I'm still here

...I just haven't done much with any of my projects. All work on my original story has halted; for now, I did a bit of mapping for the Final Fantasy fan game which I've been considering renaming and any progress on the secret project has slowed to a slow crawl; like half dead snail making a trip around the world slow. Any progress made on it in the last month or so has been non-maker stuff; like a few plot details, some info on a few characters and locations and other various bits of information.

Honestly, I haven't really felt like working on any projects for a while now, but I tinker with one every so often; mostly out of boredom. I'm just glad that anything I work on is being made during my own free time as a hobby. That way, I don't feel obligated to finish something and can take my sweet time; working on my projects whenever I feel like it.

If I make any progress other than tweaking a few things here and there on any of my projects, I'll post about it. I know I said something similar in my last post, but I felt compelled to make an "I'm not dead" post since my last one was nearly two months ago.

So....

I kinda haven't made much progress with Final Fantasy Exodus since my last post. I've been working on mapping out the first dungeon and playing with variables a bit. I managed to implement a simple switch puzzle that opens a door and I've nearly finished mapping out the dungeon. Then I kinda lost interest and took a two and a half week vacation from game making and started another fan project when I got back to work. I'm not going to say what maker it's being made in or what the project is, I have no idea if it will go anywhere beyond some maps and a basic plot. I've had trouble trying to make it work in the past and I don't know if I'll be able to now. If I do keep going with it and actually manage to make it work, I'll post more info when that happens. I really want to get somewhere with this one; hell, this one has a better chance of becoming more complete than any other projects I've worked on because unlike my other projects, my interest in this one doesn't fade as fast.

I'll post more when I've come to a decision about it or if I make any progress with my other projects.

Title & Progress Report

Yes, I'm still working on the Final Fantasy fan project and it has a name; Final Fantasy Exodus. I've done some charset and chipset editing and got a crystal charset and a modified world chipset with a snow tile, flipped bridges and mountains leaking lava. I finished that stuff days ago, then started slacking just a bit before jumping back in. I did some mapping, finished a small village and started on the first dungeon; all the while worrying that I would only be able to replace the default skiff with a Chocobo sprite and have slower than average Chocobos. I resigned myself to this for a few days feeling down that the Chocobo theme would wasted on slow Chocobos and since it was still one of the default vehicles, I'd be limited to having only one that I would have to use switches to teleport to every location they're available in. It would have been impossible to make a default vehicle run in a random pattern like a giant rideable bird that wasn't a statue. This led to the idea of a Chocobo ranch were you rent them, hence the vehicle teleport switches that would be implemented through eventing.

Yeah, there was no way in hell that Exodus' Chocobos would be reduced to that. So, with a battle cry of "To ze Internets!" I searched... that was pretty darned easy. I found something about setting up an event involving sprite changes, encounter rate changes and movement speed changes. Throw in a memorize music, play bgm and teleport to the world map and it'd be pretty eas-huh? Common Events?! I've tried using those in other Makers and never could get them to work for me! Dammit, my vision of Chocobos that move like Chocobos was murdered! I gave up and again, resigned myself to having a sub-par Chocobo system.

Then I un-gave up and did it and now Exodus has a fully functioning Chocobo system and I am happy. I could attempt to add black Chocobos, but there's no way to change a character's passibility so they only go over a certain tile while also implementing it as a Chocobo that runs. I could probably make it so that black Chocobos run the average Chocobo speed and fly twice as fast, but without being able to set it so they can only fly over water and not everything; it would redundant. They will be in the game, though; just not as a transport.


Okay, enough about Chocobs, I've done other non-maker work for the game, too. I've gotten a basic plot typed up, a list of features and some info pertaining to a series of related sidequests worked out. However, I'm still working out most of it, but I'll go ahead and post the current list of features I'm planning for the game:

- Expansive story spanning two worlds: If everything goes the way I want it, this will be a good sized game.

- Summon Magic: I'm still working on this. I've found battle animations that I was able to implement but the graphical style is a mix of RTP and misc. other stuff. I'm still debating whether or not I want to roll with this. I've worked out a backstory for the summoned creatures due to not being able to find many pre-made animation sets. If I made my own using FF style graphics, I'd be compelled to change the backstory when I have more sets ready and I like what I've come up with.

-Sidequests: You betcha'.

-Bounties that reward gil and items(available upon reaching a monster hunting guild; more as the story progresses[monsters in guild missions give slightly less experience than normal and have less chance of dropping items] some become unavailable after certain points in the story): This would be that series of sidequests I mentioned.

-Rare monsters that give lots of experience/gil or drop valuable items: No way this is being left out. I'll be sure to throw in some real nasty ones for that extra bit of challenge and frustration.



-Bonus dungeons with super bosses and/or powerful equipment: Naturally.

-Trade/Crafting System; some enemies drop drop materials that can be traded to a crafter to make items and equipment. Example: Adamantoise shells+iron ore=shell shield/shell helm/shell mail. Crafted equipment has added effects or slighltly better stats than currently available shop equipment but requires more effort to obtain because the materials are hard to come by/have low drop rates/require multiple materials: I'm definitely not leaving this out. Those rare monsters mentioned above? Yeah... a decent amount of 'em will drop some needed crafting materials for armors, weapons and accessories that are the absolute best in the game. The stuff you want when going after the most powerful of super bosses that would stomp the entire party flat. Anything to take down that psychotic shadow being that throws uber powerful spells out nearly every turn, right?

-Chocobo Transport: Shut up, I like Chocobos.

Well...

that whole 'play some classic rpgs' plan spectacularly backfired. I've kinda shunned my original project to make a Final Fantasy fangame. I've already done more work on the story for it than my original work; it even has a freakin' title. I've already started editing graphics a bit(cut crystals from chipset, add to charset) and I'm going to do some more chipset editing later(copy, paste, recolor grass tile to make a snow tile, reapeat with slightly lighter colors for another snow tile, do the same with snow capped mountains to make a volcano tile, copy, paste, flip bridge tiles, do some editing on another chipset for a second world, edit town and dungeon chipsets a bit, do some sprite editing, etc.) The only part of editing I'm really dreading is the animations. I plan on using final fantasy animations for spells and such and implementing summons in some form.

Huh, I guess I did get my inspiration back, but it's focused completely on this new fangame. I guess I'll have some content to post pretty soon; though it's not what I'd originally intended to post.

Inspiration Lost

Yeah, yeah, I know I said something about getting some screenshots up, but I'm putting that on hold. I've pretty much lost every ounce of inspiration I had and don't feel like doing anything productive for any of the projects I have in the works. Hell, I feel like scrapping everything and calling it quits with RPG making in general.

Of course, I go through this eventually when every bout of creativity for anything I'm working on starts to wind down. I get all pessimistic and wonder why I even bother. Then a few months later I gravitate back to whatever I was working and start the whole stupid cycle over again. This time though, I'm going to take steps to regain my inspiration instead of letting it slowly return over the course of a few months. I'm going to accomplish this by playing videogames.

...Yep, videogames. I'm aiming for a simplistic old-school feel with the project I'm working on, so I'm going to break out my copies of Final Fantasy 1&2 Dawn of Souls, Final Fantasy 4 Advanced and Final Fantasy V Advanced. I'm going to playthrough each one in an attempt to rekindle my love of old-school RPGs. Hopefully, it will work and I'll regain some of my inspiration.

Delays

So...I promised to get some more screenshots up in my last post. Well, now I'm delaying that for another couple of weeks I've been playing the Fall of Cybertron demo like mad for about a week now and the level cap in multiplayer is being raised Friday the 10th. So I've decided that I can afford to slack off as much as I want since I'm my own boss. Plus, I haven't really felt like working on it for a bit, so after I post those screenshots, I might put the project on hiatus for a bit. I might work on a timeline of events, character profiles and start working on a very rough draft of a script during this time though. So it might wind up being just a semi-hiatus.

Yeah, I think I'll just take a semi-hiatus and enjoy Fall of Cybertron while working on the plot and characters for the project. I probably won't post here until the semi-hiatus is over, but by then I should have enough to actually warrant creating a page for the project.

Sorta Update

I re-shifted my focus back the original project. I've been working on a castle town which is proving to be a tad difficult. I'm used to making villages, caverns and to an extent; forests. I haven't really spent a lot of time making cities or castles. Hopping back and forth between this and the fangame project isn't helping, either. I'm constantly switching between two different styles of mapping and story telling while trying to maintain a semi-regular work schedule with both projects. That's hindering my progress on both and the original work has been in progress for a year now with nothing to show but two nearly finished villages that I still need to add events to, a small forest dungeon and a nearly finished mine/cavern that needs a bit of eventing done. The fangame has suffered; but not nearly as much. I've finished mapping out two towns, a forest, a cavern, a castle, a tower and a temple. I've even started working with the database; adding monsters items and equipment which I haven't done for the original.

So, I'm going to put the fan project I've been constantly mentioning on hold until I finish my original work. Hopefully I'll have a few more screenshots to show in a week or two and then maybe a demo in a month or so.

Update

Not long after posting the previous post, I shifted focus from my original game to one of the fan games I'm working on, so I don't really have much in the way of screenshots for either game or info about the fan game as it's still a WIP with  no main plot and only what I came up with on the fly while mapping out the first few towns and dungeons.

I do have one screenshot from my original work and instead of waiting another two weeks to post it, I'll go ahead and post it now:

Click to view full version.

That's the northern continent of the world parallel to the world of Viselle. The parallel world is known as Tepira and is a sacred world to the Wyrn. Magic is more prominent there, infact; all those born in this world have a natural talent for using magic.

Currently, this continent is the setting for one of the Viselle Saga games. I'm still debating whether or not I want to extend the story for that specific game beyond this continent and if I do, should I just make it episodic with 2-3 more games taking place on other continents. Though, I am leaning towards sticking with what I have since I'm planning on expanding this map to encompass the entire world of Tepira in a future game.


I also added info about the worlds to the Viselle Saga page.

Introductory Post

So, I kinda forgot this blog existed until I revived my main blog. I recently started working on a couple of rpg maker projects that I lost interest in a while ago. One is a fangame and one is just one of many titles I'm planning in an original series that got it's start a few years ago when I first started playing around with RPG Maker VX. Since then, I've migrated to XP, then 2k3 and finally 2k. Now I mainly stick with 2k and 2k3. I like the old school SNES type graphics over XP and VX's graphics, and I find it easier to work without the use of scripts.

I know scripts are apparently uber awesome and can do things like completely rework the battle system, add night and day cycles, enhance menu functionality and other amazing things. At first, I was obsessed with adding lots of neat scripts to the game I was working on then. I used the Tankentai Sideview battle system, had some skill add on scripts and even a few menu enhancements. I was so set on adding lots of scripts that I put things like the story and maps on the back burner while I was on a script hunt. Eventually I started focusing on the story but by then, I had gotten XP and the cycle repeated itself. It got so bad, that my mapping skills barely improved, what little progress I made was achieved through ghosting a couple of forums, lurking in the screenshot thread and leeching off tips and advice given to other people. To this day, I have yet to make a post on any of those forums.

When I moved on to 2k and 2k3 I became obsessed with looking for spiffy graphics and then I promptly stopped myself, and thought 'wait, I actually like the RTP graphics. You know what, I'm going to make a game using the RTP graphics. Sure, the game I'm working is going to need NPCs with pointed ears, but I can easily make those edits myself.' I already had a story planned out for this new game and how it was going to tie into the series itself. So, I started focusing on the story more, then when I had a rough timeline of events for the series as a whole, I focused on the races and locations a bit. Then I focused on mapping and wound up making maps that I can actually be kinda proud of. So far my favorite map is a mine/cavern. I'm particularly proud of this one because it's the first map I made that actually looked good. After finishing it, I was so pumped that I started modifying the world map some more. For a map that only contains half a continent, I think it looks good. I'm starting to get a little full of myself there. Anyway, what I've been trying to say with this last paragraph is that I've reached a point where I can look at my RPG Maker work and not think it's crap.



So...that's the intro post for this blog. Kinda long(by my standards, anyway) but it works. Over the next few days I'll add a couple of new pages with information about the games I'm working on and get some screenshots up.


Update:

I've added a page with some details about the original series I'm working on. It's linked up top, near the header.