Author Topic: Temporal Flux Newbie Questions...  (Read 3028 times)

VinceIP

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Temporal Flux Newbie Questions...
« on: March 04, 2006, 01:24:48 pm »
I just got involved with TF last night. I must say, it's a wonderful program. I've been with Chrono Trigger since I was 9 and ever since I beat it, I dreamed of a sequel where the crew would return. Now it's possible! :D

I just read a wonderful tutorial on the site about making a scene between 2 NPCs. Now I want to test out the scene. I can't find much documentation on it, so sorry if this is a dumb question.

How exactly to I save my modified CT game and play it in my emulator? I clicked the save option under File, but it froze up completely, saying at the bottom left status bar "Claiming memory for unfmodified data".  I waited for awhile, nothing happened. What's wrong?

I have more numerous questions as well. I would be very gratefull for a productive answer.

- Is it possible to create new party members, weapons, items, techs, etc? Or do I have to replace these things with old ones?
- How can I create new sprites and tilesets and put them in Temporal Flux? I should be able to draw and edit sprites, but I'm not sure how I would go about using them in-game.
- Is it possible to edit the battle system or battle sequences in any way?
- How do I access certain parts of my game for testing without having to play through the entire thing?
- Why is Temporal Flux such a damn RAM hog? :(
- What are my general limitations overall to what type of CT game I can create?

Thanks for any help. I would really appreciate it.

justin3009

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« Reply #1 on: March 04, 2006, 02:03:23 pm »
You can create new weapons and items.  But Techs and party Members you have to replace.

Same as first one you have to replace, and the tile sets can't change i don't think.  Well, if you find the right offset address you could extract the graphics and hand edit them urself but only so far i've seen is the islands.

I don't think you can edit the battle system or sequences in any way.  BUT i do think you could create like a dueling system using scripting and coding but no the actual battle sysem.

You'd have to make a teleport option.  Like, for our game we did a teleport option from Crono's house to 2300 AD to test some new stuff.

Well, because TF is evil that's why :P

Only limitations in game are.  You can't add a whole new party member unless you change the sprite.  NO tech editing (as of yet).  Can't import music or new sound effects.  That's about it.  Only a few things but i believe in the future tf will go beyond these.

fxar99

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« Reply #2 on: March 04, 2006, 02:04:58 pm »
To save your changes in the Event Editor, make sure you click on the Update and Write Mem. buttons after each change, then when everything's ready, click Save. It should work.

You can replace party members using a sprite editor and a status editor, but I doubt whether you can really add another character slot (here's an interesting topic, though: Extra Playable Characters (Chrono Trigger Prerelease)

You can put an Exit in, say, Crono's Kitchen that takes you to the Location where your NPCs are. Just go to Crono's Kitchen, increase the number of exits by 1, then select the last exit (0 is the first exit, as I recall) and set its coordinates and target. See the other exits for example.

With Temporal Flux you can edit location and overworld, strings (in-game text), music instruments and, of course, events (am I missing anything)?

VinceIP

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« Reply #3 on: March 04, 2006, 02:14:10 pm »
Thanks a lot. That was very informative. Speaking of the future of TF, do we have as of now any word on upcoming versions?

fxar99

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« Reply #4 on: March 04, 2006, 02:23:13 pm »
Temporal Flux 2.00 was released only a few months ago. I don't think we're getting any new versions soon.

JLukas

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« Reply #5 on: March 04, 2006, 06:06:02 pm »
You can grab Chickenlump's Chrono Tweaker program here to edit monster, item, etc. stats that aren't available in TF yet:

http://www.chronocompendium.com/Term/Utilities_%28Chrono_Trigger%29#Chrono_Tweaker

Graphics can't be modified directly in TF, but you can decompress the graphics packets, modify them in a SNES graphics editor, and reinsert.

Geiger's notes on the RAM usage:

is it normal for TF to use a lot of RAM?

Yes. For starts, two copies of the ROM are held in memory. And a ton of stuff is decompressed to more memory. And consider that each map you look at is a generated-on-the-fly 3 megapixel image.

VinceIP

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« Reply #6 on: March 05, 2006, 07:52:37 pm »
This has all been of great help! :)

Even more questions now. I already have some small project ideas planned...

- Firstly, is there a tutorial anywhere that could teach me more in-depth about creating rooms that can warp me to areas for testing?
- How do I change the title screen and get rid of the intro with the sea gulls and view of the Fair?
- Can I remove or change enemy encounter areas?
- How exactly do I commence a battle with certain enemies?

Maelstrom

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« Reply #7 on: March 13, 2006, 07:50:48 am »
Here's a super newbie question:

How do I edit the script in TF 2.00?  I had been using 1.07 and found it under many "dialogue" sections, but those no longer seem to exist.  Is this feature somewhere else, or is there some superior tool for the purpose of editing the script?

Thanks!

fxar99

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« Reply #8 on: March 13, 2006, 09:18:42 am »
Quote from: Maelstrom
Here's a super newbie question:

How do I edit the script in TF 2.00?  I had been using 1.07 and found it under many "dialogue" sections, but those no longer seem to exist.  Is this feature somewhere else, or is there some superior tool for the purpose of editing the script?

Thanks!


The script is in the event code of each NPC since version 2.00.

Maelstrom

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« Reply #9 on: March 14, 2006, 06:17:58 am »
Thanks!

I don't suppose there is a "search" function that can find a certain piece of text (or code) in a given location (or all locations for that matter), is there?

JLukas

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« Reply #10 on: March 14, 2006, 09:36:37 pm »
A particular location will contain all the text strings/code used in it.  If you open Location 006 Gato's Exhibit, for example, and open the Event Editor, all the text strings and code used in that area will be present there.  Finding the specific text string you want is quite easy as most event code is rather short.  The NPC actions (code) for a particular NPC are normally in the same Object as the LoadNPC (name) command, but can jump to elsewhere with CallObjFunc commands.

Geiger

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Temporal Flux Newbie Questions...
« Reply #11 on: March 17, 2006, 04:24:53 am »
is it normal for TF to use a lot of RAM?

Yes. For starts, two copies of the ROM are held in memory. And a ton of stuff is decompressed to more memory. And consider that each map you look at is a generated-on-the-fly 3 megapixel image.


While this was true of v1.07, in v2.00 upto a 12 megapixel image is generated.

Truthfully, Flux should actively use no more than 50 megs at any given time (provided you don't have a ton of maps open).  Anything beyond that is probably garbage that has not been collected yet by .NET.  Unlike most editors (that I have seen), Flux edits everything in memory.  File changes are written out only once when the user selects Save.

Also, "Write Mem" is only necessary for events once before saving or closing the window.  For maps, it is also necessary before changing the loaded map (if you switch from Crono's Room to Crono's kitchen without writing, you will lose your changes).

The idea of Write Mem is that you are saving a copy of the packet to memory.  The main reason this is necessary is because most packets in the ROM are compressed.  The working copy is uncompressed.  While some packet preparation will be done at Write Mem time, most of the final, playable preps will be done only at Save time when the packets are recompressed.

---T.Geiger

Maelstrom

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« Reply #12 on: March 18, 2006, 12:41:05 pm »
I haven't always had what I was looking for neatly bunched where I'd expect it to be, but I've gotten through it in my limited work.

Anyway...

Here's another one: I'm trying to create item names with spaces, but when a player acquires these items in a battle (like after defeating an enemy), everything after the end of the first word gets lopped off.  Indeed, it seems like there are different spaces, as all properly recognized spaces are compressed as "FF", and "fake" ones are encoded as "EF."  The item names *do* show up correctly in the menu (when on the field).

So, how do I write a space that is encoded as "FF" as opposed to "EF"?

(Although I can just Hex Edit myself, duh...)

Geiger

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« Reply #13 on: March 18, 2006, 05:19:02 pm »
Flux should handle this automatically, unless something has gotten fouled up in the conversion code.

I'll file this away as a bug to be checked for in the next release.

---T.Geiger

Maelstrom

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« Reply #14 on: March 19, 2006, 05:08:28 am »
From what I can tell, these two variations of spaces serve appropriate purposes:

FF: These are spaces to be used before the end of a name.  These keep following words from being lopped off, but perhaps they may also be annoying whitespace if used after the end of an item name.

EF: These are used after the end of a name.  These spaces don't show up as whitespace, but they result in subsequent words being lopped off.  Perhaps this is because this value represents an "end of word" character (but this seems to be disregarded if EF preceeds the *first* word in an item name).