Author Topic: Ending Pic mini-project  (Read 5540 times)

FaustWolf

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Ending Pic mini-project
« on: December 24, 2007, 02:07:36 pm »
With Magus' portrait down, I'm going to see what needs to be done for the end pic and handle any palette reduction that may be necessary. Chrono'99 says we should be able to use Temporal Flux to swap Chrono's house tile set for the end pic, an idea which I like very much because the tile sets apparently have up to 6 or 7 15-color palettes, making for up to 90 colors or so that we could potentially use if things work out as I'm hoping. Some pointer work may be necessary, and it may not even be possible to "link" all the little palettes into one big one, but we'll have to see.

What's the plan for the pic, exactly? Chrono'99 and Zeality were discussing an ending quote paralleling Schala's final lines in Chrono Cross. I think the current plan is to place that quote after the pic, but I suppose we could always include it in the pic if it's fairly short and would save you guys some time. Depends on what works best with the game's programming.

Chrono'99 and Zeality, have you guys decided on an ending pic to use yet? Will it be the one with Magus standing on one of the sky islands looking out over Zeal palace? It's attached in its original state, along with another version that's grayscaled and that has a short message on it as an illustration of some of our options -- we may have to grayscale it if it's impossible to link tileset palettes together.

As a refresher for myself that others may find useful for the quote, I'm reproducing a bit from the script compiled by Zeality and Terminus Traductions -- Schala's final lines in Cross:

   Thus the curtain closes on another tale.
   
   An eternity has passed...
   Fleeting dreams fade into the distance...
   All that is left now
   Is me and my memories...
   
   But I'm sure we'll meet again,
   Someday, you and I...
   Another place, another time.
   
   It's just that we might not realize
   That you are you and I am me...
   
   Let us open the door to the great unknown,
   Come across another reality,
   And live another today...
   Even when the story has been told,
   Life goes on...
   
   Until we meet again,
   Take care of yourself, my friend...
   
   Forever yours,
   
   Schala "Kid" Zeal
 
 Ending Cutscene
   
 [Schala]
   I will find you...
   Even if I have to search the world over...
   
   Sometime, somewhere...
   
   I'm sure...
 
 ~Fin


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ZeaLitY

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Re: Ending Pic mini-project
« Reply #1 on: December 24, 2007, 02:33:04 pm »
This is the resolution of the CTJ one:



Those four words seem to work well. I was worried that the hack might not have a proper "ending", but the graphic art there really caps off all the emotion Magus has gone through.

FaustWolf

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Re: Ending Pic mini-project
« Reply #2 on: December 24, 2007, 02:49:34 pm »
Alrighty, thanks for the Japanese ending art! Now I know what we're probably working with size-wise. I know you imported data into the ROM at certain offsets to get the ending art back in the NA version Zeality, but you didn't overwrite any location tile sets for that, right? I'm wondering if we can push the envelope in any way with the method Chrono'99 suggested. But we could always do the same thing you did for the Retranslation, if that's easier.

Geiger's site has a Temporal Flux manual listed as last modified in 2004. Anyone know offhand if that's the latest version? It'll do either way I'm sure.

ZeaLitY

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Re: Ending Pic mini-project
« Reply #3 on: December 24, 2007, 02:57:07 pm »
The tileset we overwrote was basically a prototype of the tileset used to make the Japanese art. In an unmodified ROM, it's like the last tileset in the list, and looks like a few garbled tiles. I suppose we're going for the 1000 A.D. town residence because it uses a lot more real estate (compared to the art tileset, which, apart from the art, was totally blank).

FaustWolf

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Re: Ending Pic mini-project
« Reply #4 on: December 24, 2007, 03:15:44 pm »
The Japanese ending pic was definitely limited to 16 colors -- only thing I'm not sure about is whether it's a full 16 or if it's 15 plus one transparency. Zeality, do you happen to know if that peach-ish border showed up around the ending pic in-game? I'll see what I can do with a grayscale ending pic if it comes down to repeating the process you used for the retranslation.

For now, I'll see what we've got to work with if we use the 1000 AD tileset.

ZeaLitY

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Re: Ending Pic mini-project
« Reply #5 on: December 24, 2007, 04:24:05 pm »
Yeah, that border's there.

FaustWolf

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Re: Ending Pic mini-project
« Reply #6 on: December 24, 2007, 04:58:46 pm »
Ooh, if the border's there, we might be working with 16 colors then. Hmm... It appears that each location may be taken care of by one 15-color palette - so grayscale may be forced on the ending pic I'm afraid. Picture size should turn out more promising -- it would appear that we'll have plenty of room to work with judging from the Japanese ending pic and what I've seen in Temporal Flux.

I'm still exploring our options regarding the text-on-pic idea I had earlier, and I still have to wrap my mind completely around how the location palettes work, but on the assumption that 15 colors is the max, here's how the ending pic would appear v. how the Japanese ending art appeared. I'll see if I can get a decent sepia-colored mockup to show you guys later.

EDIT: Wow! Looks like it'll take awhile to sift through all the decompressed tile sets to find the 1000 AD interior (Crono's House). You guys have NO need for 1000AD tile sets, right? It would appear that all 1000AD house interiors share the same tiles from what I've seen in Flux.

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« Last Edit: December 24, 2007, 07:44:29 pm by FaustWolf »

FaustWolf

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Re: Ending Pic mini-project
« Reply #7 on: December 24, 2007, 08:51:54 pm »
Anyone know if there's any way to decompress multiple files at a time in Temporal Flux? You'd think Crono's house (i.e., 1000 AD interior tile set) would be early on in the ROM, but go figure. Maybe I'll get lucky and stumble on it next.

Vehek

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Re: Ending Pic mini-project
« Reply #8 on: December 24, 2007, 09:31:15 pm »
I haven't actually checked by decompressing them yet, but the tiles the 1000 AD tileset uses should be at 2B43A7, 2B4FFA, 2B5C54, 2CF61D, 2B27C7, 2B733E.
« Last Edit: December 24, 2007, 09:50:03 pm by Vehek »

FaustWolf

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Re: Ending Pic mini-project
« Reply #9 on: December 24, 2007, 09:47:09 pm »
OOH! That helps me immensely Vehek! I'll check out those addresses. Wow, they're toward the end of the major tile set section then. That would have taken me a loooong time, because I was just going in order.

Okay, looks like we've got it! Thanks again. One quick correction: the packet starting at 0x2B5C54 actually starts at 0x2B5C53. That's what worked for me, at least. Now for some more artwork insertion! :twisted:

I'll hopefully be able to do an in-game test tomorrow, then we can work out final details on how the artwork should appear before a final patch is made.
« Last Edit: December 24, 2007, 11:24:04 pm by FaustWolf »

FaustWolf

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Re: Ending Pic mini-project
« Reply #10 on: December 25, 2007, 12:39:00 am »
Oh my goodness gracious, it appears that the palettes aren't linked to the location specifically, but to various objects within that location. An example of what I mean is attached to this post. With some extreme creativity this could be used to our advantage; we'll have to see what's possible.

With regard to any text overlay, I figure that could be accomplished by converting a few tiles into letters and giving them the proper properties in Temporal Flux. That depends on how much space we've got left over; if I can track down the L3 (level 3?) tiles for this set, it might be very feasible. I might be looking at them already, but some palette work will have to be done to see for sure. I imagine the L1&2 and L3 tilesets would be stored together or near each other.

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Vehek

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Re: Ending Pic mini-project
« Reply #11 on: December 25, 2007, 01:29:57 am »
Each tile can be set to use one of the 7 palette sets.

FaustWolf

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Re: Ending Pic mini-project
« Reply #12 on: December 25, 2007, 01:56:58 am »
Thanks again Vehek! Actually, it just so happens that the ending pic actually looks decent in color with 15 colors! If you folks like the mockup attached to this post, we're good to go as far as major design considerations. What you see when you click on it is the actual resolution I would insert it with. This is the maximum resolution we can include with the tile sets Vehek directed me to earlier. We've got 640 tiles at our disposal, and the attached .bmp will require 620. That leaves an extra 20 tiles we can use for a text overlay if you like.

Now for two questions that are looming in my mind as I'm getting closer to actual graphic swapping. First, TileMolester reads .bmps as 4 bit-per-pixel linear graphics, whereas the uncompressed graphics are in 4-bit-per-pixel planar mode. Anyone know if this will be problematic down the road? I'm hoping I can just do a cut/paste in TileMolester from the bitmap to the tileset and things will be magically taken care of.

Secondly, does anyone have a guestimate of how many tiles can fit onscreen given the SNES', uh, projection capability? The ending pic would look pretty awesome in its current resolution, and I'm hoping we could use some sort of zoom function if it's too large for the screen.

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« Last Edit: December 25, 2007, 01:59:46 am by FaustWolf »

Chrono'99

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Re: Ending Pic mini-project
« Reply #13 on: December 25, 2007, 05:16:24 am »
You mean 640 subtiles, don't you? One tile is 16 pixel-wide and a subtile is 8 pixel-wide. The SNES can show 16x14=224 tiles onscreen (896 subtiles). See the first pic I attached. There's an infamous black line at the bottom of each location screen but it can be removed with a memory assignement.

The picture looks fine as is, but are you sure we can't use more colors? As Vehek said, each "Palette" slot in Temporal Flux actually has 7 palettes that can be assigned to each subtile with the "Palette Shift" stuff. I believe Palette Shift 0 is always void, but this still gives us 6x15=90 colors to use.

Ideally, we could have Magus's cape use one palette, the sky another one, etc., but this might be tricky since subtiles are square and the resulting shading might be blocky. A solution would be to have "buffer" palettes (like buffer states in politics) which would have half of its colors (more or less) from a first palette and half from a second palette. I attached a mockup to illustrate what I think we could do. If it's too difficult to do, the current 15-color pic is fine though.

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« Last Edit: December 25, 2007, 05:19:35 am by Chrono'99 »

FaustWolf

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Re: Ending Pic mini-project
« Reply #14 on: December 25, 2007, 12:16:20 pm »
Yeah, I think I meant subtiles -- or whatever shows up in TileMolester when you turn on the "tile grid" switch. Just so we can be absolutely clear on this matter, I've attached a pic of what I mean. We'll need 620 of whatever units are being shown in the screencap, and we've got 640 to play with.

Half the battle is just identifying which palettes out of the 623 total location palettes are applicable to each tile set / objects within the tile sets. Also, it would be helpful if anyone has info about how the palette options in Flux are arranged versus how the data is arranged in the ROM -- Flux says we've got 0xFF, or 256, palettes to work with in locations, but the data holds up to 623 (89 sets * 7 palettes/set), which is slightly confuzzling -- I'm probably just not understanding how things are labeled in Flux or something.

Anyway, yes, if the screen can show 896 subtiles max and what I've been referring to are subtiles, then we should be good to go as far as size is concerned. I'll see what I can do about stuffing more colors into the final result; I've got some tricks up my sleeve yet, which will essentially boil down to what you've suggested Chrono'99. BTW, do we want a text overlay at all (even if it's just a "~fin"), or do we want the picture plain? This consideration shouldn't affect the max number of colors we can use too much.

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