Chrono Trigger MSU-1 (with FMV's)

[confuzed]

Ummm, ok, that sounds a bit tricky for me. I'll see how far i get, at least i will try!

[edale]

OK, this patch isn't back up yet, but I checked that German translation vs DarkShock's Chrono Trigger MSU mod (https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/2546/), and there is one conflict at 00FFDC.

The German translation wants to write that location as "[60] [8F] [9F] [70]", and the MSU patch wants to write it as "[A2] [D8] [5D] [27]".


I'm not sure if this patch builds off of DarkShock's, or if it was coded from scratch. If it was coded from scratch, then it might be compatible where DarkShock's is not.

Now all of that said... If you apply the MSU patch on top of the translation patch, the MSU-1 audio should work fine, and there's a chance that bit in the translation won't actually affect anything in-game, so it might work. Then again, that could be a vital bit and all your text could end up garbled. Only way to know for sure is to test it out.

Note applying the translation on top of the MSU patch (which can't be done with the xdelta patch) might work fine as well, but it also might result in some/all of the music not working properly.

It really all depends on how vital those 4 bytes are to both mods.

[qwertymodo]

0xFFDC is just the ROM checksum, so of course they're going to conflict (and by combining them, BOTH will be wrong ).  Perfectly safe to ignore.

Also, good news.  I have some temporary hardware up and running to get my file server back online while I wait for my RMA, which should ship today or else Tuesday, but with the holidays being what they are, I might not actually receive it until next year.  In any case, the download links should be back up for now.  Just expect some minor downtime around the new year once the replacement board shows up.

[Chronosplit]

Looks like I can get Patch Checker to finally work under Wine now (latest winetricks must've done a ton for dotnet40... I should check this with the FFTPatcher Suite sometime).  Here's the details for everyone's information, now that I can download the patch:

-I just did a check with my own latest with the patch that has the most changes and though it says ~98% is go, the new text alignment stuff and script edits make the clashes long as my arm.  I expected this, it tells me that the tool is working right.
-The English Retranslation is about in the same boat.  Doctor L's is even worse than both patches, at ~97.  As I had expected, a separate patch would be needed for both.
-The German one is better off, however it does not match the MSU-1 patch alone (this is completely expected) and data does conflict. 0x0C3B0E and a fair way downward should be added to edale's report.  It is however at 99.7%, but the one other conflict is too long to say it's nothing.

[confuzed]

Had not much time recently because of vacation and family, so i had no time to try to check this myself. Hope i'll find some time next weekendto get into this.

@chronosplit
The one other conflict you were talking about, is this something that can be solved..? Sorry for this (maybe) stupid question, but i do not understand much of all this  Would it be hard to get to 100%?

Anyway, i wish a happy new year to all of you!!

[qwertymodo]

The conflicts are easily fixable.

[confuzed]

@qwertymodo
Thank you very much for this information! ..and for the work you're doing!!!

I just tried to play CT with the intro patch just to test it, but i didn't got it to run. Game starts with standard intro. Tried to google how to patch my files to get it working, but no success. Seems a bit more complicated then just applying an ips patch for language.

[edale]

@qwertymodo
Thank you very much for this information! ..and for the work you're doing!!!

I just tried to play CT with the intro patch just to test it, but i didn't got it to run. Game starts with standard intro. Tried to google how to patch my files to get it working, but no success. Seems a bit more complicated then just applying an ips patch for language.

What emulator are you using? And is the MSU-1 audio working, or is it playing the SPC (SNES's normal audio) audio? It could be something as simple as needing to rename some of the files (you do have the PCM files, right?).

[qwertymodo]

My money is on file naming or missing manifest.

[confuzed]

@qwertymodo
You win! It simply was the filename of my rom, its finally running! 

[Highblade7777]

I am using bsnes (conflict with snes9x on my computer) and while the MSU audio plays fine the intro video doesn't load and it simply plays the standard version.  Any suggestions?

Edit:
I was incorrect, I did not succeed in getting the audio to play properly either.  I compared it to a rom I hacked with the standing MSU1 hack and it doesn't do either.  Everything is the same between the two files aside from the rom (one edited with the original msu1 hack and the other with the patch from this project) any advice is appreciated.  Currently the xml and manifest are both from the original hack.  If I need to create these files or find them for this project please detail how.

Addendum:
Ok I was simply missing the correct xml and bml provided from zeldix.net now I just have to wait for this project to be completed!  Can't wait, its amazing.

[terryv]

Hello, this is my first post and I signed up to this forum because of this project. 

I play and finish this game annually so I know it very well.

I wanted to help bug test, so I figured I'd do 4 playthroughs.

- 1st with free audio w/o intro (audio+video)

- 2nd with free audio w intro

- 3rd with paid audio w/o intro

- 4th with paid audio w intro

I'll do my best to report whatever I find

[qwertymodo]

So... interesting development, Square Enix just released a port of Chrono Trigger for Steam.  Unfortunately, this port appears to be a really low-effort port of the existing Android/iOS ports, which are pretty much complete garbage, and it's even more so on PC.  BUT! the FMV's included in this version appear to be complete remasters, rather than upscales from the PS1 version.  They also appear to play at 30FPS.  Sadly, there's basically no chance of getting 30FPS out of the MSU-1 without seriously sacrificing the video quality, this does make my life much easier in terms of starting from a much cleaner video source than the heavily compressed PS1 versions.

(Click for the full eye-bleeding effect)


There are a couple of problems right now.  First, I can't figure out how to decode the video .dat files.  Yes, I could just record a screen capture, and if it comes to that I will, but I'd really like to avoid as many lossy encoding stages as possible.  Second, the Steam version seems to be inexplicably missing 2 of the videos, namely the Robo cutscene and the Fall of Guardia post-credits scene.  I need to actually play through this awful port up to 2300AD to see if that scene is actually missing, or if it's just hidden in another file somewhere.  Finally, as I mentioned before, the MSU-1 isn't going to be able to play 30FPS, so it's almost kind of sad getting my hands on these higher-quality remasters and knowing I can't use them to their full potential, but oh well... at least it will still look better than it did previously.

[ThegreatBen]

This is great news.

[Chronosplit]

This is much better sounding than I had thought the FMVs were, I heard tales of them being still compressed and junk.  Why are two videos missing though?  That sounds like a very weird omission, considering Square-Enix would've had to put them in specifically for this port.

Either way, this is fantastic news!

[Rodimus Primal]

So... interesting development, Square Enix just released a port of Chrono Trigger for Steam.  Unfortunately, this port appears to be a really low-effort port of the existing Android/iOS ports, which are pretty much complete garbage, and it's even more so on PC.  BUT! the FMV's included in this version appear to be complete remasters, rather than upscales from the PS1 version.  They also appear to play at 30FPS.  Sadly, there's basically no chance of getting 30FPS out of the MSU-1 without seriously sacrificing the video quality, this does make my life much easier in terms of starting from a much cleaner video source than the heavily compressed PS1 versions.

(Click for the full eye-bleeding effect)


There are a couple of problems right now.  First, I can't figure out how to decode the video .dat files.  Yes, I could just record a screen capture, and if it comes to that I will, but I'd really like to avoid as many lossy encoding stages as possible.  Second, the Steam version seems to be inexplicably missing 2 of the videos, namely the Robo cutscene and the Fall of Guardia post-credits scene.  I need to actually play through this awful port up to 2300AD to see if that scene is actually missing, or if it's just hidden in another file somewhere.  Finally, as I mentioned before, the MSU-1 isn't going to be able to play 30FPS, so it's almost kind of sad getting my hands on these higher-quality remasters and knowing I can't use them to their full potential, but oh well... at least it will still look better than it did previously.

Interesting. Is there a way to get the FMVs from the DS port? I refuse to pay Square $15 for this lazy Steam version. It's almost as bad as their port of FFVI.

[Squall_FF8]

First, I can't figure out how to decode the video .dat files.

I would not be surprised if that is just a standard format wrapped up in a dat file. For example FFV graphics is plain png with extra 8 bytes in the beginning.

If that is the case, you may try to hex search for header signature of avi, mp4, qt, ...

Finally, as I mentioned before, the MSU-1 isn't going to be able to play 30FPS, so it's almost kind of sad getting my hands on these higher-quality remasters and knowing I can't use them to their full potential, but oh well... at least it will still look better than it did previously.

Thats fine! If you are able to get rid of the blurry effect - its much better then getting full frame-rate. I bet it will look better then DS FMV's

[MissingLynx]

Hey everyone. Brand new here and I just wanted to let the OP know that I'm going to be beta testing this as well. I will pm you when i get to Proto Dome!

[Decko87]

This is really great, I was inspired by the Steam version of the game to emulate it and get it going on my PC. I've played through and own the DS and SNES versions and this seems really cool. After a few hours of tinkering and figuring out how to get this to work with the video patch I'm afraid to say I can't actually play it for very long. I generally get through the fair, the opening battles, and once i reach the guardia forest the game tends to crash. I made it into the castle once, spoke the Marle posing as Leene and the game crashed shortly after that. I could go through reinstalling everything again now that I've figured it out but I doubt it'll make a difference. I might try patching the original ROM again and giving it a shot. I'm running it on snes9x-64 1.55 as recommended. If anyone has had experience with crashing please let me know, for now I'm just going to play the original unless there's something I can do to prevent further crashes.

Edit: I take it all BACK! It was my fault, evidently the latest versions snesx doesn't like my Xbox One controllers ever shutting off. They were both low on battery, and I'm surmising the signal was popping out when I was on my couch, also they both died during play. I plugged in at my computer and made it to 2300 A.D., just picked up Robo and headed to the factory, everything has been flawless so far.

[NeilZander]

I'm a bit confused. Sorry for asking this but the links in question are kinda hard to understand. What I would like to ask is are the FMV's available yet for download? and does it include the an option to use the already in game music? All I want is the FMV's for the game the music isn't a problem for me and I kinda prefer the original music anyways but that's just a matter of opinion there. If it's not available yet I understand and really look forward to this project and wish you luck with it.