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...Am... I the only uh... programmer here...?

Sigh, I hate to recommand this program, but you guys should google for RPGMaker2000 and/or RPGMaker 2k3. They allow the creation of 2D RPGs via a simple point-and-click interface, though they're rather limited. Instead of wishing, make your ideas a reality.

But for the love of (insert deity of choice here), move on. Cookie-cutter RM2k RPGs are terrible. They're great if you want to express yourself, but they're not and will never be quality. (As a side-note, nor do you have any right at all to call yourself a "programmer" by using it; you don't program games when you don't write any code, you design them ) I recommand www.gamedev.net as a starting point: the people there are friendly and skilled (though serious and sometimes a little impatient) and it's a great way to get help if you're in a fix. Pick up a C/C++ compiler (Dev C++ is freeware) and look into SDL (good 2D library; very easy, powerful, though with its limits), OpenGL (very powerful; the screenshot I posted in my previous post uses OpenGL), and/or DirectX (most versatile, as it also encompasses input and sound/music/netplay, but a bit more advanced than OpenGL and SDL).

Learning some C/C++, then some SDL, is a good way to start writing your own game. Toss in some OpenGL (for the graphics) and DirectX (for everything else) and you can come up with pretty good stuff.

So there. Now you can create your own FF for real!

(Disclaimer: the above assumes you have the patience to invest a few months, at least, of effort into learning and studying. It's all downhill from there though.)

Edit: Alternatively, you can pick up Visual Basic and try that. It's a powerful language, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. But unless you intend to stick with simple 2D games, don't expect anything stunning. VB is better used to design, say, a map editor for your C++ RPG. It's easier to learn than C/C++ are, though.

This post has been edited by Silverlance on 22nd December 2004 02:00

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"Judge not a man by his thoughts and words, but by
the quality and quantity of liquor in his possession
and the likelyhood of him sharing."

I have just one thing.

In my Fantasy Final Fantasy, the main player character would HAVE to die. He just would. He'd have to die for some heroic reason that'd sort of contrast his personality, and everyone would be like 'NO!' and he (or she)'d be all *Insert meaning full line here!* Then they'd die in some way and kill the bad guy.

I started reading a series of books back in 1997 when I was but a wee(er) lad. The Darren Shan saga, if anyone knows it. It's sort of childish, but I stuck with it, and the last book blew me away. It's sort of the inspiration for this idea, because

Possible spoilers: highlight to view

The main character chooses death over becoming a crazed tyrant and saves everybody.

It's a very happy moment, but also very sad.

Can't you just hear the lone piano melody now, a la Aeris or To Zanarkand?

Hmm... there is so much to consider when making a Final Fantasy.

I'd have a good number of characters, at least ten. That way you can always spend lots of time making each character strong. I would also make it so you would have to use every character in some sort of situation. That way, you would have to spend the time making each character strong in order to complete certain areas of the game. Honestly, in FFVI, I would use the same four guys no matter what the situation (except at the end naturally). My characters would also be of all kinds of races. I'd throw in a minotaur, elves, humans, dwarves and of course a moogle or two. They would all have interesting pasts, there would be no comic relief. It would be a serious game.

Loads of secrets. Some kind of arena, some kind of blacksmith with endless possibilites.

Skills... hmm... I'd have to go with espers. However, they would teach different skills depending on which character was using them. This would prevent 14 characters who all had the same spells, making them all unique in their own way.

Battle system... I'm in a debate here. I like the way FFVI and before were since that was what first got me hooked on the series. But, FFT offered a lot more thinking. But, then I think about another Square game, Kingdom Hearts. The way you fight in this game was beyond words for me. And since I've heard that Dirge of Cerebus is a first person shooter, I think it would be okay to have an action RPG in the series.

Graphics would have to be smooth. Not something that looks all flashly, but not polygons and what not so dreadfully obvious that it takes away from the fun of the game.

Oh and Silverlance, I'm into programming myself and I know the hardships of making a game. Ever used QBasic? I think I spent at least a month working on an RPG when I first started programming in high school. A month for a basic city and a place to fight ouch. And RPGMaker2000 is a great program (although illegal . But yeah I use lots of FF sprites and the music to give my own game that true FF feel... ahhh

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This is my world: (Got my second chapter up, 3rd Chapter about 80% complete)
http://www3.sympatico.ca/daniel876/homepage.html

Hmm, I think it's REALLY debatable wether using QBasic makes you a programmer or not. It's closer to a scripting language than an actual programming language by today's standards. Definitely too restrictive for an actual project, IMHO. But yeah, I know what the hardships of making a game is; my first was an RPG on an Apple ][c with some rather bad graphics (GR mode was 40x25 pixels or something like that, so everything was just one big rectangle).

The hard part is getting the game engine up. Only a complete idiot would hardcode their game data, but either way once the main engine's up it's just a matter of adding resources. Problem is, unless you have a good dev team or lots of resources taken from other games, the whole media bit will kill your projects. Unless you're a skilled sprite artist/composer/programmer all-in-one-wonder.

I still recommand C/C++ with SDL or OpenGL, though. Either way, it's good enough for a cross-platform quality RPG that is limited by the user's PC's capabilities and not the emulated shell it runs in's built-in limitations.

This post has been edited by Silverlance on 25th December 2004 02:06

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"Judge not a man by his thoughts and words, but by
the quality and quantity of liquor in his possession
and the likelyhood of him sharing."

A paladin with a lot of sword assortments. That's all I'd need.

Paladins

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Dang. And here I was hoping the next big thing in hip hop would be, y'know, silence. ~Djibriel

Twilight Paladin.com We are now twilightpaladin.co.nr! It's not .com, but, oh well.

The Twilight Forums!

I own the RPGMaker2003. In fact i WAS makin a Final Fantasy-like project (mixed along with Golden Sun ideas and our own). We were working with original FF soundtrack, which would give quite a touch to our project. A friend of mine, whom i am working with in the project, owns a program named IDraw, which can be of help drawing stuff for RPGMaker2003. I also created my own storyline and all but time shortage has made the progress of the project slow.

Quote

..Am... I the only uh... programmer here...?

No, you aren't. Me and my brother are experienced. I'm simply skilled at RPGMaker2003 programming (which is quite simple comparing to other stuff) and my brother knows a LOT of programming.

This post has been edited by BlackWizardDryfe on 10th January 2005 02:49

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"Flush your problems with the rest of your crap!" ------ Palmer, FF7

"It's.... a very long story..." ------ Everybody, everywhere.
Isn't there anything better they can say?

Quote (BlackWizardDryfe @ 9th January 2005 21:46)

No, you aren't. Me and my brother are experienced. I'm simply skilled at RPGMaker2003 programming (which is quite simple comparing to other stuff) and my brother knows a LOT of programming.

Using RM2k3 is not programming. It's game developement. Closest you could get to considering it that would be via the built-in scripting language, which is not a programming language (as opposed to C/C++/C#, Java, Delphi, Visual Basic, even assembly if you're a masochist ). Not that there's anything wrong with using RM2k or similare game-maker programs. I'm just picky, having been into programming for many years. It's a passion for me, as well as my means of earning a paycheck, so, y'know.

What language does your brother develop in? I'd love to get to know programmers outside of the more obvious places like GameDev and Flipcode. Has he any work to his name published anywhere, or a website? (I love checking out other people's work. )

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"Judge not a man by his thoughts and words, but by
the quality and quantity of liquor in his possession
and the likelyhood of him sharing."

Ugh... seeing the word "assembly" gives me the shivers. I just can't program for crap. If I learned anything from a computer science course, it's not to make ridiculous demands on the programmer.

As for RPGMakers, I tried, but there's just too much to do for one person. My friend and I tried, but we couldn't get past character spriting, spells, and maps. We did make a Kaoru (from Dir en Grey) sprite set because in our game, Kaoru was the uber ace-of-all-trades. It's just too much to do for one person's free time. Five people maybe, but even then you don't find complete games in RM2K3 communities.

That said, I would only want graphics of FFVII quality at the least. I loved the messiness of FFVII. I loved how a guy would have a pile of scrap metal sitting in his living room. It felt great to stumble near a trooper's awfully sloppy bunkbed and find an action figure. It would've been cooler if the action figure did something. FFIX was cool like that, loads of items were hidden around just waiting to be used by you. So for me, big piles of messes with treasures in them adds a great deal of map exploration.

On to the world at large, there's something FFVIII had that couldn't be topped. The world in FFVIII was functional. There was defined society, you had countries, but you were given the idea that a country's population consisted of more than 100 people. You had governments, not some hokey king of a city. You needed identification, because you weren't Mr. I Can Go Everywhere I Please. Your characters were members of society. Then there's the cars. I'm the type of guy who spent 30 minutes driving around Esthar because the car was that cool. Come on, cars people, who doesn't like a sportscar?

You can't get that sort of world cohesion with a medievall background unless you had an empire of some sort. Let's face it, the empire bit has been overdone. That just leaves a dozen medievel villages and maybe a castle or two with the people having no clue of their neighbors. I'd be more appreciative of an ancient setting. Yes, Roman, or Greek. At least people bathe in that setting. You might want to make an excuse for pants instead of togas if togas aren't your thing.

Medieval vs Future ramble

Modern setting? Frankly, that's hard to do. Why? Because you can't do everything when the technology is limited. Our era, our technology is pretty modern, yes. However, you can not have robots. We'll have robots in a few decades, but that makes it future. So, that's you don't find many modern RPG's, except for Chrono Trigger and Terranigma.

Now lots of folks dislike future. Maybe it forces magic to not exist. If I had to chose between going from New York to Boston by a teleporter or chanting a spell, I'd probably pick spell because it's less work to say something than push a button and walk into the teleporter. Sorry, that didn't have any relevance than reveal my laziness. No, it did, because it's magic. Magic is the biggest shortcut to anything in life, no matter how technology is advanced because effort was made for technology in the first place. This is why when the situation of magic and technology exists, there's absolutely no peaceful coexistance. You'll always have some codger arguing with an engineer. I admit, I'm not genius enough to find a way to combine the two. It's that hard. Just like my example, you all would take magic over science when given both.

Now you might raise questions to my eloquent speech, but I'll probably answer them all for anyone who can actually read my ramble. Remember, I just said magic is easier. That's true, but what does it provide? I have a very hard time living without nice clothes, internet, and videogames. That's stuff magic can't crank out well. See, if you're with magic, you're going to find it hard to stray from a robe and pointy hat, and that outfit gets old fast (Black Mage aside, I love him too). You can only redesign a fire spell and castle so many times. The medieval/magic scene is just too limited if you want a broad variety of aesthetics and materials.

To wrap this ramble on, I favor high technology. I'm not simply talking starships and rayguns, I'm talking total manipulation of matter, the sort of advances we won't see for another 2000 years. At that point, technology will seem like magic. Perhaps I lied when I said you couldn't put magic an science together, but I'm not. That super far-off science is still science, there still was thousands of years of discoveries and contributions made by humans. Remember, magic is the shortcut to everything in life.

On Characters

Damsel in distress of a dragon. Kinight in shining armor rides off on his steed to save her. He valiantly fights the dragon, and sweeps the damsel off her feet and they ride off into the sunset. So flat, so boring, been done way too may times. I've seen clever interpretations. Oh, let's use a chocobo instead of horse. Let's make the knight's sword a gun. Let's make the dragon a super big comglomerate company. Let's the make a damsel use magic. Make the knight under 19 years old. Make him angsty. Make both characters parentless.

If I sound too bang on or something, know this: Back then, in the magical years of the mid 1980's, this damsel in distress idea was original. Look that that, 1980's. I was born in 1985, I have no right to claim I experienced it. Most of you shouldn't either. You could've been born in 1975, you'd barely understand 1985 at ten years old. I didn't know a damn thing what went on in 1995 until 2000. My point is, many of you cling to something of a day you can't remember. It's something people born in 1965 came up with. Naturally, folks born in 1975 make things in 1995, and those born 1985 make things in 2005. Make your own ideas on your own, regardless of sticking to the older generation thought. Frankly, I'm not seeing it like I could back in time. Somewhere along the line, the dudes with ideas aren't doing their magic like their forebears. You can grow up to an era, but you're not a thinking person in that era.

The time for iconics is over. Quit the formula, I can recognize it from miles away. I'm not simply saying to make up something new. It's hard, I know. It seems like everything's been done. Just don't look at the immediate past for guidance, please. If you have to go post-modern, try something older. Some of you might say "But there wasn't fantasy 100 years ago." Fine, that's a fact. I'm not talking genre, though. I'm refrring to style, attitude, and way of life. People wrote novels in the 19th century, and they're not heavily duplicated. Look at what those folks did, they created from scratch. If you can't work out of nothing, at least look at all of the timeline and not the last 40 years.

What's with this Logan's Run business? Is it a sin to be over the age of 24? Don't you, the people over 24, find it difficult to like a game because the main characters are as old as your children? We connect with RPGs because we feel like being the main character, not the character's mother (who isn't in the game anyway). Then there's the claim that adolescance is a time where the character needs to grow up and find meaning to life. That's true, but to a certain extant. The youth shouldn't be privledged by that. The excuse "Well, he's the descendant of..." can't really hold a candle. We're being told that you have to come from something legendary, inherit some bloodline, and be not normal to go out on a life journey. What happened to the individual who works hard at his goal, and that's his adventure? There shouldn't be some external exclusiveness to save the world.

Me personally? I sit down time to time and come up with something I haven't seen before. It's challenging, but I feel proud I created something and not simply copied. Ever heard of a Mary Sue? Ew, saying it is disturbing. I have a rule of thumb, and I go by it. To make your characters deep, give them problems, and give them reactions to it. Avoid melodrama, that's making problems of nothing. Give characters real flaws, real challenges. Failing an exam is not a real problem. Failing school because you work a graveyard shift and can't afford textbooks because your money supports your dying mother, that's a real problem. Getting cut isn't a problem. Losing an arm when fighting for you life, that's real problem. Real problems make real people. Life is getting over those problems. Avoid invincibility, a superman is hard to relate to.

Battle Engine then System

I'll be open right away. The ATB irks me a little. When I played FFX-2, I felt... weak. No matter how fast I was, there was always a facet of battle I was forced to neglect. I wasn't owning the enemy from hard work and planning. I was simply surviving the button-pressing, unable to really strategize how to kill the enemy. Maybe I'm spoiled from tactics games, but ATB actually forces me to level up to survive an attack that I can prevent if I was faster. I feel like I'm on a track and forced fed the battle. I'm not saying it's hard, I'm saying it's unnecessarily rushed. More often than not, I ended up getting beat because I miscalculated the enemy from pallete swap, or just not knowing its stats to guage the method of extermination. I'd know what I was fighting if I had the time to know, which ATB doesn't give me. The strategy involved isn't planning, it's power and speed.

To be fair, I found La Pucelle's combat too stilted. I couldn't streamline my victory in a battle. It took me at least an hour to finish a map in the early early game. I had to halt actions until I confidently mapped out the next turn and enemy turn. I couldn't trail and error like is Disgaea, once you select, it's over. Strategy in terms of planning is good, but not when you can't plan and act. FFT fell a little more in between LP and Disgaea in terms of speed, but it was more fliud to fight an enemy then kill it.

What of traditional turn-based? Honestly, it works. FFX (forget the turn order list, just action) was indivudal turn-based, I didn't F up a whole round because the enemy acted at the wrong time. Usually you set up the team actions, then do it, then take what the other guy has to throw at you. I can tolerate battle system as long as it's streamlined.

Lately there's this trend to to break away from turn-based and ATB, and that's really freaking hard. This engine that's tough to reinvent, you have to keep streamline in mind.

Now on to the system, not the hard engine. This is where cards, magic, spells, and all that goody junk is. I've heard big complaints about cards, people seem to give it the YGO stigma. I'm indifferent to them. If I have to collect them for no good reason, that's bad. If they''re absolutely necessary just make sure they're not limited or rare.

I can understand elementals, you have to have them. Please, make them logical. Too many FFs are just a little off with elementals. Yeah, fire, ice, and thunder seem so staple. Still, you place cold, the lack of heat, in the same tier as fire, a combustion, and thunder, the mistaken identity of lightning. Right off the bat, the arrangement is unbalanced, but most leave it there. Where's water? Wind? Earth? Oh, they're there, but they're useless because they don't graduate nor *really* affect elements.

The rest of the creative junk

I'm running a little low on time, I took hours to write and think about this huge block of text you call a ramble.

The amount of characters should be more than the battle size, definitely. If you hate your characters, and the gaem won't let you swap with cool ones, ouch. Is the minimum amount of playables twice the battle size plus one a good notion? If the battle size is 3, have 7 playables. If 5, then 11. A real good idea is to develop ALL playable characters. Flesh their characters out not in a chapter, but through the entire game. Don't spend 10 minutes on Freya then never let her say a line the rest of the game. Screw length of game, if it's that good, players will play it.

Sharkerbob, I like your thinking on monsters. Monsters should be people too. After all, they get the crap beaten out of them all time, nevermind extinction. It is boring to have a team only consist of non-japanese whitish people in a world of varied race and talking monsters. Personally, I'd an Iron Man or Behemoth to get a role. Heck, if given the stretch, Bahamut.

A little history: Some years back I made notes on my own FF game, and concerning characters, I thought it would rock. I figured, screw the usual cookie cutter characters, and use summons as the characters. Picture Bahamut, Shiva, and Ifrit as your character team. The what about summons? I came up with logical substitutes (Salamander instead of Iftrit). The premise was that the world consisted of monsters, and the greater monsters were summon monsters. Some bad thing happens, blah blah blah, and Bahamut and some other low rank monsters journey while mentored by the summons so they could become new summons. I did have a human thrown in there for good mix, to which a friend said "He must be really tough to be around summons." It was a daydream idea. Would it be feasible? Probably not, since nobody likes summons enough already.

Quote (SaintWeapon @ 30th January 2005 12:47)

Ugh... seeing the word "assembly" gives me the shivers. I just can't program for crap. If I learned anything from a computer science course, it's not to make ridiculous demands on the programmer.

You sir are a good man. Even sometimes at work we end up with ridiculous demands, and most of the higher-ups have a pretty solid background in programming.

For the record, nobody programs in assembly anymore. The only exceptions to this are various forms of hacking that involve disassembling (programs may not be written in assembly but they are compiled to assembly), hobby-related reasons (writing in assembly IS fun... just counter-productive), or for processor-specific optimizations (different processors have different instruction sets; compilers just optimize code for general-purpose stuff but a very tight loop that could use, for instance, a special Intel instruction to gain a 15% speed increase would do well to use it when executed on an Intel chipset.) No game is written in assembly because there is simply no benefit from it.

RM2k users are typically new on the game developement scene. And first projects often don't see completion because people make unrealistic plans ("It's gonna last 500 hours and have 80 characters!!!") After a while, most serious RM2k users either start feeling the limits of the engine and move on to real game developement with a programming language or just lose interest.

I agree with a couple of your points. Although in a few instances you seem to forget that a game, particularly a fantasy game, does not necessarily have to conform to reality. Having, for instance, something as advanced as airships and tanks in FF4 when everyone's living in castles and sailing wooden ships around hardly makes sense. But the fact it's a game makes it possible: it fits in with the overall vision of the game itself and works quite well in the end.

It has been estimated that there are only seven (IIRC) original plot ideas when you strip away the superficial stuff. If, frankly, avoiding something that's already been done is rapidly growing impossible, then why fight it? Might as well pick a GOOD storyline, cliché or no, and make the best of it. Let's face it: saving someone, saving the world, saving oneself... they always end up going back to the same problem: saving *something*. A storyline just wouldn't work out without that formula, be it damsel in distress or world about to be destroyed. Without a conflict that must be averted, there is no motivation for a character or anyone. No player wants to just go around picking daisies.

RPG combat isn't about strategy at its core. You don't know what the guy down the alley who wants to kick your ass can do. You don't know how strong he is. You can take a guess, but to be able to look at someone and say, "this guy will go down if I punch him 4-5 times and kick him once, but can take me out after three good punches" just takes the fun away from the game. Games are supposed to be challenging. Being handed the answer on a silver platter is just as bad as peeking over your opponent's screen in battleship. Battles are unpredictable and chaotic ocurences; the only problem is diverting the player away from the traditional "A A A A A A A A..." buttonmashing. The engine at its core works.

I fully disagree with your ideas on elements in battle. Magic is just that: magic. If logic were required to back it up, there'd be a VERY massive gap somewhere along the line when someone would attempt to give a scientific reasoning behind its workings. From the looks of it, you haven't experienced many systems because a lot of games use, for instance, water or wind as individual elements. In fact, FF6's elements are Fire, Ice, Lightning, Poison, Wind, Holy, Earth, and Water. The word "element" is only an arbitrary grouping: poison is not an element, but it's a property creatures can have just like holy or fire. And who's to say "Fire" is the same fire than a match would produce and has to work using the same "rules"? It's magic.

Personally, I certainly feel lucky to be able to program because I can put my ideas into a real game and see how it really does work out. It's hard to work something out in theory until you've experienced it for yourself and see just how much better/worse the opposite really is. I really urge anyone who likes games enough to want to get their own ideas out there to give this whole programming thing a shot. Regardless of what anyone says, it IS easy. It just demands effort.

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"Judge not a man by his thoughts and words, but by
the quality and quantity of liquor in his possession
and the likelyhood of him sharing."

Quote (SaintWeapon @ 30th January 2005 12:47)

Sharkerbob, I like your thinking on monsters. Monsters should be people too. After all, they get the crap beaten out of them all time, nevermind extinction. It is boring to have a team only consist of non-japanese whitish people in a world of varied race and talking monsters. Personally, I'd an Iron Man or Behemoth to get a role. Heck, if given the stretch, Bahamut.

A little history: Some years back I made notes on my own FF game, and concerning characters, I thought it would rock. I figured, screw the usual cookie cutter characters, and use summons as the characters. Picture Bahamut, Shiva, and Ifrit as your character team. The what about summons? I came up with logical substitutes (Salamander instead of Iftrit). The premise was that the world consisted of monsters, and the greater monsters were summon monsters. Some bad thing happens, blah blah blah, and Bahamut and some other low rank monsters journey while mentored by the summons so they could become new summons. I did have a human thrown in there for good mix, to which a friend said "He must be really tough to be around summons." It was a daydream idea. Would it be feasible? Probably not, since nobody likes summons enough already.

Thanks for the support!

I'd had a similar idea of using summons as the characters, though I pictured them as taking human form. Maybe they could "power up" into the monster forms during battle, or as a special attack. Something like Terras "morph" ability. I imagined the classic roster of summons would be trying to save the world from the Four Fiends and Chaos. Heh. I never actually got the plot figured out, though.

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And behold, I saw a Pale Gaming System, and the name of he who rode it was Squaresoft, and Enix followed him.

My idea on my personalized Final Fantasy? All of my thinking, feeling, and planning in this forum, eh? Well, I won't go into too much detail, but here goes:

Charcters: THE main integral part of the FF. I am sold on SharkerBob's idea on traditional FF monsters as part of the main characters (maybe not as many) but how cool would it be to have a Behemoth, Iron Giant, or Malboro on your side and not just on FFT. Definately a diverse cast of characters (any number would do from only 3-4 to having a whole army) with VERY distinct personalities, and a wide range of likes/dislikes, personal rivalries (ally and enemy alike), and a love story just for consistency as per recent FF games.

Story: Where do I begin? Something new and different, yet distinctly a Final Fantasy. I like pointy-hat black mages, white-and-red-robed white mages, dragon-armored Dragon Knights, heavily-armored, medieval knights, ninjas, summoners with horns, green-clad theives, scantily-clad dancers, a gunner or two or three, and why not a host of moogles and chocobos. Hmmm...

Graphics: Any graphics will do. 3D would appeal to modern gamers, 2D would appeal to older gamers, '80s art and graphics appeal to me. Whatever fits your fancy. Personally I feel that if the story and character cast is solid along with fun gameplay, I wouldn't care if it were 3D or 2D, just as long as they're decent-looking and not garbage-worthy.

Gameplay: Any FF style would do. I'm not biased, I like 'em all. Materia, junction, equipment, AP, sphere-grid, a combination, or if someone really creative can come up with something completely different, yet workable. There MUST be Limit Break Skills. I love those.

I'm sure I'm missing something here, but that's it for now.

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"Thought I was dead, eh? Not until I fulfill my dream!"
Seifer Almasy


"The most important part of the story is the ending."
Secret Window


"Peace is but a shadow of death."
Kuja

Since I last posted , over a year ago, in August 2003 , I've had better ideas. I feel that now is time I aired them.

This borrows faily heavily from an idea of mine for massive crossover fanfic thingy, that I doubt I'll ever do becuase as good as I think it would be, I'm doublethinking that it will suck. So, time for adaptation.

Plot: Numerous planets, linked by some means, be it interstellar travel or teleportation or just a plain knockoff of the Eldar webway from Warhammer 40,000 (note: crossover idea actually used the webway.) co-exist. The nations of these worlds are mostly at peace with thier neighbours, but upon one world (the main one), the world is recovering from a violent war which has divided not only the planet, but every other planet also, causing tensions across the worlds, as well as the disagreements bewteen areas regarding territory and resources.. In spite of the tense climates, and divisions, a multi-national task force exists which counteracts the spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction, terrorism, and deadly magics and psychic powers.

the task force draws it's soldiers from the special forces and militaries of member nations, taking them from thier units volutarily in tours of duty.

Your character, indeed, your team, is comprised of soldiers who are operating for this task-force in the pursuit of a recent threat.

Characters: Mostly, in fact, all, serving or ex military personell from various nations, part of a multinational task force as stated above. the task force's orginal main goal was, based in a nation (Eldania, on FF7's world to be exact, a nation of Eldar) and using the supplies and equipment of that nation as well as each soldier having their own nations armamentt for choice, was to hunt WMD's, illegal materia, illegal magical items, people using such things, and basically status effecting monsters , but I had no idea what to classify them as. Most characters would be experienced combat veterans, but my orginal idea contianed the small problem the lead character was Cloud Strife's son, and a captian of a Nibelheimian army regiment akin to the SAS, and was an alternative universe (had to be really...) and most of the 'professional' soldiers were angry at the major deciding to use auxilliaries from SeeD, regarded by the Spec-Ops soldiers from Nibel, Shinravia, Midgar, Alexandria, and such nations as amatuers at best, and mercinaries no better than terrorists at worse.

In the adapted idea, I supposed an organisation like SeeD could figure into it to provide the feelings of actual animosty rather than friendly rivalry between Soldiers who would probaly form a failry close bond.

Characters would have rivalries, alligiances, loves, annoying habits, but above all, would not be whiter than white. Some serve thier nations unquestioningly, some are cowards, some are combat vets virtually burned out, to the extent had Squall tried his angst on them, he'd have got the secondary weapon in his face and the soldier in question saying a rambling, demoralising speech such as
'When you've been in the middle of a firefight, watching people you know die, hearing the whilstles and knowing you might not hear the blast, crapping yourself at every burst of machinegun fire, or trying to clear a jammed rifle as twenty poor bastards doing thier jobs just like you are out there trying to kill you as quickly as possible so they can go home, even though you all know thats what you all want, and instead, you have to kill them, and you've been doing that for twenty years without a pause... then you'll have problems like I have, not little discomforts like you have now... Remeber there's some poor bugger far worse off than you in 99 times out of 100.'

Weaponry: A diverse array of both firearms, swords, and combinatiosn of the two. Idea was for Primary Weapon, and secondary, with possibly a teritary in some cases (IE a sword). For instance, an Alexandrian Army Knight Of Pluto carries a Submachinegun or Carbine as his or her primary, an automatic pistol as a secondary and a short sword as a third weapon, possibly for use with the pistol.

Magic: Accessable only by certain people. Materia would have been available, but highly expensive and heavily restricted. In the adatped version, only specific races have access to psychic powers.

Skills: diverse array of skills such as Gunfighter (two pistols) Sharpshooter, Nsiper, heavy Weaposn expert, Medic, Demolitions expert, etc...

Gameplay: Ability for squad orders to the five-storng combat team, use of cover, a bit like FF Tactics in fact, but in this case, not based upon squares, and using ATB. Also, supression, morale, and such would figure. Some skills may allow the player to take aim with a weapon to cause maximum damage. Of course, generating such areas randomly may be a major pain in the bum, but hey, it's just ideas, not true thecnical innovation.

Graphics: 3d probably. Not becuase there's much wrong with 2d, but because the diea here is a realisticish game, with cover, morale, etc... a sort of squad based combat, not really an RPG as such. Enemies would bleed upon death, your characters could be KO'ed and bleed, heavy morale effects for soem of the more disconcerting things that can happen in a battle (EG close freind getting his legs blown off, girl a character fancies getting walloped around the head by a behemoth, getting turned into something 'orrible, etc..)

Vehciles: Military Jeeps, Civillian cars, whatever fits the role. For the realsim, border and air traffic controls would exist: EG you can't fly into Theorvia from Hereland just now, turn around or we'll shoot you down.

And also, vehciles able to enter combat situations. Proably really stretching it, but would'nt it be fun to drive your little car round a mountain and spot an enemy tank?

Also means you can fight the russian gunship too!

Swearing and age rating: These are soldiers, the most uncouth of men and women at the best of times (but they do mostly say 'pardon me' after burping and use the cutlery on the table at meals.) so the sweariness wil be at bleep factor 10, cap'n. And If you have ever seen a game have a realsitic effect froma grenade going off beside someone get just an adviosry rating, hooray!

In all seriousness, the game would need to carry warnings of its content.

Difficulty: many a setting: easy, normal, hard.

Mini-games: the vehicle combat perhaps, maybe some card game, or the odd game of random sport between characters, etc..

Music: three or four choices: traditioanl FF style, rock musical types, or other. basically, the player could set music as he or she wished, but some scenes and areas would have it preset. The idea behind this is to keep everyone musically happy.

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"Only the dead have seen the end of their quotes being misattributed to Plato."
-George Santayana

"The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here..."
-Abraham Lincoln, prior to the discovery of Irony.

Quote (sharkerbob @ 30th January 2005 20:49)

I'd had a similar idea of using summons as the characters, though I pictured them as taking human form.  Maybe they could "power up" into the monster forms during battle, or as a special attack.  Something like Terras "morph" ability.  I imagined the classic roster of summons would be trying to save the world from the Four Fiends and Chaos.  Heh.  I never actually got the plot figured out, though.

Technically it was two ideas. Fortunately I have the handwritten notes from four years ago.

Originally, it was a class based system for Bahamut. He looked like his dragonlike self, stand upright and what have you. I thought only about him solo, no team, since my class idea would be way too complicated to program back then. With the class came costume, but that would show up in the field as well as battle. Lich Bahamut would look all undead both in battle and out of battle. Back then, it seemed absurd to have 6 or 10 characters do that. Of course, we have Kingdom Hearts 2 and FFX-2 to thank for the possibilites there.

However, I went a step further... the evolution thing. Here's a quote from the notes, "You can allso evolve Bahamut. Bahamut starts off a simple, dull, gray dragonian. By the choices you make throughout hi slife, Bahamut will gain certain characteristics, such as horns or wings, appear angelic or demonic." Basically the evolution compounded onto the custome feature. Picture Lich Bahamut just bony and under a cloak, then picture him a convoluted undead king with a cloud of deadly miasma just flowing off his insanely frightening body. See, back then, the idea with multiple characters seemed so impossible. I came up with this stuff four years ago, no lie, and then you see Fable today.

That idea included a whole master system where Bahamut apprenticed under masters, like a kung fu master ofr example. Actually, he'd learn from summons, such as ice magic from Shiva.

The other idea I implied had more to do with a whole army system... recruit enough of a monster type until they auto recruit and act like some sort of junction and they never mess with you on field. In time, you'd have no random encounters because all the monsters in the world were your minions. I think I included certain bosses in there... not sure from the cryptic notes.

I'm not kidding, I've spent hours thinking this kind of stuff up. I have 3 fleshed out ideas typed out from another message board 2~3 years ago. Then I have my old notebook I sat with during high school and created ideas instead of math and other school crap.

Well, happens so I'm working on my own. Final Fantasy: Alternate Reality is meant to be (1) a tribute to the Final Fantasy series and to the console-RPG genre as a whole, (2) a set of political statements, and (3) my take on how the world should be if it were more ideal but still interesting. One of the things I decided to do was to strongly allude to various elements of existing FF games.

Interesting points about my game, which I haven't yet completely planned out yet: (you should be able to recognize some of these if you know games like FFIII-VII)
+Bahamut stars, of course, and can be summoned by a character. But to complement this Dragon-God of the Light there is another Dragon-God, albeit of the Darkness...
+Dr. Cidney Thomas will be a professor of aeronatical engineering. His pet project is the development of an airship.
+The most powerful character (by level and magic power, at least) in your team will leave in mid-game. And by casting a spell forbidden to him. And he'll leave a granddaughter who will remain in your team, and she'll pick up two of his best spells.
+Music comes from FF games, CT, SMRPG, several MM games, and some other games, as well as my own head.
+There will be about 27 characters. Each of them will differ by their elements, the skills and techniques they learn, the weapons they can use (although anyone can use knives), and of course their personalities and plot roles.
+The evil sidekicks make reference to Gilgamesh, the Turks, and some entities I personally don't like.
+Unfortunately, I'm somewhat stuck with one single map. What I can do is, by limiting access to chocobo/train/air travel, 'gradually unfold' the map.
+There is something optional and definitely un-Christian at the end of the game.

Possible spoilers: highlight to view

You can fight, and if you fight hard and well enough, defeat, 'Deus'. If you don't know what Deus is, look it up in a Latin dictionary.

+Character skills range from classic FF skills/variants like Lores, Summoning, X-Command, Dice, Examine, and Grand Shock. There are others as well, though, such as Khorkina, a strong multi-hit physical attack (go figure whom that name honors), Shinespark, which can be executed after using the Speed Attack multiple times, Bide (a modified version of the skill from Pokemon), Slam (BoF's critical hit, now a skill), and Ice Skill (randomly uses one of 10 different MP-consuming special ice-elemental attacks).
+Stats come in 8 categories: HP, MP, physical attack, physical defense, special attack, special defense, speed, and evasion.
+Characters generally learn techniques by leveling up. Skills too, but skills are slightly more likely learned through events.
+There will be an elemental system not unlike that of Pokemon. <--yes, I know this isn't from FF, but what the heck.
+The plot is somewhat based in 'defeating the oppressors'. *NEW* The antagonists have taken over the connecting protagonist's homearea/town/country/state/whatever. Go figure what happens after that.
+There will be a character who has a very special power which no one, not even she herself, knows about.
+There will be characters who essentially have character classes like these: blue mage, gambler, scholar, summoner, wizard, mimic.
+There will be no instant-death moves, except from the enemy Death itself. You have to beat all VWXYZ HP out of whatever enemy to win the battle. I want to stay away from 'classic' but generally useless spells like Doom and Petrify.
+The mimic can now imitate (with enough experience) enemy moves as well as party moves. (However, using instant death against Death will simply heal Death completely.)
+Some characters will be intimately related to the plot from the start. Some characters will be sucked into the plot. And some characters are optional, and often rather powerful/userful. Some of these characters will be ones that can join your team earlier or later, depending on what you do (such as the result of a battle).

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Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

Sweet! Someone's actually got the guts to go through with their ideas! What are you making this with? Will it be 2D or 3D? Sprite based, I would guess?

When can we start expecting screenshots? A project hardly has any value until "hey look I'm serious about this" screenies are posted.

Looking forward to it.

This post has been edited by Silverlance on 1st February 2005 13:09

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"Judge not a man by his thoughts and words, but by
the quality and quantity of liquor in his possession
and the likelyhood of him sharing."

Don't start expecting screenshots until I get everything else settled (algorithms, graphical ideas, characters, maps, etc....). Of course, I've seen screenshots of things that never became reality either. You can find more information about this game directly from me (just PM me) or in a topic in this forum called 'Final Fantasy: Alternate Reality'.

(Yeah, I finally decided to reply to this inquiry from Silverlance. I know it's been a while, but I was wondering why all discussion seemed to come to a complete halt at this point.)

Also, as I mentioned in another post, I've occasionally played around with ideas for a Pokemon TCG gameplay style tactical RPG, involving people battling teams of personal small tactical units (without harm to themselves of course) for personal, competitive, and political reasons. Of course, I'm not planning to get much done with this idea before I finish FF:AR.

--------------------

Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

Ha. Can't believe I didn't make the connection.

Well, hopefully this won't be too off-topic, though the only question I have concerns the means you're undertaking to do this: language and multimedia APIs (sound/music/graphic/input) used to program it.

Good luck; having been working on my own big project for quite some time now, I can only wish you luck. Is there any website (as opposed to forum) where more solid information can be seen? (Then again, if you're like me and update every few months or something... )

Back on topic, something that has been brought up before has been the remaking of older FFs. While my game's engine could easily be adapted to making a Xenogears-quality game, I can never hope to acheive models as sexy as the now-dead CT remake's were. Seeing FF1 with FFX graphics would be terribly impressive.

This post has been edited by Silverlance on 15th February 2005 23:40

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"Judge not a man by his thoughts and words, but by
the quality and quantity of liquor in his possession
and the likelyhood of him sharing."

Everyone here's mentioned the problem with villians. I think it would be great to have
a clear hand in the development of the villians, as character story-swaps (like when you
suddenly take control of Beersteiner in FFIX, for example). In fact, make it so that the
basic premise of one-party saving the world is confused: have two separate parties and develop the story with each element plugging back into itself and

also progressing the story (such as in Hoodwinked, were the movie is explained as
continuous unseen overlapping of each characters' story). Don't reveal which side
is the 'right side' until the last disc or chapter (if bDvd). That way, when the AI has
learned which techniques you've acquired and how you use them, it'll be like a true
challenge to best yourself (your algorithms, as stored by gameplay) with the skills you
painstakingly earned and trained for. For instance, if you Holy'd your way with one
character while using the other to tank and the last to heal/support the other two,
then that should be the statistical model the AI uses in the final battles.

Taking ownership in the story, as it were. A good example of 'which side is right?' is
in the TalesOfSymphonia (despite the fact that the game ends abruptly). This
way, fans will both drive the story and the development of villians, as well as heroes.
And if the line between the two gets blurred, maybe that's even better, for players
to both experience something different, and get away from the black-and-white of
some games and back into the shades-of-grey that make up most our reality. This
kind of surprise shifting is what people love about Shyamalan movies, and I think is
a level of complexity that would help define it for the teenager-thru-thirtysomething
demographic, over simplified kidgames.

Why is that line out there like that? Arg!


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Putting the A's in W lm rt: A11smart, Jobclass: Retailer.

Well some people above say why don't you actually make it, well I'm going to say right now I plan too, I just dont have the means to right now so I'll just post my ideas.
-Each character will have a set class (IV-VI-IX)
-Has to be a Cid (probably will be a PC wielding a hamer and have some-sort of engineer esque command)
-Has to be a dragoon with surname "Highwind"
-No random other sentient species besiodes moogles(which should play an active part)
-In-depth chocobo sidequest kind of a mixture between hot and cold and Breeding.
-Love story that makes sense
-Difficulty similiar to traditional FFIV
-Will be dealing damage outside the 9999 barrier, but no multi-hitters
-Non-linnear sections of the game like WOR in FFVI
-Plenty of sidequests, with some mini-games
-Spells like mini and toad will be used to solve puzzles (FFIII)
-An importanat character has to die and stay dead
-Characters will have unique variable abilities (i.e. blitz FFVI)
-Final boss will actually be the hardest boss.
-4 characters in party
-More than just earth exterior exploration (FFIV)
Those are the only ideas I fell like listing.

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"Have you ever seen a baby do that before?"