Where's the latest ROM?

[Shinrin]

Yup my projects is in full force right now. I'm gonna post a report of it soon.

[Chrono'99]

Bah, at least I didn't encounter any corruption yet (apart from fixable messed-text corruption). CE is shaping up.

[Kae]

I apologize for not having spoken sooner. As Zeality shows, I last logged in on October 5th. That's not entirely true, as I do peruse the front page of the Chrono Compendium fairly regularly on my rounds, once every two or three days as of late. I know I saw the Chrono Crisis art on the 31st, because I remember how wowed I was by it.

I would still like to help out with CE, since it's rather discouraging to see it placed in the Abandoned Projects section of the Fan Projects page. The problem is... firstly, I don't have Temporal Flux installed. Not a big issue there, takes me all of 5 minutes. I'm also completely rusty in how TF works in terms of its map editors, but that's nothing a couple hours of mucking around with can't fix for the most part.
The biggest issue for me for contributing to CE, is that I know jack about scripting in TF, and unfortunately it's scripting that takes up the bulk of time and effort in a game.

So... for me to do anything, I need to be told what we'd like to have done. Before what I did was take existing, rough maps, and work them to add detail, flair, and overall finishing touches - specifically the Truce Guardhouse. That kind of thing I really enjoy, and would like to do as well, but... again, that requires semi-finished maps, etc, etc.

I am here. I do still poke around from time to time. I would like to help, but I need some clear and concise direction with how to help. As well, if anyone ever needs to get in contact with me, please feel free to fire off an email to my Gmail account: kaelitz(at)gmail(dot)com, because I check that daily.

[Chrono'99]

Thanks for posting

Even though the project is placed in the Abandoned section, I'm actually working steadily on the coding. As far as the coding is concerned, it's progressing everyday, although the result isn't that visible since I'm not past Chapter 9 yet (the farthest Jsondag2 coded); I'm still in Chapter 4 reworking the events so it fits the latest plot outline.

So, there aren't much semi-finished maps to polish in fact. Wait...I've skimmed through the Changelog, and here are the maps you could work on:

{0A0} A Medina location in 602 AD
{0F5} Mountain trail in Reptite 1 AD
{0F6} Reptite Forest Maze
{106}/{107} Reptite Forest Crossroads
{0D9} {0DA} {0DB} {0DC} Reptite 1002 A.D.

Some of these aren't necessarily "rough" but could be improved to look less rectangular, more natural, etc. You can also look at the Changelog topic and pick up any map that's listed, but the 8 above are the ones that need most work, I think.

It will hopefully get more interesting soon, once I go past Chapter 4; Zeal and Singing Mt. will require less code reworking, and then once in or past the Reptite chapters we'll have more new stuff and maps to have fun with.

Anyway, thanks again for posting. Here's the latest ROM patch:

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[Kae]

Sorry about the delay. I'm working on the aforementioned maps right now. I've got {0A0} done for the most part. I left the line of bushes intact since I'm not sure what they're supposed to be used for. The leftmost bush I removed though.

Working on the others now. I don't know how much I'll get done tonight.

*edit*
Wow, just loaded {0F5}. This is gonna take some work! Haha.

[Chrono'99]

In the meantime, I've finally found out what are the commands that darken the 1999 AD overworld when Lavos erupts. We needed them to make Zeal looks like it's at night in Chapter 5.

7F0041 seems to have something to do with Layer 3 (an empty one, in this case).
7F0046 is what layers are affected by the color effect.
7F0047 is the amount of blue to overlay on the map
7F0048 is the amount of red
7F0049 is the amount of green

That's a load off our mind. I was afraid it would be too complicated to change the overworld via palette hack.

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[Vehek]

Where should we post bugs now? In the bug thread again?

[Chrono'99]

Yeah, I guess.

[Chrono'99]

New patch. Here are the main plot-related changes:

Chapter 1:
- removed Schala's tomb at North Cape, because it could confuse people as to Schala's fate (consequently, I moved the Glass Rose flashback to later)

Chapter 2:
- added a small infirmary in Chronopolis
- Lucca or Marle isn't left behind after the Zenan battle
- since getting access to 3 overworlds at once in Chapter 4 is too much, Northern Zenan/Medina can now be explored directly after the Zenan battle
- Chronopolis is reached back through either the Denadoro, Telepod, or Medina Gate

Chapter 3:
- Magus breaks his seal all by himself when the party meets King Zeal and he teleports directly to the MM room

Chapter 4:
- modified things according to the new Glenn/Kasmir stuff
- modified the 602 overworld to make place for a Mystic village distinct from Medina
- inserted the 3 Vanguard captains and the 3 possible decisions (I omitted the 4th choice, it was too similar to the 3rd I think)
- reinserted the "back to the future(tm)" line in Chronopolis (it had been removed from Porre Camp due to plot changes)

Chapter 5
- "Return to Prodigiousness" was too long; I changed the chapter title to a tentative "Asking the Mirror" as a reference to Crono's line on the Frozen Flame in CC ("when you gaze into it, it gazes back at you")
- fixed the night effects
- very subtle change, but I added buildings on the inaccessible Zeal islands, since these Elemental places aren't sealed by Queen Zeal yet
- if you have the Glass Rose (find the Jade Orb in Dalton's Lair then trade it with an NPC), talk to Schala in Zeal Palace to watch Jsondag2's flashback cutscene

Not done yet:
- forgot to put Melchior back in Chronopolis
- Belthasar's speech on human evolution/Dreamstone/Zeal might needs a slight revision to account for the fact that what follows it is totally unrelated to it
- then the rest is on hold for a bit since the Dragon Tooth plot point is under revision

Also, I made Crono unremoveable from the active party because he would be too superfluous if optional (particularly because he's silent), but I'm not sure what's the best solution. If it were all up to me exclusively, I'd make Crono not a silent protagonist, so he'd have more relevance in the plot and since he's not the main character (all the party members are "main", but we can't make them all silent protagonists); however, I don't want to alienate anyone. So I need input: should Crono speak?

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[justin3009]

I'll probably try that out later tonight, and I think Crono should stay silent.

[nightmare975]

Making him speak will take us way too far away from canon.

[Chrono'99]

Crono speaks in Chrono Cross, as well as in the official Chrono Trigger manga -- in which we have a huge glimpse at his personality. The only reason he doesn't speak in CT is because he's the main character. Same for Serge; he's silent because he's the main character, and as soon as "Lynx" replaces him, "Lynx" becomes the one who doesn't speak.

The thing with CT:CE is that we don't have a main character. Magus, Glenn, and Lucca appear to be the most central characters in the plot; Marle gets a lot of attention too thanks to the 1 A.D. story arc; Robo may be a bit less important but has exposure in the future arcs; and Ayla fills the role of the optional character. Crono, on the other hand, is less developed because of his silent role. All he does (and he doesn't actually do much in the plot) is generic cardboard heroic stuff, even with the addition of the Entity connection stuff in Chapter 19.

Granted, even though his personality is shown in the manga, we would have to expand on it if we make him speak. We would have to create something that isn't already here. But isn't this the very point of making a sequel in the first place? To put the characters in new, different situations than the ones they've already experienced? We expand a lot on Magus and Glenn; we could do the same with Crono and explore the human being that's hiding being the simple "hero" stereotype. We have lots of occasions to develop him, for instance with his one-on-one encounter with Lavos in the Frozen Flame nightmare sequence (Hadriel actually intended to have Crono speaks in the very first CE plot draft). The fact that Crono dies between this game and CC should also be a reason to develop him in everyway we can; it's his last adventure, after all. He needs to have a memorable "goodbye" message.

[Chrono'99]

EDIT: Not to mention that Crono's silence completely nullifies one of the biggest difference between this game's Crono and CT's Crono: the fact that he's married with Marle. They're in love with each other, they form a couple, yet it doesn't really affect anything because of Crono's silence. If Crono were to speak, this "love" stuff wouldn't be an unwelcomed addition; on the contrary, as long as we keep the current epid mood and stay away from cliché, cutesy love-story stuff, this Crono/Marle detail would fit perfectly with the game's main theme of "reconciling differences" and "personal attachment", and Lavos's original loneliness and quest for knowledge.

[justin3009]

YOu make a good point there...That's actually a really good point.  I'm probably going to have to change it to have Crono talking thing.  It'd probably make things easier.

[Chrono'99]

New patch. Bunch of information to note:

- It already was in the previous patch, but in case you didn't notice the debug room has been fixed
- Temporary portals are now grey while only the Entity Gates are blue.
- To illustrate the fact that the party as a whole is "the main character", the party leader now changes regularly in the early chapters. Crono leads in the Prologue; then it's Magus in Chapter 1; Lucca in Chronopolis; Marle in the Porre Camp; Robo in the Chronopolis attack; Glenn when he's recruited; Magus again in Zeal at night. In other early chapters and miscellaneous sequences, the player is free to choose the party leader (Crono is not required).

Chapter 1:
- due to Dalton being in contact with King Zeal, Chapter 1 is now conveniently set in 11998 BC instead of the kind of akward 11999 BC
- it looked kind of clumsy to have the portal cave connected to the eastern landmasses, so it's now disconnected again; instead, a man with a raft appears after Chapter 1 and serves as a ferryman

Chapter 2:
- couldn't find a decent point to introduce Melchior in Chronopolis, so I made it so that he's already there (in a new room near the infirmary) when the party first visits

Chapter 5:
- tweaked Belthasar speech on King Zeal

Chapter 6:
- "Awaken to the Eruption" is too long to fit, so I changed the title to "The Breaking Point" (awesome, but perhaps it's too much of a spoiler; we'll see when we finalize the chapter titles)
- replaced the Singing Mountain Imps with Reptites
- as in the plot outline, the 6 PCs are all in Prehistory, so I added a cutscene in which you see the inactive characters searching in the forest while the active party is in Singing Mt.

Atash Kedah scene:
- tweaked it a lot; it works flawlessly with all the characters present on screen whatever your active party was; hopefully the result is impressive
- might still have a few timing issues because seconds for PCs seem to be shorter than seconds for inactive characters :/
- added a few lines foreshadowing the big relation between Lavos and humanity: the party thinks King Zeal is possessed by Lavos, but King Zeal claims it's the opposite, that the Flame is his hostage

Chapter 7:
- started to work on the Reptite 1 A.D. overworld (it's nightmare975's Human 1 A.D. map, albeit with a few differences that are to be made with event coding)
- thus, this chapter isn't really playable yet

Recall that graphic hacking is to be done at the end, so don't lol if you think the Dragon Tooth "looks" like a ridiculous bunch of Millenial Fair balloons. Also, notice the Beeba reference in Chapter 6. Beebas will probably not appear in the game, but it's a small textual reference like the Viper one, which should please fans of Chrono Cross

Phew. That was an interesting part to code. The Atash Kedah scene is almost like a miniature ending. Now, we're getting into the second phase of the game... the Reptite timeline!

*play the song The Dream that Time is Dreaming*

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