Before Crisis Remake

[obesebear]

Download BCC DEMO: HERE.
(Last update: 30/11/2021. Reason: Added Chapter 2)

Github: HERE.
Discord: HERE.
Tutorial Videos: HERE.
Twitch Stream: TUNE IN.
Compendium: BC OG material.
Trailer: YOUTUBE.

Make a donation: HERE.

What's Before Crisis: Cissnei?
Before Crisis: Cissnei is a passion project led by a team of Final Fantasy fans that aims to replicate and faithfully expand upon the original Before Crisis flip-phone game, which never came out of Japan and is nowadays unplayable.
The game is being developed on RPG Maker MV with skillful hand of Obesebear, founder of the project, that has painstakingly extracted and recreated all of the backgrounds (currently of chapter 1). While the tireless cyclone Devina did a meticulous job in restoring the portraits to be a 1:1 comparison of their phone counterparts, adding 2D sprites, implementing a battle system and was relentless in trying to always find the next programming solution and put it into place. Thanks to Rizzle, the full script is being revised and new lifed has been breathed into the dialogue. Last but not least, Xhris surprised us with some fantastic graphic and UI edits.
The game takes place six years prior to FFVII and tells the story of the Turks as they face the newly formed terrorist group known as "Avalanche".

Development
Before Crisis: Cissnei and Before Crisis: Cissnei Final Mix

We need you!
     Please pop in if you want to join us:

• Programmer
• Pixel Artist
• Multi-language translators

Requirements

• Windows
• 500mb space

Features

• Totally revamped dialogues
• Updated graphics
• Widescreen
• High-quality reproduction of sound
• Voice Acting
• Nostalgic UI
• RPG combat system
• Discover the untold story 6 years prior FF7

How to install

• Double click installer, play it

Screenshots

Spoiler: show

Known issues:

• Bug

To-do list

• Chapter 2 to 25 backgrounds
• Sprites
• Try implement ABS

Changelog

Spoiler: show

• Final Mix 0.1a - Demo out

Credits:

-Obesebear:
   Progammer
-Devina:
   Progammer
-Rizzle:
   Script writer
-Xhris:
   Graphic/UI editor
-Kuraudo:
    Resource Manager

VA Credits:

-SharethePB:
   Cissnei
-TehIrish:
   Shears
-Anthogator:
   First Avalanche member
-J.W. Richardson:
    Second Avalanche member
-Blackjack Gabbiani:
    Down with Shinra

Special Thanks:

-Mako:
   A ton of help (Gaia's Children developer and RPG Maker Wizard)
-Tsunamods:
   Voice recruitment
-NaoyaShinota:
   Support, BC original demo
-Kuraudo:
    Video trailer

[Devina]

That's really cool you're trying to remake it.

I finished RichterW's and while it was serviceable and good for a fan effort, there were some annoying parts, lack of battle sound effects, lots of typos, and it crashed a few times on me.

I know this sounds like a crazy idea, but how would you feel about adding in a fandub?
It's not a super long game, some characters like Aerith/Barret/Zack only appear for a chapter or 2, so everyone who offers their voices wouldn't have to do much work (except Shotgun's).

[obesebear]

Totally fine with a fandub, actually already talked with tsunamix about it for a bit.  Though it would need to be someone else programming it in.  Once it's done, everything will be made public for people to improve upon. I will likely loop the ost tracks and phone tracks as an option.
The only change I'll be making is switching shotgun for Cissnei since she's a canon character. Once it's done I'd like to make all of them playable, but realistically that probably won't happen

[LeonhartGR]

That's so cuuuute! About the voice over, I think it would really help with covering up for the low graphic levels and there could be parts of individual character graphics popping up everytime  there's a dialogue or at least in the important parts of the story so as users will be able to watch the characters in a more clear perspective. Like it happens in the visual novels.
hint: https://youtu.be/xMVW78wRf18?t=104

[obesebear]

Uploaded a new video. I've got some of the scripting figured out. Unfortunately, I ran into some hiccups trying to implement an active battle system, so I'll have to look into that again a little later. But so far I'm pretty happy with how this is turning out. It's just taking me a little bit of time to learn RPG maker, but I think I have the basics down.

I've also got a messaging system plugin to more easily manage the text boxes and face locations, so all of that will be sorted by the next video.

https://youtu.be/PpfDoDnJ_M0

[Devina]

That looks really good so far, the portraits could use some transparency edits (easy fix).
It'd be a good idea to include the speaker's name above the dialog boxes.

Have you thought about what you're going to do for sprites?
One idea I have is to use TWEWY: Solo Remix sprites a base, remove all 8-direction movement and keep them a bit basic.
I did a mock-up job as Cissnei (I can do better work, just wanted to see what your idea is first).

[obesebear]

Thanks. None of this is final. In fact, I'm going to have to go back into the maps and add in features that didn't originally exist in order for it to work right in RPG maker. I see what you mean about Shears portrait transparency. There are probably other issues like that that will have to be ironed out.  For now, I'm just trying to get it to a respectable state. 

For the sprites, I made a post on spriters resource.com asking for help and tips on how to best extract such a small image from such a noisy video.   I've got two options of where to get sprites for Cissnei as far as videos. But neither is particularly great nor will it be particularly easy.  If someone were to create sprites from scratch, I would be more than happy to use those instead of wasting hours trying to piecemeal them together.  Sprite creating would have to be outsourced though, I can find my way around Photoshop, but I am not an artist by any means. 

A good majority of the other sprites will probably be easier to extract due to them being on a more plain background

[Izban]

There is a rumour that the whole compilation is coming to switch translated with upscaling

[Devina]

I call BS on that rumor and wouldn't take it seriously. It's nearly 2 months old (the "leaker" even said "soon").

Before Crisis would also need a remake, I seriously doubt even Square has resources to translate an old phone game due to the age of the code.

And why just Switch? Why not PC/PS4 where the FF7 Remake is?

And with COVID (likely the reason why they can't fix the PS4 texture issue), it makes everything even more unlikely.

[Izban]

But it's a nice rumour,not like the ones you hear on Xbox live

[Devina]

Sure, it's nice to think about, but now we have a situation where we're like "is it even worth doing a fan remake if an official one is in progress?"

People who spread fake rumors need to grow up. I used to spread gaming rumors and lies when I was a kid because I wanted people to give me attention, so the people who do that sort of stuff often have low self-esteem and a lack of friends. I grew out of it.

I'm not trying to bash you or anything, Izban, thanks for letting us know of this rumor, anyway.

Keep up the good work, obesebear, and let me know if you need any help. I have decent art skills ready to help you out.

[obesebear]

If I thought there was any chance of a rerelease you can guarantee I wouldn't be wasting my time on this. 
If the remake didn't exist, there could be some grounds for a rumour like that to be true, but to me it seems like the compilation is done and all efforts will now be on the remake and its story.

Devina, the only assets that will be overly troublesome are the sprites. I can handle the backgrounds and sfx ( though help is always appreciated). If you think you can create some nice sprites that would be great.  Tonight I'll upload the videos from nicovideo to my Google drive so you can view and download them in case they'll be of help

[Izban]

Remake was a rumour then became a thing, but I totally get the point, between all the issues floating around sometimes it's nice to have hope.

Typically the guys here do a better job of upscaling, would be nice to play BC at all so if I was a betting man I bet oh qhimm forums

[darxide]

There is a rumour that the whole compilation is coming to switch translated with upscaling

Rumors are stupid. 98% of the time they are false. Look at the frenzy the Silent Hill community is in over false rumors. Please don't spread that stuff here, too.

It would be nice, but I can tell you why Crisis Core will never get remastered, remade, or rereleased in anyway and I can do it in one word: Gackt

That kills the entire rumor of a compilation release.

And no, the remake was never a rumor. Squaresoft teased it in 2015 themselves. It was not a rumor before that because everyone was 100% convinced it would never happen in our wildest dreams. Also, it was poorly planned to announce it so early and we did have to theorize about a lot of things and rumors about what exactly the remake would be were started, but the remake itself was not a rumor. We knew it was in the works. Blame Sony for pressuring Square to announce it so early and people then calling it vaporware when almost no more substantial news came out for the next three years which led some people to think the whole thing really was a rumor. But it wasn't.

tl;dr: None of the other compilation games are likely planned, in the works, or even being discussed seriously at Squaresoft right now. It would be nice, but it probably isn't ever happening.

[obesebear]

Everything is currently uploading to my google drive.  EVERYTHING.  Any picture, video, text snippet, anything I have that has to do with Before Crisis.   However, I am going to keep it to restricted access, so if you need access let me know why and what your email address is.  The more help the better

[Devina]

I realized that RPG Maker isn't really built for exaggerated and very fluid sprites, so using TWEWY as a basis is out of the question. I was scouring for RPG Maker Ace VX sprite bases and was annoyed by how... chibi everything is.

I finally found something decent with realistic proportions.
It's very simple with only 9 sprites to work with per sheet, and I'm pretty sure you could always set different walk/run speeds to simulate when you want to portray a character is in a hurry.

Male:


Female:


We could use these bases for the whole game and they're extremely versatile.
There's also a less muscular male body version too (the muscular body will come in handy for people like Barret).

For a mock-up job, how do you feel about this Cissnei?




If it's a go, I can try doing everyone in chapter 1.

I should also add, these are free bases, so it's A-OK and we won't have to worry about legal stuff as long as we credit Greg Mustache:

https://thegregmustacheexperience.tumblr.com/post/129156785421/sprite-bases-for-rpgmaker-vx-ace-two-male

[obesebear]

I will also be downloading a plugin that will allow use for larger sprites so we won't be constrained to the default sizes and proportions.   I'll make sprites a priority today and post what I come up with

[obesebear]

Devina, first off, excellent work on the mock-up than what I'm capable of.  Second, I switched to MV from VX Ace due to some plugin issues.  However, I think the TWEWY sprites are more accurate to the movements the characters make in game.  I was pretty busy with real life today, but did make time to screenshot all of cissnei's movements and check through my pictures to find official images of her.   All of that has been uploaded to the drive.
I put some in photoshop and on the far left is the official picture I have (upscaled and filtered), the one beside it is a screenshot I manually edited to try to color match.  The third is running some corrections through photoshop followed by quick manual touchups, and the 4th is an unaltered screenshot.

This is at the resolution they would appear in game.  Is editing and extracting these sprites something you think you'd be able to do? 

Each animation has 8 frames, but left and right are mirrored, so that's 16 less to worry about.  I know for sure there are plugins that allow for adding more frames in MV.  Our sprites probably need to be about 80x80 and I'm sure there is a plugin that can handle that and the additional frames.

[Devina]

Ripping them is very easy enough.



The real question is, do you want accuracy like the above, or do you want something more like my Stardew Valley-ish mock-up job? I could even recreate poses like her cross-arms pose.

Either is fine by me, although I'd be a bit sad if you decide to go with the former as it means little creativity from me and I like being creative. I would totally understand why you'd go with the former as it's more of a 1:1 recreation. Plus I'm not really good at doing pixelated monsters from scratch, so if you do decide to go with a battle system, there wouldn't be inconsistency by having realistic monsters next to pixelated characters.

Also, ever thought about contacting RichterW and asking for their sprites and data? I wonder if they'd be willing to help us out.

[obesebear]

Dude I think that looks AMAZING!  Of course if you'd like to create your own it could be added as an option. I'm doing the same thing for the music. Currently using the phone soundtrack for authenticity, but also adding support for the OST. There's also been more than one person asking about doing an AI upscale. So if everyone wants an HD remake it would be VERY possible and your made from scratch sprites would probably be perfect for that!

I have all of RichterWs assets. He clearly did a ton of work, but he also used extremely low resolution files, likely to fit it in rpg2003. It is helpful using his as a base so I can get an idea of how to script events, but there's not much else of use there.

What would also be great is to have someone good at story telling. A lot of the translation seems a bit too literal and could use some better wording.  I did my best for chapters 1-5 mixing Grimoire Valentine and Dark Angel's translations and adding my own exposition the few places it seemed appropriate. But just like with Devina, someone with more experience in that area will blow me out of the water.

[obesebear]

It just occurred to me, but maybe I can meet you halfway on the creativity. Some of these plugins support 8 directional movement AND sprites. You want to give those diagonals a try?  Also could use an idle animation instead of one frame. Not too mention an unconscious frame / animation. Maybe a casting animation too

[obesebear]

Increasing sprite size is as simple as resizing the sprite sheet, the game automatically recognizes it and adjusts.  Looking into QSprite by Quxios now to see how easy it will be to use it to add in new animation frames

[Devina]

I just checked the "Cissnei sprites" folder and oh lord, those are some blurry sprites.
Remastering them just isn't feasible imo.

Since you found a way to increase sprite size, I think we should go back to the original TWEWY idea.
There's a lot of pros to this idea:

-Line art is consistent with enemies as opposed to pixelated look
-Tons of poses to choose from, easy to use if we ever want to get into a battle system
-TWEWY's stylization is cool and is designed by Nomura, and it looks close to the original sprites in terms of movement

If you're OK with it, I can cook you up a basic Cissnei sprite sheet, just give me 3 days to polish it. How about it? I can even do her cross-arms pose as a basic neutral sprite. I'll have to leave 8 direction out for now tho, but we could always come back to it later.

What I'm thinking of is a 4x4 sprite sheet, 12 sprites per character.
Each running animation has 3, with the idle pose at the very right.

[obesebear]

Honestly, it's whatever you're able to do.  Ripping all 8 frames from the game is the most ideal, but I've seen those sprites myself.  Might be something I try to tackle later, but like I said the priority is to get something in a semi-releasable state. I can nitpick later.

What's your suggestion for all of the other sprites like NPCs and enemies?

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get much done yesterday due to the holiday. Should have some progress to show later tonight

[Devina]

Some more mock-ups. How do you feel about this? I think it's probably the best and more realistic option so far.




A lot of detail gets lost when the sprites are downscaled, but it fits the world better imo, and leaves your imagination to fill in a bit.
I could easily do all the NPCs and enemies in the game like this, as long as I have reference photos for each of them.
It'd be a bit time consuming for me, but I get to be creative and it ensures a consistent art style across everything.