Dimensional Vortex maps [Extract]

[dclem]

Hey everyone! I'm new to the Chrono Trigger modding scene; I was wondering it was possible to get the maps of the Dimensional Vortex locations:

• Frozen Cliffs
  Volcano (1000 A.D.)
  Temporal Research Lab

I don't know if any DS Chrono Trigger tools exist out there; or if they the D.Vortex maps are already available—please point me there. Thank you guys in advance!

[TheMage]

Heyo! What we've got is very small indeed, limited to mostly sprites rather than locations - dream devourer, schala, smidges, the new gate,
and a screenshot of the tower of the ancients- --

https://www.chronocompendium.com/Term/Locations_(Chrono_Trigger).html

lower right, DS Locations.

_______________

As far as I can tell there's no direct resource for Chrono Trigger DS exclusively, and while I tinker with roms, I in no way know how to make a tool, only know (or rather slowly learn) how to manipulate tools already made.

Last night I fiddled with NSMB Editor 5.2 and opened up a fresh Chrono Trigger.nds
I will say everything is so much more organized in CTDS then CT SNES as far as I can tell.

the TL;DR is I've located tilesets used in maps, but not complete maps put together, and I'm not sure how to do that with either programs i've listed below. D:

It should be do-able with the program Crystaltile2 however I'm stuck at the moment.

The long version is: 

I downloaded and opened up a fresh CT.nds in NSMBe5



I opened up roots and everything was nice and tidy in individual folders, maps, chara (characters?) etc-



in the world map folder, I found WorldBg_0007_ncg.bin



I've determined ncg.bins are the actual graphics, while .ncl.bin is the palette.

I double click, which opened a small screen that showed me squat. I kept it open then I scrolled down and double clicked WorldBgPlt_0007_ncl.bin



a screen came up with about 14 palettes, I clicked add all, closed the screen with the add all option, and went back to the other window, where I'd open the WorldBgPlt_0007_ncl.bin. This window is called 2D texture editor.





I clicked view in 4pbb format, on the left side, which turned it to this:



I played around with the tile width, until I got 16 and it became something that still looked like garbage, but i thought hey that kind of looks like a mountain. So I zoomed in and changed the palette on the left from 1 to 7. Yep that is definitely the mountain in the overworld map!



 Well. Sort of. Its not displayed correctly. Because I apparently have nothing better to do at 3 am, and I knew it was the overworld mountain and had the same piece handy from SNES as ive been sprite editing, I opened both images up in tile molester.

Yep, definitely the same mountain:



Let's fix the palettes;



however the one on the left is complete, ripped from SNES while the one on the right is the same as the image from NSMB minus the palette. but you can see it has these horrible lines through it? I assume because its in 4pbb format but not 4pbb 2X2 in NSMB and the palette is slightly off in NSMB and none of the 14 match what I get in tilemolester.

What does all this mean for locating maps in CTDS? Well, not much im afraid, i've found one tileset piece that I can't display correctly 

So I moved on to the program Crystaltile 2.

Here is a good guide on how to edit with this which I've been following; https://gbatemp.net/threads/the-ultimate-nintendo-ds-rom-hacking-guide.291274/

however the graphic files mentioned in this guide are .NARC files after being decompressed from the rom, so originally they are CARC files. Once decompressed the NARC file gives three files in this guide- NCGR - (the image equivalent to .ncg perhaps?) NCLR are the palettes, (equivalent to .ncl perhaps?) and .NSCR are 'Map files' that will put the image in the right place in game.​

This is where I'm stuck, if I export WorldBg_0007_ncg.bin from crystaltile 2 and decompress it with the program recommended in the tutorial and open it as the guide instructs, I can't figure out how to view it. It doesn't let me go to sub-file sort and F2 does nothing and I don't end up 'seeing' anything or putting the image together or map together.

I'm basically grasping at tileset pieces while trying to find a full map and no luck so far.


But maybe my late night exploration will help you? Or help someone else help you? If you find the full maps, let me know! I'll keep exploring myself 

[Mauron]

If I knew where the right maps were, the DS data could be stuck in an SNES ROM to display. I've done this with Overworld maps before.

[dclem]

Wow! I was not expected such detailed thank you so much for explaining in detail of getting the rom open and exploring the tilesets. At first i thought of a sort of a free-camera thing (if that even works for 2d sames, where I could view the map from aw far/at large and take a a screenshot like that). But I'm not sure if that is harder or easier than extracting it at this stance. alas i'll be working throw it to the end.

[Zakyrus]

Will there be a temporal flux exports version soon?
-z

[Mauron]

Probably not, unless someone else starts some significant DS hacking progress

[dclem]

I was wondering if this would be better to go about through PC steam version? with that at least we can extract the resources.bin contents.

[Mauron]

The Steam version should be in the same format, but it's still a matter of locating the data.

[Acacia Sgt]

Reviving this, it's likely the maps on the Steam version are located on Game/field/map_bin. Thing is, they're bin files. If there's a way to extract their contents, we could check if they are the maps.

[Vehek]

In the DS version, maps are in the PS_BIN\MapTable directory. Each one directly corresponds to the same numbered packet in the SNES version.
(I now own a copy of the Steam version, but I haven't looked at the internals yet.)

I did a test by extracting a map file, then compressing it into the SNES ROM and changing a map data pointer to it.



(This is map 667, if you want to try it yourself).
I'm trying to find if there's any file I can directly point to for the additional locations' data (tileset, pallete, etc.) So far I only have a memory address (Japanese version) for all the location data (2059E34).

Edit:
In the Steam version, each location's data is in a separate mapinfo_xxx.dat file. I observed from the DS version that starting with location index 532 (0x214), event packet and map packet are the same as the index. (The indices before that point are probably debug or filler events.)

[Zakyrus]

 

Wait...wait...wait...wait...wait...wait...wait.....wait a f*cking quadrillion nanoseconds....

There are already exports to each of those maps? And SECONDLY (I have no idea WHY...we HAVENT just made our OWN MAPS of those .ds exports...using just REGULAR CT TemporalFlux .map Exports (using regular CT gfx but replace the GFX LATER!>!>!>!>!))

WoW!

~Z

[Vehek]

I'm not sure what you mean by "already exports", unless you're talking about this experiment or that map editing in the Steam version mentioned on the Modification page. It wasn't documented here which files contained the map data, same format as the SNES version once decompressed.
The main problem is not knowing the contents of each map. (I was studying the raw hex of the  DS End of Time's event data, which is where I got the location index for the Arena of the Ages. I've also messed with warps, but I'm not about to test every single map.)

This is what I did for the image I posted.

• Extract MapTable_0667.dat from Chrono Trigger DS, or resources.bin of the Steam version
• Using the Compression menu in Temporal Flux, place it somewhere in free space
• Add a pointer to the list of location map pointers, pointing to the new map
• Set a location to use the new map and set the tileset and palette correctly. I just used Present-day Guardia Castle, but luckily, they actually shared the same palette.

(I suppose if I knew how a .flux file worked I could place the data directly into a .flux, but that wasn't a priority at the time.)

My guess at the format of the mapinfo files in the Steam version, based on comparing them to the SNES version.

Code: [Select]

00: Music
02: L1/L2 Tileset
04: ???
06: L3 Tileset
08: palette
0A: Palette again?
0C: Map
0E: tileset yet again?
10:Event packet
13:Scroll settings

[Zakyrus]

Surely, A REGION of MAPS could be done(or "duplicated) if NOT the other way around(MAKERS MAPs) but....thats something tilesets and MOBILITY(with tileset settings) could make, for a functional GAME MOD, lol, for REAL.



~Z