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Before I start: Mods: If you want to, go ahead an connect this topic to the now-ancient 'I'm making my own console RPG.' topic in 'Your Creations'. I'm starting a new topic in here because (1) it seems that this forum attracts more attention (I know this from experience and I appreciate attention when I want feedback) and (2) I've made a number of significant changes and developments to my vague and often impractical plans which I stated in that earlier thread--things like thinking through possible gameplay issues and then trying to correct for them (and (3) the topic is clearer).

Onto the matter itself:

Quote (Silverlance)

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.

Well, first off, I'm not going to program this--unless by some weird chance I end up learning some real programming language like C++ (as opposed to an intro-level language like Scheme). What I will do, though, is create--on paper/computer--the actual game design, including characters, skills, techs, enemies, maps, dialogue, items, weapons, etc.--and of course, the music. At that point I might pay someone to program it for me, or I might ask a friend for the favor; in any case, it's probably going to show up as a computer game available through acquantainces or possibly through the internet.

With the sheer amount of ripping off that I am probably going to end up doing in this game, I don't want to know how Nintendo, Gamefreak, Square-Enix, Capcom, etc. are going to react if I try to make money off of this, so this will go out for free. In any case, I don't want the money for it. Anyone should be able to enjoy the fruit of my labor. And I can bet you none of these companies are developing anything even close to this kind of idea--it'll be a cold day in hell before they can get legalities straight to put so many cross-references into a game, and before they can simultaneously put one person's take on things and be daring enough to make it a political statement and challenge the notion of an all-powerful deity. (PLEASE DON'T PROVE ME WRONG.)

I was inspired by the idea of 'setting things straight' and not being able to do so in reality. Of course, alas, the 'alternate reality' idea had to be claimed already, by FFTA, but I'm still going forward with this. I've had to make many changes to reality to come up with something that would actually be playable and still make sense while retaining some resemblance/reference to reality. All but one of the protagonists are still 'ports' of real people; some of the antagonists are too. I've decided to create my own world map, but keep familiar-looking features like something that appears to be the peninsula of Florida. However, the map will have to be large enough that I can limit the player's range of movement by having various 'areas' where the player can travel freely and then having various means of transportation (such as chocobo riding or trains) to get from one major area to another.

As for the graphics style, I'm not sure yet. The two styles I'm considering are Chrono Trigger's and a highly detailed 3D (i.e. NOT FFVII). I started drawing a sprite of myself--black hair, red jacket, blue shirt, green khakis...and sprite design turned out to be much harder than I imagined. Sooner or later I'll probably copy off of an FFVI sprite (which is where I got the 24x16 frame in which I'm making my sprites) and learn from that.

I know, I don't have screenshots. But what good is spiffy screenshots before I've ironed out most of the game? Besides, I'm not using this as a selling point for a company; I can theoretically take as long as I want with this project. I'd disappoint myself if I were to drop it, though.

I recently completed a list of the music I'll probably be using in this game. It's a long Excel file; e-mail me if you want to see it. I'm also working on a comprehensive character list, which will show each character's name, elements, equivalent character class, relative stats in HP, MP, physical/special attack defense, speed, evasion, occupation, and skills. There are currently 27 characters. I might delete 1-3 of them and I might add others. For a bit (but not much) more information, you can look in the 'Personalized Final Fantasy' thread, second page, for my post.

I'll periodically post my progress with this project, starting with this post.
characters: ~80%
plot: ~40%
maps: ~1%
skills: ~40%
items: ~10%
dialogue: ~5%
music: ~60%

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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 )

Well, in the spirit of digging up old threads to embarrass ourselves...why not.

This project has long since been dead. This should come as no surprise to anyone. And it's probably a good thing that it's been dead.

A few minutes ago, I posted over on It Just Bugs Me! why I abandoned the project. In short, it was a bad idea. But here is the post itself:

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1a. Cast control.  I kept on meeting interesting people in real life, as well as encountering interesting fictional characters, who would be interesting to cast in the game.  The cast kept on growing; at its peak it had almost 40 characters before I started paring it down.
1b. Plot and scope.  I had to come up with a coherent plot.  I couldn't.  All I could do was come up with cool dramatic scenes, which I ended up trying to string together.  The plot became a mishmash of influences from Final Fantasy IV, Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger, and Final Fantasy V, with bits of Final Fantasy VII and Super Mario RPG stuck in.
2. Design drift.  Originally I had in mind Chrono Trigger's battle system combined with Pokémon's elemental system tweaked a bit.  However, I had qualms about giving elements to humans and making human characters inherently and irrevocably weak to certain things, so I later switched to a character-class-based model...but part of my cast was already planned to follow the old model.  So you had odd cases where someone who is a real-life singer was first a sound-elemental character then later a bard, but some weren't so easy to transfer, such as a "spirit mage" or mage specializing in spirit and ghost attacks, who was originally ghost type...and so on.
3. Hamfistedness.  A lot of the character ability sets were intended to be based on...irregular choices of things.  A singer became a bard.  A person who was interested in history became said spirit mage.  Another person just arbitrarily got decided to be a general sorceror.  Three people on the swim team became water-type.  Another person got assigned the fire and electricity elements upon request.  So I had to start asking myself, what do these elemental affinities come from anyway?  Are they determined on birth?  But many of them are based on their interests or their activities.  So maybe they change over time?
4. Design problems.  I had a cast of over twenty characters.  I had to have a battling party of at most 8 characters.  They had to have a base somehow.  What would they call a base?  Why would most real-life locations not be featured in the game if this was based on the premise of "alternate reality"?  I guess I could just ignore everything but major cities, except then I have some oddly placed locations to deal with, from things like starring a professor of magical studies from the University of North Florida Doma...
5. Setting messiness.  Supposedly, one of the characters is descended from Magus, and another from Schala.  A third character is spiritually infused with Azala.  So in part this would have assumed that the real world was an extension of the Chrono Trigger world, making this story itself some sort of highly-distant CT fanfic.
6. Potential copyright issues.  This goes beyond just calling this "Final Fantasy".  You know how much Squenix hates CT fanfics.  And THEN you have an elemental system ripped from Pokémon, music from Pokémon TCG and GSC, attacks from the Mega Man games, possibly legendary weapons from the Castlevania series.........and on top of all that, you have the fact that some antagonists will be clearly based on real-life people, from real-life celebrities (such as Donald Rumsfeld Golbez) to people whom I knew personally.

...yeah, that's why it was a bad idea.

Oh, those percentage numbers up there? Yeah, lies. Well, to some extent they're not really lies, as I have the tons of documentation to prove stuff like character lists. I even started writing down dialogue from certain scenes. I had trouble getting characterizations right, though; I felt as if every character spoke with my own voice and attitude, and that was a problem. For what it's worth, I still suck at role-playing, after all these years.

As for music, that's mostly music chosen. My original idea was actually to stick SPC/PSF/etc. players into the game program itself and just throw the emulator-format music tracks into it, so given that, I guess that could count. I did have spectacular ideas for things like a remix of Golbez's theme that's basically an excuse for sizzlin' guitar solos and a dual remix of FFVII's bombing mission theme with the Pokémon TCG club leader duel theme, but those still haven't been produced.

That said, I really like that second remix idea. I will get around to putting that together sometime.

This post has been edited by Glenn Magus Harvey on 28th July 2011 02:16

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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 )