Ar tonelico 2 Visual Guide

Last weekend I spent both days going through Phase I, taking notes.  I was lucky enough to spend all of this weekend doing the same thing!

There were a number of things I missed on my first note-taking playthrough for Phase I, and only fully realized how much that was when I was finished.  After researching some answers, I was able to play through again, confident that this time I had really gotten and understood everything.  Shop events no longer give me trouble, as I’ve figured out their firing sequence, along with the weird criteria behind the split ‘Cynthia’ topic for Luca and Cloche.  I’ve started notating all the skills the monsters use, along with the hit count…no one will probably use this, but there’s no other source I’ve seen provide the info, so it’s a plus.  IPDs are a bit harder…I can cross-check regular monster skills against the Japanese perfect guide to make sure I transcribed them all, but for some reason, the guide doesn’t mention anything about IPD skills.  So that’s entirely manual now.  The major thing giving me a headache is the split paths — so much is dependent on one or the other being in your party, and it’s a pain keeping track of which side has seen what.  Will be very happy when the paths converge in the end of Phase II.

Ten minutes ago, I just finished both routes through Phase I again, with a lot nicer a document.  I also started breaking it out into 12 different text files, with the main walkthrough file referencing the other 11 supplementary ones.  This seems to be working great, and I can’t wait to get started on Phase II.

Now, however, is design time.  fetjuel and I will together to get all this data into a presentable format, and we’ll hopefully have a fully finished Phase I guide in the near future.

It’s very difficult for me to put off an issue that’s giving me a lot of trouble and instead work on something that will get done.

Every major game data-hurdle I’ve come across (random IPDs, alternate synthesis ingredients, monster skills and hits) I’ve come up with a solution for, but the only thing that still perplexes me (so far) are shop events.  Not the synthesis events, but the random events that happen in between.  They are really….really random.  So random that they’re happening out of order from what even the Japanese perfect guide says, with events firing well before they actually should.  In the end, I need to just suck it up and admit it’s all random and do the best I can, but it bothers me when I see it so neatly laid out in the guide, and know that it’s wrong…..

Either way, this weekend is for gathering and organizing 100% of the data left for Phase I.  I’ve decided instead of waiting until the very end to organize all the appendices, I will gather the data for them by phase, which should be a bit less daunting.

So the first thing I learned from doing a mock-up of the first page was there was a lot of data I’m not writing down properly in my notes; most notably, item and monster number annotations.  It’s far easier to note everything down as you go than to go back and re-note everything, which is what I’m having to do, but I’m almost done.  Another sweep through for IPD verification and talk topics, and I think my data notes will be pretty much completely set for Phase I.  Talk topics continue to be the bane of my existence — I haven’t figured out the system for their randomness yet, but I am getting there.

Also, jetfuel is working on his own mock up for the pages and the final design, so there will be something a lot prettier to look at soon.

Well, it isn’t really pretty, but this blog is supposed to be about all your mistakes too.  Finished a proof of concept last night — this was less about design (you can see that is my weak point) and more about making sure I can get in-game graphics pretty easily, and tooling around.

Check it out here.  And no, the next is not going to stay like that, it is a placeholder. ;-)

After spending two full days this weekend writing 2000 lines of unwrapped text, I finally finished all my note-taking on the entirety of Phase I, for Luca and Cloche’s path.  It was actually really interesting seeing the minor differences throughout, though most of it was exactly the same.

Now that Phase I is complete, instead of plunging straight into Phase II, I am going to try to (with fetjuel’s expertise) design and start a draft of the real guide, just for Phase I.  By doing this, I can see what info I should be gathering that I’m not, what info I really don’t need to note at all, or anything else I need to be aware of.  It gives me a break from mining the game for tidbits, and lets me get to see a piece of the final product without having to wait till it’s all done.  Plus, I’ve already run into two instances where I realized half-way through that I should’ve been noting something down, and had to go back through all the dungeons to re-gather the info…

Also, those random IPDs and shop topics are going to be the death of me.

I got to spend the past couple of nights starting my notes, and while I did not get very far game-wise (just got Leglius), I’ve managed to settle on a pretty decent way for me to note everything that’s going on.

Firstly, I decided to go back on what I said earlier, and turn the frame limiting off.  Now all the music is a cheery 2x speed, but more importantly, I can get things done twice as fast.  I may be forsaking atmosphere, but I’ll have enough playthroughs to get that back later on.  Especially since I’ll have to get all my screenshots from the PS2 playthrough, not the emulator one.

Secondly, I managed to find an ELF file for a CodeBreaker 9, which means I can turn on all sorts of cheats that make it easier to get through a playthrough.  Currently I only have on max money and controllable attack/defense phases (time only passes when you hold Select), but that is more than enough.  Combine that with save states, and I have been able to plumb the depths of exactly what events fire when and what causes them, without having to deal with too many headaches.

I’ve also decided to try to go straight text for my note-taking.  I have no idea what the output of all of this is going to be, so I want it to be as flexible as possible.

As an example, here is a snippet from a typical note session — obviously the writing is scratched spottily through the dialogue, so it’s pretty terrible, but you can begin to get an idea:

Enter Bonbertan.  You get the recipe for Rollcake.  Tutorial for synthesizing.  Talk to Skycat again, since you should have the ingredients.

[Skycat asks Luca to synthesize the rollcake with her.]

Player can choose whether or not to see the tutorial; tutorial just walks them through with more visuals.

(BONBERTAN SYNTHESIS: LUCA)
Rollcake -> Baked Crackercake (Stocks 10)

Exit, and return to the General Store.

[Cloche returns, with an uncomfortable silence.  Sasha accepts the horrid cake happily, making Cloche crush on her harder.  Sasha begins called her Sister Clo.]

Obtain recipe for Bomb Specs.

[Luca and Cocona talk girly.  Cloche interrupts, complaining she can't rest.]

(CLOCHE TALK TOPIC)
(Sasha #1)

(LUCA TALK TOPIC)
(You Are Nice To Children)

Store:
Fruit Drop: 35 - 99
Igniting Water: 15 - 99
Ticklish Fuzz: 15 - 99

(GENERAL: MEWMEW SHOP SYNTHESIS: CLOCHE)
Bomb Specs -> Walking Gergo (Stocks 10)

(GENERAL: MEWMEW SHOP SYNTHESIS: LUCA)
Bomb Specs -> Standard Bomb (Stocks 10)

(SKYCAT STORE SCENE: Luca)
[Scene about making a recipe so it turns out good no matter how bad Luca is.]

This section had little story description and was more about how I reference different actions.  I try to note talk topics and store scenes at their point of origin, even if you can’t listen to it right then.  I notate story notes and event descriptions in brackets, for possible use later on.  I note the number of stock you get for creating a synthesis, along with shop prices and stock.  And a whole bunch of other stuff I probably don’t need.  Again, one of my main goals is to make sure that at any given point, all the information you need is right where you are without flipping back and forth randomly.

How I write all this will continue to evolve through the playthroughs, but I think it stands pretty well.  It allows me to pluck through the game at a pretty good clip, while still retaining a large amount of information.  This info is also in a relatively easy to read format, so that no matter how the end design of the book is, it should be easy to transplant the data.

Once I finish Phase I (both paths), the design and creation of the actual guide will start.  My current plan is to do this in chunks, taking roughly 1 phase at a time, and making a semi-polished product for each.  Then, adding all the data and story chapters and standardizing/polishing the entire thing together.

Still struggling with the best way to notate the large amount of information from all my playthroughs.  I am sure there will be a lot of false starts as I try to figure out exactly what works and what doesn’t, and how to best to write down everything I come across.  So far, this has been the biggest hurdle.

Currently, I’m using OmniOutliner to detail and section out note-taking.  I’ve separated story-based notes and walkthrough notes, with other sections for shop notes, random conversation notes.  This kind of categorization is overkill, but until I figure out a rough of the bulk of the guide, compartmentalizing is probably the best thing.

There’s a few different styles of writing in walkthroughs to use, regarding spoilers.  Some are complete bare-bones no-spoiler step-by-step walk throughs that basically say:

“Go through the door.  Watch the event, go east and open the chest.  Follow the pathway north until you get to a fork, and enter the door to the west to fight ‘Boss 4′.”

While I appreciate the complete and utter lack of spoilers, the lack of any writing spark or game-locators is off-putting.  Some people follow guides to the letter, page by page, so they’ll know exactly what the vague instructions are trying to tell them.  However, I think a larger number of people crack open the guides when they want to make sure they aren’t missing anything, or in case they are stuck or looking up a reference table.  In those cases, it would take a frustrating amount of time trying to backtrack their own individual path and mold it to what the guide is telling them to do.

I think the key is to balance the two.  A guide’s purpose isn’t to tell you the same story that the game is telling you, nor is it to be so sparse as to be unnavigable.  While outlining and bringing light to often-missed story aspects and arcs of the game is a goal of my guide, rewriting the script isn’t.

I think by the 5th or 6th playthrough I’ll finally have a rough idea how to properly take game notes.

So I’ve started my first runthrough, and as I’m mercilessly typing out absolutely everything that is happening, I realize there’s a lot of info I don’t need to jot down.  This is the same info that was stressing me out about being able to collect (mainly, bestiary and item collection stuff).

Why?  Because AT2 has the best in-game encyclopedia ever.

So here is a list of things I do not have to research and note on any of my playthroughs:

1. Magic (names, damage, effects)
2. IPD name, level, headquarter, desire, personality, condition, skills, and log
3. Item name, category, how to obtain, item effect, weapon effect, armor effect
4. Dualstall crystal name, effect
5. Enemy name, drops, stats
6. Synthesis creator, name, ingredients (not shop location, or how obtained)
7. Name of all talk topics

So a lot of this is going to be transcribed from the in-game work, which is great for me, because the less I have to guess the better.

Now, I can focus on what’s missing without worrying about some of the more intricate mechanics I don’t need to think about.

After playing with some saved games in the PCSX2 emulator, I don’t think I can do what I had previously planned to.  While the numerous graphical issues using a DX9 renderer are fixed in DX10, there is still the black line of shame that ruins any screenshot I take.  I thought I could accept the background graphical seizures of DX9-renders, but after playing a bit, I realized something else bigger that was messed up.

The split-screen title error doesn’t only happen at the beginning, but in every single static-background scene.  Which means every Cosmosphere, at the very least.  The inability to take shots in the most emotional parts of the game is kind of a big deal.

The issue is known, and is accepted as a bug with the emulator itself….which is good and bad.  Good, because that means it can be fixed in any of the SVN’s that are being released almost daily.  Bad, because there’s no guarantee of that, and there’s no alternative — switching graphical plugins won’t help to get around this.

In the end, my first playthroughs will have to be limited to data only (screenshots taken for informational and reference purposes).  The actual screenshots themselves will need to wait until the final runthrough where either PCSX2 has been patched to fix this, or I do another run through on the PS2 outputting to a computer.

So making a guide for Ar Tonelico 2 is probably going to be hard.  Especially because there are so many variables — the entire game splits in two paths in the first act, and it has four endings, which you are usually locked into very early.  Add into that a bunch of unknowns — I.P.D. displacements, Dualstall strategies, and item drops, and you need a way to play and replay and replay certain scenes, along with the entire game as a whole.

Luckily, there is an excellent PS2 emulator for the PC.  And while not absolutely perfect, it is remarkable they were able to develop something like this that could do so much.  As with all emulators, the performance depends largely on the setup you do (and the rom itself), and I have spent hours and hours tweaking to get the most accurate PS2 performance for this game.  In case anyone else out there is interested, I thought I would share what I found out starting Ar Tonelico 2 with the PCSX2 emulator.

First things first; while the emulator itself is free, in order to do anything at all, you need a dump of your PS2 BIOS (instructions here), as well as a legitimate copy of Ar Tonelico 2.  While you can use a plugin to play the game directly off the DVD, I found it way easier to rip it into an ISO and play off that.

Here are the software/versions I am using…I have used a lot of versions of this emulator and plugins, and have run into a lot of issues.  This exact combination is the best I have found so far….please note this is all written on 2/8/09, and future releases will change this all around, I am sure:

• PCSX2 Playground 0.9.5 Beta, SVN 708 (must have the base PCSX2 Playground installed first)  I have run into performance issues playing AT2 with non-PG beta versions.
• GSdx 872m SSSE3 0.1.12 Graphics plugin that is bundled with the Playground package.  The SSSE3 vs SSE2 vs SSE41 all depend on your CPU, see this thread for details.  Also keep in mind this is an earlier version of the plugin than is available now — this is because 0.1.14 disabled the use of screenshots when using DirectX 9 capability (DX10 produces black tears in the game portraits, so DX9 is a must).  There is also another graphic filter out there, ZeroGS.  It works well, but certain scenes which involve dynamic zooming of the background (Waterfall Hill Park , for instance) absolutely kill it.
• SPU2ghz Playground 1.9.0   For sound; this is bundled with the playground plugins, and has worked just fine for me with no tweaking.
• Linuzappz Iso CDDVD 0.7.0   For CD/DVD; again, this is bundled with the playground plugins, and I use it because I use an ISO, instead of my original game disc.
• PlayStation2 Bios USA v01.60

Now, the settings.  The only ones I’ve really touched are graphics, CPU, and Controllers.

GSdx 872m SSSE3 0.1.12
Resolution: Windowed
This doesn’t affect the actual in-game resolution, and I’m still trying to decide the best way to play.  Windowed allows you to use other applications (note taking, screen shot analyzing) at the same time without tabbing out of your game.  However, I might play full screen with a synchronized screenshot folder to my Mac, and do the data collection there.

Renderer: Direct3D9 (Hardware)
The software renders, as expected, are ridiculously slow, so hardware is the only way to go.  DX10 is better performance-wise, but has a bug that drives me up the wall, shown in this screenshot — a black tear right across the left character portrait in every screen.  DX9 runs a bit slower, but doesn’t have this tear.

Shader: Pixel Shader 3.0
I didn’t notice any difference between 2.0 and 3.0, but bigger is better right?

Interlacing: Normal
Bob makes the screen shake, Blend is fuzzy, and Weave seems to stutter on movement and have horrendous pixelated redraws.

Aspect Ratio: 4:3
Widescreen stretches, and I want to preserve the correct aspect ratio.

D3D internal res: Native
Took me a while to figure this one out…I had originally upped the internal resolution to create faux-HD screenshots.  This graphic filter messes up the facial texture placement when you don’t use the native resolution though (as shown here).  So I stick with native, which is still excellent.

Texture Filtering
Alpha Correction
Again, enabled for the sake of it.  No easily-discernible difference for me.

CPU
I enabled multi-threading, as I have a dual-core.  The other thing to note in this section is to turn Frame Limiting on to ‘Limit’ — this forces the game to operate at 60fps.  While running the game at ‘Normal’ (fast as possible) is great for speeding through at 90fps, it completely destroys the audio, which alternates from way too fast to way too slow in an effort to keep up with the shifting frame rates.  Keeping it stable at 60 means, even though I’m not speeding through, I don’t butcher the gorgeous music.

Controllers
Currently just using keyboard controls.  I want to hook up my DualShock 3 or Xbox 360 controller, but both have driver issues, and since AT2 doesn’t use the shoulder buttons much (or at all), it’s easy to do a standard Up-Down-Left-Right W-A-S-D setup.

Even with all the setup, there are still a few issues I’ve encountered so far (though I haven’t played very much).  Most of these are artifacts or graphical glitches…haven’t encountered any slowdown yet.  And there are no settings or plugins I’ve found that fix the opening screens.

More will be posted as I actually go through the game itself, but my test runthrough handled battle, character portrait talk scenes, zooming scenery, world map navigation, and FMVs, which should take care of most of what the game has.