Marbule Gallery - Completed Fan Creations > Crimson Echoes

New Protocols and Planning

(1/6) > >>

ZeaLitY:
You know, I hate making thread after thread, but then again having a fresh start each time allows for easier and clearer presentation. After speaking to Geiger, I'm relaying and proposing guidelines for editors that must be adhered. Due to horrible abuse in the early stages of the project and a string import bug, the Crimson Echoes ROM is ailing. To prevent having to deal with corruption in the future, follow these rules.


* When editing, after making a large edit to a map or event (or after finishing a new area), copy and paste the ROM in the same folder as a backup. I do this by having folders dated by day (like 10-15-06) in which I edit the most recent ROM. The first back up is something like 1_porreroom.smc. The second could be 2_guardiacastle.smc. These are named after each major edit, giving you a clear idea of where your progress sits if you must use a backup.
* If you are editing outside work, export .flux files. Please do not make an .ips patch for something exportable or a new version of the ROM. Patches can only be used for things that Temporal Flux cannot edit or in special cases. The chance of corruption may be relatively remote, but it's time we stopped throwing our work back and forth like a football. We need to keep the ROM in the hands of one person. Since there really is no ROM right now, we'll determine later who gets it and how we'll transfer it if someone else needs to do corrective work.
* Before you export files, download this and generate an MD5 checksum file for each .Flux. This may sound like overkill, but MD5 is a good way of checking file integrity.
* As always, if you encounter an error while doing something normal, copy it down to a text file and exit the program without saving. I haven't explicitly asked Geiger about this, but it sounds like saving something in the face of an error is a pretty bad idea, so don't do it. Try to remember WHAT you were doing exactly (even if you have to use printscreen to take a screenshot) and copy down the exception error text so it can be tested later for an actual bug.
Any other suggestions from visiting ROM hackers or editors are welcome.

Now, we also have the problem of transferring the ROM's hard edits. We should postone what we can until a workable game is made. The chance that hard edits might corrupt something is remote, but still exists. We should hedge our bets and create a good, working adventure before customizing everything.

ZeaLitY:
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.

~

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?

ZeaLitY:
Okay, so how should we get started? I was thinking that for now, we should just rebuild the game chapter-by-chapter. We should have two concurrent ROMs: the real one, and the one in which we'll keep track of hard changes with. So if I'm editing the Vanguard and make map XX 40 by 40, I'll make it 40 by 40 in our hard change ROM. This is so we can import / export without having to go through the process of making all the correct map lengths and scroll values. The hard changes ROM will be totally unedited save for keeping track of this stuff.

We'll be following all the protocols...so expect to see things pop up in that KingZeal folder.

ZeaLitY:
Well, sorry for another reply, but it looks like I'll be restoring the demo all the way up to where Chrono'99 and I were working on the plot before corruption. I'll post patches in the relevant thread.

ZeaLitY:
That's weird. Somehow, Load Screen (00) was configured to use event packet 18 on the old ROM instead of 17. Glad I figured that out...

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page