Radical Dreamers Edition: Opening Up the Data Files

[PowerPanda]

If you have the steam edition, you can view the source files. Here's how.

1. Open up the folder [C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\CHRONO CROSS  THE RADICAL DREAMERS EDITION]
2. Find the folder named [Data] and make a copy of it anywhere on your computer. (I just kept the copy in the same folder.)
3. Open up the data file. You will see 9 files
   cdrom.dat
   cdrom2.dat
   font.dat
   hd.dat
   lang.dat
   launcher.dat
   movie.dat
   radicaldreamers.dat
   ui.dat
4. Replace the ".dat" file extension with ".zip" on all of the files. Windows will warn you about changing a file's extension, but you can click through the warning.
5. Extract the zip folders. You can now browse all of the data files for Chrono Cross.

[IHBP]

Nice! Is it fairly simple to navigate?

[justin3009]

From what I've explored, yeah. Most of the folders are fairly blatant what they are. However, most of the files inside are abbreviated so it's a bit more tricky to what goes to what but it's at least consistent in what the data is.

[IHBP]

The fact that it has way more mods in 3 weeks than the psx version had in 23 years suggests that as well.

Hopefully we'll get some data maps and editors here on the compendium .

[Beach Bum]

Does anyone know how to view "en.csv" inside the lang.dat file? It seems like it should contain the whole english script, but there's many columns that simply say "{ERROR}".

This is a guess on my part, but I think those might be lines that are generic, not tied to a specific character, and get put through the accent generator thing they have.

Tried viewing it in Excel and Notepad++, but same thing.

[Beach Bum]

It's interesting that they took the time and effort to redraw the Kid as a child portrait, even though it still does not get used anywhere. Same goes for the Dragon God. Redrew its portrait, but never used when it speaks.

The Serge-Lynx portrait that was only used in the forging screen of the original game is not redrawn, but they did take the time to upscale it. Which is strange, because the remaster does not use it anywhere, not even in the forging screen anymore. Maybe the game's code still calls to it somewhere.

[Beach Bum]

Actually, on closer inspection, it seems the entire script is in here. I still don't know what the {ERROR} columns mean, tho. Predictably, inserting new lines does absolutely nothing. I assume the code of the game calls line numbers when events are going on. Because of that, replacing text does work...

One thing that confuses me is how portraits are called. There doesn't seem to be a command for it in the CSV files, which is strange. Does the event code itself call portraits and assign lines to it? Will try to dig deeper into this.

Pardon my french, I'm childish.

[Vehek]

One thing that confuses me is how portraits are called. There doesn't seem to be a command for it in the CSV files, which is strange. Does the event code itself call portraits and assign lines to it? Will try to dig deeper into this.

Yeah. You can see some of the commands related to it in the old reverse-engineering documentation.
https://www.chronocompendium.com/Term/Chrono_Cross_Fieldscript_Notes.html

62 QQRR SSTT UUVV WWXX YYZZ - Set up a dialogue window at screen coordinates RRQQ, TTSS, with width VVUU, height XXWW, and flagset ZZYY (ZZYY = 64 -> display portrait)
9E XXYY - Set Dialog Portrait: Set current dialogue portrait to number YYXX
E3 WW XXYY ZZ - If character WW is in the party, have him say message YYXX from the corresponding dialogue file
E0 XXYY ZZ - Message: Display message YYXX from the corresponding dialogue file.

It's been a long, long time since I actively worked on Chrono Cross, so I can't say much, other than than evidently making an active party member speak is different from an NPC/out-of-party instance of a PC. Just which portrait is automatic in the former case.

This, for example, is from one of yaz0r's tools.

Code: [Select]

0x0299: SETUP_DIALOG_WINDOW( X:150, Y:50, LettersHigh:0, LettersWide:0, Flag:0)
0x02A4: CHARACTER_DIALOG(Kid, 0x0002, 0x08)

+-------------------------
|Kid:
|Just you wait, Lynx!
|Today's gonna be the
|day of reckonin'!!!
+-------------------------
|Say yer prayers!
|...Not that it'll
|do ya any good!!!<Close>
+-------------------------

0x02A9: WAIT_DIALOG()(To be clear, dialogue text was not part of the raw event data. The dumper splices it in from the area's dialogue data section for convenience.)

[Beach Bum]

Interesting way of doing things.

Looking through the script, the "accent generator" thing they had was also pretty incredible. I wonder what kind of tools they used, seems like a bitch to type all this out.

Code: [Select]

{PARTY2%}:\n{Cap}{wha}t{-}i{stz}{-umeth}{-}it,\n{SERGE}?\n{Cap}{-you-}{-}{l}ook{-umeth}{-}t{rwr}oubled.{bpage}\n{Cap}{thd}i{sth}{-}i{stz}{-umeth}{-}it.\n{Cap}{thd}e{rr}e{'s}{-}n{o}{-}tu{rr}nin{g'}{-umeth}\nback, now!{mend}
Most of those bracketed parts correspond to a field of data inside the accent generator file, mesgen_en. It's actually pretty nuts how many letters and words are in there.

[Mr Bekkler]

That is crazy looking, to the extent that I'd guess it wasn't typed. It looks generated or compiled. I think even though it looks like you've found code, that code was the output of another tool.

[Vehek]

At least one of the interviews explained it.
https://www.chronocompendium.com/Term/January_2011_-_GameSpite_Interview_with_Richard_Honeywood.html

I made a rudimentary search-and-replace tool that replaced all those syllables or phonemes with the corresponding tokens. We translators would tweak these by hand, then we would add those tweaks to a dictionary file so the system gradually improved as we taught it better implementations. It was a real head-ache that I doubt many loc teams would ever be able to implement. (Thanks to Yutaka, Sammy, and Rich for putting up with all the extra workload I added to them!)

[Beach Bum]

That kinda makes sense, actually. Type everything out first, then search and replace with the required commands. Only downside is that's a one way street, but maybe they had some sort of backup for that.

Interesting little tidbit about the dream sequence speech btw, when they step out of the elevator there are two copies of the "There's no turning back now" speech. One is said by "party member 2 (whoever the game happens to choose)" and another is specifically specified to be Leena. Maybe the party there was going to be Serge, Leena, and Kid before they decided on the random party member. That's the only line of that sequence where there's a copy specifically for Leena, the rest of the dialogue in this part just has "party member 2".

Also been trying to find a way to look at the models, seems like most of them are .OBJ files with .TIM textures, but the .OBJ files can't simply be imported in Blender or 3D Studio Max. Maybe there's some encryption or weird file structure going on.

There's also a pretty high res picture of the cinematic Frozen Flame model in the launcher files. Don't know where it's being used tho. I heard before that they didn't re-render the cinematics in higher resolution because they no longer have the original game files, but they must still have something if they were able to make a high quality render like this.

[ZeaLitY]

I loaded up tirion's room viewer, but it looks like the location art actually hasn't been scaled up? Then again, it's reading from cd-rom.dat, so maybe it's reading from the old Cross files. Either way, it looks like a pretty blurry AI upscale in-game anyhow, so guess there's nothing of value to rip.