Annnnd, I'm Back

I've had a burst of energy that directed itself towards one of my fangames and expanded the hell out of the world map. I tinkered with the plot a bit, and went resource hunting, mostly for battle backgrounds and kept going and going and I'm still going. I fretted over the battle backgrounds a bit; having separate ones for rivers, continent edges and oceans that all use the same tile with the same terrain tags linked to the same background. I didn't want river battles taking place on a ship or ocean battles taking place on a river. The best solution I've come up with(besides completely redoing the entire world map) was setting up background changes for certain groups of monsters. The only problem with this is that the backgrounds can be seen changing at the star of the battle. Luckily, with the right screen transitions, it muddles it enough to be passable, thanks to the plains and river backgrounds sharing similar colors.

Other than that, I'm still chugging along and I plan to do a lot more mapping in the very near future and then possibly getting a playable build going sometime after that. Progress on my original project is still at a dead stand still, though. While I'm starting to get the hang of chipset editing and charset editing, doing it in the default paint program is a tad freaking tedious and doing it for two projects at time seems uber time consuming and would most certainly make me apathetic about working on either one, resulting in more hiatuses and very sporadic tinkering on one or the other; instead of actually working on one at a reasonable pace where shit actually get's done. So for now, my original project is on the back burner and I'm focusing on my fangame.

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.