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Miscellaneous

Cid Margrace, Animal Lover

I've decided to add a notable NPC to FFD's cast of characters, which seems to never stop growing...

As yet unnamed, this NPC is a Moogle hailing from Figaro that assists Cid when he calls upon him. This is mainly added to justify the Objective Popup script used to clue players in to their next course of action to progress the story (when activated, a Moogle provides a brief message), and to help with some tutorial-esque scenes. The new Moogle character will not play a major role in the game's story, but rather show up when needed to explain different aspects of the game's mechanics.

I'm open to suggestions for a name for this Moogle; but Mog, Nono and Montblanc are off the table. =P

Progress Report

Cat Nip, Gold Saucer, The Echo

Wanted to take a minute to talk about some of the things we've been hard at work on as of late, as we've been pretty quiet otherwise.

Custom Sprites
First up, Avee has been working like a fiend, and has created over 60 different unique character sets for FFD, and I'm really excited for you guys to start getting a look at them. Paul is on a break currently, and as soon as he's able to come back, we're going to focus hard on maps and locations, giving a closer look at the game's world.

Cat Nip
A script has recently been released that replicates the functionality of the popular Cat Nip accessory from FFX-2. We've made sure it worked with our systems, and have added three new Relics based on it. Cat Nip is a new Relic that serves a single purpose: to manipulate the damage outcome of ALL actions taken whilst wearing it. The three different versions of the Relic all have different damage manipulators.

Gold Saucer
We recently unveiled another new mini-game that can be found in the Gold Saucer. The Mini-Cactpot works like a scratch-off lottery ticket to some extent, allowing players to reveal three numbers in a 3x3 grid. Once chosen, the player selects which line they'd like to wager on, and the sum of that chosen line corresponds to a Gil prize. This mini-game is present in FF14's version of the Gold Saucer.

But you may be asking, if there's a MINI-Cactpot, does that mean there's a beefier version? You bet there is. The Jumbo Cactpot is also being coded into the game, and that works much more like a standard lottery. Anytime from Monday through Saturday, players can buy a ticket, and choose four numbers from 0-9. Every Sunday, the winning numbers will be revealed, and players can claim huge Gil prizes based on how many of their numbers match, and in what order they match. Matching all four numbers in order? Well, players who are lucky enough to score on that will likely never worry about Gil again. As an added bonus, the earlier in the week that the player buys their ticket, the higher their Gil payout will be.

New Game+
Finally, we're adding one final permanently unlockable guest character to our Arrowny Gallery New Game+ content, who possesses a set of abilities that are truly unique.

Game Design

Shmarter Shpells

Back when I had little to no knowledge of RGSS3, I made a bunch of different damage calculations, mostly emulating Final Fantasy VI or Final Fantasy VII. These days, as I learned how to more complex things, I started looking at calculations used in the more advanced titles in the series, like Final Fantasy X.

One thing that kinda irks me about RPG Maker VX Ace is how little control you have as a creator with applying and removing states. You basically can either add or remove and give a percentage of that happening. That's it. I learned a while back that you have way more control over these things if you write your own methods to determine state application and damage.

So, today, I took a look at a lot of abilities that alter states, and worked to make them act a little more intelligently. Take the Black Magick spell, Enfeeble, for example.

The spell always deals some light non-elemental damage, but also has a chance to apply any of the four "Break" states (Armor Break, Power Break, etc.). However, it can apply ALL of them in a single cast if you're very lucky, using the default methods. That's a little nuts (and totally unfair), so I rewrote the method for the spell and added the following conditional checks to it:

- Does the target already have any of these states? If true, do not add the same states.
- Is the target immune to any of these states? If true, do not even attempt to add these states.
- Did the target have any of these states newly applied when this ability was cast? If true, do not add any other states.

So, when you cast Enfeeble, you can add any of the four states (determined by a random number roll from 0-4, each corresponding to a state), but once you apply one of them, it won't add another state until you cast it again (and it won't add a state a target already has; in this case, the number will roll again until it lands on an applicable state).

My hope is that using skills like this won't feel like such a gamble. I've gone and done the same for a number of abilities that add have a chance to add more than one state.

Let's look at another Black Magick spell, Shatter. This ability deals light non-elemental damage, nullifies Reflect, cannot be reflected and has a low MP cost, so it's always a viable choice during battle. However, if it's cast on a target with Reflect status, it deals heavy non-elemental damage, for the same MP cost. This spell already existed in the game for a long time, but the damage increase for casting it on a reflected target wasn't up to snuff with tier 3 spells. Now, it's even stronger than those are, which I hope will cause players to immediately consider using Shatter on a reflected opponent, instead of always defaulting to spells like Ultima (which will still outperform Shatter, but it will cost 70 MP more per cast).

It's easy for me to get lost in making cool spells and not realize how overpowered they are, like the Null spells in White Magick. These now only target a single ally, rather than the entire party. I recall someone mentioning this in response to our RSD video.

Thoughts on this? Suggestions? Ideas? We're approaching our May 1st deadline for adding abilities and items. Once that date arrives, we won't be adding any new abilities to any party members (we can still change how the existing stuff functions, though!).

Progress Report

Draw Points, Magick Refinery & the Golden Ticket Shop

Lots of cool things to talk about today.

We've changed up the mechanics of how Draw Points work. When players would find a Draw Point, they'd be able to select a new spell to learn, based on the type of Draw Point found (White, Black, Red). Players would get a few choices for spells, and permanently learn the one they chose.

We've changed how this works now.

All Draw Points are now equal. They don't have a specific type. They also don't permanently teach your characters a new magick spell. Don't panic, though: we're not using the FF8 mechanics on this. Now, when you find a Draw Point, you're rewarded a specific amount of Mako Stones. This new form of currency can be traded in at a Magick Refinery to teach your characters a new magick spell. Each Magick Refinery has their own specific stock of magick spells that can be taught, allowing the player to choose what spells they learn and when, and it also allows me less time coding Draw Points the old, complicated way.



Shown here is Mysidia's own Magick Refinery, as it is upon your first visit.

Next up is something very cool I wanted to talk about for the last few days (if you follow us on Twitter, I may have jumped the gun on announcing when this would be available, and I was totally wrong, ha).

A new addition to the Gold Saucer is the Golden Ticket Shop. This is a special shop that functions unlike any other shop in the game. The items offered in the Golden Ticket shop can only be purchased once each. After that, they're sold out. The shop uses Golden Tickets as currency, which you can find all over Gaia once the Golden Ticket shop is open. There are 255 Golden Tickets spread across the globe, and finding them all allows you to fully purchase the entire stock of items offered at the shop. When you buy an item using Golden Tickets, your tickets aren't deducted. It's progressive.



This image shows but a few of the items you can obtain here.

Progress Report

Leon Leveled Up!

It was really nice to see Leon's concept artwork featured as RMN's Pic of the Moment (thank you for that)! It was also cool because while that was happening, I was working on his new Paradigm skill changes (almost every character has a Paradigm that changes a character's command ability to something new). I finished his up, and he's a little unique from everyone else.

His skill change doesn't just change a command ability to a different command ability, it changes it to an entirely new ability set! Leon's Guardian command has been renamed to Sentinel (his former upgrade), and by using his "Synergy" Paradigm, Sentinel will change to Spellblade.

Those of you familiar with the Magic Knight/Mystic Knight/Spellblade job class first seen in FFV know what's next!

Leon, when paired in battle with Vicks, Wedge, or Lyra, can utilize the spells they have learned to perform attacks with his sword that have been imbued with a magick spell. The character who Leon is drawing power from to use the new Spellblade abilities must be in the battle party, and must also be alive. Wouldn't make sense to be able to absorb magick power from a dead ally.

When using a Spellblade ability that draws on a spell with a chance to apply a status condition (such as most Red Magick spells), Leon's Spellblade has an increased chance to apply the associated status condition.

Progress Report

Updates, updates!

Lots of script tweaking from me this week, among other stuff...

Aesthetic Changes
  • Paul and I are finalizing a new logo for the game, one more fitting to the game's overall plot.
  • The game's title menu now has some animation.
  • Damage popups no longer draw text, but use images to display damage.


Character Changes
  • This is one of the tricky bits of this update. We have two new secret characters, but we're opting to actually keep them a secret. Forever. Players will need to unlock them on their own. The addition of these final characters brings the playable main cast of characters to a total of 17, excluding guest characters.


Skill & Equipment Functionality Changes
  • Jump no longer has a casting time to execute, takes a turn to deal damage, and Reeve can no longer be targeted, healed or damaged while jumping.
  • Meditate no longer applies a random buff on Beclem. It has returned to using a previous function of increasing the damage of the next physical attack, much like Wedge's Focus does for magick attacks.
  • Any status condition which affects damage now does so with a flat rate multiplier, rather than adding points to stats to achieve a damage increase or decrease. For example, Bravery now increases physical damage output by 30%, rather than raising Attack Power by 30%. Status conditions affected by this change include Bravery, Faith, Focus, Meditate, Curse, Petrify, MP Turbo, Serenity (Paradigm), and Chi Focus (Paradigm).
  • Beclem's Paradigms no longer dictate which Blitz abilities he has access to. Beclem now has access to any Blitz learned at any time. His Paradigms have undergone a recode. More on that later.
  • Focus items now properly display their mastery bonuses (refers to the bonus unlocked when equipped on a level 99 character).


Limit Break Changes
Several Limit Breaks have been updated, in fact almost every character has a new one (in some cases, both), so I'll list the changes made to the initial four party members. More on other characters later.
  • Cid's Grand Lethal has been changed to Magitek Bomb, which deals unblockable damage on all enemy targets.
  • Reeve's Dragon Dive has been changed to Highwind Legacy, which deals unblockable damage over six hits to random enemy targets.
  • Vicks' Pulse of Life now restores 70% of each ally's Max HP and MP, rather than 100%.
  • Wedge's Comet has been changed to Magnificent Display, which deals unblockable damage to a random enemy target and causes female party members to protect Wedge when at near-fatal HP for the remainder of the battle.



Database Changes
  • Items, Key Items, Relics, Paradigms, Nethicite, Focus, and Skills have all undergone a preliminary recode which will be finalized and entered into the game's database on May 1st, 2015. This will be the last revision of items and skills. Currently, the game holds over 600 items and over 600 skills, and we expect that number to grow a little more before our deadline.


Beclem's Paradigms
Previously, Beclem's Paradigms served to either increase his natural abilities as a Monk, or change his Blitz abilities based on his current fighting style. We've gone ahead and updated how his Paradigms work, and how his Blitzes work (that will be touched upon in a later update). Here are some of his new Paradigms.

  • Evade & Counter: Increased Evasion and has a chance to counter incoming physical attacks.
  • Devastating Blows: Applies Seizure when landing a critical hit.
  • Chi Focus: Physical attacks and abilities deal increased damage while Beclem's HP is full.
  • Blitz Ace: Blitz abilities deal increased damage.


Just a reminder, each character has a total of nine Paradigms to unlock, and only one may be used at a time, per character.

Progress Report

RSD and the Big Giant Skills Recode

Thanks to all of you who gave feedback on our Release Something Day video! We were hoping for more, but no biggie! Your insights were duly noted (especially on the subject of sound effects; I totally agree). So, I wanted to take a second to give some details on what the three of us are up to right now, in terms of our work on the game.

Paul is perhaps the busiest of us all, working on location and character artwork, as usual. He is also doing a hell of a job planning out future animation sequences for abilities like Limit Breaks and summons. Currently, I think he is aiming for designing the Palamecian Research Facility (now called the Palamecian Geofront in-game for those who might have been confused by the mention of it in our RSD video).

Avee has been on a consistent roll with bringing Paul's character designs to life in sprite form, completing well over a dozen sprites in a really short amount of time, and all of them are insanely good. Really. I cannot wait to get another release out because of them.

That leaves me! So, not sure if anyone is aware of this, but FFD has been getting bigger and more ambitious over time, to the point where I started to worry if we'd run out of space for Skills, Enemies, and Troops in the game's database. RPG Maker VX allows a maximum of 999 in each of those categories, and I was somewhere up to around 600 skills in the game. So, I started to analyze each skill, deciding what should stay, what should go, where I could free up space for new skills.

In the end, I was able to use a Database Limit Breaker to up our maximums to around 2,000 so it's no longer a concern. However, I am sticking with my task here and making sure we don't have a bunch of useless things floating around in-game that most players will never use.

For instance, a few of Cid's Tool abilities are history. Scanner, Deconstructor, and Magitek Launcher have been cut. The first two, I doubt players would use often because Cid will almost always be played as an attacker. Both of those skills also have effects that are available to other characters. The Magitek Launcher was cut because Cid already has an AoE attack in Auto-Bowgun and a launcher-type skill seems a little too familiar to his second Limit Break (which is new, we'll explain sometime later).

That's just an example. Some characters have gotten skills ADDED rather than taken away. The goal was to condense the skills list and take out any lingering useless stuff from our status in development months ago.

I also want to talk a little bit about some upcoming things, like the number of Aeons the player can obtain. To put it lightly, the number of Nethicite Aeons the player can get their hands on has risen. A lot.

Finally, really awesome changes coming to Beclem! Can't say how yet, but when I can demonstrate it, I will do that as soon as possible.

Announcement

Artist Blog 05 - News Galore

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!

Miscellaneous

Happy New Year from the FFD team!

2014 was a great year for us developing FFD, and we are going to make 2015 the biggest year yet! Happy New Year to all of you at RMN, our official FFD home. We've got a lot of really exciting stuff in the "very very soon" pipeline to show you guys, and most of that stuff is thanks to Paul, so I'll turn it over to him if he wants to briefly elaborate.

From me, you're going to be seeing a lot more new areas of the game as they're created, and of course, we're taking our #DecemberGoal into the New Year, keeping that same work pace that will give us our new and final demo release (before the actual final FINAL release) sometime in the coming year.

Thank you all for helping us to develop the game with your critiques, play testing, comments, suggestions, resource and script releases, and your assistance. FFD is RMN's game as much as it is ours.

Happy New Year (still about 5.5 hours away in New York)

Game Design

Artist Blog 04 - Drawing Drawing Drawing

Hey chaps!

First of all, I'd like to wish you all a happy holidays! Merry Christmas, Happy Kwanzaa, Happy Dongzhi Festival, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Festivus and (for people like me), Happy Winter Solstice! I'll keep this blog post short and sweet. I have three weeks of vacation time off work (technically, it's more like two...) and I'm spending it drawing like a madman. Here are some miscellaneous tidbits for all of you:


-As some of you may have noticed, we have removed our old demo (there goes our 9,000... ;P) from our game page in preparation for our next build.

-I'm currently waiting on the delivery of some software which will hopefully allow me to take our graphics to the next level. There's no ETA on it at the moment, but hopefully it will be soon.

-William and I will be posting something important regarding sprites and parallax maps in the near future. (I keep saying "soon"... sorry, its the holidays after all... all I can do is eyeball and ballpark.) Stay tuned for that!

-The number of UNPC portraits in the game is no longer hovering around 300... its about twice that now, if not more. (Eek!)

-The world map has undergone some minor changes. A few locations have had their names changed while a couple of new locations have been added. These new locations are the Pirates' Hideout and Wutai Valley. An updated world map will be posted sometime later in the future.

-#JanuaryGoal is rolling along. I can't give you any exact estimates, but know that William and I are working quite hard. Hopefully we can provide you with a pretty enjoyable experience with our next build.


Finally, in an attempt to be much more transparent with all things artwork related, I've left a holiday sneak peek for all of you awesome and patient subscribers! Kudos to you hardcore FF fans who can correctly identify over 80% of the characters below (some are originals). Feel free to make some guesses. Almost all of them will make an appearance in our next demo build!

I hope you're all spending your holidays in good health!
Enjoy!

(Warning: large resolution)

~ ~ ~




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