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Chrono Cross accent generator

Blackjack

Member
Threi said:
its not better (well ignoring the music and artstyle), but I sure as hell liked it more.

I would much prefer to see a CC sequel than a CT sequel at this point.
But a sequel to CC would BE a sequel to CT! :lol
 

Darkpen

Banned
RevenantKioku said:
Dude, CC is not only a fun game with a great soundtrack, it is BALLSY.
It takes goddamned BALLS to
kill the main characters from the first game.
And while that makes me hurt on the inside, that is why I love it. Because it is not afraid to toy with my emotions like a real lover.
...but wasn't CC more of a sequel to Radical Dreamers than CT? Same music, too
 

yeb

Member
Vorador said:
I stopped trying to make sense out of CC plot years ago. There's as many interpretations of the plot as people have played it, there's too many loose ends and unexplained things on the script. Maybe a botched localization? i don't know :-/
I've actually heard Ted Woolsey's not-quite-faithful localization of CT did cause some themes in CC to be essentially lost. That was from a CC fanboy though, so take it with a grain of salt.
Sir Fragula said:
I'm confused, what are these accents and how do they work? Are they just text that gets modified somehow, or are we talking sound files?
Text that gets modified. There's something like 40 characters, and the only characterization most of them receive is having dialogue in ALL CAPS, or saying "ya" instead of "you," or a stupid catchphrase.

Anyway, there are people who dislike the game on its own merits, and I really hated the element/stamina system. In most games, attack-attack-heal is only an effective strategy if you're over-leveled. In CC though, it really seems like a fundamentally sound strategy; as long as you have beefy characters with full stamina/element levels and plenty of healing spells equipped, most bosses simply can not threaten you. There's only a couple bosses that even pose the slightest problem for the most brainless strategy in RPGs, and one's only a problem because you're forced to use a caster who's too soft to survive for the -heal part. It basically felt like a game where I was forced to be over-leveled, and I prefer the opposite.

Oh, and the cast of characters sucked.
 

RevenantKioku

PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS oh god i am drowning in them
Darkpen said:
...but wasn't CC more of a sequel to Radical Dreamers than CT? Same music, too
RD isn't canonical if I remember right. CC is more of RD redone, really.
 
Holy Order Sol said:
Chrono Cross was fucking awesome and so were the accents.

:lol @ people saying the plot made no sense.

Oh, sure, it made sense after the game sat you down and explained it all to you in three thousand dialog windows in the home stretch of the game.

But I'd say for the majority of the game, it is deliberately cryptic. Perhaps it is telling that most people did not reach the point in which the game says "Okay, look,
Schala got trapped with a surviving chunk of Lavos and was assimilated by it, but Schala is really Kidd, two timelines are merging, and Lynx is Serge's father.
"
 
yeb said:
I've actually heard Ted Woolsey's not-quite-faithful localization of CT did cause some themes in CC to be essentially lost. That was from a CC fanboy though, so take it with a grain of salt.
bullcrap, Woosley's translations are great, and better than the supposedly "the way it was meant to be played" retranslation, people just like to bitch
 

RevenantKioku

PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS oh god i am drowning in them
Prime crotch said:
bullcrap, Woosley's translations are great, and better than the supposedly "the way it was meant to be played" retranslation, people just like to bitch
Yeah, he did a real good job, especially considering the limitations were much harder than we have these days.
The big shitstink people got into about Woosley's translation comes from when he made a comment about how he had to at times throw away half of what he had written, and people took that to mean actual content was thrown away, which is just not the case.
 

Threi

notag
Blackjack said:
But a sequel to CC would BE a sequel to CT! :lol
well i should clarify; I would want the next Chrono sequel to share more in common with Chrono Cross than Chrono Trigger.
 

gokieks

Member
Chrono Trigger is what I consider to be the best RPG ever, and probably will remain such, but I did enjoy CC. In fact, I thought it was a better game than FFIX (which was released at around the same time). The only problem with the game is that there's just way too many characters, a large portion of whom are either useless or pointless.
 

Llyranor

Member
Hey, if there's a CC accent generator, I want one for when I post on GAF.

For the record, I liked the music and battle mechanics in CC more than CT.
 

sykoex

Lost all credibility.
Vorador said:
uncharted2_oh_noes.gif
:lol
 

RevenantKioku

PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS oh god i am drowning in them
Actually, I forget how it handles a lot of the scenes, but it would make sense if there was an accent generator in the game... Just have the text for the scenes and then pass it through a filter for each character. No idea as it's been so long since I played CC, but at the very least that is an interesting idea for handling a lot of different selectable characters and prewritten scenes.
 

Chemo

Member
Threi said:
well i should clarify; I would want the next Chrono sequel to share more in common with Chrono Cross than Chrono Trigger.
Really? I liked Cross just fine but was severely disappointed after Trigger, and the DS port just brings it home. If I had my way, Cross would be remade for DS using the Trigger engine, have all of the Cross characters/world redesigned by Akira Toriyama, and have the battle/level system changed back to how it was in Trigger as well.
 

BluWacky

Member
Chemo said:
Really? I liked Cross just fine but was severely disappointed after Trigger, and the DS port just brings it home. If I had my way, Cross would be remade for DS using the Trigger engine, have all of the Cross characters/world redesigned by Akira Toriyama, and have the battle/level system changed back to how it was in Trigger as well.

Save the beautiful Nobuteru Yuuki art, please :( but then I loved Cross to bits on its own terms - although it's a much messier experience than Trigger I had a lot of fun with it back in the day (beaten it twice), although I don't think it's held up as well as some other PS1 RPGs. Trigger is a very simple RPG beyond its graphical novelties, while Cross goes for something a lot more in-depth with more limited success.

Back to the thread title - I remember reading about this accent generator back when the game came out but unfortunately I'd have no idea where it was in the code etc. I just tended not to use the characters with annoying accents so it never really bothered me that much - I think I tended to go for Serge, Kid and Riddel, and only Kid had any affectations (obviously, as Serge never speaks...)
 

sykoex

Lost all credibility.
PepsimanVsJoe said:
In terms of accents the first chapter of DQIV DS is worse than the entirety of CC.
OMG this. Text accents are just stupid. If you really want to convey that the character is foreign or whatever, maybe have a word here and there have an accent, but dear god not a character's (or in DQ's case an entire continent's) entire dialog.
 

theultimo

Member
Credits have this guy responsible:

Localization Director, Localization Specialist, Localization Programmer, English Auto-Accent Generator:
Richard Mark Honeywood
 
theultimo said:
Credits have this guy responsible:

Localization Director, Localization Specialist, Localization Programmer, English Auto-Accent Generator:
Richard Mark Honeywood
Wait, this is real then? They actually have an accent generator?!
 

Siyou

Member
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laMvJf9UNdc

the music is definitely really good. There is no denying it. I think Chrono Cross will always be looked down the same as Castlevania. Although the games don't hold the same and familiar balance as they did, there will always be a critic. Sure, some say the game isn't good, some say the game is great.

I personally enjoyed this game, even though it wasn't the same as the Chrono Trigger, I think the change was good and it definitely presented itself true to the prequel.
 

theultimo

Member
Prime crotch said:
Wait, this is real then? They actually have an accent generator?!
From the developer room in the game:

Richard Honeywood:

I work at SQUARE in Tokyo where I "live" with the Chrono Cross team. I was the Localization Director, the Localization Programmer, and one of the translators. One interesting feature of this game is its automatic accent generation ability. Without this system... all the text for the 43 main characters wouldn't have fit into the game, making an English version impossible! I created an English auto-accent system where we could just write the plain translation and.. leave it up to the program to convert it real-time into the "voice" of whoever's speaking at the time. So... I am also responsible for all those funny speech impediments that we're sure drove you crazy! But I bet you never realized they were auto-generated, right? Anyway, see you later, Serge!
 

Baryn

Banned
Chrono Cross haters are just sad, sad people.

Square innovated with Chrono Cross and brought us one of the best RPGs of its generation. I played it through almost as many times as Chrono Trigger, and the game is four times as long! :lol
 

Vorador

Banned
theultimo said:
Credits have this guy responsible:

Localization Director, Localization Specialist, Localization Programmer, English Auto-Accent Generator:
Richard Mark Honeywood

I've been owned o_O lol it's true.
 
theultimo said:
Credits have this guy responsible:

Localization Director, Localization Specialist, Localization Programmer, English Auto-Accent Generator:
Richard Mark Honeywood


He worked on the Goocalization and Translimeation of Rocket Slime on the DS, just been watching the credits for that :lol
 

Meier

Member
Is there any chance that this gets released on PSN? Or does the original game work on my PS3? I mean is there full disc emulation for PS1 even on systems without PS2 emulation?
 

Dead

well not really...yet
Best Psone RPG, so damn superior to Chrono Trigger as well.

Really need to replay the game sometime...
 

Fuu

Formerly Alaluef (not Aladuf)
My mind has been slightly blown by the knowledge that there actually was a generator.
 
Fuu said:
My mind has been slightly blown by the knowledge that there actually was a generator.

Indeed.
Somebody has got to find a way to get to this system and stick into other well-known RPGs.

I could totally get behind playing through a couple FFs with wacky accents.
 

Torquill

Member
Yes, the accents are applied dynamically a run-time.

For any given event, your character in slot 2 might be set to say a specific line of text. That text is probably stored on the disc in relatively plain language. Depending on the character in that slot an accent may be applied to that line of text.

It should be theoretically possible to hack the game to skip the step that applies the accent.
 
Torquill said:
That text is probably stored on the disc in relatively plain language.

I bet it's not, Probably every word with an accented variant will be replaced by a numeric code taking up a few bytes, which will be used to locate the word in each of the 'dictionaries' loaded in for the active characters.
 

bluemax

Banned
Torquill said:
Yes, the accents are applied dynamically a run-time.

For any given event, your character in slot 2 might be set to say a specific line of text. That text is probably stored on the disc in relatively plain language. Depending on the character in that slot an accent may be applied to that line of text.

It should be theoretically possible to hack the game to skip the step that applies the accent.

Sounds like it works more like this:

Code:
switch (m_ECharacter)

case Glenn:
dialogueBox.display(StringtableEnum11_1);
break;
case Kid:
dialogueBox.display(StringtableEnum11_2);
break;
...
default:
dialogueBox.display(StringTableEnum11);
break;

I mean maybe they're generating them on the fly but in my head this seems a bit more likely.
 

discoalucard

i am a butthurt babby that can only drool in wonder at shiney objects
Pretty sure they're just generated on the fly. So if the original text read "you", for certain character it'd change to "ya" before it was displayed, for instance.

I remember that in the Japanese version, there was an auto-dialect generator, that changed the pronouns and stuck different particles on the end of sentences (like "ja" for the older characters.) It was just a variation on that.
 
yeb said:
Anyway, there are people who dislike the game on its own merits, and I really hated the element/stamina system. In most games, attack-attack-heal is only an effective strategy if you're over-leveled. In CC though, it really seems like a fundamentally sound strategy; as long as you have beefy characters with full stamina/element levels and plenty of healing spells equipped, most bosses simply can not threaten you. There's only a couple bosses that even pose the slightest problem for the most brainless strategy in RPGs, and one's only a problem because you're forced to use a caster who's too soft to survive for the -heal part. It basically felt like a game where I was forced to be over-leveled, and I prefer the opposite.
I played it pretty differently, at least for boss fights. Usually I'd equip the most powerful spells available that had the opposite color of the boss, then figure out how to fill the whole color meter with that spell's color before I cast it, ensuring huge damage. In fact I'd often put together a custom party for specific boss fights based on the characters' color affinities. I don't know whether that was a particularly effective way to play through the game since I never read a FAQ, but it was fun and really different from how other RPGs played.
 
Quoting Masato Kato himself. Pre-defense of CC. ;o

MK: OK. Since I may never have the chance to say this kind of thing anywhere else... I'll go ahead and say it. After the announcement of "Cross" this time, I heard a lot of voices out there that were saying things like, "Man, this isn't CHRONO". To tell you the truth, I was gravely disappointed. Yes, the platform changed; and yes, there were many parts that changed dramatically from the previous work. But in my view, the whole point in making Chrono Cross was to make a new Chrono with the best available skills and technologies of today. I never had any intentions of just taking the system from Trigger and moving it onto the PlayStation console. That's why I believe that Cross is Cross, and NOT Trigger 2. The thing that I can't understand is how could people possibly declare that this isn't Chrono? And for these people, I can't help but wonder what it was that Chrono meant to them...? Is it possible that none of the messages that I tried to send out to these people never really got through to them?

Cross is undoubtedly the highest quality Chrono that we can create right now. (I won't say the "best" Chrono, but) If you can't accept that, then I'm sorry to say this but I guess your Chrono and my Chrono have taken totally different paths. But I would like to say, thank you for falling in love with Trigger so much.

And to those of you who have fallen in love with the new Cross, Welcome. Pleased to meet you. And of course, Thank you very much.

But wait a second... the game hasn't even gone on sale yet (laughs). Oh well. I hope from the bottom of my heart that you will enjoy playing Chrono Cross. Seriously (laughs). I hope to see you all again!
...............
Whew...
Not counting the message data in the games, it's been a while since I wrote such a long script... Are there no messages of love for such a valiant writer like myself (laughs)?
 
One of the nicest features about CC is the fact that you can run away from bossfights so you can determine what spells you need and/or if things aren't going too well.

If only the Shin Megami Tensei games did that as well. =/
 

Pachinko

Member
In basically every single conceivable way in which a game can be measured, chrono cross is worse then chrono trigger. The main problem , having played through CT on the DS recently is that CT is set up to be an RPG aimed at people who don't really care for RPG's or have never played one before. The world map could almost be a non interactive one as they got rid of random encounters, the dungeons are for the most part relatively small , consisting of only a couple screens varying in size , the story is VERY simple, and the characters that exist in that story are the most basic of archetypes you could draw from. In spite of this or perhaps directly due to it , this simplicity allows the game to be experienced from beginning to end in 20 hours or less, it has great graphics so you've always got something pretty to look at and the combat which is normally such a drag in other rpg's of the time is very fun here with double and triple techs, area of effect, distance and such to worry about. Plus you don't get interrupted randomnly, you see all the enemies, there's no battle transition, characters just whip out their weapons and go to town and because they followed such a simple character archetype for your main party , no one feels useless , everyone has their own gameplay niche. Basically the game is a blast and you ignore all of it's short comings. For a number of people this was probably the first rpg they ever finished or possibly the first one they ever played so it just holds a soft spot in their hearts.

Nothing square could have made to follow it up with would have been good enough, in my personal case I'd have actually been perfectly content with the EXACT SAME GAME with slightly better graphics. Square instead went out and did something completly different but really, for me, I'd rather they remove the sketchy connections to chrono trigger completly and just let CC stand on it's own. Even has it is I consider it the equivalent of when an anime like idono, tenchi muyo does an alternative universe story. Given the time traveling nature of chrono triggers story any sequel made is merely a possibility in a sea of different outcomes. Certainly it did interesting things gameplay wise but mostly all it accomplished was overcomplicating something that was so awesomely simple that it worked. And really, for all the possible complaints that COULD be thrown at CT, chrono cross actually has a worse cast of characters because there's simply to goddamn many of them in the game, why bother having 50 people to choose from when there are still only about 8 or 9 archetypes present in the game? There is 0 character development present in this game , it's basically just a bunch of random and inconsequential morons running through random and loosely connected environments. So you've got characters that are ugly , unlikable and pointless going through a story that's only mildly interesting at best , boring at it's worst going through a nice looking but completely random world but honestly, that could be acceptable if the meat of the game- the combat system- were atleast the same one present in chrono trigger. Again the game disappoints having but a handful of double and triple techniques , perhaps thrown in only because they realized late in the development cycle that their game had nothing to do with it's much better predecessor and the excellent character specific magic system ? gone, replaced with a crappy materia knockoff that pretty much means your party has 0 individuality, you may as well be playing through the game with a bunch of one eyed eggs that have an arm for a weapon and a leg for moving, it'd make no difference to the story or the gameplay. Perhaps worst of all though , the best thing about chrono trigger that it still has over any rpg released prior or after it - the way encounters are handled was ruined in CC. Now, you may as well just have random battles because you have to watch a transition load you into a battle which is now just an ff8 quality atb setup. Worse still, you have a plodding battle system pace that is second only to the mech battles in xenogears. Consider yourself lucky should you manage to stay awake for the fights, especially later in the game. Even the developers must have realized how pointless the entire experience was because after completing the game you get a fast forward button so you can see the other endings without suffering through the horrible game as slowly. In a generation of hardcore gaming masochists that care only about math and complexity in their rpg's , I can easily see why they could find enjoyment in chrono cross but to me , it sodomized everything that chrono trigger stood for.
 
Game needs some kind of remake if only to reuse the incredible soundtrack.

I'm going to replay through this soon. Fuck Square for abandoning Chrono.
 

Tenks

Member
bluemax said:
Sounds like it works more like this:

Code:
switch (m_ECharacter)

case Glenn:
dialogueBox.display(StringtableEnum11_1);
break;
case Kid:
dialogueBox.display(StringtableEnum11_2);
break;
...
default:
dialogueBox.display(StringTableEnum11);
break;

I mean maybe they're generating them on the fly but in my head this seems a bit more likely.

Well I'm sure they'd write it as a strategy. You would have something like a party class which has your characters and each character class holds the information to process their audio. No way they'd use some supermassive switch statement. I'm also assuming the plain-english audio is stored in some form of database so you access it via the character methods something like party.character1.playAudio("clip_1_1_1") or something of the like. playAudio would then retrieve the clip from the file system/database and transform it with the accent filter that was placed within the character class.

That is assuming its not written like shit which I highly doubt it is.
 

Fersis

It is illegal to Tag Fish in Tag Fishing Sanctuaries by law 38.36 of the GAF Wildlife Act
Tenks said:
Well I'm sure they'd write it as a strategy. You would have something like a party class which has your characters and each character class holds the information to process their audio. No way they'd use some supermassive switch statement. I'm also assuming the plain-english audio is stored in some form of database so you access it via the character methods something like party.character1.playAudio("clip_1_1_1") or something of the like. playAudio would then retrieve the clip from the file system/database and transform it with the accent filter that was placed within the character class.

That is assuming its not written like shit which I highly doubt it is.

Is something like you said, i did a kind of accent generator for a LeapFrog game.
Its nothing mind blowing on the tech side but it is on the sound department ,since they have to record many times the same stuff.
 
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