Chrono Trigger Soundtrack Expansion

[xZabuzax]

Well goddamn, Chrono Trigger is already an awesome game with pretty darn good music and you are making the game even better by adding more music?

I'm in!

[PowerPanda]

The work on CTSE 3.0 is done, and it has been ported to Enhansa Edition, the Bugfix and Uncensoring Patch, and Chrono Trigger+. The default rom for CT+ is going to include this music only in the new areas of the game. However, CTSE will come with an optional addendum that adds the music to the base game in CT+ as well.

In addition, Reld has updated Temporal Flux to not only allow the placement of the new music, but to incorporate the ASM that allows you to set random battle music per map. These are now done from the Location Properties screen, rather than a separate music sub-window. The music sub-window has been moved to a main window, and still allows you to change instruments for the songs. As an added bonus, Reld has also allowed users to set enemy IDs beyond the base game range.

The last step in all of this is coordinating releases. We're hoping to drop the updates for CT+, CTSE, and Temporal Flux on the same day, giving you a Chrono Trifecta.

EDIT: I keep finding little things to fix. One byte here; one byte there. Things like Fanfares resetting a location to its original music. I've found enough of them that I think I need to complete my personal playthrough before releasing. I've already finished up the endgame sidequests, so it's just playing through CT+'s new content and then doing the Black Omen and Lavos. Shouldn't take me more than a few days.

[PowerPanda]

CTSE 3.0 has been finalized, and is ready for upload. I am awaiting one last verification from ThegreatBen that a last-minute addition to Chrono Trigger+ won't produce any conflicts, and then I will upload. There are a lot of changes to the 3.0 version, including improved versions of the 4 PSX/DS songs that make them sound closer to the original than the 1.0 and 2.0 versions. Additionally, CTSE now has compatibility with the following romhacks:
Bugfix and Uncensoring - Bugfixes only
Bugfix and Uncensoring - All-in
Enhansa Edition
Chrono Trigger+

Here is the list of changes:

==3.0==
Drum tables added for the new music
Echo buffer and volume controls added for the new music, allowing additional instruments to be used
"A Meeting With Destiny" & "A Time to Rest ~After the Battle~" re-arranged to make use of more instruments
"One Sunny Day When We Met" & "Scattering Blossoms" edited to use drum tables
Added ASM that allows the random battle music to be set per map
Added "Battle 1 Rough" as the battle theme for Gato and Ozzie's Fortress
Added optional patches for battle ASM and party change menu music
Added more musical cues, notably to the Millenial Fair, Mt. Woe, Last Village, and the Blackbird
Compatibility patch added for the Bugfix and Uncensoring romhack and the Chrono Trigger+ romhack

That's not all. The Chrono Trigger editor, Temporal Flux, is getting a modified edition from Reld. This "Version 3.04 R1" is the first update in over 5 years, and is focused on improving the interface and tools for music insertion. It will detect if you have CTSE applied, and if so will allow you to place the new music from within the editor. If it is not applied, you wil still get additions for making it easier to edit music.

Finally, 2 other hacks will get updates to coincide with CTSE 3.0. Chrono Trigger+ will get its long-awaited update, inserting the new music into the new areas of the game. CTSE will come with an addendum patch that optionally adds the new music into scenes from the original narrative as well. Last and most certainly the least, Gi Nattak is updating his (in)famous "unsightly pixel" patch to its 2.0 version, which will fix stray pixels on the 12,000 BC maps. This patch is included in all versions of CTSE as a thank-you to Gi for his help.


EDIT: No conflicts. I am submitting for release.

[PowerPanda]

With the release of Version 3.0, I have recorded a couple of exhibition videos showcasing areas of the game where you can hear quite a bit of new music. A lot of this has been covered before, but I wanted to create standalone videos for these sections.

The Millenial Fair

The Blackbird and Last Village

[PowerPanda]

I've had a bug report for CTSE Enhansa Edition, where the Keeper's Dome location won't load. This was my mistake. I shifted one of the music changes 1 byte to the left, and blew away some event logic. I thought I had caught all of those, but I must have forgotten to visit Keeper's Dome in Enhansa Edition when I checked on all the changes.

If you're playing the Enhansa Edition addendum patch, there are 2 ways around this.
1. If you're comfortable in a hex editor, go to address 38xD738. There are 2 bytes that read "58 3B". Change these 2 bytes to "18 58"
2. There are actually no changes to the Keeper's Dome in Enhansa Edition. You can move your save file over to CTSE Standard Edition to visit the dome, and then move your save file back to continue the rest of the game. Think of it like a Playstation game where you have to switch to a different disc to visit a town.

I will, of couse, fix this in a revision. I'm just going to wait a couple more days to see if there are any other bug reports. I've done my best to eliminate bugs prior to release, but with 6 versions out there, I know I probably made another slipup somewhere in there.

[gothic251]

Absolutely love the mod, thanks for all your hard work!

So for the bugfix version compatibility, I'm assuming the 'all-in version' is for the Bugfix+SkyDark and Name Liberties+Aerdian Item Names version. I use the Bugfix+SkyDark and Name Liberties version as I feel the Aerdian name changes are unnecessary, would the all-in version still work there? Or would a different patch have to be made?

[Kallisto]

The GreatBen and all of you here done such a great job improving such a older version of the game of CT and I dare say surpasses CT-PS1 in terms of technical aspects and thanks to the capabilities of FMVs being added via MSU-1 (Also if we're being for real CT-SNES had the better menu before it was replaced).

It also surpasses now even the DS version in terms of story+dungeons, and of course people can switch between CT+ and CT-DS to play every aspect of the game world if they got the DS version too.

Man, I don't know what you guys can do at this point other than just throwing in more content for the heck of it like FFVI T-Edition. I suppose if someone was a technical wizard the DS content could be added one day.

[PowerPanda]

I suppose if someone was a technical wizard the DS content could be added one day.

I think the mixture of "this would be years of work" and "nobody actually likes the DS content" is a formidable duo.

[ThegreatBen]

I think the mixture of "this would be years of work" and "nobody actually likes the DS content" is a formidable duo.

Amen to that.

[andrewclunn]

Not sure if I should ask panda or ben.  The mav versions of the songs for the MSU 1, apparently the versions I worked on didn't loop properly.  Has that been resolved?

[ThegreatBen]

Not sure if I should ask panda or ben.  The mav versions of the songs for the MSU 1, apparently the versions I worked on didn't loop properly.  Has that been resolved?

No, but I'm the only one who has them anyway.

[Pethronos]

Sorry for questioning again PowerPanda, but... which is the reason that bugfix only all-in patches differ so much in size? Thanks in advance!!

[PowerPanda]

Sorry for questioning again PowerPanda, but... which is the reason that bugfix only all-in patches differ so much in size? Thanks in advance!!

It has to do with how the Temporal Flux editor handles event editing. All of the events in Chrono Trigger are compressed. Temporal Flux is able to uncompress these events, but it's not as efficient as the original algorhithm when it recompresses them. As such, even when you make a small edit, the event ends up larger than it was, and it writes the last part of the event to the first available free space. This quirk with Temporal Flux is why almost none of the Chrono Trigger patches are compatible with one another. They all try to write their new events to the same block of free space.

Anyway, with the compatibility patches... since the All-In patch already edits more events than the Bugfix Only patch, and it edits many of the same events that I added new music to, the code displacement had already occurred, and my changes only changed 1 byte, rather than a couple hundred. With the Bugfix Only addendum, I was the first one making edits to those events, so the IPS file also contains a lot of the shifted bytes too. Hence, the patch is twice as big. That's also why there needed to be 2 separate compatibility patches.

[PowerPanda]

I have uploaded version 3.1, which fixes the bug in Keeper's Dome. However, it will probably be of more interest to people in that it addes compatibility with Fauntleroy's Schala Edition, which is the last major romhack of Chrono Trigger I hadn't included. Disclaimer: I have not PLAYED Schala Edition, so the new music is only added to vanilla content. For the Battle Theme by Map ASM, I have made educated guesses about which battle themes should be used based on the tilesets of the new maps.

[SeriousKano]

Hi, where can I find version 3.1? On the project page it still says 3.0.

[PowerPanda]

Hi, where can I find version 3.1? On the project page it still says 3.0.

I'll see if I can get that corrected shortly. If you download it, the filename indicates it's version 3.1. Note that that there have been some reports of new music not playing on the Bugfix and Uncensoring All-In Addendum Patch. There is a reason for this, which will be easily-correctable once I get some time to sit down with it. I haven't heard of any problems with the other patches.

[SeriousKano]

Thanks for the quick answer. In that case, I'll wait for the update. Nothing but the best version.

[Darío]

The other prerelease battle theme, which the Cutting Room Floor incorrectly identifies as "futuristic", is just the same battle theme we already have, but with the wrong instruments applied

Just a quick note, this is actually not true since the pre-release battle theme has a synth bassline throughout the whole track which is not present in the final version. I know it's not a huge difference, but maybe it could still be used somewhere?

[PowerPanda]

Just a quick note, this is actually not true since the pre-release battle theme has a synth bassline throughout the whole track which is not present in the final version. I know it's not a huge difference, but maybe it could still be used somewhere?

The "synth baseline" is actually an early version of the electric bass sample, which doesn't exist in the final rom. I consider it to be in the same category as the pre-release Spekkio track, which has different articulation on the flute, but is essentially the same song. I will not be including it.

[Darío]

.