Zeality interested me when he said that no one besides Geiger had created a fully functioning Gate. So I was playing with TF, and I compiled the following information.
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DDK's observations on Gates:
Hey all, DDK again. This time, I'll be talking about some of the things I noticed when trying to create a Gate with Temporal Flux.
Test area: Lucca's Workshop
First observation: Trying to create my own Gate data caused a black screen upon entering LW. Decided to try copy and pasting.
Conclusion: I didn't do something right.
Second observation: Copy and Pasted the Closed Gate section from the Telepod Exhibit into Lucca's Workshop, and removed the storyline dependant hiding. Set Gate's coordinates relative to the coordinates of a door in her shop. When I loaded the game, the Gate was nowhere in site.
Conclusion: I fubbed up somehow.
What I did: I changed the coordinates back to exactly what they were in the Telepor Exhibit (x88 y43). This was a whim, and a complete coincidence when it WORKED. The result was that the Gate was placed on a tile above the upstairs balcony.
Conclusion: The coordinates for the Exit placing and for placing the Gate were different, somehow?
Third observation: Played with the X and Y coordinates, and saw a VERY subtle change in positioning. It was like the Gate was moving from pixel to pixel, instead of from tile to tile.
Conclusion: They WERE different, and used a much larger grid system with much smaller tiles, possibly pixel-to-pixel.
Fourth Observation: When the Gate opened, instead of the normal Gate background, I was greeted with a black background. I expected this, because I saw the Gate background was composed of two seperate NPC sprites at the Telepod. Also, Crono moved to the correct Gate area, so apparently the Sprite movement coords are the same as the Gate's.
Fifth observation: I moved the Gate down to the lower floor with the coordinates x7F and yAA. This placed the Gate on the door. Examining it opened the black portal on the balcony, not where the Gate was or had previously been. I thought this odd.
I modified the Param sections of the Black Circle Mode 7 event, and found the first two corresponded to the X coordinate correctly, but the Y coordinate was different somehow. Param 3 is still unknown to me, but is perhaps related to Z, and can allow us to place Gates on different Z planes?
Six observation: I changed the Black Circle's Param 1 and 2 to the Gate's. As expected, the X coordinate was dead on, but the Y coordinate placed the Circle lower than it should have been. After research, it seems that the actual movement the Black Circle moves with Param 2 is equal or farily close to that of the Gate, but they seem to use different numbering for their respective Y axi.
Conclusion: Param 2 controls the Y coordinate, but differently than the Y coordinate for the Gate placement.
Seventh observation: I got the black circle on a feasible position relative to the gate (x7F y74) due to the Y coordinate for the Black Circle in the Telepod being 6 bytes under the Gate's. I thought this would be a good time to get the background working. So I went and checked out the Telepod Exhibit data again, and learned something interesting: The gate background NPC's were apparently 13 of the mini-Y coordinate bytes each, meaning the entire Gate background was about 26 bytes high. This tells me it's pixels, but I'm still not sure.
Eigth observation: I copied and pasted the data from the Telepod exhibit into Lucca's workshop, and altered the X and Y's accordingly. However, I seemed to have made an error, because I was unable to get to the Gate due to an invisible object, which my removing of background layers identified as the Gate sprites. Perhaps the Y's are in the same area as the Black Circle?
Ninth observation: I altered the Gate sprites to be six bytes under the Gate's(or rather over, since each extra bit of Y coordinate causes a downwards motion). This time, the Gate was completely covered. I looked at the Telepod data to see what I had changed to make things go wrong. In the end, I realized that I had no clue what I was doing, because the data between the two locations was inconsistant. I decided to try trial and error. I placed the Gate sprites at x80 yA3(Upper) and x80 yA2(lower) and I then noticed that my Black Circle seemed to change its position depending on how close to the Gate I was when I activated it. Also, my Gate background wasn't animated. Needless to say, this became a major headache. I decided to check out the info in the Gate room in Guardia Forest.
Tenth observation: Absolutely no luck. I'm stumped. Well, at least we know a bit more than we did, eh?
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I'm hoping someone can take this information and get Gates working.
