Modification

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The Modification wiki depends on volunteer contributors to add new information or tutorials. If you're interested in the Chrono series and have done some research, post on the forums or e-mail chronocompendium@gmail.com for access to edit the modification section, and we'll make sure that you can add your findings here.

If you're looking for Steam mods, check the Moogles and Mods Discord, as well as the Chrono Trigger Steam and Chrono Cross: Radical Dreamers Edition Nexus websites.

Chrono Trigger

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Chrono Trigger (Japanese: クロノ・トリガー) is a 1995 SNES game and is considered to be one of the greatest games ever made, as well as one of the finest role-playing games of the 16-bit era. Owing to its success, Chrono Trigger has been investigated and hacked extensively. Temporal Flux enables whole-scale editing of scenarios, field maps, the script, and many other areas of the game, while many other utilities and translations round out the community's offerings. A leaked beta version, the Chrono Trigger Prerelease, has also garnered the attention of ROM hackers.

Numerical File List and Offsets

  • Does not exist at this time on the encyclopedia. There are other attempts to organize the ROM (such as Geiger's CT offsets).
  • 114B00-114BBF. Weapon palettes. 6 bytes each, 32 total. That should mean a limit of 3 colors per palette. And $00-1F is the valid range for the $0D6CEC,x index values.
  • Datacrystal RAM Map

Geiger's Offsets

Geiger was the first to audit the ROM of Chrono Trigger, creating a huge offsets text file that mapped the ROM. The guide is formally hosted as at his homepage. A direct link exists below:

Old Version

Direct File Access

Even Older Versions

Alphabetical Topic List

Miscellaneous Resources

Event sound effects - bundled as .spcs or .wavs (no looped effects). Instructions for conversion included in the readme.

Battle sound effects - this archive includes all the battle sound effect, such as Luminaire exploding or Lightning 2 firing off.

Instrument Sample Pack and SPC bank:

Utilities and Tools

Temporal Flux

Temporal Flux is a spectacular editor that can work with dialogue, locations, and overworlds, and in the future will be the vehicle for editing everything in the game. A plugin architecture lets editors add their own functionality to the program. Get the latest version and plugin architecture here. A backup for 3.04 is available here with a plugin architecture 1.00 backup here.

Before consulting Kajar Laboratories or tutorials, check out Chickenlump's Temporal Flux guide. Updated in 2007, it can get you on your feet in no time. Download it here.

Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 is required for Temporal Flux to run. The .NET Framework can be obtained through Windows Update. After installation, return to Windows Update to download any available .NET patches. A downloadable version, Microsoft .NET Framework Version 3.0 Redistributable, is available on Microsoft's .NET download page. If possible, use Windows Update instead as it will take into account your Windows version and language. If you're still having issues, please note that not all the new .NET frameworks provide what the old ones did (in the same way). In Windows Features, check for .NET 3.0: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/framework/install/dotnet-35-windows (thanks to Trig)

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TF Plugins
Actor, Animation, and Static Checker

This archive contains two Flux files. The release file is Actor, Animation, and Static Checker.Flux. It allows one to view each of these things without modifying events for every little change. Grab it here.

This is a technology demo of self-modifying code (SMC). Assignment commands are capable of pointing into their own memory space and changing values. But be warned before you start trying to use SMC that its a pain to maintain. Every time you add, remove, or change a command, you'll need to check every SMC assignment and change its address. This becomes particularly burdensome if you are using several of these assignments, such as in this Flux file.

To use this Flux, import it to its default slot, which will attach it to Location 067. To attach it to a different location, you'll need to modify the ChangeLocation commands. Provided that you change nothing other than this, the SMC assignments should still work fine. Talk to Gaspar for instructions.

The other Flux file included is a slightly older version that is not as complete, but also does not use ChangeLocation. NPCs are loaded in real time, though this does create some minor issues we have not yet solved. This demonstrates some of the research that was done to achieve the real time loads. Without setting the proper values in memory, Chrono Trigger will typically crash after just a few NPC loads.

Hi-Tech

Note: Please check this topic in case a more up-to-date version has been released.

Hi-Tech, an addon for Temporal Flux, is an outstanding and fully functional tech, attack, and item Editor for use with a Chrono Trigger ROM. You are to provide your own ROM. With it, you can edit all of the tech animations and properties, along with targeting, thus being able to create your own techs and attacks from scratch. Consumable Item healing and status addition properties are handled by Itemizer, and not included in Hi-Tech.

Mauron's Tools

Note: Please check this topic in case newer versions have been released. These versions are current as of May 6, 2018.

  • Attractive Battler: An attract battle mode (intro demo fights) editor.
  • Fiendcrafter: An enemy stat and appearance editor.
  • Inventory Manager: A shop editor.
  • Itemizer: Item and equipment editor.
  • NPCustom: NPC graphics data editor.
  • Save Master: A plugin to control the data copied into save files.
  • String Relabeler: A plugin that allows editing of some of Temporal Flux's global strings.
  • Temporal Relocator: A save era editor for location maps.
  • Warrior Workshop: A character stat editor.

Tutorials and Guides

You might also check out Zakyrus's CT hacking grab bag.

Translations and Hacks

Steam

Chrono Trigger was released to bad reviews on Steam due to its ugly UI and other questionable changes from the SNES original. Several hackers came forward to release patches fixing the UI, restoring the original translation, and tweaking other aspects of the game to improve upon the experience. While Square Enix has since made some of these improvements to the base game, the patches can still add fresh, needed changes to the game. Check out the following website, which aggregates all Steam patches and utilities:

Should the site go down, the Chrono Compendium backed up all items here:

Some interesting findings are in this board about the Steam CT version: [Link https://trello.com/invite/b/BnoJAiFS/ca312bf3c0d04088733cde70637e4f11/chrono-trigger]

In short:

  • there is no ROM; it's built on the mobile port
  • SOME editing is possible with Temporal Flux, but only with some hex editing (tested only with maps)
  • there's a lot extra data in the PC version that Temporal Flux cannot read

Thanks to themadpatter for these findings.

Guides to Editing
Other Tools and Patches

There are a couple tools available:

CT Defilter

By River Nyxx.

CT Explore

By River Nyxx.

As well as a graphical patch:

By reyqn

Chrono Trigger - Music Library

The library has been translated into English and French by Terminus Traduction (who also translated Chrono Cross and Radical Dreamers into French).

yawnmoth has written a document on hacking the music library:

Chrono Trigger DS

There's one hack at the moment:

Mystic Edition

This hack replaces the terms fiends to Mystics and Fiendlord to Magus or Lord Magus as it was on the original SNES game, the rest is kept the same as the DS translation. Additionally, the author made minor graphic changes and palette modifications, the changes are as follows:

  • Crono’s mugshot given back his smile.
  • Recolored Heckran’s Cave and the Blackbird back to their blue colors.
  • Dark Ages map post Lavos Beckons chapter was given more brightness.
  • Ozzie, Frog, Marle were given small color changes.

Download here.

There are a couple translations available:

Spanish Translation

By the ChronoSP team.

Simplified Chinese Translation

By BCD.

Chrono Cross

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Chrono Cross (Japanese: クロノ・クロス) is the 2000 sequel to Chrono Trigger. Released for the original PlayStation, it has been extensively hacked, mainly since the late 00s. Event coding, model changing, and field map editing are among the frontiers of Chrono Cross modification.

Numerical File List and Offsets

Chrono Cross, released late in the PlayStation's life, was subject to clever data obfuscation by Square. Obfuscation in this sense—the art of hiding data—means at the simplest level that, if you put Chrono Cross in your hard drive, you can't browse directories and view individual assets, like character models and textures. Instead, the game disc is compiled as a unified whole with an index file at the beginning which the PlayStation / Chrono Cross read to find files and operate. In 2002, Terminus Traduction (specifically, Yazoo, Nemesis, and Manz) successfully audited Chrono Cross and wrote a set of utilities for extracting its data. The first tools (Chrono Cross Hacking Tools) were authored by Yazoo and dump the entire game's assets. The second set of tools (Chrono Cross Translation Tools) are heavily-modified versions of Yazoo's tools primarily coded by Nemesis and his team. They are specifically geared to dump assets (such as text, scripts, images with text, and video captions) needed for translation.

All Chrono Cross file dumpers to date assign each file a four-digit number according to its position in the toc (see boot.dat)—0000 is the first file listed in the toc, and so on. There is no single accepted convention for numbering the subfiles of compound filetypes, so I've used the briefest one, which I invented for Purple Cat Tools, where 0009.000 is the first subfile of file 0009, 3760.003.005 is the sixth subfile of the fourth subfile of file 3760, and so on.

File Number Name/Content Filetype
N/A boot.dat (other link) N/A
0000-0007 executables exe, text
0008-0016 Misc. cpt, drp, atim, unknown
0017-0024 Main menu stuff drp, tbt, unknown
0025-0074 PC menu strip portraits tim
0075-0125 PC menu info packs cpt
0126-0189 Key item menu images tim
0190 Key item descriptions tbt
0191-0202 Shop and misc menu stuff tim, drp, unknown
0203 (partial duplicate of 0017) drp
0204-0307 PC overworld models and textures mdl, tim
0308-0331 PC disguise and boat overworld models mdl, tim
0332-1966 Room data script.cpt, drp, rgfx
1967-1977 Misc. drp, cpt, tim, exe, unknown
1978-1992 Dialogue frames tim
1993-2084 Dialogue portraits tim
2085-2272 PC overworld animations anim
2273-2408 Music minst, mseq
2409-2413 unknown
2414-2415 (duplicates of 2313, 2314) minst, mseq
2416 Combat menu drp
2417-2517 Battlefields drp
2518-2542 Misc. stat and battle data cpt, lzss, unknown
2543-3054 Battle scripts bscr
3055-3210 PC battle models and weapons cpt, mdl, weap
3211-3690 Enemy battle models and weapons cpt, mdl, weap
3691-3707 Enemy weapon models mesh
3708-3759 PC small strip portraits tim
3760-3811 PC battle animations drp
3812-3971 Enemy battle animations drp
3972-5597 Elements eins, drp, egfx
5598- Videos video
  • Special Note: The information in this wiki was compiled by the coolest purple cat this side of the timestream. Technical discoveries brought to you by the Chrono modding community.

File Types

anim Model animations.
atim The ~TIM-like texture used for battle models.
bscr Battlefield script
cpt A file consisting of several other files mashed together
drp A file consisting of several other files mashed together
egfx Element graphics(?) pack.
eins Element instructions(?) pack.
exe PSX executable code.
Fieldscript File Fieldscript
lzss Compressed file.
mdl A 3D model.
mesh Generic mesh
minst Music instrument sample.
mseq Music sequence.
rgfx A room graphics pack (.cpt). Contains background images and NPC model textures.
script.cpt Room dialogue script and misc. resources
tbt Text file with leading pointer table
tim Classic TIM texture.
timinfo Information on slicing, mirroring, etc. a texture.
video A movie file.
weap A weapons model/texture pack (cpt format).

Files with unique content formats or files whose content is not understood are usually given the .out extension (some subfiles from drps have been assigned .tHH, where HH is a hex representation of a drp type byte, instead.)

For the old, deprecated file structure page, see Chrono Cross File Structure.

Alphabetized Topic List

Tutorials and Guides

Miscellaneous Resources

Utilities and Tools

Translations and Hacks

Radical Dreamers

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Radical Dreamers (Japanese: Radical Dreamers –盗めない宝石–, "The Unstolen Jewel") is a 1996 side story or gaiden to Chrono Trigger. A text adventure, it has not received the same amount of attention as the other games in the series for obvious reasons. The main focus of ROM hackers has been to enable translation of this work, which was never made available outside Japan.

Numerical File List and Offsets

Does not exist at this time.

Alphabetical Topic List

Miscellaneous Resources

Utilities and Tools

Translations

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