JP's Beta Test

[Agent 12]

I'll do my final run through here.  You'll get some behind the scenes action as I jot down whatever comes in my head for one of the features.

PROLOGUE:

Developer notes:

This chapter is pretty much the same as it was since....well a long time ago .  Zeality's director skills show in the very first scene. Having the two NPCs in the  sort of goof around before the actual scene between Crono/Marle takes place is a nice touch.  We definitely took feedback from the fans here after the first demo and made the fetching quest optional. 

Fiona's dungeon was added because people wanted a way to fight right from the getgo.  It's one of the few maps that I didn't touch AT ALL.  Oh man...the medina mayor situatoin changes a ton through the game but 90% of the people wont' even notice Hopefully the 10% that do notice appreciate it.

I added the closing crono's shades cause of V...now i close them every time too . I love the spy in the porre square, another nice touch.  Chrono'99 did such a good job with the meeting.  Crono used to look ridiculous when he attacked the guard, and 99 killed two birds with one stone by having the guard not die (fan feedback was not happy about the deaths) and adding a little humor with having the guard try to escape and fake death.  This guard is also shown to have been captured later (yet another nice touch)


Mapping:
Chair in choras on right side

Dialogue:

Toma flipped guy in shrine could text box position
Guy in the arbortoreum talks about a room behind the altar....this is just mean there's nothing there anymore
Crono's loud and clear should be on the top


DIFFICULTY: n/a


CHAPTER 1:

This was really when i decided to take over the project.  It wasn't really going anywhere with the current people so I decided to do my own thing with Magus by himself.  When I became the project leader I made chapter 1 my little side project and it actually fit into the story pretty well.

Another fan feedback moment is here with the infamouse: daltons dungeon is hidden behind the mountain (whose bright idea was that...oh yea mine ) At the time I was seriously afraid to edit OW events, but Chrono'99 wasn't haha. Dalton is always good for a light hearted moment. The elder used to die from daltons attack but again...fans don't like death   How cool is that stasis tube??? Way to go chrono'99!!

Mapping:

First door in daltons dungeon has black over it
2 lasher fight priority issue with black floor on bottom

DIFFICULTY:

I can definitely see the complaints from before. But I do think starting him at level 5 fixes it (Sorry V, I tried to make it optional but it's super hard). It's possible to beat Golem Boss w/o leveling up even once, and using a midtonic and a tonic (both of which can be gotten from chests). So I think were good there. Lashers are hard when they are paired but it adds strategy cause you need to take them out quick.

[Agent 12]

CHAPTER 2:

By far the highlight of this chapter would have to be Chrono'99's map...I mean come on...it's perfect This chapter was WAY different before, we used to have them go back to get the epoch so they could rescue Magus.  I was really proud of the Crono/Lucca in disguise It never did get perfect but I hope the players give us some slack.

What an awesome explanation of why the TDC doesn't send you to 12,000 BC.  Amazing job of using a cutscene where dialogue just would have gone over the players head (chrono'99 made this)

EVENTS:

Boss: Make battle menu on bottom

Dialogue:

Truce Inn:  War!?  I can tell you choras is staying out of it , no indent, also probably shouldn't be a guardian soldier
Screaming Couple: Guy Says {Crono}
Leene Square: Old man assassain, don't set facing
Atropos after attack:  Attack like that line has a {line break}

DIFFICULTY:

Maybe add a hint in one of the NPC's to help them find the porre base?
Marle's new bow is pretty expensive, though it does double her power
Dragon Tank could use an AI upgrade
Porre soldiers seemed kind of weak
Blue Shield Fight was really really easy.....and kind of boring


Chapter 3:

In one version of the plot, you had gotten the epoch, rescued magus, then come here.  This is better pacing.  The masamune getting stolen, came in the new plot...what an AWESOME idea! This map used to look alot worse before Chrono'99 fixed it up.  I also believe the destroyed mammon machine is chrono'99's first map

DIALOGUE:

Change X back to Y

Events:

Apparantly we need a party follow after the agent 12 shop
Left Path end, make battle on the bottom
Fade out screen when leaving ocean ruins, maybe have the party run towards the teleporter
PC1 is just sort of magically at the temporal catch

DIFFICULTY:

It's a little on the hard side but totally doable. I was fast forwarding through battles w/o too much worry.  The double panel fight can be hard but really...it's kind of the boss of the dungeon.  You really have to take one of the panels out as soon as possible.

Chapter 4:

This is where the real game begins for me. You finally have some free roaming to do.  Dorino fields were HILARIOUS before 99 fixed them up check out the before after picks in the feature. Um..the chapter stayed relatively the same. Oh this is where you first see Kasmir! 99's spriting really makes a difference. The decisoin here is actually from the very very first plot draft I think...And wow does that decision make dialogue hell for zeality.  I love the cake scene

DIALOGUE:

Vanguard guy, change it from 600 to 603 (for having it chartered)
VANGUARD library change Magus to {Magus}
Response to robo => top
Truce Inn:  Add space to Medina's relationship with guardia
Truce Inn: Change 602 => 605

MAPPING:

Door to samuel

EVENTS:

PartyFollow for the  battle when you revisit Daltons dungeon in the basement
Medina Auxillary in chapter 4 has one of the imps wrong
Exploremodeoff for dorino inn will you stay here girl

DIFFICULTY:

RolyRider and Imp ace can be bumped up


--JP

[Agent 12]

Chapter 5:

This chapter is pretty much the same since the beginning.  Chorno'99 devised the riddle...Faustwolf made the question mark picture.  Zeality had the idea for the dreamers wing (you did go to the dreamers wing ...right??) it' so surreal.  Originally we made it night with a very very bad overlay....it was so hard to see haha.  Also it wasn't till recently that we graphics hacked the stars into the zeal OW, ,turned out really well.  Again, Dalton is ol' reliable for the light hearted moments.  I dont remember who made that scene..i think I had the idea for a turtle though.

The speech explaning the frozen flame is another great example of using a cutscene to explain something complicated.


Difficulty:

Robo's arm the clashvice is pretty expensive try like 1800

CHAPTER 6:

IS this the best chapter in CE?  Proably.  What more can you cay, amazing dungeon, amazing music, amazing puzzle, amazing ending scene.  Huge turning point of the game.  If you don't like this chapter then...well you suck haha.

Difficulty:
GoldFinger is expensive, and not really necessary, we JUST got the clashvice and didn't really have any fights.  Maybe make it like 2500
Bring Forcefield defense down by 10
Bring Grigori attack down 8 and price down by 1400
Lower defense of reptites by a little



Chapter 7:

yea bet you didn't see this chapter coming.  Snaking forest was a cool idea. ...i doubt anyone will get the Goldeneye Golden gun reference (the code to get that gun is the order of the forest). It was really hard to make enemies for marle to fight alone you probably notice but we made every enemy in this chapter pretty weak to confuse...it's really a huge part of the strategy IMO. Chrono'99's attention to detail amazes me..little stuff like Marle pulling herself up to the window...wow



MAPPING:
Check stairs of second floor entrance
Battle solidity left wall of last room

EVENTS:

marles Terra tower save point location in save dialogue

DIALOGUE:

Change teacher to say "I'm sure you know his wife"

Chapter 8:

Another great chapter.  Chrono'99's graphics hacking really excels here a tweak to a tileset to make the factory have more  habitable tiles (windows/bushes/tables etc) and Vision serpants sprite make this chapter really feel fresh. The conveyer belt puzzle is a nice touch.  Oh geez i was about to say the chapter was to hard then i realized that lucca's gun was stopping all the machines haha...man that's sneaky.  We really had to make up for the speed here, we  give you a dash ring and a speed tab


EVENTS:

Savepoint for left path before final room has wrong save screen location  -- Hrm....didn't repro this time...
Loading game doesn't change music

MAPPING:
Room with two reptites and a byte the reptites don't move
After lucca/robo the between chapter scene has save as stain of regency

DIFFICULTY:

Proto 2's are way too strong, they could do half as much damage, HP is good
Bytes could do half as much damage too
Look into final fight for factory

--JP

[Agent 12]

Chapter 9:

Fun Fact, chapter 8/9 used to be switched. It allowed for some cool temporal stuff in dinopolis but, in the end chrono'99 is right the order feels good. This place used to have an OW we swapped it out for the location OW we have no.  Came out pretty good.  The location OW used to use the fair tileset for like...stone roads and stuff..man was it ugly. Difficulty for this wasa little hard. I mean this team is amazing so I wanted to err on the side of hard. We hand out lapises constantly so that Frog isn't stuck constantly casting heal.  Chrono'99's mapping yet again shines ( i know i'm a broken record) but check out..like the sign in front of the smithy..correct me if I'm wrong but thats the top of a ladder! small stuff like that really takes a creative mind.

It took me awhile to figure out what how he made the reptite caves look so awesome, then I realized it's the stuff in the ceiling.  I never would have figured that out as a mapper.  Good dialogue too, I love the "i always pick the winner guy".  Wow that's the first time I face dthe two reptites AI in a regular setting it came out awesome!


Events:

Smithy save point has wrong save location
First elemental battle move battle screen => bottom

Mapping:

First room on way to smithy corner tile = above head during fight
U-turn head is covered by bushes

DIFFICULTY:

Double Reptite fight: Increase reptite offense by like 400%, magie by like 25%  NEED TO MAKE SURE THESE GUYS AREN"T IN ROBO/LUCCA'S CHAPTER

Chapter 10:

Super short chapter, really just one cutscene.  Agent 12 is so awesome. Fun fact, thanks to the temporal rules we set up this is more complicated than we thought. We originally just saved the dragon tooth here to give to belth, it wasn't till much later that we realized that with our rules the dragon tooth would still show up and make the reptite world....but by that time we had set up the whole "chronopolis needs the dragon tooth or it'll run out of energy" story. So we hacked around it and had agent 12 recover it from 3 million BC

MUSIC:

Change the dactyls nest long map music to prehistoric


Chapter 11:

Back to being weak .  Now we get to see what 1 AD really is like...and it's not pretty.  The battle here is so amazing thanks to chrono'99! If it still hasn't clicked to the player how drastically they can change history with one event I think it does in this chapter. I purposely put the chaos bird here because I thought it'd be funny to give marle a taste of her own medicine (i constantly confused people when I use marle alone)

Events:

Reset the chest bits    
Infinite speed tab after 3x kilwala fight in lost woods
Battlefield save point is wrong
Put different dialogue for talking to cedric twice after battle
maybe give an item when you go back to cedric Possible museaum item?
Back at portal dialogue => top
Block of chronopolis teleporter for coming back form chapter 10 and chapter 11

Difficulty:

Increase "porre guard" attack by 400%, increase magic defense by 300#
Hecran battle needs revisited, some attacks are good but others are way too weak, cure may be too powerful

Chapter 12:

Honestly I hated this chapter at first. It felt out of place, and I feel like the player is ready to get the hunt king zeal on. However, it there are some good arguments for it...it adds an enemy that ISN't king zeal (though we do have kasmir too), it takes away from the static chronopolis OW, and it makes agent 12 that much more awesome .

EVENTS:

Chronopolis OW save is ???
Room before boss battle menu => bottom
Adding "DING" sounds when commander gives you 2500 G  Weird...it says it's there but i didn't hear it, maybe it doesn't work with that song
Have 2 soldiers on the side of table not face you when you talk to them

Difficulty:

Calkhula is a joke and his AI seems to render the display behind him useless
The rest came out really well!


Chapter 13:

This i really the final interlude chapter into the serious bam bam bam action action action of the rest of the game. I think it came out fun, no battles, the irony of frog going around catching frogs, and a little serious reptite think tank action.

Events:

Instant end when all frogs are found.
Marle facing is wrong after talking to her at party

Dialogue:

Reptite speech fued => feud
Add hint that hunting range is east of aylas hut somewhere
Add X frogs left?
Dancer's dialoge is not prehistory.

Mapping:

Frogs shadow shows on second level when coming from north
Solidity of rock on east side

Difficulty:

Make timer 4 minutes. It was hard for me to judge how long to make this cause...well i knew where everything was.


Chapter 14:

And the interlude is here. It's a wild ride to the end! This chapter stayed relatively the same. Old fans can rejoice to find Ozzie/Slash/Flea are still up to their shenanigans. The puzzles came out OK, their not hard by any means but I feel like they are pretty unique. People better talk to the damn townspeople we added the whole viper clan thing here, but people are probably going to miss it...You didn't use to have the epoch in this chapter so people were more inclined to talk to everyone plus you had to go through the mystic tunnel to get to Ozzie/Flea Slash. I like the pierre reference by tata' dad.


Dialogue:

Dorino Inn: Robo killed wild boar => Top

Difficulty:

Lower Atlas by 5000, Clarent by 12,000, pearl cap by 3000


--JP

[Agent 12]

Chapter 15:

ah, our perfect chapter .  Fun fact, the fall of guardia used to not take place here....well this was a "mini fall of guardia" but the true fall of guardia took place during the ending of the game.  The Chrono Trigger DS release, made us move the true fall of guardia to here.

Dialogue:

Chronopolis Reactor: Chrnopolis agents are not noticing has an unneeded line break

EVENTS:

Delay the lucca saves the kid scene until after the fall
Facing down when going up or down  left stairs
Kings Room after the fall, waitress talking to herself
Get Rid of the masamune.

Chapter 16: This used to be a sidequest but it became important enough to put it in the story. It closes off the final xamoltan, and gives a little bit of pay back for chapter 15.  Toma in chronopolis cracks me up. I love the reactor room where he presses the button even after the guy says "don't press this". The numote I feel like was a pretty unique puzzle. Zeality did a good job with the luccia family dialogue. Speaking of which we have some nice cross tie ins here with luccia and norris.

Dialogue:

Bartender in 605 talks about toma not being there...when toma is 2 tiles away.

EVENTS:

Add toma to medina bar
Luccia's brother doesn't come over during cutscene
Porre lab save point has wrong time
Show stopper when retriggering caught mutant

DIFFICULTY:

Coyopa is way  too hard
Sell fail not in melchiors store, have  reward for saving teachers  be the parthion
Mutant could use a boost in speed and offense/magic
P. Buster in porre lab is weaker than Melchiors atlas (swap them)


Chapter 17:

A trip down memory lane here with the original mammon machine. This whole chapter was added by chrono'99. It had a pretty large change when we lose the masamune in chapter 15 which was relatively late in development. We had to cook up the "anti annihalation energy agitator"... kind of corny but...well it was much better looking scene with the masamune piercing the machine.

Dialogue:

Where the red knife failed, the annihalation energy will prevail is said twice

Events;

Explore mode off with belthasar on way to ocean palace TDC
Far left path, if you die you walk around dead

DIFFICULTY:

Scouter and guards are really easy


Chapter 18:

Flame Dungeons.  These are the kind of scenes where no matter how much work you put into them they never meet your expectations. I'd say my favorite is Marle's ( I feel like marle is the main character of CE). Then Crono's, then Robo's, Ayla's, Lucca's, Frog's, Magus. Marle's is a pretty blatant copy of Cloud recovering his memory if FF7. I do think we did a good job of making the user say "did the flame make that up or does that really happen in the timeline. And honestly....well it's up to the user.


Events;

First magus battle => bottom
Check Frog's "death stance" in post flame dungeons scene

DIFFICULTY:

Check that hermes cap casts haste
Atropos was really really easy..all of robo's flame dungeon was


Chapter 19:

Another trip down memory lane for old CT players. Speekio and gaspar come back with a bang. Setting up for the Guru Reunion later. The dreamtime was dreamt up by Chrono'99. Originally this is suppose to be a no-magic zone. It's technically feasible but when i tried it out, the battles were boring...really boring.  I would rather have an "only magic" zone, but I'm not sure how to do that.

DIALOGUE:

Atropos has old dialogue or is really out of the loop


EVENTS:

Do the kasmir tunnel trick in the north room of the dreamtime
4 base fight before boss make it one time only and after fihgt turn it into save point
Inviso man in melchiors room

DIFFICULTY:

Make either base or ion a physical attack only enemy (magic cures them)
Enemies definitely weren't hard, but battles were long and kind of mehCould use second opinion doing the above helped
Dreamtime boss is really easy, his sleep attack misses alot, physical attacks too much.  increase physical attacks by 300%, increase speed a little bit, increase HP by 10%[

[Agent 12]

Chapter 20:

I feel like this dungeon is like a perfect length/ number of battles dungeon.  Maybe it's just cause I made it though .  We finally get some closure on Dalton here which is nice. This used to be a sidequest but of course dalton became super important over time and so we put it in. It's also an accident that the game starts and ends here but it's kind of cool in a poetic sort of way. I wanted the dungoen to feel like one of those crazy stairs paintings but also to feel like...somenoe just grabbed a bunch of zeal wreckage and threw it into a building.

Dialogue:

Mist village right house box => auto

DIFFICULTY:

Up Basher Offense atleat 400%,
Up Thrasher up too, but check double tech to see if that's offense or magic
Melchiors final store is pretty amazing so up it's prices by like 50%
Cinderella in marles reptite chapter seems out of place since we just got it in this dungeon
Dalton was pretty easy, we should have dalton Plus open for using now

Chapter 21:

A little bit of plot before the finale. We finally learn Zeal's true aims, and zeality truly excelled at making an argument for reviving Zeal. His speeches for King Zeal are really superb.  Again as mentioned above I love how the game has come full circle and were back with Sargon again.

Dialogue:

Change the textboxes to Auto in commons.

EVENTS:
REMINDER: move robo/atropos to center

have Melchior face down after belth breaks him and sargon up
Moonstone is in sargons place after the scene
Guru Reunion fix textbox placement
Guru Renion Melchior Decisions need to be lined up


Chapter 23 (skipping sidequests for now)

Perfect.....i'm so proud of this chapter.  The maps, the dialogue, the feeling you get while walkaround, and now I confirmed that the difficulty is good (even if you skip the sidequests so it'd probably be easy if I had done the sidequests which is expected).

DIFFICULTY:

Synchrite/laser guards are kind of weak DOUBLE CHECK
OK, Final bosses states are just.....wrong haha. May revisit this later....it's really really hard to make stats this late in the game cause characters are so different...for example if i make his magic do a decent amount of damage to magus it obliberates robo....i also don't know if i should be scaling the fight for someone who got ultimate armor/weapons or for directly after dalton

Final SavePoint:

play time 31:36

Levels 49/50.  Learning final tech (it wouldn't take much effor to learn)
I have an abundance of G, but that's not that big of a deal

--JP