Chrono Cross--a mixed bag of rips--

[SierraLatkje]

Okay, so the request was just for portraits, but I figured that while I’m playing the game, I should rip everything I can, ‘cause I really love the graphics in this game! (Actually, I love almost everything about it, except the end game. It woulda been so much better if they hadn’t tried to tie it in to Chrono Trigger…) This is the first time I’ve played it not on New Game+ since it was brand new. I had no idea it was this hard to go through Guile’s path…I hope I can actually survive the Viper Manor sequence. I had Nikki in the party during the dream at the beginning, so I didn’t want to recruit him this go-round, but I hardly like the idea of starting with the narcissist…

But let’s start with the game icons. I’ve made a bunch of them, and I’m not sure which one I like best:






Although I am kind of leaning towards the two with Kid and the ocean, 'cause I like the contrast of her red clothes and the blues of the ocean and the sky. But then again, Serge is the lead, so...yeah, I have no idea...

All right, so here’s what’s currently fully ripped and ready to go. We have the party portraits you see when you’re at the equipment stores (well, equipment forges, really) because they’re all conveniently provided in the VRAM even at the very beginning when you only have Serge in the party. I wasn’t quite sure what to call them on the icon, though…




Anyway, then we have the first four dialog boxes. (I’ve already ripped the fifth one, but I don’t have it ready yet.)









And now I have some questions. The key items in this game get huge, lovely images, and I’ve been ripping those as well. However, I was thinking I should probably wait and submit them in a combined form rather than one at a time. What do other people think on the subject?

Also, what about backgrounds? They’re pretty fragmented, but less so than the ones in FFVII and FFVIII, from what I can tell. As an example, here’s the fragmentation of the background for the house in Termina where Glenn and Dario grew up:

Is that too messy to deal with, or should I be grabbing those as well? (Ignore that third column; it's the overlays for things Serge can walk behind, plus some of a different screen.)

Next, I’m having some trouble with the name select font. It’s a much nicer font than the standard font, so I wanted to include it as well, but…it’s weird. At first, I thought I just couldn’t find the right palette for it, but now I’m pretty sure that’s not the problem. Here’s what it looks like in the game:

And here’s what it looks like as ripped:

As you can see, the darker, shadow-like version is the lower one on the game screen, but as ripped, it’s the higher one. (Errrr....as you'd be able to see if it was about twice that size anyway...I wasn't thinking about that...I should've scaled up a small sample so the problem would be more evident...) If you pick a palette where the higher one is lighter, then it just looks messed up. Any advice?


Finally, some questions about the portraits. Regarding the NPC portraits, should I wait and group them, or just put them out one at a time? I was thinking grouping would make more sense…
And how about the PC portraits? Should I do sheets with each character’s dialog and menu portraits, or sheets with groups of dialog portraits and other sheets with groups of menu portraits? If I do group them, then how many should be included at once? I think trying to include all of them might make the file a bit large and unwieldy, especially for the menu portraits…

Oh, yes, about the menu portraits! This is how they look when they’re ripped:

Should I leave them like that, or should I reconstruct them?


Final question. Some of the higher level spells have some effects that seem to be sprite-based. (Like the one Call Meteor (or something like that; I had it during the opening dream sequence…) for example.) Any interest in me grabbing those as well?