Final Fantasy Discovery

Hello folks!

Long time no see. Our last blog post was back in 2014, so, as always, thank you for being so patient with us! As many of you have noticed, #JanuaryGoal has come and gone. William and I are extremely sorry that we were not able to get out a new build for all of you subscribers. #JanuaryGoal was always just a simple motivational objective and was never a hard deadline of any sort. In a way, William and I made some pretty good progress, but not enough to warrant a whole new build release.

With that being said, I'm writing this to you now in order to give you a more concrete idea of what William and I have in store for 2015. Our next "goal" will be the end of summer. I'm hesitant to make promises simply because... well, a myriad of different things can happen during the development process that could effectively hasten or slow down our work. The end of summer allows us extra (and ample vacation time) to square up a lot of new features that we've begun adding into the game during the last few months of 2014 (as well new features still being designed but we have yet to implement fully). I'm very sorry if some of you were disappointed that we were not able to release something last month. Please be patient with us and I promise you that we, the FFD development team will do our very best to have something very special for you by August!

Naturally, this extension comes with a few tidbits. Originally, our proposed #JanuaryGoal build was a test build that primarily focused on the implementation of new features (in comparison to the last RSW demo, which was removed a few months ago). These features included an increased resolution, revamped GUI, new music tracks, a plethora of new artwork as well as a new Travel system. Story advancement was quite minimal however and this is what we're going to focus on for the EoS 2015 build (End of Summer). I've always had a specific stopping point in mind for the definitive FFD demo and this is what we're going to try and aim for. Ideally, the next release after the EoS build would be the final game (and no, I don't have any ballpark estimates about when that would be!).

Here are the *tentative* game statistics for the EoS build:

Locations:
-Every location from the previous RSW demo (all will be revamped to various degrees)
-Narshe*
-Giza Plains
-Fovoham Windflats
-Figaro Castle
-South Figaro
-Rabanastre*
-Tycoon Castle*
-Vallis Media
-Carwen
-Macalania Woods
-Matoya's Villa
-Sanubia Sandway
-Free Port of Jahara
-Ogir-Yensa Sandsea
-Ronka Base Camp
-Antlion's Den
-Gold Saucer
-Mist Cave
-Corel
-Mideel
-Lodestone Cavern

*Limited access

Playable Characters:
-Cid Margrace
-?*
-?*
-?*
-Reeve Highwind
-Vicks Farron
-Wedge Farron
-Lyra Tycoon
-Firion
-Guy
-Dajh Klaus
-Parker Gabbiani
-Beclem Yun Fang
-Ellie Baldesion
-?**
-?
-?
-?

*The "Cloud", "Squall" and "Locke" impostors are no more!
**This character was chosen based on FFD subscriber input

Number of UNPCs (Unique NPCs with portraits): 100+

Misc Features:

-Travel Menu system
-Custom Animated Battlers (here's a WIP sample)

-Limit Break cut-ins
-Parallax Maps up the wazoo
-Enhanced GUI
-Save anywhere*
-Intro Movie

As you can see, this is quite a bit of game material to cover. The amount of content that we have planned for the EoS build is roughly 20% of the full game's length. To help facilitate this colossal development process, we've enlisted the exceptional talents of one of RMN's best pixel artists: Avee!

Avee will be working with William and I to help create original sprites for the insane figure of UNPCs and original characters in the game. His preliminary work has been phenomenal so far and we're extremely excited to see the rest of his work. We're lucky to have his incredible services working at our behest to help bring our creative vision to fruition.

While nothing has been fully cemented yet, William is also negotiating with a talented musical composer to create original FFD remixes of popular (or even obscure) Final Fantasy tunes! Let's cross our fingers and hope the talks go well!

So... that's about all I have to report for now. Work has been crazy for William and I. William had blizzards to combat while Benchmark Testing is rolling around the corner for elementary schools. While updates may be slow and sporadic, rest assured, development is always ongoing! :D

Anyhoo, I'll leave you all with a final look at one of the revised scenes from the original RSW demo (with sprites courtesy of Avee). Hopefully some of you still remember it.

Enjoy!