

To pull out a small part of your paragraph, I think you're right in pointing out that it's not a spell seemingly in Janus' standard repertoire. That would cause it to fall into my theory of situational reality where he had control of the magic as it was cast and cast through him, but that Glenn's form was chosen or perhaps fated for him to wear by the same reality awareness that possibly created the gates for them to travel from era to era and place to place. Otherwise, it would be a decent dark spell to shapechange enemies with.

I do, also, think that they were limited by the technology they had to work with and could only have so many concepts able to be played through the technology, to catch Mauron's addition. There could be nuances to it that come into play that couldn't be conveyed in full.

Lavos's involvement is a decent suspicion, and even if it could be surmised that Lavos had greater matters to attend his attention to as his own entity, learning and growing, that it's entirely possible that he did, but would still only play a small part in the actual power behind the spell or its permanence so that it didnt take magic to maintain the form, which killing a magic user that cast it would suggest.

I do think that Lavos' death could trigger the event, but more in an unweaving of magic and spells that would be unweaved much like certain parts of Final Fantasy 8 with time travel involved as the vestiges involved would lost interest or wane for other reasons at the end of the major catalytic events that literally changed and rechanged reality from in the inside.

Time is a vastly complex concept filled with entities beyond those seen and labeled. Glenn, no matter his humanity or human aspect, became legend through being a Frog, not being a human, and that plays into it more than any of the other aspects. Pure story-telling as art mimics life as it mimics art again and tells the stories told and played out to the tune of eternal entertainment among the mortal/immortal instruments.

[justin3009]

Skipping most of the rest of the posts, but it's definitely possible to have it on a memory check for Magus being dead, Frog would return to being human. We know where the code is for each character so it'd be a matter of splitting Frog's section off into it's own chunk and have a specific check for him to be human or not.

The rest would be altering his sprite assembly and animation data to load as well.

It's doable with some ASM work but it's definitely not out of the question.