Toa of Mirrors

I hope I'm not necroing this topic by replying to it again after all this time, but I just wanted to let anyone who was interested know that the Zyro image upscaler I was previously using is dead now. Going forward, I'll be using the next-best free online AI upscaler, jpgHD. It came second in the same tests I ran Zyro on when I first did the upscales I posted here over a year ago, and it came in first in the tests I did today on the remaining available upscalers. I'd recommend it for anyone still working on this project looking for a free way to upscale MNOG's old, noisy SWF images.

On 11/1/2023 at 9:20 PM, Groovy Jake said:

I recently decided to get into the Bionicle story, after passively looking over wikis and this very forum for quite a few years.

Since there's no official way to read it all, I decided to read this compilation, "Biological Chronicle", which I've heard is the best way to read/enjoy the Bionicle story, using the final version on TuragaNuva's website.

A Newcomer's Review of Bionicle - Book 1 - The Coming of the Toa

I really enjoyed this book. For one, I really liked the characters and story. The Toa are all pretty fun and interesting, and with their elemental powers and element based personalities, it reminded me a lot of Lego Ninjago, another Lego series which I grew up watching. I liked the overall story of them learning to work together. I think Tahu, the hot headed fire Toa, and Kopaka, the distant and lone wolf type ice Toa, were probably my favorite. I found their bickering and eventually their learning to work together to be one of the best dynamics in the story. I also found the world and lore of Mata Nui to be quite intriguing.

 

Speaking of which, Takua's story was a good way of getting to actually know the world of Mata Mui, with him being a Matoran, and I found his story of fighting his own equally important battle alongside the Toa to be quite well done. I like the personalities of the other Matorans as well, and it was really neat to get to know the local pass times and interests of these various groups of people. Really makes it feel like a living breathing world. I felt it all tied together really nicely in the end, with Tahu's mental link with Gali allowing the two stories to really mesh well near the end.

 

Two bits I really enjoyed were Pohatu's speech to his Shadow Toa counterpart (which was probably his shining moment), and the encounter with Makuta. Finding out he wasn't totally evil but simply a necessary part of the universe, being the destruction to Mata Nui's creation, is a super intriguing concept. I hear later stories undo this idea, which is a shame, since a villain who's almost more of a force of nature is genuinely really cool.

 

The main issue I have with the book... well, it's not the fault of the compiler, but it becomes really obvious at points what was written as a book and what was written as a walk through. The sections focusing on the Toa are super well written with great introspection, I believe being mostly written by C.A. Hapka with bits by Greg Farshtey, and I feel it really helped me connect with the Toa as characters. Unfortunately, most of the story related to Tahu feels pretty basic. The dialogue itself is great, but there's very little introspection and the text doesn't really have a unique style to it. I also wish Gali and Takua's mental link was established earlier on. I know this is because the sections with the Toa largely come from a proper book, while Tahu's sections come from a walkthrough of the Mata Nui Online Game, but it does make the writing seem inconsistent at times, especially since the former is written in 3rd person, while the latter is written in 1st person.

 

The comics surprisingly weren't a super jarring shift, but it was strange how Lewa spoke pretty normally in the comics and MNOG walkthrough, while he has his own broken style of speech in the book sections. The comics themselves were pretty great though, with incredible art and writing on par with the books and MNOG. Honestly, I think any jarring shift had less to do with them being comics, and more with them often being told by Turaga or from Makuta's POV. The Kopaka comic's inclusion in the book was actually was pretty seamless by comparison.

 

Despite the occasional change in writing style and the overall weaker writing of the Takua plotline, I still got quite invested in Takua's story. I feel the only place where the lack of detail in the MNOG sections kinda hurt the book was in the Makuta fight section. I saw the original MNOG cutscene on YouTube and it's such a great scene with amazing dialogue and beautiful imagery, and it kinda sucks it wasn't novelized with a bit more effort put into it.

 

Still, I really enjoyed the book. Bionicle is a really cool story, and this book is a great introduction from what I read. I definitely wanna see how the story continues going forward. Currently reading Book 2, I'll post my thoughts on it once I finish it.

Note: I decided to read the "with optional extras" version of the text, because I heard the Quest for the Toa game was important to the story. But, tbh, I think the Standard version probably benifits from being excluded. While it's nice to have, I feel that the story is ridiculously repetitive and uninteresting, until the very end with it setting up the events of the book. I feel this section being truncated to just the necessary details (Why Tahu became an outcast, him helping the various Matorans and Turaga, and the ending with the canisters being released and Tahu winding up on the beach) would be a better epilogue. But I know this is only a compilation, so I can't complain too much lol. I'll definitely stick to the Standard versions going forward.

benifits -> benefits
Tahu -> Takua
Matorans -> Matoran

5 hours ago, Ontocron said:

Yeah, the new update is online. I'm very sorry about the radio silence; I had planned on going back to look at the sand jpgs, but I wanted to prioritize the bugfixes and consistency edits, and I kind of ran out of time. Your edits are good, but I feel like there might need to be another pass on a couple that have slightly blurry sections, like 1.3-E.swf. In the past couple weeks I also started experimenting with bigjpg.com as well as zyro to see what's possible.

I hope to get a new update out with nicer sand images and more unique Matoran appearances eventually.

Alright then. If you ever need more help with this project, I'll be here.

Was this updated today? You know, I really worked hard on those upscaled beach SWFs last year, and then, like, months passed with no further response about them. And then this project gets quietly updated and the only indication that it happened was a surprise appearance on the Bionicle Day stream. I was hoping that if this ever got updated, the SWF edits I made last year would be included in the all-in-one release in some form or another. But if there was a problem with them, I figured I'd at least get told why they can't be put in. Instead, I got neither. The V.2-S.swf in V0_2 doesn't have the upscaled sand the V.2-S.swf I posted on this topic does. And I have no idea why my edits were not deemed fit for inclusion! I'm not trying to rant here -- I am happy this got updated -- I'm just trying to understand.

On 8/17/2022 at 4:53 PM, Keyblade87 said:

Wow, that's an impressive result! The 7zip file is "Unavailable", but it's clearly a big improvement. It even looks like it could have been the original, uncompressed image; great work! This could help out the sandy beach textures the most, since there's only so much Photoshop could do with such a noisy image.

I don't know why the file would be "unavailable", but just to be safe, I've uploaded it to Mediafire. You can view it here: https://www.mediafire.com/file/7oc92bee9e3p9gc/I.1-S_Upscaled.7z/file

Though I must warn you, Zyro is not perfect. The last few sets of footsteps are faded and barely visible in the upscaled image compared to the original. But it's still generally a major improvement.

EDIT: I'd have posted this next section as a separate post, but BZPower has a strict policy against double-posting, so I have to make this update an edit instead.

I ran the bitmaps from I.4-E.swf through Zyro and worked the same magic on the top part as before, this time using a waifu2x upscale as the transparency edge. I similarly edited a few other SWFs. I'll post all my upscales and SWFs as attachments and on mediafire as one big 7zip file:

MNOGIM-Zyro.7z

https://www.mediafire.com/file/crymla67tvluydw/MNOGIM-Zyro.7z/file

23 hours ago, Keyblade87 said:

Thanks, glad you like it! I don't really want to stop Maglya from spawning, because I figure the player might not wait for him to walk into view after the first visit to Ta-Koro. You're right, though, it is awkward. I think it would make sense for him to simply refrain from giving you the surfboard until after you have the backpack. In fact, that'll probably be included in the next update. For now, here's an updated swf file for that scene that you can drop into your Mata Nui Online Game folder.

Thanks, I'll try it right now! And congratulations for getting mentioned on BZP's news feed!

EDIT: I ran the original beach mosaic from I.1-S.swf through a number of different upscaling processes, and the free one at zyro.com did the best job of it, so I've attached it below. It also increased the resolution x4, so after shrinking it back down with waifu2x, I used FFDec to replace the version in your modified SWF, but the top looked a bit iffy because Zyro had a little trouble upscaling the transparent area. So, I removed the top 9 lines from it and replaced them with the top 9 lines from your version of the mosaic, then replaced it in the SWF and saved the SWF. It came out pretty good, I must say. I've attached a 7zipped copy of it below as well. I included the zyro upscale image in the 7z file because BZPower seems to be dumbing down image attachments.

I-1-S_Upscaled.7z

This looks amazing! I can't wait to try it. Thanks for releasing this.

EDIT: Okay, I'm playing All-In-One, and I'm loving all the fixes and new additions, but I've noticed one little remaining bug. I talked to Maglya, who gave me the Lavaboard before I even got my backpack, so the add item animation doesn't play. Should the scene be edited so that he doesn't show up until passing some sort of backpack check?

If it would help, JSLBrowning did something like that for his edits of the game. And he thoroughly documented how he made all the changes here: MNOG Documentation (google.com)

Okay, so I've already posted a topic about the Galidor Glincher files I salvaged, but I have updates for it now. Unfortunately, the topic hasn't been posted on for a few years, so if I've got BZPower's rules correct, I can't add to my old existing topic, but I can make a new one. Here's a link to my original topic, and when you're finished reading it, I'll discuss the updates below.

Alright, so about a month ago, I tried to convert the models again with Terrev's 3DXML-to-OBJ converter at https://github.com/Terrev/3DXML-to-OBJ . I still couldn't figure it out, but then I went to https://rockraidersunited.com/topic/7897-3dxml-to-obj-converts-ldd-model-captures-to-obj/ and watched the linked tutorial videos jamessterV2 posted at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsP1QZr39W0 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqKf5gmfZbs . That showed me how to convert the models to OBJ, so now I have versions of all the Galidor Glincher parts/characters that most 3D model viewers can read. Then I used waifu2x-caffe to denoise and upscale their textures. Now they look just about as good as 20-year-old models can. I bundled them into all a 7zip file; the base folders have the models with the original textures, and the subfolders of each of those folders, which are each called "(UpPhoto)(noise_scale)(Level3)(tta)(x4)", have the models with the upscaled textures. The link is below:

https://www.mediafire.com/file/wjo5pbuhn4lrlk2/Galidor_Models.7z/file 

I hope all you fellow Galidor fans enjoy the models!

I miss Galidor so much! I remember the retro console-style Flash site, and I wish I could still visit Sam Bluetooth's lab.

And I thought they smelled bad on the outside!

I've recently concluded that the transcription of Quest for the Toa in the Complete versions of Book 1: Invasion isn't the most accurate one out there, or at least parts of it aren't. For starters, the first person who talks to you in the game looks like Jala, but the PDF calls him an Onu-Matoran. He is called Jala in Pages 145-153 of ToaTapio Nuva's own Bionicle story compilation, at http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/tapio/Legend/the_bionicle_story.doc . MakutaMutran's version, specifically The Dark Time Chapter 2, calls him Aft, a Ta-Matoran who bears little resemblance to Jala, and his version later omits Vakama's line about Takua being an amateur. Though I'd have to review the text and the game more thoroughly to be sure, I think Tapio's version is the most accurate account of Quest for the Toa.

On 7/3/2020 at 12:48 PM, Tales said:

Sorry to revive an ancient thread... I'm a fairly competent game-dev; and I think I might be able scrub the animations from the swf files, and put together a functionally similar game using c++. My only real concern is with the legality - last thing I'd want is a lego-lawsuit.
Not gonna make any huge commitments, but I am definitely going to make some sort of attempt.
Does anyone happen to have a good transcription of all the dialogue / dialogue trees? That'd definitely be handy to have.
Also, should I try to emulate the original version of MNOG or the updated one? (for example, I *personally* liked having to pick up the lightstone, but some places have listed that as a positive change so... :P)

https://biosector01.com/wiki/Mata_Nui_Online_Game_Walkthrough has most of the dialog, but a few off-handed comments were omitted. For example, if you talk to Maku just before you first leave for Po-Koro, she'll say, "I've heard that there's trouble in Po-Koro! Oh no, poor Huki..." "Why does Nokama make me stay in the village at a time like this? Huki might need me!" Even though those quotes aren't in the walkthrough, it ironically references them as Takua's motivation for going to Po-Koro in the first place. And that's not even counting the cut dialog Templar recounted in their game dev blog.

On 1/29/2020 at 12:25 AM, MakutaMutran said:

Hi! I’ve been doing something very similar—compiling the completely Bionicle story. “Complete” as you defined it—comics, serials, games, etc...EVERY piece of lore. The only difference is that I novelized comics, games, and animations to flow with the book material in solid text. I’ve been doing this since December of 2014 sharing it with old fans and new readers. I honestly didn’t know about this project already. Good to see someone else had the idea!

I started with books and serials and am going back through filling in the rest. So I have material spanning all story years, but not all source material yet. I just finished completing 2007 and am working on 2008. So far the total word count comes to a whopping 1.114 million words! It’s incredible. 

There are nuanced differences between our versions. Would you have the time/interest to have a look at it? Here are my different names, which I’ve called Phases of the story. 

Phase #01: Advent (2000-2002)

Phase #02: Illumination (2003)

Phase #03: Provenance (2004)

Phase #04: Deliverance (2005)

Phase #05: Apocalypse (2006)

Phase #06: Abyss (2007)

Phase #07: Ignition (2008)

Phase #08: Revolution (2009-2010)

Phase #09: Divinity (2011-end)

Eventually I would like to finish the story by writing my own ending after finishing canonical material. 

I believe he keeps them here, though it makes them a lot harder to download than this collection: https://www.fanfiction.net/u/7913598/MakutaMutran

Of course, it's still easier to download than the Wall of History's websites. Speaking of, the Wall of History seems to have the intro preview of Bionicle Legends 7: Invasion, in which Matoro got possessed by the Makuta on his way down the Cord, presumably because it was briefly posted somewhere before it was cancelled, at https://wallofhistory.com/story/no/04/07/01/00/ . Also, there are a few lines of dialog cut from the final chapter of MNOG that Templar posted at https://templargames.tumblr.com/post/183938904297/program-9-the-light-of-victory-and-its-shadow .  Are either of those of interest to either of your projects?

Also, I do have some ideas on how to add the plot points I previously mentioned in, though they would likely involve inserting quotes between blocks of text from the books, which you said you're trying to avoid. To illustrate what I mean, I attached a list I wrote of some of the additions I would make to various chapters of Book 1: Infection based on some of the lines Templar wrote for MNOG that were cut from the walkthrough or the final game.

MNOG Dialog Additions.txt

When you say Dark709's did a number on your machine, did you mean it had a virus?

I wasn't at the Mask of Light premiere at Legoland, but I remember these banners around the Imagination Zone afterward:

I believe Dylan and Cole Sprouse were at the premiere, and I also believe the Toa Nuva briefly invaded Miniland, USA:

1 hour ago, Peri said:

Oh no, its down? I didnt even know it was up somewhere... was it one of the things Templar cleared from their site?

In any case, thanks for preserving these. From the image that looks like a lot of polygons for a 2002 web game!

Yeah, for years their showcase site still worked. They must've shut it down within the past year or so. I captured the 3DXMLs from it back in 2011. But by the time I figured out how to datamine the base w3d files they were generated from a few years later, they had already been taken down, years before the showcase was. You can see what their showcase looked like at https://web.archive.org/web/20180415082102/http://www.templar.com/showcase/

On 10/26/2019 at 9:57 AM, Sir Keksalot said:

Have you considered making stud.io parts out of these models? It'd be a start to getting the Galidor parts in the program, even if the poly count is, uh...special.

My main priority is converting the other 3DXMLs to a format that such processes would accept, which I don't know how to do.

I ripped a number of Galidor set models from Templar's Galidor Glincher as 3DXMLs a while back. One of them I converted to DAE and then to .blend. Now that it's down, and so are the Galidor-specific fan forums, I thought I should post them here. http://www.mediafire.com/file/fy4nbjse477up7d/GalidorModels.7z/file

I thought the Encyclopedia Updated canonized the part of the MNOG's version of the Manas battle where the Kaita disabled them by destroying their heating towers. But Infection (Complete) uses the full Book/Style Guide version instead. Was that an intentional decision, or something that might need correction?

Also, the MNOG walkthrough mentioned that Maku mentioned trouble in Po-Koro just prior to Takua's conversation with Nokama, but didn't include what she actually said. Should this also be added in? For reference, speaking to her in her hut at this time causes her to exclaim:

"I've heard that there's trouble in Po-Koro! Oh no, poor Huki..."
"Why does Nokama make me stay in the village at a time like this? Huki might need me!"

Additionally, the Makoki Stones aren't mentioned in Book 1 - Infection at all. Should a reference to the fact that the Toa collected them and used them to open Mangaia be mentioned?

It sounds like the kind of music Toonami would put in one of their commercials or bumpers in the 00s. Which is a good thing, in my opinion.

This is a really great resource of Bionicle information. However, I think Book 7 should at least include a summary of the events of Bionicle Legends 7: Invasion, since we know the gist of what happened, just not the particulars.

Dude, all your Bionicle videos have been taken down from Vimeo. Is there anywhere else you could post them?

While not a working offline version, partly because all the php files can only be called and not accessed, I have managed to use datamining and web archive indexing to find almost every file from www.menol.org. All the SWFs and XMLs should be there, so at the very least one can view all the cutscenes and locales, and I have maintained the website's folder structure. I've collected them all into a 7z archive here: http://www.mediafire.com/file/0p6cc0k6ou75kq7/menol.org.7z

Well, it seems that once again, Toatapio Nuva managed to save posts from the old boards which I did not. Well done.

Back around 2007, someone on the old now-deleted boards posted a fan-theory here: that Mata Nui is a Giant Robot, and the Matoran and the other Bio-Mechanicals lived inside him. The member posted detailed descriptions of his evidence, complete with large images and visual aids, such as the fact that the two sun-holes looked like eyes if I'm not mistaken. The original poster even got an award for their theories from one of the Admins or Mods for how plausible and well-thought out the theory was. And a year or two later, it turned out to be true; the theorizer was completely correct in his assertions. I'd like to see that topic again, but the old boards were removed years ago. I think it should be preserved for its historical significance to S&T. So I ask you all: if anyone saved a copy or at least part of the post, or if someone has the means to dig it up from the old boards if they still exist, or even if anyone just remembers the topic, could they come forward to share their knowledge of the matter?