Author Topic: Ending Pic mini-project  (Read 5545 times)

ZeaLitY

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Re: Ending Pic mini-project
« Reply #15 on: December 25, 2007, 01:02:33 pm »
We could. In the readme, I have this following the end of the credits:

Code: [Select]

   SERGE ~RADICAL DREAMERS~
   
            This is the first time I've ever seen his true face.
            Even for a guy like me, I'm taken aback by his looks.
             
            His hair sways in the moonlight, as his piercing blue
            eyes survey the environment below.

            His beauty is different than a woman's... there's some
            sort of a fierce, intrepid quality about him.

            He is truly... a beautiful person.

So maybe we could have a very small quote on screen. Then again, text is comparatively huge on the SNES due to the small resolution, so it might just make it ugly. Guess it depends. I'll leave this choice open.

FaustWolf

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Re: Ending Pic mini-project
« Reply #16 on: December 25, 2007, 01:36:32 pm »
I might just be getting closer to figuring out the palettes. Can someone tell me if, in the Temporal Flux location editor, "palette" actually means palette set, and "palette shift" actually means palette within the set? If so, the palettes in the ROM might just be ordered in the same way they are in Flux. I've got to do more investigation, but hopefully this is the case. It gives us a lot more leeway than I thought we had originally (since Flux will handle the palette pointers for us).

We've got twenty subtiles to work with as far as a nice text overlay is concerned. So five tiles I guess; might limit us to five letters without ROM expansion. Once I do a successful in-game test (I assume I'll start the game and Crono will be walking on the picture as opposed to his room), we can explore text overlay more in-depth.

EDIT: Okay, I think I now understand how the palettes are arranged in Flux. They're actually right in ROM order -- I was having a slight mismatch problem due to defining the palettes in terms of 16 colors when they're actually 15 colors. So Geiger's palette 0, shift 1 is the first location palette of the first set, Geiger's palette 0, shift 2 is the second palette of the first set, and so on. Now that I've reached this understanding, the REAL work can begin.
« Last Edit: December 25, 2007, 02:34:19 pm by FaustWolf »

Chrono'99

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Re: Ending Pic mini-project
« Reply #17 on: December 25, 2007, 07:23:06 pm »
The "Another Place... Another Time..." line is definitely good. "Fin" would probably be shown after the pic, on a black screen.

The entry from Serge's diary is equally interesting though. It reminds me of those excerpts from Alazlam J.D. in Vagrant Story; he's a historian from FFTactics who never appears in Vagrant Story, but his excerpt still manage to give a nice flavour to the game (it was something about ghosts and souls or something).

However, I'm not sure how effective it would be to shorten or summarize it... maybe we can show the whole entry on a black screen with the font used for the credits? I just coded it on a test ROM, see the attached pic. There's no comma, apostrophe, and ~, but we can probably graphic-hack them over some unused letters. Hell, perhaps we can graphic-hack the whole alphabet to have a different font. Lower case letters in particular would be nice. It's fixed-width though.

The other question is whether to show the excerpt at the end of the game (before or after the Another Place/Another Time pic) or at the beginning, like it is in Vagrant Story. I think the beginning would be more effective; it makes the whole game seem like a flashback (and RD almost canonical), but it's slightly less "random" than appending it to the ending after the whole adventure.

EDIT: Then again, stating that Magus is a "beautiful person" and then going into an adventure that shows him deceiving people and crushing their right eye may seem too much out of order. Well, maybe putting it at the end is better after all. Thoughts?

[attachment deleted by admin]
« Last Edit: December 25, 2007, 07:32:52 pm by Chrono'99 »

FaustWolf

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Re: Ending Pic mini-project
« Reply #18 on: December 25, 2007, 07:41:09 pm »
I'd considered graphic-hacking over another tileset for the text overlay on the ending pic, so maybe we can get a nice font going and use it for both? Is there another tileset besides the 1000AD interior you guys don't need? How about the Millennial Fair?

Chrono'99

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Re: Ending Pic mini-project
« Reply #19 on: December 25, 2007, 07:43:11 pm »
Yeah, the Millenial Fair tileset is not used. (The Telepod tileset isn't used either, but note that its palette is used for a room in Zeal Palace. It's not the same as the Millenial Fair one in any case.)
« Last Edit: December 25, 2007, 07:45:22 pm by Chrono'99 »

FaustWolf

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Re: Ending Pic mini-project
« Reply #20 on: December 25, 2007, 08:05:31 pm »
Ah, thanks for the palette warning. Anyone happen to know where the Fair tile set is in the ROM by any chance? Vehek already gave me one of the starting addresses, so we've got 128 subtiles or 32(?) tiles for a font right there.

What's our timeframe look like now? Are we shooting for a January 1st release, or just as soon as possible?

Vehek

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Re: Ending Pic mini-project
« Reply #21 on: December 25, 2007, 08:26:33 pm »
The Millennial Fair tileset uses tile packers 7E, 82, 83, 85, and 17.
Those should be at 2AE172, 2B0000, 2B0C55, 2B27C2, and 25B8D7.

ZeaLitY

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Re: Ending Pic mini-project
« Reply #22 on: December 25, 2007, 10:00:17 pm »
Oh, well, I just stuck that in the end of the readme as a sort of easter egg awesome thing, like Grimmjow Jeagerjaques in the Retranslation readme.

If we really go that route with ASCII text before and after, and use the beautiful person thing, I'd take it out of the readme, I guess. I'd leave in the Prophet art. But for the before section...hm...modified opening?

This associate of Kid's is known to us only as Magil of the Shadows.

A high-class magician of some sort, he looks to be about thirty.

...this mysterious figure who could allegedly slip in and out of the shadows...

At times, it seems as though I'm hanging around someone from another world.

~Serge, RADICAL DREAMERS

FaustWolf

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Re: Ending Pic mini-project
« Reply #23 on: December 25, 2007, 10:46:20 pm »
@Vehek: YOU ROCK!!

Looks like I've got the palette scheme totally figured out now, so I'll have an in-game test tomorrow at some point for the end pic. Anyone have a favorite font for the beginning/end/ending pic text? If the font is shrunk letter-by-letter, it might look pretty decent as a tileset.

« Last Edit: December 26, 2007, 05:54:14 pm by FaustWolf »

FaustWolf

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Re: Ending Pic mini-project
« Reply #24 on: December 26, 2007, 08:27:49 pm »
Attached are the results of my latest palette reduction experiment along with some other versions for comparison. I'm beginning to steer away from the idea of buffer paletting because, at most, I'd only be able to squeeze one buffer out of the seven palette shifts available, and that single palette would have to handle more colors than I could possibly stuff into it. But there are other options that will allow us to end up with something pretty decent.

Now for a description of what you're seeing as attachments. The top-most attached pic is the original 15-color mockup I posted earlier; it is the worst we could possibly do. Below that is a composite image made from seven separate groups of tiles, each group given its own palette. The sky, clouds, and the sky island turned out better this way I think, yet Magus and the turf he's standing on actually suffered significantly. This is only with the computer determining palette reduction, though -- I can get better results by picking the colors personally as I did with Magus' portrait. The last pic is the best the ending pic could theoretically get through optimal paletting for a total of 105 different colors.

I'll probably end up combining the best parts of the 15-color mockup with the best parts of the new version, and perhaps through that process I'll find a way of freeing up an extra palette or two to use on Magus himself. I can't promise blue hair this time, but I'll see what I can do.

[attachment deleted by admin]
« Last Edit: December 26, 2007, 08:33:13 pm by FaustWolf »

FaustWolf

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Re: Ending Pic mini-project
« Reply #25 on: December 27, 2007, 06:01:33 pm »
Hey everyone, I'm going to be moving my operations from the 1000AD interior tile set to some other set due to the need to use the 1000AD interior in the ending of Prophet's Guile. I'd like to use the Millennial Fair tileset for the ending pic, and it appears I'll have enough tiles, though one issue is bothering me; see the linked pic and see if you can answer a question for me:

http://img180.imageshack.us/img180/3935/questionjc9.gif

The decompressed tileset shown at the top-left is obviously for fair banners and flags, but these at least some of these tiles appear to be used in the animation of said flags. The Temporal Flux panel to the right shows only static animation frames, so I'm assuming I can't work with some of the tiles in this fair set. Has anyone ever tried to overwrite animation frames and re-insert into the ROM? If so, do the overwritten frames appear in Flux, or are they hidden and shown only in in-game animations?

There's an unusually large number of subtiles in this decompressed set (218 as opposed to the usual 128 I've seen previously), so I'm going to assume for now that 128 out of the 218 are accessible in Flux and the rest are "implied" animation subtiles that can't be manipulated in Flux. That would be a perfectly fine outcome, but just in case, are there any other tile sets not being used in Prophet's Guile? What about the 2300AD tile sets?

I'm slowly but surely improving the palettes in the ending pic. My progress so far is attached; compare the sky island and the grass at Magus' feet with those regions in the previous iteration ("7SplitTest.gif"). I have yet to work on the palettes being used for Mr. Beautiful himself.

[attachment deleted by admin]
« Last Edit: December 27, 2007, 06:06:32 pm by FaustWolf »

Chrono'99

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Re: Ending Pic mini-project
« Reply #26 on: December 27, 2007, 07:41:47 pm »
I'm not sure, but I do remember facing some problems when I was messing with the Blackbird tileset ages ago (with the animated conveyor belt tiles). Yeah, we'd better use a different tileset just in case. I think some tiles are animated in the 2300 AD tilesets. The Kingdom Trial tileset might be a safer bet (in location {1B6} in Temporal Flux).

FaustWolf

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Re: Ending Pic mini-project
« Reply #27 on: December 29, 2007, 01:36:44 am »
I still have to revisit the sky coloring scheme to get rid of some obvious blockiness, but here's where the final art is going. I attempted to recolor Magus' cape, but I think it looks like puke in its present state -- I'll let you all be the judges on that. With a bit of reshading it might look fine, but that's beyond my artistic capability. The first pic is the latest version with the seven palettes in use, the second is what it looks like when only one 15-color palette is in use. We could always go with the latter, simpler one; it makes no difference to me. What do you all think? I'd be more than happy to hand over my ending pic tile sets and reduced palettes if anyone is interested in refining the results.

BTW, what are the chances of being able to use an overworld tile set for the ending pic? Would that be harder to implement than using an interior set? If the Millennial Fair doesn't work out, I'll try for the kingdom trial if I can find it; anyone know where the trial set is? A possible alternate could be the 2300AD dome interiors if you guys aren't using those; animations might not be a problem in the domes from what I remember.

[attachment deleted by admin]

Vehek

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Re: Ending Pic mini-project
« Reply #28 on: December 29, 2007, 02:23:23 am »
Let's see, the courtroom uses tileset 1C. According to the location tileset data, that tileset uses tile packets 96, 97, 98, 99, 9A, AF, and 13.
Those packets should be at 2C0000, 2C0E5D, 2C1B72, 2C2786, 2C36D6, 2FD02D, and 257CBF.

Be careful, whichever tileset you actually modify, the graphics might take more space than the original and will have to be repointed.

FaustWolf

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Re: Ending Pic mini-project
« Reply #29 on: December 29, 2007, 11:50:41 am »
Wow, thanks as always Vehek. Is there a list of where all the location tile packets are in the ROM anywhere, or is there a mathematical equation I could use to figure that out? I hate to have to bug you for info constantly. :mrgreen: