Adventures in poking the Tiny Chao Garden title screen background
05/12/2024
Listening: Synthesize Her - TWRP
Reading: XFCE Cinnamon opinions
Watching: NONE!
Playing: Aseprite
Eating: Crackers
Drinking: Room temperature (cold) water
The other day I sat down (briefly) and stitched/extended this very cute patchwork background from the standalone Tiny Chao Garden app game thingy's title screen. I thought this could be fun to read about, so here's some information + my thoughts :P
The TCG has been vexxing me for some time; the fancy title screen I'll be working with here is exclusive to the multiboot version from Phantasy Star Online I & II on the GameCube. Or at least I think it is...? I can't get it to show up anywheres else and it hasn't been found in the rest of the ROMs, at least to my knowledge, which is informed by my not knowing how to dump multiboots from RAM directly myself... and being an amateur at hex editing. My experiments are a bit limited! I'm ultimately going off of MainMemory's (a very prolific Sonic modder!) really great multiboot releases. The Sonic scene would seriously not be this level of alive and thriving without her really cool work!!!
Multiboots are like Nintendo DS Download Play multiplayer if you've ever used that on DS/3DS. Basically, certain games allow the console they're hooked into to temporarily distribute a short demo, often a multiplayer one, to another console's RAM. This could happen from GBA to GBA, GameCube to GBA, or DS to DS (the latter over wi-fi rather than cables!).
Sonic Team made a couple of these demo-like multiboot games during their time with the GameCube; several of their releases on that console included the Tiny Chao Garden as a multiboot app, on top of it already being hyper-distributed with the Sonic Advance series and its many many Many 2-games-in-1 bundles.
The entire GameCube - GBA connectivity ecosystem is fascinating, made doubly fascinating by its connection to the mysterious and very complicated Chao ecosystem.
So here's how I went about stitching a "textless" version of the title screen with as little tampery editing as possible:
The screen typically flashes a PRESS START ticker like so:
Zero clue why the copyright info is different between language toggles when it's the same version of the game. Another TCG mystery that will surely haunt me.
The next step is to try and identify the tiles' pattern so we can fill the gaps, so here's a grid to help us name the tiles:
To explain how I'll now refer to the tiles: tile E2ENG is completely obscured to the point we can't make out the design, whereas in E2JP we can see it's a dizzy 🌀!
By the way, the tile symbol designs are based on the way the "Emote Balls" Chao have can change to display their mood. Except for the upside down heart/spade design♠️ in H2/B4, which isn't possible (maybe it represents a fruit/nut like 🍑?) and the Chao design💧 in E4. Similar patterns are used in SA and SA2's Chao menu screens, but not in this cute tiled style!
So let's transcribe the visible tiles, marking the un-guessable completely obscured tiles with ❌ for now:
| ❌ | A | B | C | D | ️E | F | G | H |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ❤️ | ❕ | ❔ | 🌀 | ❤️ | ❕ | ❔ | 🌀 |
| 2 | 🌀 | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | 🌀 | ❌ | ❤️ | ♠️ |
| 3 | ❕ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❔ | 🌀 | ❤️ |
| 4 | ❔ | ♠️ | ❕ | 💧 | ❔ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| 5 | ❤️ | ❕ | ❔ | 🌀 | ❤️ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
Based on the first row, tiles E1 through H1 seem to be repeat in tiles A1 through D1. Assuming the pattern follows, we can surmise the first four tiles per row are:
| ❌ | A | B | C | D |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ❤️ | ❕ | ❔ | 🌀 |
| 2 | 🌀 | ❌ | ❤️ | ♠️ |
| 3 | ❕ | ❔ | 🌀 | ❤️ |
| 4 | ❔ | ♠️ | ❕ | 💧 |
| 5 | ❤️ | ❕ | ❔ | 🌀 |
Which leaves only one tile fully unknown, in B2 ! So stitching the pattern together became a matter of finding bits of the right tile in the right place. The heart❤️ and spade♠️ are mirrors of one another, so B4 can be used to stitch up A1. The puzzle that pops up now, is the alternating teal and light green tiling; not every teal tile has an equivalent light green tile + vice versa!!!
To complete the teal ❕ I can use the top pixels from A3ENG and left pixels from A3JP. To complete the green ♠️, I copy the green ❤️, clean it up a bit based on its teal cousins (onion layers yipi!!) then rotate it 180°. To palette swap the 🌀 I've got to partially overlay the green version atop the teal one on a separate layer then shift the colors. And so on and so forth!
In the end the tileset I've wound up with is this:
The completely obscured tile B2 can't be a question mark❔ or an exclamation point❕, the two symbols not yet found in that row, as that would make the tile immediately border the same symbol on the top or bottom, which isn't present elsewhere in the pattern. Ultimately I think it's a Chao💧!
So here's the clean tilesets applied to the image:
Here's the stamps I've made so far!
See here for all the other stamps I've been making ^_^...
Let's wait and see if the TCG will continue to torment me...
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