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The development of Chrono Trigger: Resurrection started in April 2003, but it was not
the first time Resurrection Games developed a remake of Chrono Trigger...
Nathan recalls, "I started developing a version of Chrono Trigger for the Nintendo 64 during
my senior year of High School. It was my first real game project, so
it was quite a challenge. Art was mainly done by myself at the time and there
was another 3D modeler who did a test Crono model. Mat Valente worked on the music
and composed a full soundtrack of .XM's that sounded much, much better than the
original SNES songs.
Due to my lack of experience at the time and the lack of quality on the art side, I
quietly decided to postpone the project after the summer of 2000 until I felt more
competent in my skills and until there were more reliable art resources available."
All of the technology was custom-written for Chrono Trigger: Resurrection.
This includes: a cross-platform renderer, which runs on GameCube,
Xbox, and PC; Converter and preview tools, such as the texture converter, 3ds max exporter,
sound player, etc.; And, of course, the game core, which contains all of the logic to run
the game.
Currently, the entirety of the game and engine is being programmed by Nathan.
An average scene in Chrono Trigger: Resurrection ranges anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 triangles.
Instead of opting for a low-polygon scene with lightmaps, we've decided to strategically tesselate the
scene geometry so that static vertex ligthing could be used -- with similar quality results. This allows the lighting
to have a more artistic feel than a normal light-mapped scene because all lighting is hand done and nothing
is mathematically calculated. It is also less expensive, performance-wise, and more compatible with other platforms, due
to its more simplistic technical roots.
A typical main character mesh is composed of 10,000 - 12,000 triangles and has an average of 150 bones for animation.
Each mesh has went through a rigorous approval process. For our lead 3D artist, David Ying, it is a testament to his
patience and ability as multiple fixes were requested and then fixed.
When Luis Martins joined the Chrono Trigger: Resurrection team in August 2003, the artistic
direction of the project changed significantly. All of the previous character concepts and
meshes were replaced in favor of a more consistent style and look -- more like Akira Toriyama's
style that was used in the original Chrono Trigger. Luis made sure to overlook all the aspects of the
quality in the graphics department so that everything could be as consistent as possible. It is a fair
assumption to say that, without him, Chrono Trigger: Resurrection would not look as good as it does now.
The soundtrack for Chrono Trigger: Resurrection has been re-mastered with higher quality instruments and a
higher sampling rate by our musician, Mat Valente. He has been very dedicated and worked hundreds of hours
to retain the original feelings of the songs while adding more feeling to them, in the process. We think his
hard work would even make Mitsuda-san proud.
Mat is also responsible for the sound effects in the game. In combination with the re-mastered music, we hope
the audience will be pleasantly surprised with the level of audio quality in the demo.
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