Chrono Cross Hard Hack

[Grobycftw]

Hi guys! First of all I wanna thank everyone on this forum for sharing their wisdom and time innovating on this Game! Chrono's game is such a fantastic universe, its part of my childhood and I will always enjoy talking/thinking about it!
*Sorry if sometimes my writing seems a bit odd, as english isn't my first language Ill try to do my best!

This a topic about the hack me and my brother are working on.
Here's a list of content we want/will change : 

All enemies stats, element they use, drop/steal will be change, possibly the battlescript for a couple of boss (if its not too complicated), will add stars/boss, All Main character stats and stats growth will be rebalanced, some will have different signature move (ex: Dash&slash), element grid allocation will be modified (possibly the order you can unlock them). We made Slash 100% Playable (will replace Pierre! and we have make a super cool artwork for the rectangle in menu ^^ ill upload it so u guys can enjoy it to). Replace a few main characters by enemies like (Funguy => Dwarfy, Doc => Marbule Sage, Orcha  => Dark Orcha). Will change a few main character looks (mostly clothe's colors). Add New weapon/armor/accessory, change their prices, changing the shop goods, and Blacksmith forgables. Change some element, allowing enemies signature move to be use like an ordinary element!(like icebreath, CrashPulse, OmegaWhite, OmegaBlue..). All the battle starting color fields will be modified . I think this wrapped up most of what we have edit for now!

Some element will be modified like Hellsoul => AnimateDead, here's a little example!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNFhP8G_Ep8&t=3s

Slash image isn't the last version but it should look pretty similar to this one, we're really trying to make it as if it was made for the game!

All of this is on the work/some is 100% done!
Now for the few things we still have trouble with like : Import new model for weapons, Unlock the doors of time so it can be accessed through a normal game, make Dario fully playable (adding space for model seems to be quite a challenge at the moment, I know some people here on the forum are also working on the same issues! We'll get it guys don't give up ^^!). And changing the Chests content. Those are the few remaining things were having problem with. If you have any tips or knowledge on these matter, feel free to let us know , ill be updating here and there when we complete a new step! Thx you for reading this topic!

[prizvel]

Great. I see you're registered on compedium. Welcome)
(My acc "chrono mania" in youtobe )

[alfadorredux]

It's been a while, but I think one of the problems with playable-Dario was that his model's texture (not the model itself) is too large for a PC model texture and has to be scaled down to fit in the allowable space.

[Grobycftw]

Hi Prizz ^^! Glad I can share stuff with you now

Indeed Dario has 2 texture just like most of the bosses, but what were trying to do is for example : Grobyc who has a 21 sector long model, and Dario with 31, I can't just simply replace Grobyc by Dario, I would either have to make dario's model fit the exact length (that would mean changing joint/bone and everything so that it fit "Too Hard") or edit the lines where it allows the length of specific models. (which we cant seems to find xd )

but lets take radius with 33 sector wide, its an easy match, you can insert dario in radius allowed space and it works 100%. but replacing radius in the story becomes another challenge xd! anyhow well manage something i'm quite confident about it  

[utunnels]

Nope, it is not about model size, but the textures have to find a place in video ram, which is currently lacking. In theory we can remap the model, make new textures and weapons, though none of those are easy job to do.

Edit* If you don't want Dario to equip other weapons though, things will be a lot easier.

Edit2* I recall I sent a PM to maybe prizvel(?) about how to edit Dario's model to give him an external weapon model. But I don't have the message currently. 

This is how the Einlanzer should look in Dario's hand, have not tested in game though.
https://storage.googleapis.com/utunnels1.appspot.com/ccmodelviewer/index.html#battle/dario2

[Grobycftw]

Oh I see, you're right adding weapon for dario would be a tough job to do. (Amazing what you did on the model viewer, seems pretty cool!) im still unfamiliar with editing either weapon model/texture (mapping) or Characters model, my brother worked with 3DS max so he have a better base on that subject. I've read a good part of you're post on these matter. We got the model import script for Blender (luckily I have a good friend that helped me with the python script so it works) but we still have a lot to learn!

[prizvel]

utunnels Yes, you wrote to me:

If you can manage to give him a weapon, then the rest is possible. You can remove the masamune from his second texture, the change the bytes behind 0x68c0 to below:

00 04 00 04 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 07 00 00 00

I didn't test it in game, this is how it looks in blender:


However if you want to make a masamune model, there must be a tool to convert models.

But I have not tested it, my goal was to retrieve the Masamune

[utunnels]

I see, the idea is to change the weapon joint to where his right hand is so he can actually wield an external weapon.
There will be problem in his tech animations though. For example,  he throws the sword which is part of his model. Might need some change in the animation data as well.

[EgyLynx]

anyway... What i seen these play thinks, that first boss was just easy if at get fight so long at these two get not ups... Then someone said at best to get rest at home and fight up... and check elements...  But... after that, game really begin... But there wasn´t do changeds at easy level or hard level....

[Grobycftw]

You're right Utunnel, I didn't even thought about the ConductaRod element

I'm not sure about what I can reply on Egy but you got me thinking, the way your characters stats growth during the game (especially at the beginning) can influence the difficulty A LOT, here's a small list of statistic Stats I made, I should do like 10x that in order to be fixed

[Yourgingerestfan]

A lot of these changes sound like a project from way back when, especially ...Dwarfy. Gonna wait to see how this plays it and what resources you end up using if any.

[lockgar]

Did anyone ever make a playstation file explorer, or is everyone reading the disk with a hex editor and guessing randomly. I've just been reading around, and I see mention that square would effectively, put files into zip files, and then zip all those file for a double layer of encypting. I would assume they didn't just zip them but my question is, did you guys already figure all this out? I see the model posts and now I'm hoping for some high res high poly models. There are even listed bye offsets and what they effect.  Mine don't match. 

[alfadorredux]

99% of the files on the discs have been identified, at least in general terms, and the findings are in the Encyclopedia. There are some unpacking tools of various levels of ability that can extract the files from disc images--see the "Chrono Cross Toolsets" thread about halfway down this forum.

The high-poly models used in the FMV sequences are not on the discs. The models that have been extracted are the battle and overworld models, including texture and animation data. Inserting modified models should theoretically be possible, but no one's done it yet as far as I know. The Blender plugin for Cross is load-only--we can't export models back to the CC format yet--so modifying a model in a sensical way would be difficult.

Does that help?

[lockgar]

A bit, whats stopping you from turnning it back into the CC format? Did square use its own custom model file type?

[alfadorredux]

Yes, Square used a custom format. Much of it has been deciphered, but there are some quirks that make it difficult to convert to anything else (the rigging for animations is...weird). utunnels wrote custom code to load the models into Blender, and no one's tackled the matching export code yet.

So if you want to insert new models into the game, your first step is probably to learn Python so you can write an export plugin for Blender.