The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero news & patch notes

About The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak II

+ Wishlist today and stay tuned for updates leading up to the game's release! No longer threatened by the mafia organization Almata, the people of Calvard have returned to their peaceful lives. But one day, a shocking series of murders involving a mysterious crimson beast sets the wheels of fate in motion once again. Various factions spring into action – both those who abide by the law to uncover the truth and those looking to capitalize on any new developments wherever possible, no matter how sinister. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/36616022/35e0e427722e1b5d7bcefde9d66bef960cbd8cab.jpgWith chaos once again looming on the horizon, the spriggan Van Arkride receives an unexpected visitor, prompting his own investigation. Who is behind the murders, and what is their goal? The sands of time bring old and new faces together for this thrilling second installment in the Trails through Daybreak saga.

STORY

Year 1209 of the Septian Calendar. The threat posed by Almata has passed. Peace has finally returned to Calvard. And, for a time, that peace goes uninterrupted—until a CID special forces unit is slaughtered by an unknown assailant. With authorities working to contain the situation, criminal forces take the chance to make their own moves. Meanwhile, a spriggan by the name of Van Arkride begins his own investigation—after prompting from an unexpected visitor. Who could be responsible for this massacre? What was their objective? And how does it all relate to Agnès' search for the eighth Genesis? {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/36616022/a4b522ebb6694a5b91879220cce64ce6c8788967.jpgA crimson beast's roar. A chance meeting with a boy and girl, both embroiled in a mysterious search. These are the circumstances that lure Arkride Solutions down the trail of an inescapable fate.

SYSTEM

Battle System The game builds on the seamless transition between field battles and command battles introduced in the previous game with new mechanics that can be used in both: Cross Charge & EX Chains! Mastering the use of these two combo mechanics can provide you with overwhelming firepower to use against your opponents. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/36616022/79edba96a3a4637b00d9b8e3cb7595b120d4b04f.jpg - Cross Charge If you manage to Perfect Dodge an enemy's attack during a field battle, the Cross Charge icon will appear! Pushing the correct button while the icon is on-screen will swap in another party member, who will simultaneously execute a charge attack on your foe! As a bonus, the party member that you swap in will have enhanced attack power for a period of time. - EX Chains EX Chains can be activated by fulfilling specific conditions during command battles. Once these conditions have been met, using a craft or normal attack against a stunned enemy will automatically activate an EX Chain! This allows party members with SCLM activated to launch a simultaneous attack that will also impact nearby enemies, dealing massive damage. Choose Your Chapters {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/36616022/6b4af915cb58fdd3c24025b1ac7d3da6b81a6a14.pngVan and his collaborators will not always travel together during the events of Trails through Daybreak II. At times, some of the group may split off in order to take care of tasks in different areas of Calvard concurrently. Because of this, each act contains multiple chapters you can play in any order. Progress the story in the order you choose! Each chapter features a different cast of characters as we see their side of the act's story play out. Once you've completed your chosen chapter, the next one will start up automatically. Unique Missions Certain chapters will feature missions that utilize the unique skillsets of the characters in that chapter's party. For example, directly controlling the holo core AI, Mare, to hack the orbal network, or using Swin to silently tail a suspicious individual.

CHARACTERS

Van Arkride The man at the head of Arkride Solutions. A lover of sweets, saunas, and orbal cars. Due to his job as a spriggan, Van has a tendency to take on legally-questionable jobs. However, the fact that he occasionally walks on the edge of the law does not preclude him from doing good by others—as is evidenced by his numerous personal contacts. While tracking down the Oct-Geneses at Agnès' request, Van developed the ability to transform into an armored form known as the Grendel with the help of Mare, the holo core installed within his combat orbment. It was with this new ability that he was able to fend off the mafia group known as Almata. Having once terrorized the entirety of the Republic, Almata was eventually brought to its knees by the Arkride Solutions team during the fight for the Oct-Geneses. Upon the quelling of this threat, however, they decided to temporarily go their separate ways. Now left to himself in a less-than- lively office, Van is free to return to his lone-wolf lifestyle once more. Agnès Claudel A first-year at the prestigious Aramis Academy who currently serves on its Student Council. Despite her polite manner of speaking and at times meek demeanor, Agnès has shown great strength and determination while employed at Arkride Solutions—especially when facing off against the seedy underbelly of society. Agnès first met Van while searching for eight prototype orbments known as the Oct-Geneses, which she inherited from her great-grandfather. As thanks for taking on her request, she began working as one of Arkride Solution's part-time assistants. At present, Agnès has recovered seven of the eight Geneses. Unfortunately, while continuing her search for the last remaining Genesis, she's had no choice but to also divide her time between preparing for the Aramis Academy Festival and periodically helping out around Arkride Solutions. Regarding her relationship with Van, she both respects and admires him as her employer. However, she seems to be harboring some more amorous feelings for him as well... Elaine Auclair {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/36616022/665c0751d95ccb7cff047770b0117eb0396e4033.jpgAn A-rank bracer affiliated with the Calvard branch of the Bracer Guild. She is occasionally referred to by the moniker 'Beauty's Blade.' Due to her dignified beauty and masterful skill with a sword, Elaine tends to catch the eye of the media more often than not. Unfortunately, this also leads to talent agencies offering her contracts for modeling and acting—she always declines. Outside of being the poster girl for the Bracer Guild, Elaine has no present interest in joining the world of entertainment. During her high school years, she enjoyed a brief and fleeting romance with Van before he suddenly vanished without so much as a word. It was only recently, after seven years, that the two were able to reunite. Although their lingering feelings for each other have left their current relationship a bit tense, their time fighting Almata together was able to strengthen their bond once more. Some time after the events involving Almata and the Oct-Geneses, Elaine received word that the Central Intelligence Department's elite Gamma Squad had been brutally murdered by an unknown assailant, and that a 'crimson' monster was spotted at the scene of the crime...

WORLD

The Republic of Calvard A large country located in the central region of the Zemurian continent. Its current leader is President Roy Gramheart. Due to the unfortunate circumstances created by the desertification of eastern Zemuria, Calvard has a substantial history of receiving both immigrants and refugees. The resulting mixture of cultures and ethnicities has made the country into something of a melting pot. One hundred years ago, Calvard was under the heel of its monarchal rulers. It was only after Sheena Dirke and her compatriots brought about a democratic revolution that the nation was transformed into a democratic republic. Though in constant conflict with Erebonia over the control of bordering regions, Calvard has recently been on the receiving end of reparations from the empire following the Battle of Jormungandr. These reparations enabled Calvard to enter a period of rapid growth and development, leading to its eventual overtake of Erebonia as the most powerful nation on the continent. Regarding the region's recreational interests, recent technological advancements in orbal vehicles and filmmaking have caused a boom in both the motorsports and orbal cinema industries. Messeldam A moderate-sized city located in the north of Calvard. Due to its long-standing role as one of the Northern Sea’s major trading ports, Messeldam was often tasked during the days of monarchal rule with the delivery of imports to the capital of Oración—along with fresh seafood, of course. Although the port remains active to this day, developments in airship technology have greatly diminished its significance. The city itself, however, remains an important gateway to Remiferia and its surrounding nations. Unlike Langport, Messeldam possesses very few tourist destinations. That being said, the townscape's architecture tends to be quite popular with visitors, as its design has seen little change in the past century. The city’s Eastern and Central Eastern populations are fairly meager due to its geographical location. As such, it lacks a community that values cultural traditionalism. This has, fortunately, been a boon for Messeldam, as new art movements and customs are accepted with relative ease. It was this very attitude that led to the city serving as the venue for the Orbal Film Festival for a number of years, until its relocation to Tharbad in 1208.

About The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak

After the war, Calvard is enjoying unprecedented economic prosperity. However, the public grows uncertain as the number of immigrants increases and political reform runs rampant. Follow Van, a young man and local spriggan, on a unique request that will prove more than he bargained for. Will the nation fall into chaos? {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40784472/086b05e629552d65f7ea4493e3cda1e463821aa9.jpgThe AT (Action Time) battle command has been completely revamped transitioning seamlessly from field battles to turn-based combat. The sixth-generation tactical orbment Xipha offers a revolutionary combat experience unique to this iteration of the Trails series! In addition, the Topic System allows players to gain an advantage in battle by using conversation topics as bargaining chips. These topics can be obtained by interacting with other characters throughout the city. The game also features the Alignment system, which allows players to change their character’s three unique attributes and influence characteristics such as their status, the forces they fight with (or against), and even how the plot unfolds. Dive into the dynamic adventure in "Trails through Daybreak!" Story The spriggan's life is but one of many professions that has emerged from the Calvard Republic. Be it playing detective, negotiator, or bounty hunter, Van Arkride takes on the kind of work that can't be taken to more legitimate sources. It could be something the police can't handle, work that's best left out of the public eye, or even a request from a criminal of organization in the underworld; so long as it pays and doesn't cross too far over the gray line, he'll accept near-any job that comes across his table. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40784472/b83b31a331947224f3a2f7be0e5e719b5a9bd930.jpgThe year is 1208. A prim-and-proper young lady dressed in the uniform of an esteemed academy visits a dilapidated, multi-tenant building in a downtown district of Edith, the nation's capital. With a most dignified gaze, she looks upon the plague of the door before her. It reads: 'ARKRIDE Solutions Office: Complicated Matters Only.' Steeling herself, she knocks on the door three times. "First thing in the morning...?" a relaxed yet surprisingly young voice grumbles with a yawn. From the moment he opens the door to greet her, a new tale begins. Key Features

• The AT (Action Time) Battle system has been completely revamped, transitioning seamlessly from field battles to turn-based combat.
• The sixth-generation combat orbment, Xipha, offers a revolutionary combat experience unique to this iteration of the Trails series! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40784472/40c3a01b9c834f87ff4b248ec3a97e8b021e411d.jpg
• In addition, the Topic System allows players to gain an advantage in battle by using conversation topics as bargaining chips. These topics can be obtained by interacting with other characters throughout the city.
• The game also features the Alignment system, which allows players to change their character’s three unique attributes and influence characteristics such as their status, the forces they fight with (or against), and even how the story unfolds.

Get The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak today and enjoy English launch exclusive bonuses!

English Launch Purchase Options

*Owners of the Japanese version of "The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak (Kuro no Kiseki)" will automatically receive English language support in an update scheduled for July 5, 2024. The English release is almost here! To mark the occasion, enjoy better discounts on the Deluxe and Ultimate editions. Take advantage of the limited-time bonuses and get your copy today! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43729251/e73fe8d6bee5cab02c4f50b63970ff297fcb8e2e.png

Hi everyone, it's been a while! A number of changes have accumulated since the last patch, although most of them are either non-critical or only only apply in very rare circumstances. Here's the full log:

• Optimize text rendering, particularly reducing frametime spikes when rendering new text at high FPS and with the fast text speed option enabled
• Allow the use of multiple controllers simultaneously
• Various Japanese text fixes
• Fix a legacy issue with a wrongly colored chest
• Several fixes to map collision geometry, either to make it impossible to get stuck or to prevent leaving bounds at specific FPS/turbo combinations
• Improved the handling of input rebinding reset
• Fix a minor potential memory leak related to the video player
• Fix rare potential soft-locks when closing shops
• Fix minor text issue in Crossbell Times issue 4
• Improve the description of some game options

Note that you can always revert to earlier versions of the game by selecting them in the Steam "Beta" menu. Cheers, Peter "Durante" Thoman

Hi everyone, in today's update there are a variety of smaller fixes and improvements:

• Fix potential reference leaks when switching resolution
• Fix mouse scrolling on minimap with respect to camera rotation
• Fix drawing intensity of percent progress in camp/records page
• Change initial window color to black

Note that you can always revert to earlier versions of the game by selecting them in the Steam "Beta" menu. Cheers, Peter "Durante" Thoman

Hi everyone, in today's update there are a variety of smaller fixes and improvements:

• Fixed an issue where window content could be offset from the actual window position on startup.
• No longer confine the cursor while applying changed display settings, preventing a specific issue when reducing the resolution.
• Fixed various 3D map geometry issues.
• Improved the water effect on some maps.
• Tweaked the battle UI HP/EP/CP number placement.
• Back-ported some book text layout improvements from Azure.

Note that you can always revert to earlier versions of the game by selecting them in the Steam "Beta" menu. Cheers, Peter "Durante" Thoman

Hi everyone, in today's update there are some further improvements to the auto text advance feature.

• Add a visual indicator when auto text advance is enabled.
• Add a bindable action to toggle auto text advance. (Defaults to "R" on the keyboard and "X" on the controller )
• Tweak the minimum wait time for non-voiced text boxes.

This brings the feature up to par with the release state of Trails to Azure. Note that you can always revert to earlier versions of the game by selecting them in the Steam "Beta" menu. Cheers, Peter "Durante" Thoman

Hi everyone, today we have another minor update to fix one specific issue:

• Fix the new water shader feature inadvertently affecting battle graphics in some specific circumstances (turning sprites black)

Note that you can always revert to earlier versions of the game by selecting them in the Steam "Beta" menu. Cheers, Peter "Durante" Thoman

Hi everyone, version 1.4.3 is a minor update which primarily aims to resolve some issues with the recently introduced auto text advance feature.

Improvements

• Improve auto-text wait time calculation
• Fix an issue where auto-text advances non-voiced messages despite set to voice-only
• Fix message log color handling in some circumstances
• Make prompt in shop menu to switch pages for large parties clickable

Note that you can always revert to earlier versions of the game by selecting them in the Steam "Beta" menu. Cheers, Peter "Durante" Thoman

Hi everyone, version 1.4.2 brings with it several highly-requested features, a pretty nice rendering feature that wasn't really all that highly requested, an important bug fix, and many minor improvements and fixes. Let's start with the highlights. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40784458/a92af3539da9306ed495593c6c7c09480ea3b5a0.gif

Major New Features

• Water rendering update: water now optionally uses a pixel shader which distorts the reflections/refractions. We tuned this for most bodies of water in the game and it looks pretty neat.
• Added an "Auto Text Advance" feature. Note that there are a few events in-game where this will not apply since they require manual advance.
• Check and trigger achievements on loading saves. This means that if you e.g. import a save from a playthrough of a different version of the game, applicable achievements will now trigger. (Note: this mostly applies to collection-type achievements)

Major Bug Fixes

• Resolved an issue which could cause portraits not to be displayed in very specific circumstances. If you are curious about what happened there, here is an explanation by Alex: Like many games, Trails from Zero uses a texture manager, a dedicated component that is in charge of loading, retaining, and releasing textures. The texture manager maintains a fixed number of slots, where each loaded texture occupies one slot. Slots can be reused once a texture has been released (i.e. is no longer needed). Textures are referred to by their slot index (ranging from 0 to number of slots - 1). However, a special value of -1 is used to indicate the absence of a texture. While -1 is handled correctly by the game, the message box logic suffered an off-by-one error, where slot index 0 triggered an immediate release of the corresponding texture. This unintended release caused the portrait to be missing. The game loads a handful of system textures at launch, which end up in texture slots 0 and a few subsequent ones. Originally, on other platforms, these system textures are only released when quitting the game; slot 0 can never be used for a portrait texture as it is already occupied. However, in the PC and Nintendo Switch version, these initial system textures are occasionally reloaded (released + loaded), for example when docking the Nintendo Switch or changing the text language. This reload can free up texture slot 0, which can then (potentially and rather randomly) be used to hold a portrait texture, in which case the off-by-one bug described above triggers.
• Implement a number of English localization fixes.

Additional Changes and Fixes

• Improve font rendering performance by avoiding unneeded copies and temporary textures. This might be noticeable on slower systems when a lot of text is displayed.
• Map geometry fixes on many maps, and some map collision fixes. Some of these are specific to ultra-wide monitors, but others are visible in 16:9 as well.
• Show correct button prompt in detective notebook for "Details".
• Add mouse support for the casino exchange menu.
• Made direct camp menu save button prompt clickable.
• Check whether detective rank is in a valid range when loading saves.
• Fixed crash when failing to delete saves.
• Allow cancellation of dialogs in the settings menu with the back button.
• Always apply framerate limit, even when VSync is enabled (or forced off). This is to prevent issues when VSync is off globally.
• Fixed an issue where battle character outlines could flicker with high FPS.

Note that you can revert to earlier versions of the game by selecting them in the Steam "Beta" menu. As always thanks to all our QA testers who helped with this patch! Cheers, Peter "Durante" Thoman

The Trails from Zero "Extras Bundle" offer is extended until the end of October! This bundle includes the "SSS Classified Files" Digital Art Book and the "Anthems of Crossbell" Digital Soundtrack for absolutely FREE! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/32623015/55e818ff6ab65f7f8e27300802fb54579cc8e99e.png Additionally, for those of you who already bought the game between October 4 and October 17, 2022, you will also receive the bundle! Please note, for those who bought the game on Steam during this period, please visit the Trails from Zero Steam page to claim the bundle. On top of the offer being extended, all of our Falcom titles are on sale as part of our NISA Publisher Sale!

• The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III - 60% off
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV - 40% off
• Ys IX: Monstrum Nox - 30% off
• Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of DANA - 70% off

We'll be posting more exciting announcements all week long on our Falcom Events Website, so keep your eyes peeled 👀

Hi everyone, we just released a small hotfix for Trails from Zero which fixes a regression introduced in patch 1.3.7 that could lead to graphical issues (i.e. missing sprites) on some configurations in some situations. Sorry about that, and we hope you continue to enjoy Trails from Zero! - Peter “Durante” Thoman, PH3

Hi everyone, Thanks for all the great feedback on Trails from Zero! We've implemented some of the requested features and fixed a few issues in this update, see below for details. Changes and Improvements

• Added a new audio setting to disable message beeps
• Added a new setting to disable rich presence
• Play voice lines in the message log when selected even if the "Other Voices" option is set to OFF

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a potential crash when returning to the title menu
• Fixed an issue where movie sound effects were still played after skipping a movie
• Draw the BGM Info overlay in some additional situations where it was hidden before
• Various localization and map fixes

We've also added an experimental "fast text speed" option: to use it, set "fastTextSpeed" to "true" in the category in "%localappdata%\Falcom\Zero\settings.toml". This is not intended for general use. We have received some reports of sporadic crashes specifically on older Intel integrated graphics hardware. So far, we have been unable to determine any specific issue with the game causing these, and in several cases the problem was resolved by updating graphics drivers. So, if you are affected by this problem, please try updating your drivers. Note that you can always revert to earlier versions of the game by selecting them in the Steam "Beta" menu. Cheers, Peter "Durante" Thoman

Hi everyone, and welcome to the final post in this series on the upcoming Trails from Zero release! In case you are just joining us, there were two prior parts: in the first part of the series, I talked about a slew of general and PC-specific improvements we made to the game, including support for arbitrary resolution, framerate and aspect ratios, the message log, and full mouse support both for gameplay and in menus. The second part was all about how we selected, generated and sometimes recreated the highest quality assets for map textures, character sprites, and the UI. Originally, I planned for this final installment to deal primarily with platform features, a bit about optimization, and perhaps also some information on the more obscure almost antique bugs we fixed for our release of the game. However, after the first post, we were contacted by many people who pointed out various features of some specific previous releases which, despite our best efforts, we didn't yet include. Luckily, we managed to get not just one but two surprise features in since then -- the most highly requested one by far, and another one which most people might not even be aware of. So without further ado, let's get started with those two surprises!

Music Information UI

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40784458/818c715db154ecea51a3ff7b3719f38996851c22.png The single most requested feature - of those that we had not already included - was a background music track information popup as seen in the Geofront fan patch for the game. I'm happy to report that we managed to implement this without too much hassle. As you can see above, it is of course entirely optional. With that option enabled, every time a new music track starts playing a UI popup will show the track name, and, if available, the OST disk and track number it can be found on: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40784458/8ef03fa12c446948882c8577fcced9cff3dd9e51.jpg

Dynamic Character Shadows

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40784458/cab8de8eb39b897d76f9b01c064a4ba04e0ab314.png This is a much more obscure feature request, which reached us after the first post in this series went live. When we first received it we were surprised - none of us were aware that this existed - and not quite sure if we could actually implement within the resource constraints we have. Some background: the Japanese-only Vita "Evolution" version of the game features dynamic character sprite shadows in some scenes. These do not exist in any other version of the game, and we had access to neither the source nor assets used in this particular version. As such, for this particular feature, the problem is not just coding the shadows, but actually placing lights on all maps where they make sense. Luckily, we were able to create some in-game UI for light placement which allowed our beta testers to contribute to getting all the light locations just right. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40784458/0842525288d9eee9e90ae892a0a5bcb648967a22.png We now have dynamic shadows from light sources in dungeons, and on other maps at nighttime. As an added bonus, our character shadowing allows distinguishing between torches, flame-like lights, and other light sources, and the former feature a subtle shadow flicker and movement over time.

Platform Features

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40784458/838bdc65e7093f9ac14198dce7197991436c8802.png A small feature we have included in this release for the first time is rich presence integration, with both the Steam and Discord APIs. The Trails games are pretty long, so now your friends can see what you are doing all that time - if you are into that and have it enabled of course. You can see an example of the type of information that will be displayed in the image above. Perhaps a more practical feature that will be particularly important to any of you playing on Steam Deck is Steam Dynamic Cloud Sync integration. In practice, this means that it is even more convenient to shift between playing on different devices, and in particular between the Steam Deck (and other PC portables) and a different PC. You can read more about this here. Talking about saved games, there are a few more things that I should mention. First, we've been asked quite a few times whether saved games made using the Joyoland (and thus Geofront) releases of the game will be compatible with our version. The answer used to be "no" - the save format had changed slightly, and we also compress all save data so that it takes up even less space for e.g. portable cloud sync purposes. However, we have now implemented the ability for the game to load saves made in previous releases, giving us save backwards compatibility with saves made using the previous PC versions! Oh, and the somewhat popular "continue from latest save" feature which you might know from our previous releases is returning as well.

Performance Optimization

Reading this headline you might rightfully ask yourself what I'm going on about: Trails from Zero is, after all, a relatively old game, and should easily run on most PCs without much optimization work, right? Absolutely. But that doesn't mean that there is nothing left to optimize. And, while it really doesn't change much on a full PC plugged into a wall socket, our optimizations actually made some impact on Steam Deck power consumption and thus battery life, as you can see here: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40784458/9fa215c05c4d63c99dee6fd6b14d8c2fbe1d62e2.png This is a comparison of the peak total system power draw of the game on the Steam deck at native resolution and 60 Hz/FPS, between one of the first working versions we had, and a version close to release. Note that this is in one particular level, and with ~30% screen brightness. We primarily implemented two optimizations: a general rendering optimization which we worked on to make sure our Switch port hits a solid 60 FPS on all maps, and a specific optimization for the High Speed / Turbo mode of the game, reducing its CPU impact. As you can see in the comparison, while these aren't game-changers, they help make it feasible to hit 6 hours or even more on battery when playing Zero on the Steam Deck - and more specifically, turbo mode no longer notably affects power consumption. We also implemented texture de-duplication, which allows us to keep the game download and install sizes small (less than 4 GB!) despite including higher quality assets. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40784458/25d400ee256c3577542563787a1a5c5718bddc9f.png Talking about the Steam Deck, I'm happy to announce that Trails from Zero is already fully Steam Deck verified! In fact, as you might have surmised from earlier posts in this series, it goes beyond the verification requirements by offering 16:10 aspect ratio support.

Bug Fixes and More

Even after 3 blog posts I still haven't touched on a few points I wanted to mention. For example, we backported book page navigation as well as the "Encounter Trigger" and "Other Voices" settings from Trails to Azure. We also added basic rumble support (on damage), and offer separately configurable speed up factors in battle for high-speed / turbo mode. Beyond all these feature improvements, we also fixed a lot of bugs. Some of them were new in the Kai versions of the game - e.g. a handful of wrong textures ids - while others have existed in every single version since the very first PSP release of the game. Perhaps the most amusing of these bugs, and one of the harder ones to find, is one where an enemy could reset the input handling, causing "stuttery" character movement, by triggering the hitbox of a door. To the best of our knowledge this could occur on only one map in the entire game. But it's gone now.

Conclusion

This release has been a long journey - and at this point, even writing about it is starting to feel like one. But that might just be appropriate for a franchise which is epic in the truest sense of the word. Anyway, before I close out this final post, I'd like to thank everyone involved with making this version of the game happen, one last time: the developers at PH3, our beta testers, NISA, the members of Geofront and of course Falcom. And finally, thanks to everyone who is interacting with these updates and discussing them online - I try to follow most of that discussion, and participate when I can. While it's not always possible to answer all of it or implement 100% of all requests, as you can see with the two features mentioned at the beginning of this post, your feedback can help us deliver an even better final product. Cheers, Peter "Durante" Thoman, CTO, PH3

Hi everyone! As I mentioned in the first part of the series — be sure to check it out if you haven't done so yet — I originally intended for this to be the usual one-off behind the scenes blog post I do for our releases, but the sheer amount of changes and improvements in Zero made that infeasible, So here is the second part in the series, this time focusing on game assets, and more specifically on sprites, UI textures, map textures, and even the maps themselves. In the first post I noted that to fully understand this version, it's helpful to know the history of Trails from Zero's releases. You can find the same summary of this history here again as a refresher: The game was originally released for PSP by Falcom, with a Chinese PC release licensed to the company Joyoland following soon after. This release was eventually used as the basis for a fan translation by the "Geofront" team. Independently, Falcom much later on developed a Playstation 4 version of the game known as "Kai", which serves as the basis for our version. That version did not include everything that was in the Joyoland version, or that was eventually added by the Geofront modders, so it fell to us to adopt or sometimes recreate these contents. I'll refer to all of these versions as "PSP", "Joyoland", "Geofront" and "Kai" respectively.

Character Sprites

The Crossbell games are the final series by Falcom to use the 2D-sprites-on-3D-maps look which was a hallmark of the Trails in the Sky series, and is also featured in some beloved Ys titles. Since they make up such a significant part of the overall presentation, the quality of the sprites is a fundamental aspect of the look of the game, and we wanted to make sure that we go for the best possible option here. The sprites for PSP were by necessity rather low resolution, and the Kai version uses upsampled variants of these lower-resolution sprites. Joyoland and by extension the Geofront release have higher-resolution versions, but these are limited to an 8 bit color palette and therefore frequently show some dithering artifacts. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40784458/a4d70d4042b505c618b37195a9e4fb4f2a629899.png For our release, we chose to start from the higher-resolution Joyoland sprites, and de-dither them using a neural network trained for this purpose. Special thanks to our beta tester UltraSun for investigating this! The results are clean, high-resolution sprites with full colors and no dithering artifacts, as you can see in the comparison above. These sprites are shown at 200% size (400% for PSP), which makes both the dithering artifacts in the Joyoland version as well as the relative loss of detail and some small distortions in the upsampled version quite visible. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40784458/29db5fdcdcd160bc1609280be924a06e1a0d349d.png One thing you might also have spotted is that the color saturation and brightness is slightly different between the Joyoland (and thus our) version and the PSP version (and thus its Kai upscale). This would of course be relatively easy to adjust by simply editing the assets, but in our internal testing we had diverging opinions on which one actually manifests the original artistic intent, and which one we prefer. As such, we decided not to decide and let everyone choose, by adding a "character glow" graphics option.

UI Textures

In this category, I include not just the basic UI textures, such as icons or window decorations, but also everything which is shown in 2D and not a sprite. That means, for example, character portraits or still shots used in in-game material or cutscenes. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40784458/a6172b64c93cdf12da93fe7140ac91e0588a5685.png For UI textures, compared to sprites and map textures, the work we did is perhaps most diverse. It includes, of course, finding the best existing source for each type of texture, but also other options such as re-taking screenshots used for still images, or even entirely re-drawing specific types of UI textures, such as the compass you see above.

Map Textures

In addition to character sprites, map textures make up the other most essential part of the presentation of the Crossbell games. There are 2586 unique map textures in Trails from Zero, and whatever approach we took had to be consistently applied to all of them, The existing situation was that PSP textures were of course very low-resolution. Kai used a generic upsampling solution on these with varying success, while the Joyoland version used a mixture of original and fully redrawn textures. The latter are always higher resolution and have a higher fidelity than the PSP textures, but they also sometimes lose a bit of the original visual identity. The nature of these textures — with highly distinct characteristics, from basic surfaces to complex composites of e.g. signage and foliage — and the fact that the best source can vary per-object makes any fully-automatic approach vary wildly in quality. At the same time, the amount of unique textures in the game does not allow for any fully manual improvement scheme to be applied consistently. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40784458/2974a53c852b2dbca13bb26678704c12a3a5e891.png In order to resolve this dilemma, we created a rather complicated pipeline of tools to extract and manipulate (e.g. with AI upscaling) the textures from each existing game release, all feeding into the custom tool we created for the manual part of the process — the unimaginatively named "PH3 ImageTool" — which you see depicted above. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40784458/99e9650b99f1691c616c44c4bb980dd539d8e19c.png This tool allows the user to quickly navigate and visualize many different versions of textures, and to select individual regions in order to compose a final version. This version can then be previewed in various transparency and tiling scenarios, and individual regions can also be marked for redrawing. Of course, this still involves a lot of manual work when going through every single texture, and we'd like to thank NISA and specifically Thomas for making this possible. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40784458/78a91deae9b87503836def1cba1bb24495a911cd.jpg {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40784458/c5fea1096b8d0c21350148db1630ef497fd79b42.jpg | {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40784458/d953271dcc2ffcc210ef971c8c98d25c4879f60a.jpg {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40784458/ffd0fc39fbfdcb3e982aca89346d6ffb357ad0e9.jpg Above you can see a comparison of the previous and new textures in two different areas of the game, and here is a full-size screenshot of another area: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40784458/9a4954bf8b9452d20bbf9de9561050b1b66a8a6f.png Not bad for a game originally developed for PSP, if you ask me.

3D Assets

All the other work I talked about today was ultimately on 2D images. However, there were some issues we had to address which required editing 3D assets. One of them I already touched on in the previous part of this series — extending geometry beyond what is visible in a 16:9 viewport — but there are also some other use cases. One example are sporadic problems with map vertex colors that caused various small graphical anomalies. Another are offsets and holes in geometry that are often negligible at PSP resolution, but become more visible on modern platforms. A challenge in this aspect was that we had no access to the original 3D model data, meaning that we could also not use any standard tooling. Therefore, we ended up building our own tools for exporting and importing geometry data to and from the native game file format and Blender. Luckily, we are only talking about static model data with basic vertex attributes here, which is relatively easy to deal with. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40784458/bfdfc9801e348c4d6055cfe5900f377ecfabb154.png In the screenshot above, you can see a pool table being edited due to a stray vertex color. Much of this editing work was performed by Geheimen, one of our intrepid QA testers. There are a surprisingly large number of these small geometry changes throughout the game, so if you spot a tiny model detail that was fixed compared to other releases, you know who to thank.

Conclusion

Once again, I salute you if you actually made it through this entire post! In the third and final part I'll cover some platform features that didn't make it so far, perhaps some bug fixes, and even — surprisingly — optimization. There will also be one pretty significant surprise feature which we only implemented after receiving feedback from the previous post in this series, so look forward to that! Until next time, Peter "Durante" Thoman, CTO, PH3

Hi everyone! The release date for Trails from Zero is inching closer, and we want to share more about the development of this new version of the game. I initially just intended for this to be a one-off post like we did for a few other releases, but there's more to cover here than there ever was before so instead this will be a multi-part affair. In this first part, I'll primarily talk about new in-game features, while future parts will focus on the improvement to in-game assets, bug-fixes, some platform support information, and maybe even more minor features I can't get to today.

Background

For both this look at features and future discussions of assets, it helps to have some background knowledge of the release history of Trails from Zero. The game was originally released for PSP by Falcom, with a Chinese PC release licensed to the company Joyoland following soon after. This release was eventually used as the basis for a fan translation by the "Geofront" team. Independently, Falcom much later on developed a Playstation 4 version of the game known as "Kai", which serves as the basis for our version. That version did not include everything that was in the Joyoland version, or that was eventually added by the Geofront modders, so it fell to us to adopt or sometimes recreate these contents. I'll refer to all of these versions as "PSP", "Joyoland", "Geofront" and "Kai" respectively. The short of it is that the most recent Falcom version - PS4 Kai - is the source for this port.

Aspect Ratios, UI and Mouse Support

One of the more significant challenges when porting a game from console to PC is dealing with aspect ratios, especially in older games with lots of hand-crafted UI. In a similar vein, fully supporting mouse input in such games frequently requires a lot of work on individual menu screens and UI elements. I'm happy to report that we were able to tackle this challenge in full for Trails from Zero.

Aspect Ratios

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40784458/6faaa634c31bf0f652b9f99d38b69081b0d915cb.jpg In games with a fixed camera perspective such as Trails from Zero, supporting ultrawide aspect ratios can be particularly difficult. Often, the original game optimizes level assets by not including anything which can't be seen by the original (16:9) camera. In our previous release of The Legend of Nayuta: Boundless Trails, we tackled this issue by trying to constrain the camera, per-level, to areas that are visible. For Trails from Zero, we re-implemented this approach -- as you can see above -- but also managed to go one step further in many situations. We created some tooling to extract and edit the original level geometry, and one of our wonderful QA testers was able to fix many smaller geometry issues in maps with this tool. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40784458/53e5d58f301de2157544c28455b8a1a9038033c0.png

Aspect Ratio and UI

This takes care of the 3D rendered aspect of aspect ratio support, but still leaves open the question of UI. Here, we opted to keep a letter- or pillar-boxed layout for menus, while adjusting the implementation of all floating HuD elements to anchor them to a screen location which make sense for each element. This allows us to support anything from the venerable 4:3 to ultrawide, of course including 16:10 as found on the Steam Deck. From very wide: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40784458/83e843a2b800f6e8de7f7422d42a405497b87c0f.png ... to very tall: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40784458/6bc8ff7e8acb769b59f1de4f495773bc8a46c4cf.png Note that there were lots of sometimes very subtle UI changes to accommodate arbitrary aspect ratio support, such as changing some UI animations in battle or adjusting textures in minor ways.

Mouse Support

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40784458/5cbf41a029cb982853f71299e4940000f796c6c6.png Mouse support in Trails from Zero is very complete. In fact, the entire game could feasibly and rather comfortably be played using only the mouse! Even the mini-games are fully supported. To this end, we've implemented the following:

• Mouse Menu Navigation, which includes the ability to naturally select elements such as tabs in menus and characters in the equipment screen by clicking their portraits. It also includes mouse wheel scrolling in item menus -- actual scrolling, not moving your cursor (a distinction I need to mention since it's a pet peeve of mine).
• Mouse Movement, implemented as click-and-hold, similar to earlier PC Falcom games, or most mouse-driven PC ARPGs for that matter. This includes lots of customization options, which should be sufficient to make it feel right for almost everyone.

These options can be individually enabled and disabled, allowing you to use any hybrid mouse/keyboard input method you prefer.

Other UI Options

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40784458/88bdf3bb25955a0ba3c72219f59447f27f93da2c.png We have implemented some more UI options to make the game more configurable to your preferences, and to better support different output devices or play styles:

• A UI Scale option. The default setting, which is what you've been seeing in the screenshots so far, is more suitable for playing on a PC monitor or large TV. There is also a "Large" UI setting, which mimics the original PSP layout and sizes more closely and is great for portables such as the Steam Deck.
• We've added the ability to hide the status display depending on your characters' current state. You can choose to e.g. hide the status information when every party member has full HP, or only if all of HP, EP and CP are full.
• We also included the option to only show status condition icons for the currently selected character in battles, a setting which was originally only available in Trails to Azure.

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40784458/78b3f2887baed6051b9b20781ddc81d659bc232c.png The screenshot above shows the large UI setting - if you look at it in full screen you might see how it can be overbearing on a standard modern monitor or TV setup, but it's great for smaller screens.

The Message Log

Modern Trails games and many other JRPGs frequently feature a message log, which allows you to see previous dialogue and in-game messages, and re-play voice lines. No previous official release of Trails from Zero had this feature, however, the fan community added it in the Geofront release. We couldn't re-use this implementation directly, but the feature was really popular with fans and one of the more frequent questions about our release was whether it would include a message log. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40784458/6d1d52b7028923736bf652ce0838299d04474dd9.png So far, I had to tell people not to concern themselves with this for now, but that only made them more curious. Now, I'm happy to confirm that we implemented a message log feature from scratch, with all the expected functionality. You can see it in action in the screenshot above. Talking about messages, we also backported a new feature which was added in Trails to Azure later which allows you to hide dialogue with a button press.

Rendering and Graphics

Unlike later full 3D games, where there is a lot to improve regarding the rendering quality of existing assets and effects, the most major improvements in a game like Trails from Zero must come from improvements in the assets that are used. We'll provide more information on that topic in a future post, but for now there are still a few technical improvements to discuss.

Increased Draw Distance

Everyone who follows our ports knows that draw distance is a recurring topic. Personally, I'm always saddened when I play a PC port (or new console remaster) of an old or relatively low-tech game, and still encounter pop-in that should be easily rectified on the newer hardware. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40784458/456dbbf8056e67839cf2323fbea83acf72089ad8.png The image of Crossbell Square above is cropped from the far background of two screenshots - so don't pay too much attention to the overall environment - and shows how two NPCs are being distance culled in the left case and not on the right. To make things clear, those NPCs are there in both versions, but in any previous release they pop into (graphical) being if you move backwards a few steps. In short, distance pop-in is completely eliminated in our release.

High FPS Support

The PSP version of Trails from Zero was designed for and ran at 30 FPS, and the later Kai release increased this to 60. While the Geofront fan release allowed for higher FPS settings, it could not circumvent the basic design of the game expecting a fixed framerate, and thus slowed down unless the FPS target was maintained consistently. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40784458/9425dd33dc5aad152aec52e24e183044fe4c8008.png We went in and fully made Trails from Zero compatible with variable framerates. With our release up to 144 FPS will be fully tested and supported, which also included fixing several smaller issues related to collision and animations. Interestingly, some of these already existed in previous 60 FPS versions, but none of them were critical or widely reported.

Anti Aliasing and the Rest

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40784458/67effb70b53319a2db584bf09b908f158fa40ffb.png Regarding the basics, we support MSAA (up to 8x) and FXAA, as well anisotropic texture filtering. Refresh rate and frame limiting can be configured independently. This one is really obscure and will not interest most people, but did you notice that the "Monitor" selection says "CF791" in parentheses after "Display 1"? That's the model ID of my monitor. I always wondered why games with explicit monitor selection options (which already seem like the minority) almost never display the model name of a display, but rather just its numeric ID. Well, I now think the answer is because Windows makes it a bit too annoying to bother getting this information for a very small improvement only a subset of the audience benefits from. Anyway, yeah, we have that.

Conclusion

I think that's enough for now - in fact, if any of you made it through this entire post I salute your dedication. Before the release, in some subsequent posts, we'll talk about other facets of the PC version, including game assets, some platform features that didn't make it into this part, perhaps some bug fixes, and even - surprisingly - optimization. Until next time, Peter "Durante" Thoman, CTO, PH3