Author Topic: CHRONO TRIGGER 13th BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE (GOODIES!!)  (Read 6616 times)

FaustWolf

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CHRONO TRIGGER 13th BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE (GOODIES!!)
« on: March 11, 2008, 03:15:55 am »
As you are all no doubt aware, this post comes to you on CT -- Chrono Tuesday, March 11. Chrono Trigger is 13 today! *blows on a kazoo* This is the day when we should all reflect on the substantial impact one videogame series has had on our lives.

But enough talk -- down to business. Attached to this post is the world's first non-translation Chrono Cross hack. Thanks to the artistic wonders wrought by BROJ, maggiekarp, and Thorn, the many members who contributed to the CC model investigation, and Terminus Traductions (who produced crucial tools slightly modified for usability by Ramsus), Kajar Labs now brings you a patch that, when applied to digital copies of the Chrono Cross CDs, will change Guile superficially into Magil, or Magus if you prefer to name him that.

For an idea of what you're getting when you download this hack, here's a youtube video showing off Chrono Cross' brand-new character. Click on the very lovely Aeris holiday greeting to see the video:


The video is intended to represent Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, and Radical Dreamers simultaneously -- the whacked-out story bits against a black background invoke Radical Dreamers; Magus' presence fulfills the wishes of many a CT fanboy/girl (myself included); and the technical host for this wondrous fan achievement is Chrono Cross itself. Shame I couldn't implement dialogue changes in time -- that's still under investigation. If dialogue changes are feasible, consider it likely that the patch will go above version 1.00! I'll even do a video where Magil goes toe-to-toe with Lynx after some pre-battle conversation.

There will be multiple versions of the Guile -> Magil patch! maggiekarp has a whole wardrobe lined up, and red-eyed & green-eyed versions of Magil/Magus are also in the works. So if Magil doesn't conform to your aesthetic tastes here, you can try out some other versions in the future.

That will be all for now. Feel free to use this thread to reminisce about Chrono or something. And let me know if the patch readme is intelligible -- I typed it up at 2AM. Without coffee.


As a postscript, I would like to express my disappointment that Wikipedia passed Chrono Trigger over for a March 11 "Today's Featured Article" honor. I would also like to be quite frank with the community in claiming at least partial responsibility for this unholy "passover." You see, videogame articles have recently been panned for receiving too much attention there, and when ZeaLitY proposed that CT should get the nod for March 11, a huge argument ensued. Yours truly became a registered Wikian (something I was long overdue for anyway), and, filled with extreme Passion of Youth, I contributed a few supporting blurbs to the "Today's Featured Article" discussion as my first action at Wikipedia. *Apparently* this is looked down upon, and I was labeled ZeaLitY's "sockpuppet" -- some Wikians suspected ZeaLitY had created another wiki account under the name "FaustWolf" in an effort to turn the tide in CT's favor -- and wow, I thought it was just a discussion and not a vote. My involvement appears to have reflected badly on the effort to get CT a TFA nod, and therefore I offer my apologies to the community, for whatever it's worth, and regardless of how much I really had to do with it.

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« Last Edit: March 11, 2008, 11:33:35 am by FaustWolf »

justin3009

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Re: CHRONO TRIGGER 13th BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE (GOODIES!!)
« Reply #1 on: March 11, 2008, 09:10:56 am »
Now that was awesome

Shinrin

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Re: CHRONO TRIGGER 13th BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE (GOODIES!!)
« Reply #2 on: March 11, 2008, 02:17:40 pm »
Wow, that's some nice work. I would love to see more Chrono Cross hacks.

maggiekarp

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Re: CHRONO TRIGGER 13th BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE (GOODIES!!)
« Reply #3 on: March 11, 2008, 02:35:39 pm »
Really dig the little story setup in that video

ZeaLitY

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Re: CHRONO TRIGGER 13th BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE (GOODIES!!)
« Reply #4 on: March 11, 2008, 04:51:02 pm »
There was still some clever political maneuvering involved, so on whole I would say that though my request failed, the WikiProject video games won that battle. The war will go on.

ZeaLitY

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Re: CHRONO TRIGGER 13th BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE (GOODIES!!)
« Reply #5 on: March 11, 2008, 04:59:11 pm »
Oh, and are you thinking what I'm thinking...

Events are way off from hacking, of course. But with all of Cross's art and locations, Magus could have a fun little adventure in El Nido while shadowing Serge's group (which pops up in certain locations) and furthering his own agenda and knowledge of Project Kid.

Yeah, now that's a badass ROM hack idea.

FaustWolf

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Re: CHRONO TRIGGER 13th BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE (GOODIES!!)
« Reply #6 on: March 11, 2008, 05:04:01 pm »
Thanks guys! There's always Chrono Cross' birthday in November (not sure when Radical Dreamers came out, but that's got Featured Article status as well). Maybe we'll succeed in experimenting with dialogue changes in Cross by that point, and we can get a "hackfic" going. At the very least, getting all the resources excised from Cross by that time will be a fairly doable goal. We'll have all the models excised by that time, for sure.

Yeah, that's a slick hack idea. Did Terminus Traductions leave any notes on event hacking?

Boo the Gentleman Caller

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Re: CHRONO TRIGGER 13th BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE (GOODIES!!)
« Reply #7 on: March 11, 2008, 05:22:11 pm »
zeality is on to something...  magus could be trailing serge's group and could be playing some sort of being-the-scenes effects on the storyline.  now what those are, i dunno, it would take some time to flesh out, but the ideas are a-brewin'!

FaustWolf

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Re: CHRONO TRIGGER 13th BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE (GOODIES!!)
« Reply #8 on: March 11, 2008, 05:28:11 pm »
And not to mention, with the sheer number of characters in Cross there could be multiple parties doing stuff at the same time. Sort of like those instances in Final Fantasy VI where you'd have Terra off somewhere and Celes or Edgar or someone off somewhere else. In a "perfect" Chrono Cross hack you could switch between Magil's POV and Serge/Kid's POV.

...wow.

But I wonder if it wouldn't be easier to excise all the graphical resources, find a 3D engine, and do a fangame from scratch. Such things are FAR, far away at this point, but it's always been in the back of my mind.

Thorn

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Re: CHRONO TRIGGER 13th BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE (GOODIES!!)
« Reply #9 on: March 11, 2008, 07:22:50 pm »
But I wonder if it wouldn't be easier to excise all the graphical resources, find a 3D engine, and do a fangame from scratch. Such things are FAR, far away at this point, but it's always been in the back of my mind.

Well then, all I have to say is... TO FAR AWAY TIMES! *A toast to FaustWolf's genius*

FaustWolf

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Re: CHRONO TRIGGER 13th BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE (GOODIES!!)
« Reply #10 on: March 11, 2008, 07:44:12 pm »
Heh, well, we'll see what we can do.  Once we get all of Chrono Cross' graphical data excised, my plan is to turn to Final Fantasy IX, as I think its game resources would mix quite well with CC's. And FFIX is very much on its way to being all figured out over at qhimm. To boot, Legend of Dragoon's got a bunch of pre-rendered backgrounds ripe for the picking -- they're all in classic .TIM format, which is a blessing. Nice environments too. And there's enemy battle models that look like MegaMutants! :D We could throw in Metal Gear Rex for good measure...

The problem is finding some sort of 3D engine. There's Multi Media Fusion for 2D stuff -- if you've got some $$ to fork over, that is. In any case, if there ever is a 3D game creation package, one would have to know a programming language to take full advantage of it. I'm putting all my eggs in the Python basket, since a.) Luminaire has proved it extremely useful for model viewing and b.) MMF is likely going to implement a Python module; and MMF might go 3D some day, perhaps by the time enough resources are liberated to begin thinking about huge fan game projects.

The only thing that scares me is the prospect of entering the working world full-time after May. I wonder if I'll have more or less free time in "real life" than in college -- it's difficult to tell, since studying is practically a 24-hour task, except when you're hacking and liberating game resources of course!

For the short term, I'm going to see if I can implement some kickass stuff for another birthday tribute vid. Spring Break, please give me more time!

ZeaLitY

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Re: CHRONO TRIGGER 13th BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE (GOODIES!!)
« Reply #11 on: March 11, 2008, 08:01:25 pm »
Hey hey hey, of course we should not neglect the Cross backgrounds. I'm ready to explode those all over the encyclopedia and push them in fans' faces like "LOOK AT THE BEAUTY DAMNIT!"

I bet it's something really simple (the instructions to assemble the room graphics), but yeah, I'm ill-equipped.

FaustWolf

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Re: CHRONO TRIGGER 13th BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE (GOODIES!!)
« Reply #12 on: March 11, 2008, 08:32:42 pm »
So am I. It's utterly possible to assemble them by hand, but so tedious.

BROJ

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Re: CHRONO TRIGGER 13th BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE (GOODIES!!)
« Reply #13 on: March 11, 2008, 09:55:35 pm »
I *just* came across this thread... Truly amazing video Faustwolf! However, I think the most feasible way of implementing Magil into Chrono Cross, story-wise, would probably be through an interactive flashback when you meet Magil and subsequent flashbacks as you progress through the story and come across new situations. Just my opinion...
« Last Edit: March 11, 2008, 09:58:31 pm by BROJ »

FaustWolf

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Re: CHRONO TRIGGER 13th BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE (GOODIES!!)
« Reply #14 on: March 11, 2008, 10:09:25 pm »
Thanks! Yeah, with event editing such things should be possible. IF we ever figure out how to do that. I'll consider us lucky if we figure out how to change whatever pointer tables exist on the game CDs. I imagine the pointers might simply be the Table of Contents at the beginning of the CD, but I'm not quite sure if it's just that, or if something else is involved.