Crimson Echoes Extravaganza

[ZeaLitY]

I plan to go all-out, no-holds-barred with a Compendium feature when Crimson Echoes is released (or a little after). As part of this, I want to interview every current team member concerning what they think of the project so far and what they hope to accomplish. So please answer these questions. I'm going to e-mail inactive members and those who don't frequent this forum often.

How do you feel about Crimson Echoes so far?

What do you hope to accomplish or see completed in the future?

~

Be verbose. You aren't going to offend anyone if you talka bout being disappointed in something, since a lot of us are painfully aware that we've languished around lazily for the last two years (the anniversary is in Novembre) without doing anything for the project. So cast your hopes and fears into the pond, because when the feature is released, we'll get to look back on what we thought. Let me reiterate that this is not being released right now. It's just going to be part of the future feature when Crimson Echoes debuts.

[ZeaLitY]

I take it you guys are bewildered, so here is my contribution.

I'm anxiously hopeful for Crimson Echoes now. Having been there since the beginning, I've seen the countless let-downs and mistakes we've made over two years of development. Most of it would not have happened had we taken a more realistic approach to rom hacking and a harder stance on development dedication. But that's all for the history file. At the moment, I'm literally bubbling with excitement. I'm about to commit serious hours to the project to basically finish the entire infastructure. Afterwards, Jsondag2 or Chrono'99 can waltz in and code things over the new locations with ease. Of course, I'll have to come in and do the dialogue, but that's really the fun part. Two years of development means we've refined and shaped a solid plot and serious character development. I hope we'll be taking the heroes on a ride that won't disappoint fans. At the very least, the multitude of rom hacking innovations completed so far are sure to blow people away. The day this is released will mark the beginning of an exciting era in Chrono Series fandom.

~

I hope to get several maps done and write decent dialogue. Paradoxically, doing Magus is easy; I've given much thought to his style and can write him without much difficulty. The other characters pose a challenge. I'm having fun with Glenn, but giving Marle and Lucca different personalities is hard -- especially considering their behavior in the Japanese version. Ted Woolsey made them both a little more extravagant and exclamatory in speech, and it helped set them apart from the generic heroine persona. As for Ayla and Robo, those are fun -- Ayla always has strong-will and a fresh approach to life, while Robo keeps cool with analytical, insightful observations on what's going on. As for King Zeal, he's just a blast. There's going to be some exciting dialogue between Magus and him; I can't wait to get cracking. It'll take some work, but the payoff will be huge.

[TheOutlaw]

I feel Crimson Echoes is moving on a relatively good pace considering most of us have busy schedules.
Enabling free discussion in the plot discussion was a great idea, the end result will be better for it.

I hope To accomplish Glenn, but my main concern right now is when will we learn how to hack techs, because some single and double techs will need to be altered. it would also be nice if some people started sharing possible ideas for the Glenn techs.
          I agree with dialogue, Glenn's is hard to do. As i was playing through his motives and personality seemed inconsistent. I can't say I would do a much better job writing it myself, because flat out Glenn is hard to write for, In CT his dialogue was all geared to his past, his honor, him gaining self confidence. Now in CE he has overcome his past, he is a self confident person, still containing Honor. We really do not know much of Glenn's personality. his personaltiy has to be recreated without upsetting fans. King Zeal was well-created, his motives and personality are clear, all that's left is to cater the dialogue with word-choice, I'll like seeing the final product. Ayla seemed somewhat repetative her dialogue could be expanded. I haven't seen much of Robo's dialogue so i really don't have anything to say about him.

[nightmare975]

I thought you wanted us to email it.

How do you feel about Crimson Echoes so far?

I feel that its gotten pretty far from when I joined. We've figured out how to insert Glenn and are on the way to creating the first TF Chrono Trigger fangame. But, I'm kind of angry that you want to hire a bunch of people just to get the maps done though. We may get stuck with some really bad maps that we would have to seriously clean and/or just plain old delete. Sure we're going at a slow pace now, but at least the content is going great.

What do you hope to accomplish or see completed in the future?

I want to finish making and cleaning the remaining maps. Then when we are all finished, I want to help work on Time's Illusion with Justin. Plus I would love to work with you all again on another project.

(Edit: I thought you wanted what we were going to do after CE was finished.)

[Kae]

Not too sure how warranted my opinions on the matter may be, but I'll give my two copper pieces.


How do you feel about Crimson Echoes so far?
I haven't been on the Crimson Echoes team for terribly long, and in that time I haven't done any real significant amount of work for the project. That being said, I'm absolutely floored at the amount of effort, time, and creativity that people, past and present, have put into the project. I'm wary to call it a rom hack, because that doesn't do it justice -- Crimson Echoes is worth being referred to as its own game. It is very quickly shaping up to be, and to be honest, will be, a creative masterpiece in its own right, using a timeless story and characters as a springboard to a truely phenominal piece of work. When Crimson Echoes is finished, I definitely believe that it will be something that both staff and player can be proud of, and pleased with. Without giving too much away, I think people will be pleasantly surprised with the plot, characters, and overall feel of the game. Crimson Echoes really does capture the essence of the Chrono series.

What do you hope to accomplish or see completed in the future?

I personally aim to become more involved with the project, specifically map work. I'm very obsessive with detail and getting things just right, be it shadowing (a particularly favourite pastime), or adding in more detail to spice up existing areas. I don't particularly prefer designing maps, but even given a rough outline to work with, I can take off and add life to what would probably otherwise be a dull thing to look at. So ultimately, I'm hoping to see Crimson Echoes completed within a reasonable timeframe, or if not completed, progressed to such a point that the game can be released to the public again, so that other people can enjoy the Chrono universe once again, because let's face it, it's been far too long!

[Chrono'99]

How do you feel about Crimson Echoes so far?
It's very promising. Plot and gameplay concepts are getting more and more polished as the project moves forward. I believe one of the best thing about this project is that's it's truely the work of a whole community. We can all participate, and I don't think anyone could decently claim a particular part of the project to be his and his alone. As a consequence, the results can only be serious and solid, since we don't have the risk of ending with something "biased" by a unique and too dominant point of view. Actually, Crimson Echoes might be a little like Wikipedia... but with no vandalism.

What do you hope to accomplish or see completed in the future?
I think we're getting to the point where most of our ideas have successfully concretized in the game coding: all the objectives are feasible. Personally, I will continue being the project's official "janitor", cleaning up stuff everywhere I can. There's just one thing that we can't do: replace Ayla with Schala, because of the Tech animations... We have come to accept this fact though, as the plot is written with her as an NPC.

(Edit: typos.)

[Vargose]

How do you feel about Crimson Echoes so far?
I think it has been going great. We have made some serious break throughs. Limitations we thought were impossible have been exceeded. Glenn will be in the game! Vehek figured out sprite assembly, which was a huge step. The Spriters justin and outlaw have been doing excellent work thus far in bringing Glenn to life. Vehek and jsondag then figured out the techs which will make possible the removal of the more froggy techs. (And to be honest, with the knowledge we have, we could actually get Schala into the game now). Now CL is working on a sprite assembly editor to make the process a little easier. We have the ability to insert new music, new graphics, tilesets, etc. We have been pushing the envelope, which is great.

Since most of us are infact students there is a seasonalness to our work. This should be expected. It is depressing however to see work slow from warp speed to slug crawl. I myself have contributed to that. I committed myself to getting Glenn in the game, but I haven't done any sprite assembly in quite some time. For this I am sorry.

What do you hope to accomplish or see completed in the future?
I will be committing myself to a schedule as far as sprite assembly work for Glenn is concerned. I hope to see Glenn through to his completion. I will also make a point to start frequenting the forum once again. Vargose the Kilwala will not be beaten by business. After Glenn I would like to get some some new music tracks in for our new areas, and after that I want to continue to explore areas in which I can help. I would also like to conitnue to help jsondag with idea generation.

[ZeaLitY]

I'm feeling it...the passion of youth. To create a new world of the Chrono series...and it's going to be so polished and wonderful. God, I can'tw ait.

[justin3009]

How do you feel about Crimson Echoes so far?
This project has been going great!  This is exactly what Crono fans want to see.  This project will be one of the best yet for Crono series in TF!

What do you hope to accomplish or see completed in the future?
Cleaning up of maps, and maybe whole new tiles/npcs.  An Idea that me and Outlaw had was that the statues where you find Schala, maybe there could be like a pause moment where they see the statues head fall off into the lava and it floats.  It'll require some serious spriting but it'd be great.
Some new techs would be interesting.  If possible, (Might be not sure), create double techs with Magus and whomever.

[Vehek]

1.
It's amazing! It shows off a lot of rom hacking tricks and capabilites. It's one of the few true total rom hacks of Chrono Trigger.


I remember seeing the original Crimson Echoes thread, back when it was first starting and was at only two forum pages. So much of the in-between storyline was changed since then, mostly because those parts were considered impossible to hack in. But even what they considered impossible, playable Glenn, is (at this time) becoming possible with information on sprite assembly.

2.

I'm hoping to see many things accomplished in the future. Fully understood tech animations and tech mechanics hacking, more information on enemy AI, and others.

~
I can't remember for sure what caused me to work on sprite assembly. Maybe someone suggested that people on sprite assembly, maybe I wanted to contribute something. In any case, I remembered posts about sprite assembly in the 2003-2005 ACMLM archive. I dug up the information and started studying it, eventually realizing suddenly how it loads tiles. Amazing how much people talked about how useful sprite assembly would be, but never tried figuring it out.