Just thought I'd make a QUICK post describing what is taking so long. Basically, my school is CRAZY with giving homework during the beginning of the year. I've been rampantly writing documents both engineering and English-related... all the while juggling American Government, Physics, Calculus, and Psychology. Crazy stuff. The only time I have to myself is... well... if I get lucky and have only a little homework over the weekend.

I WILL get this petition out of everyone else is too busy to do it, but you MIGHT have to wait until the next weekend before I can put the petitions together. Every second passing is yet another I don't get towards sleep. Ack!!! 138 seconds have passed! NOOOO!!!!

Sorry I haven't posted in awhile, guys, but it looks like things are ok.

Yeah, that's totally fine about my images... The ones Apoc made look a lot better.

A really good point was mentioned to me recently: No matter how much we try to make the verbage of the petition "legal," we will still have one more tiny pebble in our way that really can't be cleared. And since it's so tiny, it's probably not worth worrying about: Remember, our legal system only applies to the United States. Even if it's legally sound in US law, that doesn't mean a hill of beans to Japan. Therefore, as long as we can amply convey the message, that's really about all we need to worry about. I say we trust Square of America to handle things properly when it comes to dealing with Japan.

Probably all we really need to do in terms of verbage, now, is to translate it to Japanese...by someone who REALLY knows Japanese and is a native speaker of it. That's not to say Square America wouldn't translate it for us when they talk to Japan, but they might appreciate us doing the courtesy of saving them a little time, just so it's more convenient and it's one less reason for them to avoid passing it on.

So therefore, my input is that we are go on verbage as it stands. Agreed?

EDIT: By the way, check out a thread I'm about to make in the Underground.

You are right, this pebble is pretty insignificant. Look at it this way. While what were are writing MAY be legally unsound in Japan, it will be in America. Our group is contacting S-E of America, which (to my knowledge) should be under all U.S. laws. After recieving our petition, S-E of America is to send this petition in to S-E of Japan after looking it over themselves. Now since S-E of America is under U.S. law, and they approved of it before sending it out to S-E of Japan, then S-E of Japan would HAVE to accept the petition. Afterall, if they didn't, S-E of Japan would be going against S-E of America's word; 'tis never a good thing for a business to go against itself.

As for the whole translation deal, I'm not against it. The problem is, I and noone I know of, happen to be fluent in Japanese. We would have to go on another wild search for this person. It would be pretty good to have a version translated though, for when it would be sent to S-E of Japan.

As for the ENGLISH version of the petition, I guess the time when I should be most free to work on it would be the weekend. Expect a few or all of them to be done over the weekend.

...the underground?

...secret society?

Secret forum

The Underground is a private forum that is only available to Trusted Members. It's basically there for discussing things like ROMs and other illegal shtuff. Anyway, don't worry, Apoc. Jake didn't post anything related to the Petition in the Underground, so it's okay.

I'm fairly certain we already discussed the translation thing, both here and at CTRP. And I also thought we'd agreed that it would be less trouble to send the petition over in English. I'm gonna go check through the other pages of this thread now to see if I can't find where it came up...

I do not think translating into Japanese is a good idea. From what I got out of SE of America's correspondence with us, it seems they want to be the mediator between SE of Japan and us. This relationship places the burden of sending the petition to Japan on them. They are our contact. Recently I've seen translating the petition for them spoken of as a personal favor, as if for a friend. That's not the relationship we have with them. They may be doing us a huge service, but this is still a professional relationship. In the professional world, doing someone else's work for them is not looked at the same way. It will likely send the message that we think we are more qualified to translate it than they.

Furthermore, considering the fact that SE of Japan probably has a whole lot of people that speak English, all SE of America would need to do is send the English version of the petition over to them, and let the people at SE of Japan translate it if need be. These translators would not only be more qualified in translating between the two languages than anyone we would be likely to find, but they would also be more familiar with Japanese law and business practices, so would be able to convey the exact same idea in a translated version to their superiors as our version is conveying to SE of America.

I will support any decision that this petition team decides upon, but I think it would be a waste of time to translate it ourselves.

Point taken. Are we ready to go then? I think we just need those .doc files from Apoc, and I'll get them out to Nathan right away.

I think putting the site in English might help lol. I guess you will put the text in when you put the .doc up?

Apoc, have you finished the version of the petition that has all the characters together?

Oh, wait, he's too busy to post here...he probably won't even see this message until later this week, LOL.

As was promised, I have completed the basic petitions. Unfortunately, I am hosting it on geocities... so the links will probably go down a lot. You'd probably be better off just downloading it from the links, rather than opening the file. (EDIT BY JAKE: I'm changing the URLs of the ones I can since Geocities' bandwidth stinks. I'll update these as I download the rest.)

http://www.jullinar.com/chronotrigger/petition/petition-ayla.doc
http://www.jullinar.com/chronotrigger/petition/petition-crono.doc
http://www.jullinar.com/chronotrigger/petition/petition-frog.doc
http://www.jullinar.com/chronotrigger/petition/petition-lucca.doc
http://www.jullinar.com/chronotrigger/petition/petition-magus.doc
http://www.geocities.com/msanis88/CT_Remake_Petition_ver4_Marle.doc
http://www.geocities.com/msanis88/CT_Remake_Petition_ver4_Robo.doc

Hope you like them. A far as those go, this is probably your last chance to tell me to make any edits to it


I hope to finish the version with all seven characters some time today. Quite frankly, it might be a little difficult considering each image will become less-detailed as I shrink it. I guess I'll try it out and see how it looks. I'll show the petition with it afterward, you can give opinions on it then.


If you think the petitions already existant are good enough, then by all means... feel free to put them up.

********EDIT!********
I have finished the version of the petition containing all characters. It maybe found at...
http://www.geocities.com/msanis88/CT_Remake_Petition_ver4_all.doc

Questions, comments, nuclear war threats?

RAWR! I'll fire a nuke down your chimney! LOL, j/k

Jake: Your links don't work. Please put the original links back up -- I can at least download the petitions from Geocities.

Apoc: We have to change the logo. I'm sorry, but I'm scared to death of what S-E Japan might do if they find out we used their copyrighted images for it. We can't use the CT logo, and we can't use the Crono sprite. We've gotta try something else.

On the "all-in-one" petition: could you maybe apply a fade border to the images so they don't look so blocky? And yeah, you oughta enlarge them a little bit...they look fine when I view the document online, but when the petition is printed out, it will actually look smaller than the online version will, so the images will practically become microscopic. Even if it means you must leave no room between the images, you should enlarge them anyway so they'll at least be recognizable.

The Marle and Robo petitions look excellent. Although, I was wondering...this is entirely optional, but on Robo's petition, could you enlarge his image so it cuts off the kid on his head? He just seems smaller in his image than the other characters do in theirs. (The difference is really noticeable on the all-in-one image--Robo looks tiny in comparison to the others.)

Anyway, like I said, I can't download the other petitions, so I can't give my opinion on those.

New logo? Hmmmm... I hate to say it, but I really can't help there. I would gladly incorporate another one though if I am given it. The image only needs to be around the same size. This could be a problem though. Any of us have connections to an artist? To make this banner without using copywrited material, would mean to make it completely originally. Only a good artist would be able to pull that off. To make this simple for the artist, can't we just request a DRAWN version of the current logo? That way it isn't using S-E's original material, AND gives the artist an idea to work with. Any ideas on how we can accomplish this as fast as possible?

Comments on the "All in One": Hmmmm... I see. Ok... so I need to make them a little larger, eh? A border? Hmmmm... well I guess I can see what you mean. I'll see if I can do anything about it.


Single-character comments: Ok... so Marle's petition looks fine? Well at least that much is good. With Robo, I took was a little surprised by his picture. He is drawn smaller, and just has empty space surrounding him, to make the image around the size as the others. I'll see if I can remove that, and enlarge just him. No need to remove the kids, or so I think... anyway. Too bad you can't see the others. Guess I'll have to wait for the comments on those ones.


*edit*
Ok. I played around with the picture of Robo, and got a larger version. I put it in another petition. Is it any better?
http://www.geocities.com/msanis88/CT_Remake_Petition_ver5_Robo.doc

To fix the so called... "box problem", I removed the lined border that surrounded many of the images. This way it doesn't exactly look like the images are enclosed in a... box. Adding in shading around each individual image would be a PAIN. Knowing myself, I'd probably screw up each individual image in the process. Hopefully the boxiness isn't too bad now. Oh, almost forgot to mention. The pictures are enlarged. Details on them are much more noticeable and clear. They fit nicely on the page, and I think this size works pretty well for the "all in one" petition.
http://www.jullinar.com/chronotrigger/petition/petition-all.doc (Now hosted by Jake-O-Cities)
...just thought I'd mention. I made a test print of this document. It looks pretty awesome, I have to admit.


Anyway... any more ideas/comments/flamethrowers?
Oh... in addition. Since Jake already has hosted the images, I'll take the ones currently hosted down from Geocities. Just... make sure those links work.

Nice...very nice... And btw, I fixed the links in the first set he posted.

That looks very cool Apoc. Good job. Now we just need the site to have the text Jake wrote in it. We are getting closer to really getting this on the move. Jake how many signatures do we have now?

Ummm... but didn't we need to find a new logo to replace the old one on those petitions?

That's up to you guys. It doesn't matter to me. Either way we are getting fairly close to really getting this moving. I actually like that logo. So like I say up to you.

I'm with Vash on the logo. Now that I think some more about it, I'm not so sure Square will give a rip what we do on the papers, so long as it's not something that's being publicly displayed that we're taking credit for. If it's something that's just on paper and is going to their offices anyway, they'll probably look right past it without noticing.

I haven't checked petition@vizzed in awhile, so I'm not sure how many signatures it has. When we're ready, I'll just email everyone who's written to that address and let them know what the deal is.

Nathan has had some trouble with coding the Flash content as being dynamic (so that we can change it on the fly), but I haven't talked to him recently about it. I'll check on him later and let y'all know late tonight where he stands.

So you like the petitions as they are currently? It might be a wise choice to put a small disclaimer on the bottom basically claiming that the game "Chrono Trigger" and all of the characters or artwork depicted in the game are liscensed to S-E.

Of course, this is just a suggestion. I like the current logo too, but if it could bring problems... it would be wise to choose another one before we actually send out the petitions. Know what I mean?

Anyway, I'm very much looking foward to what is coming. Once we have everything set up, I shall try and promote this on various forums. With any luck, we'll gain enough popularity to be accepted on Slashdot, and then possibly other gaming sites.

All-in-One: Almost there but not quite, Apoc. Make the images just a bit bigger (I suggest enlarging them until their borders touch), and you'll have it.

Robo's Petition: You can leave the picture there the normal size. The size difference is really only noticeable on the All-in-One when you compare him to the other characters, so really, you only need to put the larger picture there, and not in Robo's stand-alone petition.

The Logo: Well, Jake and Vash have the final say on this thing, so I'm not gonna argue with them. But for the record, I just think it's a bad idea to use Squaresoft-copyrighted images on ANYTHING we send to them. It's like we'll be holding up a big flashing neon sign that says, "Hey, look at us! We're breaking the law!", because we'll be taking our illegal activity (using their images without permission) and shoving it right in their faces for them to see.

Remember, copyright infringement is how CTRP got shut down. I don't want this petition to make the same mistake.

And Apoc is right, is is absolutely crucial that we put a little disclaimer with the proper copyright info at the bottom of the petition. Even if we don't use Square-Enix's images, we'll still be using the name "Chrono Trigger", which is also copyrighted by S-E. Maybe, just maybe if we put that disclaimer there, we might be able to get away with using S-E's images for the logo. I'm quite apprehensive about this, however, and I still feel it would be best to just use a new logo altogether. (After all, disclaimers didn't stop S-E from shutting down CTRP...)

On an entirely different note...Jake-O-Cities? ROFL.

Erm... enlarged until they touch eachother? I'm not so sure about that idea. I actually just barely got that image in to the document (it was made a little smaller than the original, actually). So if I were to do as you said, the images would be really squished together... and look kind of awkward. Even if I made them bigger, Word would resize them to something not much larger than what you see there anyway. I admit that it wouldn't be bad if they were a bit larger, but getting the precise size to fit in that formation and not be resized due to Word would be somewhat difficult. I've printed out the document, and I can quite clearly see each character. As such, I don't believe there is much need to worry about making them larger anyway.

...As for Robo's petition... why the sudden change of heart? Your original request was to change him solely in the stand-alone petition. Of course, since I was working on the all-in-one petition at that time as well, I thought it would be beneficial to let him be larger there too. Unlike all of the other pictures, Robo's picture has A LOT of empty space. All I did was focus more on the part with Robo. I mean, unless the update makes it look worse than the original, I see no need to mess around with what isn't broken, if ya know what I mean.

As for the whole "copyright infringement" aspect, I agree with Stoney... to an extent. While I won't necessarily count out the idea of using the current logo... I can see where it may cause problems for us. As such, I would recommend that we change it. The least we can do, would be put up that disclaimer. Quite frankly, since we are even using unofficial fan work, it might be a good idea to do that too. I'm not entirely sure as to how to make such a disclaimer though. Anyway, if we are to get a new logo... we need to find it soon. We've been stalling a little for a while now, so I personally would like to have the website and petition ready ASAP so that the signing can finally begin.