I've been mulling it over, and I think we can decisively defeat corruption by maintaining an up to date library of all our work on the Crimson Echoes file server. Due to restructuring changes, only I have access to that now (though I'll see about others). We would have a section called "Exports" with a folder for every single changed location. You wouldn't export every little detail, but after making alterations and finishing an area (at least for a while), you would export the .Flux files and your .md5s for them and give them to me. I'd upload them. In the event of corruption, here's what we'd do.
If something corrupts, we'll remember the location. Then we'll take take an unmodified version of Chrono Trigger and systematically import our most up to date files (perhaps in amounts of ten). After each amount, we'll check the corrupted area to see if it happens. We'll narrow down what's causing it from there. At this point, we can ask JLukas, Geiger, Chickenlump, others here etc. to see if something specifically is causing it or if we just have a bad packet.
I plan to do this already when we build our new ROM. Once the exports are done, I'll go through every area checking events and maps for empty data. Just like last time, if we find a problem we'll track it down and send it off for evaluation. The only hard part would be inputting all the scroll value data / map size stuff, which I think is still unexportable...but regardless, yes.
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I believe this process will finally put the nail in corruption's coffin. If we do suffer some problems, we'll be able to get them fixed with the help of our serious rom hackers in the group. Things can be remedied case-by-case with all our work preserved in .Flux files until voila, the finished product is ready.
In line with this, I'd like to hold off as long as I can on making hard alterations to the ROM. Like the King Zeal sprite issue, hard alterations run a slight risk of causing problems. If we're going to nail the source of corruption in a hypothetical future situation, it'd be easier in a controlled environment where we know either data integrity / import and export / old, bad CE packets are to blame -- and don't have to worry about big, hard edits.
Comments and discussion?