Belthasar 0.3.0 preview (Windows, Linux)

The third preview of Belthasar, for Windows (x64) and Linux (x64).

It contains none of the game. You need your own dump of Chrono Trigger (USA), made from your own cartridge.

How to play

1. Unpack anywhere and open Belthasar (Linux) or Belthasar.exe (Windows).
2. Click Browse... (or drag your .sfc onto the window) and choose your dump. It is verified (SHA-1 de5822f4f2f7a55acb8926d4c0eaa63d5d989312).
3. Click Make the game data. The game's data is made from your dump on your computer, once (about 15-30 minutes; nothing is downloaded).
4. Click Play. From then on Belthasar starts straight into the game and reads only its own data -- the ROM is not needed to play.

F1 opens the options (widescreen, internal resolution, frames between, sync).

Linux

• Built on Ubuntu 24.04: needs glibc 2.38 or newer.
• Install SDL2 and Python 3 (sudo apt install libsdl2-2.0-0 python3 on Debian/Ubuntu). The setup runs with your python3.
• Browse... uses zenity or kdialog when one is installed; dropping the .sfc on the window always works.
• Your data folder (saves, options, the made data): ~/.local/share/BelthasarProject/Belthasar/.

Changes since 0.2.0

• The power-on is ported: a new game and the attract start at the console's reset, with the cartridge's sound from the first frame.
• Load and sound timing derived from the ROM: location and world loads, reboots and song uploads take the cartridge's frames; the title's pendulum ticks with its picture on every pass.
• The playthrough is checked against the cartridge through leg 32: the castle after Yakra, the return to 1000 A.D., the arrest, the trial and the rescue.
• Engine fixes found by the new test states: the effect clean-up colour, the decision box's hand, the X-Strike's record, and others.
• The test suite no longer depends on one machine: every state it reads is made from the ROM by a recipe or fetched from a public save by hash. All 953 checks run in a fresh clone and pass.
• The documentation brought up to date.

Checked for this release

• Each package's own setup, run against a verified dump, made ct_assets.dat and ct_tables.dat (59/59 steps); ct_assets.dat is byte-identical to the developer's.
• The data-free game from each package, with no ROM present, played the first 3000 frames of the attract with every 4th frame's picture identical to the development build's (Windows and Linux alike).
• Both packages were scanned for the game's bytes against the ROM and the extracted data (tools/release/scan_rom_leaks.py --binaries): clean.

Built from commit 1367157; see docs/RELEASE.md.

SHA-256:

• Belthasar-v0.3.0-preview-windows-x64.zip: d283d76bdc9e66faa815011ada2f20a30d4d08c44eecc37e508e11ac684db768
• Belthasar-v0.3.0-preview-linux-x64.tar.gz: cdd67ce5f52e33da05503abeb4ff67cfbc0467d45f397340810e842df346bb32

This is a preview; macOS is not packaged yet.