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Fierce Legends Interview - Exclusive!

One of the honoured CoN affiliates, Fierce Legends Software, is on track to create the biggest news about FF6 since the discovery of the Intangir glitch. Or maybe something else. I don't know, I'm just talking at this point. But Final Fantasy: Forgotten Story, a game in development by FLS right now, will soon be available to the public. The game, a fan-made prequel to the events of FF6, is a custom program that may eventually change the way you look at fangames. Gerad and I, in a manner of speaking, sat down with the leader of FLS, Adam Harvey. Adam, better known to the community as Corda, had some great information to share with us in this first-ever CoN-exclusive interview!
-R51

Gerad:	Thanks, Corda, for agreeing to this interview on behalf of the staff. We really appreciate it. First question: tell us a little bit about the history of the Final Fantasy: Forgotten Story project, and about yourself. How did you come to create and lead the project?
Corda:	This is a very long and difficult story, but I'll try and simplify it to a paragraph or so. Basically, FLS started out based on an April fool's Joke at FFOnline, pretending an FF6 sequel was in development. This got around the forums and there was excitement galore, but when it turned out to be a joke, people were let down. Some were so let down and inspired by the idea, they formed an idea to create such a game, and FLS was born. I was drafted in as a musician a few months into production, but things quickly fell apart. The project was handed from its producer, at the time a guy called AegisKnight, onto Matt Myers. Matt was one of only 3 original members of FLS left (including myself), and in addition to having no team, was also facing a high personal workload and many other personal issues, and couldn't handle the development of a full online project. The project was, after several months passed on to me, with only a few brief notes and story ideas handed down. I decided to, out of respect, abandon the work others had done (seeing as they no longer worked on the project), and instead take the idea of FLS, and the name. I decided to get a new team, and work on a prequel set a long time before the original story concept. And that's really where we are now.
R51:	It is stated on your website that you are a non-profit organization. Please tell us a little bit about your organization and what your motive is for creating the game. In short, what's in it for you and your team? How do you intend to finance the game's development - or is this an altruistic endeavour and, therefore, you don't really care?
Corda:	It's true we're non-profit, and it's true we're probably going to stay that way. We're non profit primarily for legal reasons, since making a profit from the Final Fantasy franchise without due agreement from SQUARE is illegal, and we don't want to offend or take credit for the work of SQUARE. We're just all Final Fantasy lovers, and have become inspired and thrilled with the entire idea behind FF. Instead of making fanart, or fanfiction, or writing music based on FF, we're combining all these elements to create the ultimate Fan Media product: a game based on FF. We plan to keep development running just off of the inspiration and love of making the game. Sounds like a silly dream, but we've done well so far and really, we've only been concentrating on the 'boring' aspects of pre-production and preparation; the true fun of artistic creation is just beginning.
Gerad:	Please tell us a little bit about Catherine Joseco, your storyboard/art director. Do you have any tidbits from the story to give us? Any storyboard or original art samples? We'd like to know about Catherine's background in art - what made her your choice for the position? We'd also love to hear some words from Catherine if she's available.
Corda:	Catherine is a great artist and wonderful person, always enthusiastic about all things creative and all things to do with games! She's been working hard on basic character designs, and now she's beginning to turn towards concept design for the 'wider world' of FF: Forgotten Story. I can't give much away about the story, but her logo for the game says a lot for the story itself if you can read into it! Catherine is studying a degree in art at University, and in addition to this she's been an artist for a very long time as a hobby, drawing her favourite game characters and anime influenced creations. Cath has actually gone home for the week to be with family, but before she went she did read the interview and give me her thoughts, and although I have no direct quote from her, she was very happy that people were so interested in her art, and was looking forward to sharing many more designs with you in the coming months!
Gerad:	It is also stated on your website that you are not Square-affiliated. Have you discussed the use of the Final Fantasy name with Square? Is it your choice or Squaresoft's choice to be unaffiliated, and if it is your choice, then why?
R51:	More to the point, is there a need at all to be affiliated with Square, or is the connection of the same legal standing as a fan website, used as a tribute instead of a recreation?
Corda:	It's true we're unaffiliated with Square. We haven't discussed the use of the FF name, and we don't plan to just yet. At the moment, we see the project as a fan community project, and something that pays tribute to the FF series in the same way a picture or fanfiction would. Since we are committed to making the game without any sort of inside or outside financing, we're positive the project can carry on as something of a simple fan project, and hope no one takes offence to the idea. Once the development hits a crucial stage, or once our advertising campaign and fanbase reach larger proportions, we may evaluate our official stance on things. Right now, we're taking it easy. We've done some homework on this, and as far as we can tell our management of the project at the moment ensures we don't offend or violate any legal codes. While we're sure we are technically violating copyright and legal issues, we're doing it in a way that makes any reaction to the project simply not worth the time and investment. In other words, from a business point of view we simply aren't doing anything to hurt anyone else, we make no money nor detract from any existing market, and the purely online presence of the project means no outside or third party producers or distributors shall be involved on any scale. I guess you could say we're a bunch of FF fans making a game, not a company making a product, and in the corporate world there is a difference.
Gerad:	Agreed, agreed. We remember a discussion of musical formats from a couple months ago. What kind of music did you decide to implement? Do you have any samples for us?
Corda:	Yeah, this was something that confused us for a long time, but we think we now have the answer. Basically, using a standard MIDI file would mean the sound interchanged from computer to computer, depending on the soundcard/soundset that was being used. However, if we encoded everything to a higher quality and consistent format, like MP3 or WAV, there would be in excess of around 500MB of music files alone (which wouldn't make for light downloading). We had to find a way to keep the size of the music files down, but the quality of the music up, and our programmer Jason Zimmer finally stumbled across the excellent DLS format. It's basically a sort of basic soundfont system, but the difference is it works on any computer. We'll be using actual instrument samples from the original game in the DSL file, to make for absolute accuracy. Samples of this shall be available very, very soon.
R51:	What methods are you using to manipulate graphics? Are screenshots from the upcoming demo available as yet?
Corda:	We're using a completely random and infinite set of graphics tools to make the game and all the promotional material for the game. I really can't comment on what we're using due to the sheer quantity of different applications, but in addition to the standard Photoshop/Paint Shop Pro and tile making studios, we're also using some of our own custom tools to manipulate graphics, and to manage tilesets and maps. Screenshots for the demo shall be available within the next month, we promise!
Gerad:	Please tell us a little bit about your co-producer and lead programmers, Jason Zimmer and Jean-Philip Desjardins. Have they worked on other games before? What is their background in game production?
Corda:	Jean-Philip Desjardins (known affectionately and for ease as JPD) hasn't really had much experience in game development, but has studied programming extensively and written numerous personal projects, he is also still studying programming. Me and Jason go back a long way, Jason was working on a 3D engine for an RPG of mine that never quite made it off the ground (it's still on hold, but I'm betting it'll take some time!) We've become friends through that and now we're working on this project, which is a much more manageable and feasible project to realise. Jason has a lot of experience designing games, ranging from personal projects and little programs to larger and professional stuff (he's working for a pro-studio at the moment).
Gerad:	How will the game be marketed? Are you relying on word of mouth, or will we see an advertising/public relations push as the demo or even the game come closer to release? What kind of advertising and marketing are you looking to do? Banner ads, email lists, merchandising? Any of the above?
Corda:	We're using a wide variety of methods to market the game, becoming increasingly more specific as the development continues. Initially, for the next few weeks, we'll be relying on word of mouth and regular news updates to keep the fanbase steady, and to extend the fanbase on a shallow but constant curve. We're then turning increasingly to interviews, media and an advertising campaign to continue the push and create an awareness among the general online gaming community. We're also holding competitions and events to mark the production of the game. As well as this, a mailing list and other such marketing techniques will be employed to try and get the word out to as many people as possible. We have no plans for any sort of merchandising unfortunately. We'll be producing a wide range of free screensavers and promotional items, but nothing that you can buy or 'own' in a tangible sense, as this would breach any sort of legal code we are trying to follow.
Gerad:	What makes this game better than the competition? Is there competition at all for this style of game?
Corda:	I suppose there is a competition for this game, just in the general gaming market. Although we're not looking to make any financial gains, we hope this game will be a massive hit online, and we hope we'll have many thousands (perhaps even millions) of downloads in the months and years after the game is released. Therefore, we have competition in as much that we need to make a game people will want to spend their time playing. And while we're not worried about sales figures or any such financial criteria, we still need to make a quality product people will enjoy spending their time playing.
Gerad:	Tell us a little more about the plot behind Forgotten Story. Will we see references to the original FF6 game in the form of locations or characters?
Corda:	We're still writing a lot of the story detail, and we don't want to release too much information on what we have so far, but we're able to say that it's a prequel set around the time of the 'War of the Magi' (probably actually detailing many of the events of this war). We're not going to comment on the references of any characters from the original game just yet, suffice to say the time setting and premise will make it difficult for any characters to become directly involved in the story. Lets just say what will be, will be... As for locations/themes, this is where the links with the original will be most noticeable. Although the world is different during the War of the Magic, much of what you remember shall still be there, and shall still be of importance to the game. In addition to this, many of the original game's themes, such as the idea of power and humanity, and the ideas behind war and peace, shall make a comeback. Again, we're reluctant to specify exactly how the games will be tied at this stage, but the story will become clearer as we progress throughout production.
Gerad:	What kind of system will we need to run the game - specs, etc.? Will it be available for both Mac and PC?
Corda:	Exact specs are difficult to give right now, but a very good estimate would be: Pentium 2 233mhz 64MB RAM Around 15MB Hard Drive Space A simple graphics card Obviously these are not exact specs, and we'll be able to offer more detailed specifications as development goes on, but it's suffice to say if you're on the internet reading this, you've more than likely got a computer that's effective enough to run the game. As for the Mac/PC issue. Well, at the moment we're developing solely for PC, and the game shall be released initially for PC format only. However, we're planning several 'add-ons' and modifications to the game once it's out (some relating to gameplay and extra features, some will be for FMV we plan to add at a later date. However, highest on our list of priorities for post-development additions is a port to Mac. We should begin this virtually immediately after the initial release of the game, and we hope it won't take too long. We don't want to isolate any Mac users who might enjoy the game, so we'll look into this issue straight away. Incidentally, it may be worth noting (for some) alpha tests on the basic engine have revealed it does work on a PC emulator used by Mac computers.
Special Guest Question From SSJ_Cloud:	How are you programming the game engine - originally or based on another existing engine - OpenGl, Direct X, or their own API? C++?
Corda:	The game engine is original, written in C++ and with Direct X support (possibly OpenGL to follow). We're making all the engine components and the majority of tools ourselves, to ensure that we can faithfully realise all the aspects of the game we have planned.
Gerad:	Has any difficulty been seen in the scripting part of the game engine? How difficult is it to code something like that?
Corda:	It can get pretty difficult to code, simply because of the sheer size of the game. In addition, there are difficulties with continuity and keeping game play consistent from section to section. Aside from that, there are also difficulties specifically with the sheer volume of data needed for the battle engine, requiring a lot of data and a lot of cross referencing with other aspects of the game. All in all, it's pretty difficult, but a few late nights and a lot of coffee will usually crack even the hardest of issues.
Gerad:	Finally, when will the demo be released, and where can we find it?
Corda:	This is a good question. We're slightly off target for the original demo deadline, but we shouldn't be too far away from a demo now, we'll try and get Santa to put it in your stocking. (If not, January should be doable. - R51) As for where you can find it, definitely from www.squareultima.com/fls, and possibly from other sources provided by our friends and affiliates. Information will become available closer to release date.

Thanks, Corda, for giving us this great interview! We here at CoN hope the best for FLS and the Forgotten Story project. If you'd like to discuss Forgotten Story, check here.

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