Frog's Theme Intro Recreated

[Reld]

I've attempted to put the intro to Frog's Theme from the OST back into the game. There are some redundant commands for things like volume and panning in the track data that I'm pretty sure are leftovers from when the intro was present, but other than that I had to transcribe it by ear. I think it came out pretty well.

After the intro plays the main song just loops normally, meaning it doesn't loop back to the intro. I did this on purpose because I think the loop sounds kind of jarring when you loop the whole thing.

Attached is the SPC if you just want to hear it, and an IPS patch with the song inserted into the game. I put it in the free space at the end of all of the songs and just repointed it, so the original Frog's Theme track data is still in there.

[ZeaLitY]

I swear this used to be on the Great To-do list, or maybe Agent 12's wishlist for the Glenn hack idea. Was it as easy as the post makes it sound? (Now I'm not immediately finding the "rip the PSX extra tracks as SPCs, if they're in the ROM", but maybe that's because we investigated and determined they weren't stored as SNES APU data, but composed as a PSF or streamed)

Complicated SPC work seemed to be one of those final frontiers utunnels was working on when everyone faded away. I recall, too, that when Crimson Echoes was approaching May, I was a little sad that we probably were going to have to release without doing all the intended re-instrumentation and other music hacking, similar to Prophet's Guile (just an odd substitution here or there).

[Reld]

I wouldn't say it was easy. It was tedious at the very least. I have an OpenMPT (formerly ModPlug Tracker) file with all of the instrument samples from Chrono Trigger, so first I transcribed the notes by ear into that just so I could hear what I was doing. Then I converted that to hex commands by hand in a text document, and finally I entered the hex manually in a hex editor. I was able to copy and paste parts of the existing song, but I had to be sure to find and adjust the loop points as I did it. I screwed up typing in the hex a few times before I got it right too.

If anybody wants to use this in a human Glenn hack or whatever I'm cool with that. If you need help moving it around to replace a different song or whatever I can do that.

[ZeaLitY]

It's fallen off the radar, for now (that hack idea). At this juncture, I'm debating what the audience would be like for a Chrono Trigger ROM hack—I'm sure it's highly dependent on the story offered. Something like the Schala Edition is no doubt more on the popular end; it's garnered ~2,300 downloads and lots of love (based on the reviews), but it gives me pause to imagine something more ambitious (such as my old Radical Dreamers hack idea, or the Glenn hack) that doesn't immediately have mass appeal. Prophet's Guile was a slam dunk too, given it's Zeal + Magus.

I should start another topic about this, but I'd wonder what people think. The Glenn hack idea was going to feature familiar faces like Cyrus, Robo, the Mystic Knights, etc., but imagining something ambitious like Chrono Break—I almost worry people would see Cross characters involved (even if the party's 4/7 Chrono Trigger characters) and write it off as wild fanfiction. We've also got Another Eden and that FF Dimensions game tipping Kato's hand on what he actually was going to have Chrono Break be about (which, it's somewhat similar to my idea), so that almost takes the heat off the big compulsion since Day 1 we've had of "we have to finish the trilogy!!"

[Mauron]

I have an eventual hack idea that's sorta like Schala Edition I will probably make someday.

[Fauntleroy]

ZeaLitY, I can't stress this strongly enough: don't die with your stories still inside of you.

My three most popular hacks are "What if?" alternate story deals. Some people enjoy them, some people HATE them, some people can't be bothered. But I was going to make them regardless because... I just felt a need to.

Hacks are exhausting to work on, but they are also so fun to work on. There's nothing else quite like it. And when you finally get it to all come together, it's just magical.

Don't waste another day thinking about it. Start doing stuff.

[Boo the Gentleman Caller]

Mauron, TheMage, and I had an idea for a hack a while back that followed a group of misfit time-travelers from the OVA (a Nu, a Kilwala, and Johnny, amongst others) in a sort of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead behind-the-scenes look at the events of Chrono Trigger.

Essentially, these heroes are either in a time era mucking things up right before Crono and friends arrive, or right after -- regularly crossing paths. The only caveat is that we hoped to have a fully explorable 1999AD and the party would be present for the Day of Lavos.

Overall it was meant to be a comedy/drama with a bit more comedy than Chrono Trigger, while also offering a bit more darkness (for example -- the lead character is the daughter of the Director from Trigger's Bad Ending and is a literal mute who, originally from 1999AD, witnessed her mother die during the Day of Lavos and tragically blocked the memory due to the trauma).

The cool thing about it was that we literally could use the exact same tilesets, enemy placements, etc., and had to build very little in the way of new assets. Even many of the coded events could be the same, just edited a bit to match the new characters.

We did toy with doing away with both Ice Age era's, replacing them with a not-quite-as-bad-as-2300AD version of 2100AD, and a fully explorable 1999AD. Looking back, however, I think losing the Antiquity era's would be a huge mistake.

[Reld]

Boo, I was coincidentally just reading this thread where you were talking about the same hack idea and posted a few art assets. It's a fun idea. I'd play it.

[Mauron]

More characters coming out of the closet in Chrono Trigger!

[IHBP]

Sounds cool, if any of the assests from my hack could be of use you're welcome to them.

[Fauntleroy]

More characters coming out of the closet in Chrono Trigger!

Yes please.

But if you live in Medina, you might want to move your fine china out of the way first.

[Mauron]

It's very rude to break people's china.

[Vehek]

Complicated SPC work seemed to be one of those final frontiers utunnels was working on when everyone faded away.

A short recap.

Back in 2008, as a result of looking into the mods created by the Japanese Romancing SaGa community, I learned about their ability to create custom music in another game using a slight variation on the music format. I introduced the tool they used.

utunnels then made his own command-line partial reimplentation of the Music Macro Language importer, but I don't think it ever got widespread use for any of the Square games it could support. (Checking the FF6 Hacking fansite today, there may be some tools of their own now.)

Not being a composer, I stuck to using MIDI-to-MML converters when I wasn't developing and/or modifying programs to dump music from other Square games.

I believe in the early post-C&D days, somebody started working on an Impulse Tracker (IT) to mml converter, the idea being you could compose and listen to a piece in the tracker beforehand.

[ZeaLitY]

Aha, that is jogging my memory. Yeah, I am somewhat familiar with tracker files like that from the Unreal series; I've done a lot of work cataloguing proto material from Alexander Brandon and his contemporaries. I guess that really would do it, in that case. If I recall, someone got Scars of Time somewhat into the game? I want to say though, we were tossing out ideas of other songs and there was some kind of hard limit on what could and couldn't be done, perhaps in terms of complexity or something.

Well, the Chrono Break idea is always out there. Part of my appreciation for ROM hacking now is the fine art of it—using our hindsight to absolutely maximize what could have theoretically been done at the time by the Square development team, minus things beyond the cost/benefit of learning how to do (like programming new Mode 7 effects, or something). It's interesting to me, because it seems like some aspects of the community are stronger than ever (especially with places like Hidden Palace and TCRF).

But probably the biggest joy is that Chrono Trigger is just such a unique game and that any new scenarios/events, period, seem to immediately go back to that feeling of playing it for the first time. Seeing a Melchior or Belthasar sprite walk out with new lines in a map you've never seen before seems to have the same magic as before. I don't think it'll ever lose that touch. It would be nice to have a satisfying send off and tie up the whole mystery of what the Ideal timeline looks like.

[TheMage]

Frog's original intro is awesome! Love this!

I for one am very interested in any Chrono Trigger hack of any kind. A hack about the middle ages with Cyrus and Glenn and mystic Knights sounds amazing, frankly I've read far too many fanfictions to fill a void the middle ages left me with and its never been enough.

 I don't care how fanfictiony a hack is or how crazy it might get, there's some magic in that. I just love seeing what stories people who love this series as much as I do can create, what sorcery they can achieve with just the base game and hacking. Witnessing the passion this game has instilled in people even in 2021 is amazing. 

Speaking of that hack Boo- I finally learned (5 years(?) too late) how to insert new PC graphics into the game correctly! I'm working on a tutorial to put up here on the compendium for player character insertion is it okay if I use NUWT's graphics for the tutorial? 

Also speaking of that hack, I can't seem to access verve fanworks. Is it down? I hope not, we had a lot of assets there that I don't have backups of! Namely, the map we made of 1999 that was fully functional! *weeps*

Also -if anyone is serious about wanting to create a hack or return to old hack ideas they've had in the past, this is my official application/volunteer offer to insert and create sprites and map assets for said game. I really want to be a part of creating something awesome, no matter how big or small, anything that plays with the CT universe.

I also roughly know how to create events and can do general stuff in Temporal Flux. I can make a cut scene, create a new area. My knowledge dives off a cliff when it comes to coding battles though! (but im willing to learn).